Introduction

Whether you run a small business here in Cardiff, or perhaps you’re a large business that relies on obtaining customers locally, its now essential for many companies to invest in SEO.

So, whether you’re a local hairdressing saloon, or you’re a large law practice employing many hundreds of staff, you’re bound to want to get more customers.

SEO for those that don’t know what it means stands for search engine optimisation.

And normally most digital marketing agencies, normally split their SEO services into two main categories, they are “local SEO” and also “national or organic SEO”.

So, to help your business to improve its local SEO, so you can focus on one city or town, we thought we would right a blog post explaining different ways that you can improve your local SEO.

#1 Set up a Google My Business account

Haven’t done this yet? Well, why not?

It’s super easy to do, so you just provide to Google information about your business, such as its Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP).

Then you should ask a company to make sure that your NAP information is consistent, i.e on your website you have your businesses name, address and phone number written.

Then this should match your businesses Google My Business account, plus it should also match all of your business’s citations.

#2 Add Schema

Okay, so as an SEO consultant, you have to think like Google’s algorithm, so for example let’s say you run a car dealership, well your likely to have say 100 cars listed on your website.

There will often be information about the brand of the car, its mileage and also information such as what extras does it have such as air conditioning.

So, this means that Google has a lot of information it has to index, yet how does the algorithm know what the businesses address is, its phone number or let’s say the businesses name?

That’s to say each page may have over 1000 words on it, so how does Google’s algorithm know where to find the businesses name, address and phone number?

Well, this is what Schema is for, it allows the SEO agency to mark-up the businesses NAP information, so that the algorithms know exactly what the businesses name is, its address and phone number, this can help to improve the company’s local SEO.

#3 Earn high quality backlinks

High-quality backlinks are important, so let’s say for example you run a dental practice, and you want your business to be ranked number 1 for “dentists Cardiff”- for this to happen normally the business will need high-quality backlinks.

#4 Employ an agency to add content marketing

A lot of businesses here in Cardiff employ a digital marketing agency to write content marketing and to add this to the company’s website every month.

The work must be high-quality, and how much content marketing is needed is dependent on how competitive your business sector is. So for example, a solicitors practice will normally need a lot of good quality content marketing, where a less competitive business, let’s say a company that makes wedding cakes in Cardiff, may need less written content marketing.

#5 Onsite SEO

If you employ an company, they should work to improve your businesses onsite seo, so this could be writing meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor text, adding content marketing.

 

#6 Google’s algorithm

Some digital marketing agencies may implement SEO work which is not white hat, which means that Google’s algorithm could penalise the business. So only invest in quality white hat SEO.

 

#7  Update your website

You must update your website, so whether that’s updating plugins, or it could be working with an company to make sure that they are adding blog posts to your website.

 

#8 White Hat

Make sure that all SEO work is white hat, by this we mean that if you employ a marketing company here in Cardiff, to help improve your businesses local SEO, the must be white hat.

 

#9 Employ a local SEO agency

There are now thousands of digital marketing agencies, based all across Britain, so you could hire a business that’s based in London, but often the business will need regular meetings with its marketing company, so its worth bearing this in mind, as if your company is based here in Cardiff, then why not hire a SEO company?

 

#11 Mobile friendly

Your businesses website should be mobile friendly, so this means that the website resizes to the screen of a mobile or tablet. If your website is not mobile friendly then you could possibly be losing customers.

 

# Business reviews

If your customers leave positive reviews on your Google My Business account, and these reviews are real, then this can help to improve your businesses SEO.

 

#Affordable

Here’s a really important tip, its important to make sure that your monthly SEO cost is affordable.

This may sound like common-sense advice, however many businesses choose an expensive company, yet then do not appreciate that they have to invest for a long time normally before the business can see results.

So, if a business is thinking that it can improve its organic SEO in say just a few months, and the business faces a lot of competition, then often this is not possible. Often to improve a businesses organic SEO this will take a lot of time, and this often why agencies ask companies to sign a 12 month contract.

 

How we can help:

If your business would like a quote for local SEO or organic SEO, then why not call us?