Alex-M

In this article, we’re going to cover 'why is SEO important for business during COVID-19?' and how you can get ahead of the competition. Since the pandemic started, there have been significant changes to both our personal and professional lives, which have had a drastic knock-on effect for the economy and, in particular, SMBs. Many of my clients had their businesses virtually grind to a halt with the numerous lockdowns…and some of them may well not fully recover. Some states and territories are enjoying more relaxed physical distancing rules, allowing them to target a percentage of their former customers, but many of the larger states as well as some countries are still doing it extremely tough.

In this article, we’re going to outline why your business needs SEO – especially if you’re the owner of a small business. We cover 16 reasons why search engine optimisation actively helps to grow your small business; it costs significantly less than most other forms of digital marketing and it is highly effective. Small businesses need SEO services as soon as they launch their entity online, as it's the most viable and cost-effective way to simultaneously understand and target customers in the critical moments that matter. 2021 saw the greatest ever need for SEO when demand rose to unprecedented levels. As consumers shifted in droves to online, even the most traditional retail business realised that they needed to switch to digital…and FAST! Most small businesses understand the importance of SEO for their digital properties and the results they will achieve from the SEO work being implemented by a digital agency.

In this blog, we’re going to discuss the question "what will SEO look like in 2022?" and the likely changes we see coming. After all of the changes in early 2020, one thing that remains constant from all this upheaval is the way that the technology around search engines and social media networks continues to thrive and be ever-present in our lives – especially these days. Surely, there is no longer a need for the question as to whether technology and internet giants such as Google will keep on innovating.

In our latest blog, we answer the burning question of “what is the best CMS for SEO?” If you’re a small business and looking for the best SEO-friendly Content Management System (CMS) for your website, what should it offer and what do you want to get out of it? Most of my clients don’t have the time, training or inclination to design their own website – but they do nearly all want to have a high level of control after the website is built to add new content (such as blogs and videos) and edit their site whenever they choose to.

What is a good CTR for your small business organic search results in Google? When considering what is a good CTR, this is a more complex question to answer than merely one set of numbers. You also need to take into account whether there’s an additional ‘featured snippet’ included above the natural listings, as well as whether the search terms are branded or non-branded, just for two examples. It is well documented that click-through rates for branded keywords are inherently higher. Improving your Organic CTR (Click-through Rate) means driving more traffic to your website without necessarily having to improve your rankings. Here are 12 steps you can follow to achieve this.

Many people often get confused between strategy vs tactics, so what’s the difference? Essentially, strategy deals with the Why and tactics deal with the How. This is fundamental if you’re looking at a small business SEO strategy for 2021. Strategy is the planning phase, and tactics are the action steps needed to carry out that plan. It’s also important to note, though, that strategy doesn’t just happen at the beginning before the tactics are conceived. Strategy happens both before and after the initial tactics are drawn up…with new tactics being deployed to keep in sync with the evolving strategy.

For our 23 SEO Trends in 2021, we’re going to start with User Intent and Increasing Clicks as two major factors this year. Did you know that you can increase clicks to your website by actually earning them from Google without ranking higher? It’s one of the least well-known facts and one of the best things about SEO. Essentially, you don't have to rank higher up on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to get more traffic if you can get more clicks from the rankings that you already have.

Serving hyper-relevant content that best answers the queries and needs of users is certainly at the forefront of many SEO Pros’ minds since the introduction of RankBrain and numerous core algorithm updates. Indeed, some might say that this is at the very heart of what a good SEO content marketing strategy is all about in 2021. Many SEO Pros believe that they're already providing this by driving their content strategy via keyword research alone.

You often hear the phrase “content is king” in reference to search engine optimisation (SEO) when speaking to an SEO Professional, but – to a great extent – this has never really been true, even when the saying first came into conversation years ago. Although many SEO agencies use this expression with their clients, it has never been the standalone factor that will gain you rankings.

With either a free SEO audit or a paid version, an SEO audit follows a detailed and technical checklist of potential website issues and other areas of concern such as content and links etc - that might prevent it from being indexed in the first place, as well as issues that might be holding back its potential to rank higher up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).