Title tags are a crucial part of any web page. They are an important SEO element and can help you rank higher when you optimize them properly. They can also encourage users to click on your page’s link in Google results, on Facebook and other social media sites rather than that of your competitors.

Most people don’t spend a whole lot of time on their title tags. They shove a keyword or two in there and then forget about them. But it’s well worth spending time to write high-quality tags that help you to rank and get even more traffic from Google.

But optimizing title tags isn’t easy. There are some common mistakes that a lot of business owners make. Here’s what you need to know about the most common mistakes and how to correct them.

Having Home in the title tag

Many website owners think they need to call their home page “home” to make it clear to users and humans that this is the start of the site. But most users don’t need to be told what the homepage is, they want to know what it is about. Google definitely doesn’t need your title tag to know that your homepage is the home. Your sitemap already does this. Instead, your homepage should have a title relevant to what the page or your business is about.

The title tag is too long

Search engines will only display a certain number of characters on their results. This is currently about 70 on Google. This means if your page title is over 70 characters there is a good chance that Google will cut it short and replace the remaining words with ellipses. Keep your titles concise to ensure that they are shown in their entirety.

No keywords

One of the two reasons for having a title tag is to tell Google and other search engines what your site is about. Keywords are essential in this regard, yet many business owners don’t take the necessary steps to identify appropriate keywords and add them in.

Every page has the same title tags

Some business owners don’t even bother to change any of their title tags. This means that every page has the same title, usually the title of the company. When all pages have the same title, you miss out on dozens of opportunities to rank. You’re also probably missing out on hundreds or even thousands of more visitors from Google because your page titles aren’t enticing or relevant.

Too many keywords

On the flip side, some business owners try to trick Google by overoptimizing their title tags and stuffing them with keywords. Naturally, this doesn’t work. Instead, Google and human users will be confused as to what the page is actually about. Google won’t rank you for any keywords and humans won’t click on your page’s link in Google as it will look spammy.

Having trouble with your title tags? We can help. Get in touch to find out more.

When a local business first starts doing digital marketing, it can all get a bit confusing. Where can they actually be found? What area is it best to focus on? There are actually four areas where local businesses can appear in Google and we go into detail about them below.

Local Service Ads

This is a recent Google development and the first spot that local businesses can be found on Google. These are localized ads that promote particular services, especially ones like plumbers and builders.

Unlike traditional Google advertising, this section is lead gen, not pay per click. That means that if you advertise here you won’t get charged every time some clicks on your ad. You only get charged if the searcher fills out a questionnaire and Google decides whether or not you can provide that service. You’ll get charged whether you close the deal or not. That part is up to you.

If you want to use this service, you’ll need to sign up through your Google My Business account. This will include background checks as every business will need to pass the Google Guarantee, which covers any damages that clients might claim.

Normal Google Ads

These are the ads that have been on Google for as long as most people can remember. These are pay per click, which means that you will get charged every time someone clicks on your ad. They also aren’t localized. Theoretically, you could advertise to someone on the other side of the country if you aren’t careful with your targeting. To run these ads you’ll need to target certain keywords, locations and possible demographics. You’ll also need to set up a budget so Google can work out how many times to show your ad and who to.

The Local Pack

This is the first free, organic section that small businesses can appear in. This section shows the Google My Business profile of at least three local businesses related to the search. How well you rank will depend on several factors including your business’ location, your GMB profile, your reviews and your general online presence. Small businesses can optimize their presence and their profiles to try and rank higher and many agencies will provide this as a service.

Organic results

The final place that local businesses can appear is in the organic search results. Again, this is a free section and businesses can optimize their website and web presence to increase their chances of getting listed here. This is the main focus of SEO and many agencies near you will provide this service. A place in the organic rankings can never be guaranteed, however, regardless of how much money you throw at it.

If you need help getting your business listed in any of these four sections, give our team a call today.

One question that every small business owner wants to know when they start doing SEO is how long it takes to start ranking in Google.

Here’s a hint: it won’t happen overnight for the vast majority of small businesses. The average time that it takes to rank in Google can vary massively depending on the term and it’s competitiveness, but most authorities agree that it usually takes between three to six months to start ranking well.

If you are a new business with a brand new web presence ranking in a competitive space, it can take up to a year to see any results. This news can be hugely frustrating for website owners. After all, you’ve invested so much money into building your web presence and hiring an SEO company, you want immediate results.

But instant results don’t happen in Google’s organic listings. The only way to get quick results is to cheat the system. But that will ruin your digital presence in the long term.

Below we’ll discuss how Google works and why it takes as long as it does to rank.

How Google finds your page

Google uses bots or spiders to crawl through billions of webpages every single day, collecting data and cataloging all of the information ti can find. All of this data is added to Google’s ongoing index of the internet. It’s this index that Google uses to rank websites and form its search results.

If you want your website to appear in Google, the first step is making sure that Google can find and crawl your website. If you have Google Console set up, you can actually submit your website to the index to make sure that it is crawled. Google will continue to crawl your site organically over time to make sure that its index remains relevant.

How Google ranks websites

Every time you search, Google serves up personalized results from their index in a way that it feels best matches your query. No one knows the exact formula that Google uses to rank websites, but we do know that it is based on a huge number of factors like the number of backlinks a site has, the page’s content, it’s age, and the searcher’s location and history.

How well your website ranks in Google will depend on things like:

Your SEO

You can optimize your website so that Google is more likely to find it, able to crawl it better, and thinks it is more valuable. This includes optimizing pages for certain keywords.

Your site’s age

Older websites are given more authority. New websites are considered less trustworthy, simply because they haven’t been around as long. You can still rank if you have a new website, but you should see improvements after six months.

The competitiveness of keywords

Some search phrases are harder to rank for than others. It might not be possible for small businesses to rank for keywords that are targeted by national companies. It may be better to go after localized terms first, before targeting national phrases.

The quality of your content

It’s hard to rank if you don’t have much content on your website. That’s because you aren’t giving Google enough content to decide what your page is about. The websites on the first page of Google tend to have in excess of 1000 words on their page.

Backlinks

Backlinks are a big sign of authority for Google. The more website linking back to yours, the more authoritative your website looks. That’s why it’s important to get backlinks even if you are a small business.

Everyone tells you to write high-quality blog posts so that you can get more traffic, build trust and eventually earn more money through your website. But what does a high-quality blog post actually look like?  

It’s not, as some people believe, sitting down for half an hour, smashing out a convoluted 300-word post, grabbing a stock image and hitting post. Creating quality blog posts demands a lot more work.

Here’s exactly what you need to do to create a great blog post every single time.

Start with why

You need to have a reason behind every post that you write. Are you trying to explain a topic to your audience? Are you writing about a new feature of your product? Are you trying to educate your audience on a particular term? Whatever your reason for writing, make sure that it is at the forefront of your mind when you’re at the keyboard. This will help you keep your writing focused and on point

Have your audience in mind

As well as knowing the reason for you writing the blog post, you should also have a deep understanding of your audience — the people who will read your post. You don’t just want to write for anyone. By writing to a specific type of person you can make sure that your blog post is as relevant and as useful as possible.

Know your topic inside and out

There is simply no point writing a blog post on a topic that you aren’t an expert in or haven’t researched. It will be very obvious that you lack expertise. Instead, confine your writing to topics that you know inside out. And if you are going to broaden your topics, make sure that you research thoroughly to create a useful and engaging blog post rather than waffle that people can find elsewhere.

Be original

You shouldn’t try and copy the content that is already out there. The web is full of cookie-cutter content that doesn’t stand out. Why bother adding to it? Instead, try to be unique and take a different approach to everyone else. This could be going into more detail than anyone else, taking a different perspective than anyone else or by tackling a topic no one has done before. However you decide to play it, make sure your writing is unique.

Aim long but keep it quality

There is a tendency for people to write to a specific word limit such as 1000, 1500 or 2000 words. Yes, long blog posts do tend to rank better than shorter blog posts, but those blog posts are high quality, too. And quality is the key. Don’t waffle for 2000 words to try and reach some prescribed target word count when 800 words will do it. Keep your writing concise and high quality. It doesn’t have to be long if it doesn’t need to be.

If you keep these five tips in mind the next time you are writing a blog post, you’ll be sure to create a high-quality post that your readers will love.

Image optimization is often overlooked in the world of SEO. With so much on-page and off-page optimization, it’s easy for image optimization to get lost in the noise. That doesn’t mean that image SEO is any less important. There is still plenty to gain by spending time optimizing the images on your websites.

It’s so important that Google even shares advice on its website about how to optimize images. Still, it can be a hard task to start. That’s why we’ve created this comprehensive multi-step guide.

Make sure your images are relevant

We are visual creatures. That means it’s important that you make an immediate connection with your readers through your images. The best way to do this is to use eye-catching and relevant images that encourage your viewers to carry on reading. You can do this through stock images but it’s even better if you can do this by creating your own images. In some cases, such as where you sell your own product, it will be absolutely necessary to use your own images.

Make your images as high quality as possible

Both search engines and readers prefer high-quality images wherever possible. This is even more important now that readers use multiple devices to access your content. If images aren’t high quality, they can look distorted when being viewed on a desktop or mobile devices.

In most cases, this will be a JPEG. But PNGs are also suitable if the image is not huge or complex.  

Make images as small as possible

The smaller your images, the quicker they will load. This is incredibly important now that Google is increasingly prioritizing mobile browsing. It even has a mobile-first index now.

Mobiles cannot quickly load images with large file sizes. This can have a negative impact on user experience and will result in people leaving your site. The higher your bounce rate (particularly your bounce rate from Google) the lower your rankings.

By scaling down your images (while still keeping image quality high) you can ensure that your entire page loads quickly when viewed on a mobile device.

Add alt tags

All of the images on your website should have descriptive alt tags that include relevant and related keywords. This helps Google to know what your images about so that it can rank your page accordingly. Don’t keyword stuff in your alt tags, but don’t forget about them.

Give images descriptive titles

As well as alt tags, you should also be saving all of your images with relevant titles that describe the images and include keywords. Google can crawl image titles as well as alt tags and these will also help the search giant to understand what your page is about.

You can change the name of your image before you upload it to your website or most CMS platforms, like WordPress, will let you change the image title after you have uploaded it.

If you need help optimizing your images, reach out to our team today.