T for Technology – Find yourself with SEO

It has become such an achievement that finding yourself on the 17^th page of a Google search feels like real life rejection.

Included in top searches awards lists, one will always find the big brands mixed up with influential leaders, celebrities, and influencers from all walks of life. This obviously has a huge impact on the relationship between popularity and success. At least popularity seems like success because the brand or product is the most seen and heard off.

This is also true for our businesses, practices, and shop fronts. Being more findable will certainly translate to more marketing success and in turn more turnover and hopefully more profit. But… it’s not that easy. How does one ascend from the page 17 valley to the First page peak of glory!

Well, there are cheap, sustainable, and hardworking ways and more expensive easier ways. As always there are many ways to get up this metaphorical hill. I will cover the expensive ways in a follow up piece.

Hard-working ways will be what is referred to as SEO. Search Engine Optimisation. An acronym that has become widely known as the practise, or almost, science of increasing search accuracy and hit ratios, also maintaining search order position on certain keywords. It is a definite full-time job for someone. In an arena of tightly contested keywords – to come out on top of searches – tough call!

Acceptance. Accepting that you have no control over what Google and other search engines will list is your first step. You can only try and boost your compliance to their rules and stay on top of changes to make adjustments as needed.

Rules are broadly defined and include site specific requirements that are “must haves” for proper listings.

• sites should be hosted on a secure connection using HTTPS protocol
• sites need to be responsive (in the sense that it adjusts to the screen aspect ratios and browsers people use for continuity purposes)
• you need to have a publicly accessible “robots.txt” file in the sites root
• have a sitemap on a properly formed .xml formatted file
• make use of canonical tags
• descriptive or “pretty” permalinks is a must!

The technical rules are insane, especially if you are frowning or had to read the previous paragraph twice.

If you have a bit of technical savvy, and your site is created on WordPress or Wix platform, there is help in the form of plug-ins that will guide you up Mt. SEO. I personally liked to use Yoast SEO on the WordPress sites. It guides you in every post or page with rules indicated as little red or green lights, turning the reds to greens as you go. It also explains what needs to be done to have optimal structure and encourages best practices in your composition of said page or post. There is a free version and a pro version. The free version will get yourself on the correct path, but I would recommend the Pro version for most people as it bridges the gap for the technically challenged users. It does a lot of that “confusing paragraph requirements” for you.

Google offers a lot of very useful tools that are available for free, these will greatly assist you and can be used alongside the plug-in tools. One such tool is Google’s Webmasters tool, now re-birthed as Google Search Centre. It helps with reporting on your keyword status and search engine hits. It has wonderful reporting, not too hard to use and has a price tag of R0.00 – which is the best part!

Other useful gratis tools include Google My Business. It is made for interacting with clients who rate your business and leaves reviews, adding information that is immediately available on the search engines listings. It also displays your operating hours, contact details and information about the business you choose to share. I would highly recommend this option for your first base camp in search listing climbing activities.

(More to follow in Part 2 – keep reading!)