Local SEO in High Wycombe

Startups often rely on a combination of talent and good fortune to establish their brand. However, waiting for growth to naturally occur is not the best strategy. Instead, startups should take a proactive approach to boost their online visibility and enhance their brand image.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO enhances search engine visibility for local businesses, specifically those with physical locations. By adhering to local SEO best practices, companies can effectively increase organic traffic from customers in nearby areas.

Search engines use different signals to provide users with the most relevant local search results, including locally produced content, social profile pages, specific backlinks, and citations. 

Local SEO capitalizes on these signals by embedding relevant keywords and phrases into the site's content, optimizing titles and meta descriptions, and using social media to increase the business's visibility.

Benefits for Local SEO for Startup Businesses

As a business owner, attracting traffic to your website is crucial, regardless of the size of your establishment. Did you know nearly half of all Google searches are for local information? Don't miss out on potential customers in your area - optimize your website for local searches.

As an entrepreneur you will need to have a detailed marketing plan that addresses charts your business's future progress and development.

By 2023 28% of all business activity is expected to be conducted online so purchasing a premium domain name is something that will really give your online business a head start. 

A premium domain name is short, unique, memorable, and can easily win the trust and confidence of your customers. But one pressing question we often hear is, "how do you get one?" .

Three Brilliant Techniques for Finding a Great Premium Domain Name

Before selecting a premium domain name for your business, be sure it satisfies these three crucial requirements.

1 Must Be Easy to Brand

You cannot afford to ignore brandability when searching for your domain name. Simple-to-brand domain names are creative, memorable, easily stand out from the crowd, and will reflect the spirit of your business.

Source Unsplash

Five years ago, emerging digital marketing trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), data-driven marketing, and voice search engine optimization (VSEO) were seen as too ambitious for the time.

Fast-forward to the present, and these trends are now among the top priorities for millions of businesses.

In fact, you can’t spend time online without these digital marketing trends curating every facet of your user experience: Targeted social media ads, the videos that appear on your YouTube feed and hands-free Google search while you’re cooking at home, to name a few.

If you are serious about leveraging your business online, it’s nearly impossible to stay competitive without keeping track of the latest trends in digital marketing, driven by demand.

With emerging technologies and the resurgence of old and tried methods, our friends at a top New York web design company understand it can be overwhelming to keep up. How do you know which trends are worth investing in?

Misconceptions Entrepreneurs have about SEO

Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, is vital for businesses aiming for success. It is an integral factor for any company that knows the value of building a strong online presence. However, some entrepreneurs are still not quite sure that they understand why they need SEO.

This is understandable since search engine optimization can be complicated; difficult to explain. Business owners aren't regularly exposed to keywords, link building, search engine ranking, and On Page SEO. These concepts are all unfamiliar to them and, as such, paves the way for misconceptions about SEO.

For search engine optimization to work, all misconceptions must be set aside - because they are all just myths. 

Common SEO Misconceptions

1. SEO is simple. Everybody can do it.

SEO is all about strategies and techniques that can be quite technical at times. It also involves keywords and link building, something that not everyone is familiar with. So, no, SEO is definitely not easy – and not everybody is capable of doing it confidently and properly.

2. SEO is a one-time thing. You can stop once your website achieves a high search engine ranking.

SEO is not a one-time thing. It is not something that you quit because you are already ahead of the competition. It’s all about strategies and techniques and it’s also a process that feeds on consistency.

Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash

From remote shopping to virtual tours, a number of companies began to shift their activities online in the past year to attract customers and increase their sales. E-commerce also experienced a huge rise during 2020 with online sales making up 21.3 percent of the annual retail revenue.

Despite the high number of businesses working online, there are still some that do not sell their products or services through a digital platform. This brings us to the big question. If you don’t have a business that conducts transactions online, do you still need a website or a web presence? Well, simply put, the answer is yes.

In this day and age, it is almost critical for all types of business to have a well-designed web page. Even if you are not operating online, you still need a website to gain an edge in the industry and over your competitors. Here are some ways it can help you get ahead and grow your business.

Strengthens the Brand Identity

If you think about, the website is one of the first things that most people search for when looking for products or services. With an easy to navigate, attractive and informative web page, you can instantly make a positive and lasting impression on the viewer. While, you may not be selling anything on your page, visitors might still remember the brand name and recall the details later on.

Your website is an important part of your brand identity and a well-designed one can help strengthen it. One of the most important part of that identity is a logo design. While it is easy to find graphic designers to design your company logo nowadays it is how you make use of it which really matters. By incorporating the logo design of the business, a relevant color scheme, imagery and font styles, you can tell people about your industry, work and values you stand for.

Marketing is a crucial tool for absolutely any business. How else would your potential customers find out about you, right?

Newer, more efficient marketing tools regularly replace traditional marketing methods. At some point in time, social media marketing was something that businesses would explore hesitantly. However, in this current scenario, social media marketing has turned out to become an essential marketing tool for businesses.

What was once a new concept has now become a norm.

Whether you have a new business that is just getting on its feet, or you already have a stable client base and are looking to make your reach even further, great!

What you need is a complete solution: Social media marketing.

How well are you promoting your business? If you haven’t employed programmatic advertising yet, you are missing out on numerous benefits.

Programmatic advertising is the new word in the digital promotion realm. It can put your service in front of your target audience with just a few clicks. This automated advertising approach has been adopted by numerous small businesses all over the world.

Can you run your business without programmatic advertising? You can.

Can you run it more effectively than your competition? Unlikely. According to Dun & Bradstreet report, 65 percent of B2B marketers indicated they currently buy or sell advertising programmatically.

We’ve come up with four ways this type of advertising can help you grow your small business. Once you take advantage of this method, you are bound to discover a few more.

Running a small business is often hectic and marketing is one of the biggest demands. But it’s also essential.

With the majority if purchases now occurring online and an increasing amount of local traffic to local businesses being guided by the internet, it really is crucial to make a success of the web.

Web success means ranking well in search engine results. Since SEO (search engine optimisation) is all about keywords and keywords are just that… words… SEO is actually all about content.

There’s no getting away from its importance. To rank well for your niche, your business needs to produce quality content that people a) want to read, b) will share and c) will link to.

But what is ‘quality content’? It used to be that anyone could string 300 words together in a blog, cram it with keywords, post and voila… up the rankings you go. To be frank, I’m glad those days are over, but it does complicate things for your business.

I’ve been suffering from blog block recently and missed my last two self-imposed deadlines, so writing about … well writing, is possibly a strange topic for this blog post at this precise moment in time. But here goes!

Writing content for your own website can present a challenge. You undoubtably understand your small business the best and know exactly what you are all about and how you deliver your services. But … sometimes in your enthusiasm for your business (don’t get me wrong conveying that enthusiasm is great) the writing can get a little laboured and key points can sometimes be lost amongst a lot of unnecessary content.

In this post I’ll share some key things to consider when drafting your content so that it encourages your small business website visitors to get in touch … and become your customers.

1 It’s all about you

Well, more accurately, it’s all about your customer. It’s easy to get carried away by the aforementioned enthusiasm and write about all the great things that you can do and the services you offer. But your customers don’t want to read about you they want to read about what you can do for them.

Focus your writing on the word ‘you’. Less ‘me, myself and I’ and more ‘you and yours’.

Recently I attended a digital marketing masterclass. I was lured in by the ‘masterclass’, which, as an aside, demonstrates very well the importance of a great headline for your online promotional activity.

Whilst the course was interesting, I spent most of the day learning about keyword research and on-page search engine optimisation which wasn’t quite what I had expected. The course was well received by other delegates, but I had been expecting something quite different. After all, as web design is what I do these are things that I am very familiar with and have been implementing on customer’s websites for quite some time.

My core business offering is to help small businesses and start-ups get online, primarily with a new website, so I had been hoping for some insight about the whole digital picture … how it all pulls together to market your small business in this digital age. I often support new customers with a whole host of other related services to help get them started with managing the online marketing of their small business. I’d hoped for tips on conversion tactics on landing pages, social media advice and content writing and the whole online branding process.

So, what is my point? Not, that obviously, I should have been a little more thorough before signing up and that I should have requested a course overview.

My point is, that it got me thinking about all these terms that we see used everywhere and ‘hashtagged’ all over Twitter. Not just digital marketing … think

If you manage a website for your small business, you are probably aware that to be competitive it is not enough to just launch your website and then forget about it. You need search engine optimisation or SEO. SEO is probably something you have heard about and know you should be doing.

You’ve probably also quite likely heard various things mentioned in connection with SEO; like ‘content marketing’ or 'digital marketing'. You are probably also aware of the benefits of having an active presence on one or more social media channels but how does it all sit together and what exactly is content marketing?

To compound things SEO best practises are ever changing and what may have worked effectively a couple of years ago is not going to work now so you need to keep up to date.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a form of marketing online or digital marketing, that involves the creation of material online with the purpose of raising awareness of your brand or business. The type of online material that you should be creating can include;

• videos (via something like YouTube),
• blog posts (on your website) and
• Tweets, posts and status updates on various other social media platforms.

The content should not necessarily advertise your business and products directly, but should be generating interest and raising awareness while encouraging visitors to your website.

Last month this blog featured its first guest post and it got me thinking about the benefits of having a guest contributor on your small business blog. There are a lot of articles, blog posts and content out there extolling the benefits of guest blogging for the blogger:

• Building relationships with a wider audience
• Gaining status as an expert in your field
• Driving traffic back to your own blog or website with links

These are all valuable reasons for writing and getting your own content featured elsewhere. But as a time-poor small business owner I thought I’d write about the benefits from the other side.

The benefits of featuring guest content on my own blog

1 Featuring a guest blogger saves time

This was probably the greatest appeal for me.

I have a self-imposed schedule of a minimum of one 2,000 word, or thereabouts, blog post a month. I don’t think this one is going to make it. This coincides with a mailing that I send on the first of each month although at the time of writing that mailing is likely to be a little late this month!

It takes me roughly three hours to research and write each post initially. There is then time put aside to proof read and edit, source a suitable image and publish the post.

So ... how to safeguard your brand online presence

In a lot of ways, the Internet is still like the wild west, and it’s hard to believe the world wide web we use today is only around 17 years old. Things change quickly, especially when technology is involved. Surprisingly though, while we “Google” things like how to bake the perfect cookie and how late that local store is open until, we often forget to check on our own brands.

You as an individual are a brand, and your company is its own unique brand too. Both need to be monitored for accuracy and for potentially damaging material that could exist with or without you knowing. If you’re not actively monitoring your search results, it’s like someone is talking behind your back. Luckily, like a good friend, Google can tell you what’s going on if you’re willing to listen.

Check and Check Often

Not surprisingly, those who do find potentially embarrassing or damaging information, monitor their results more frequently than those who don’t bother to check. Discovering information too late, however, could have a long-lasting impact on your character, business sales and much more.

What if you Google yourself and you don’t find anything? Well, according to ReptuationManagement.com, “having no web presence can raise suspicions and potentially be just as damaging as negative content.” You’ll want to build up properties that accurately promote and help your presence and reputation online. Local directories, social media profiles, and partnership pages are just a few of the ways you can accomplish that.

Why Good UX & Security Matter

Providing a good user experience within the web properties you own and manage is critical. An outdated website with poor navigation, for example, can lead to people questioning the authenticity and professionalism of you or your company. Your information on the web may be accurate and not be hurting your online reputation, but your website and social media profiles could be.

As a small business website owner, you have possibly felt under pressure to add fresh content to your website. We’ve all been told that Google likes a well maintained and regularly updated website and a blog is a very easy way of doing that without having to constantly think of tweaking the main structure of your website … although it is important that you keep that current and don’t neglect it.

Apart from posting content in the interests of ‘just adding content’ to boost your search results, there are plenty of other reasons for starting a small business blog and some of them could just help give you a new focus when you’re struggling for blog post ideas.

Ultimately, your website and/or your blog is all about promoting your business and finding customers. Careful planning of blog content allows you to provide real value and benefit to new and existing customers. This in turn can build trust and loyalty which will lead to long term business rewards.

Regular posts on your small business blog allow you to:

1. Show a bit of personality behind your brand
2. Reinforce your key messages and build awareness of your services
3. Generate engagement with new and existing customers
4. Establish yourself as a respected voice within your niche
5. Attract new, and otherwise different, visitors to your website

1)  Show a bit of personality behind your brand

People do business with people. If you’re a small business, or perhaps ‘the’ business this is even more true. Depending on your offering, it is likely that your potential customers are investing in you as the provider of services rather than just the services that you offer.

Your website will be outlining all your goods and services and encouraging your visitors to make contact. It will be factual and detail the logistics of how you work and what a client can expect from you. You may have written an excellent ‘About’ page that outlines what qualifies you to deliver those services but it probably doesn’t give a huge amount away about you … the person.

Presenting your small business in a professional light and creating a great first impression is crucial if you are to succeed. First impressions are important and we’ve all heard that when you first meet someone, they will form an opinion of you, rightly or wrongly, within about 60 seconds. That’s not long and in this digital age, it’s even harder as your potential customers’ first impression may even be formed online before they’ve even met you face to face. It's important to present your business in a professional light ... however, people first come into contact with you.

So, it's worth investing in a consistent image across all the different types of media that you are using to reach your potential customers.  It's good for brand awareness but it will also present as more professional and convey that you are serious enough about your business to invest time and effort in the finer details.

A haphazard and inconsistent approach will give the impression that that is how you approach your business generally and even worse how you deliver your products and services.

I have been freelance or self-employed and running a small business for over 20 years. The way we market ourselves has changed enormously in that time. In this post, I’m going to share a few things that I’ve learned through experience and from networking and co-working with many other small business owners about how to present ourselves professionally.

I’ve also numbered these points in a logical order for those readers who are just starting out. You need some of them before you can start the next one.

A 2016 survey revealed that around 50% of all small businesses still don’t have a website, even though it is easier than ever to get your business online.

This is a topic that came up in conversation while I was at a networking meeting a couple of weeks ago. (Yes, sometimes I do get out from behind my PC and go and speak to real people. I even quite enjoyed it although I was lured by cake as it was a birthday celebration for the networking group in question. I digress.)

“Do people actually still need a website with all these things available like Flickr and Instagram?”

This question came from another small business owner, who does, in fact, have a website themselves.

I was aghast for but tried not to let it show. Once I’d got over the initial shock of imagining myself completely redundant I recovered my composure and explained why a website is as important, if not more so, than it ever was to your small business. I thought I’d share some of those reasons here countering the argument that you could just have a strong presence on social media and negate the need for a website.

Social media is very important for the growth of your business but you still need a website

{tweetme }#SocialMedia is very important for the growth of your business but you still need a website{/tweetme}

If only there were some magic formula for writing a blog post. An easy template for creating a post that everyone shares and gets a load of traffic.

Sometimes it can seem like an uphill struggle, but the thing to remember is that a thoroughly researched and well-structured post will always add value to your blog even if it’s not getting a huge amount of traffic initially.

Get the basics right and then the traffic will come so remember these key points:

• Well written and grammatically correct content will create a great first impression of you and your blog or small business website.
• Factually accurate content will add to your credibility as an expert in your field.
• Search engine spiders can detect good well-written content that isn’t just stuffed full of keywords to try and boost your SEO.

It’s safe to assume that your early posts won’t get much traffic as no one will know that your blog exists. However, your posts will always have some value if they’re well written and follow a few basic guidelines. New visitors, impressed by a current post will search back to see what else they can learn from you. Your older posts that didn’t get a lot of exposure initially will have ongoing value and can be shared long past their original publish date, especially if your content is ‘evergreen’. (More on this another time.)

In other words, don’t ever compromise the quality of your content for the sake of just getting something published.

If you're anything like me getting started with a blog post is difficult, but once you've got going it's sometimes hard to know when and how to stop. What is the best way to end and sum up your blog post?

Writing a great attention-grabbing headline and a compelling introduction will encourage your visitors to read on through the rest of your post. You will have outlined what you’re going to be writing about, defined a clear benefit to reading on and reassured the reader that it’s worth their time to read it.  

But having read your article, what do you want them to do next and how do you want to reinforce your message at the end of your post?

Why is a strong conclusion so important?

A strong conclusion to your post can encourage your readers to take some action, which was probably the aim of your post in the first place. It can also make your post and therefore you more memorable.

Don’t overlook your closing paragraphs. By getting it right you could be encouraging your readers to:

So you’ve written an attention-grabbing headline and you’ve caught the reader’s attention. Hooray! They’re reading your blog post. How do you ensure that your visitors read on past the introduction to the rest of your post?

This blog post will demonstrate some of the clear benefits to a well-crafted introduction and will outline what you really should be including. Has it worked so far?

What's the relevance of the beach picture? Well only that this time of the year I find it very inviting (tenuous link to an inviting introduction) ... in fact I like to go to the beach any time of the year.

But back to the blog post introduction

The objective of your introduction is to encourage the reader to continue. It should:

• Outline what you are going to be writing about.
• Offer a clear benefit to reading on.
• Make the reader feel comfortable that the content being shared is valuable and worth their time investment in reading it.

Think of your audience and try to address them personally.

If you’ve done your research you will know who your readers are. You will have clearly identified who you are trying to target you will be able to outline a clear benefit to them for reading on to the end of your post.

Research says that on average eight out of ten people will read your headline but only two out of ten will go on to read the rest of your article or blog post. So, if you want your content to be read, it’s worth spending some time and effort on that all-important headline. Some copywriters even say that around half the time it takes to write your article should be spent on researching and crafting your headline.

Well if you’ve made it this far then the headline worked and you’ve read the introduction!

Before you start: What are the objectives of your headline?

There are various reasons for having a small business blog, but if readers don’t get past the headline, then your blog content is pointless. Think about how your headline is going to make sure the content you are painstakingly writing gets read and achieves its own objectives of:

• Getting found in search results.
• Attracting visitors to your website.
• Demonstrating your expertise within your business sector.
• Giving tips and advice to existing and potential new customers.
• Providing an easy way to add topical content to your website.
• Generating material to share on your social media platforms. (I can usually get between 5 and 10 Tweets from each blog post.)

The first two points are probably the most relevant to readers of this blog, so this post will focus on those two objectives. Your headline needs to make sure that your blog post gets found and is then read with a view to impressing your visitor so much that they move on to the rest of your website. That’s quite a tall order.

Getting found in search results

If your headline contains a phrase that readers are likely to use as a search string, then so much better. At least include some of your keywords.