No I can’t rank your website with SEO

seo is dead
On April 18, 2024
I’m often asked if I can get a clients website to rank in Googles search pages, and the answer is no I can’t.
Ranking your website through SEO is a long term game, a minefield to navigate and honestly I don’t understand it deeply enough to offer an SEO service and those who offer SEO as a service are expensive and won’t promise to get your website to the top of Google (that’s my £2000 experience). I would be doing clients a disservice by offering an SEO service.
In a nutshell here are 3 factors that are important to improve your rankings, High-Quality Content, Page Experience and Links. Theses are huge topics in themselves but I’ve written a brief understanding so you know what they entail.

High-Quality Content

Gary Illyes from Google summarises this by saying: “Without content it literally is not possible to rank. If you don’t have words on page you’re not going to rank for it. Every site will have something different as the top 2 or 3 ranking factors.” Link source
Google is looking for quality content about your niche or service in as much detail as possible. A blog would help if you write articles, how to guides or similar content.
Showing visitors how to do the thing you offer isn’t a bad thing some may do it themselves but many will be looking for you to do it for them.

Page Experience

In short your website must have an SSL certificate which will give you the padlock icon in your browser, you may find your browser such as Chrome will block websites without an SSL cert. Your website should be usable on mobile and having a good Google Web Core Vitals score will ensure you are following Google best practices for page experience.
‘Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page. We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally.’ Link Source

Links

Links have always been a factor in ranking a website. Back in the day you could build a web page with relevant keywords in the content add a few links to and from other websites and you could get a page one listing on the search engines, nowadays links are still important but they must be relevant to your website content and from reputable websites, low quality or spammy links can damage your ebsite rankings. When writing articles or blog posts linking out to sources you refer to in your content and to relevant internal pages of your website is also important.

That’s a very brief description of what’s involved in ranking on Google but hopefully gives you an idea of how much is involved, and why probably, SEO is such an expensive service.

So how do you promote your business?

So, what can you do to promote your business? I may be one of a minority but I’m not looking to grow my web business as such, I keep it ticking over just how I like it, I don’t use social media or any of the other resources I write about below except for referrals and an advert in a local community magazine which provide me with a steady stream of leads, but if you are looking to promote your website to get more clients/customers and business here are a fw ways you can do that.

Online

Niche/service specific online directories.

You may have to pay for some of these but they can be invaluable for new business especially if there aren’t many providers in your area, presuming you are a physical business. These directories help improve your online presence with a link back to your website.

Online business directories.

Get listed on as many business directories as you can find. Online business directories maybe more suited to physical businesses as you’ll need to provide details of your NAP (Name Address and Phone number) it’s important to ensure your NAP are the same through out the listings that you create as this will help with oyur online presence too.Here’s a list of business directories from yell.com
[Google business listing, Facebook, Navmii, My Local Services, Foursquare, Central Index, The Scotsman, Daily Record, Evening Standard, WalesOnline, Belfast News Letter, iBegin, iGlobal, Cylex, 192.com, Bing, Yalwa, Opendi, Tupalo, Where To?, Infobel, AroundMe, ShowMeLocal, HotFrog, Yell.]
You can also go to yell.co.uk add your business details in the form to check your existing listings for inconsistencies in your listings, this is a great tool for checking your listings on multiple directories. One thing though expect a call from the yell.com sales team to try to get you to sign up for their services. 

Use Social media

Don’t over stretch yourself use 1 or 2 channels such as LinkedIn for B2B (business to business) or Facebook and instagram B2C (business to consumer)
Groups are great for getting into conversations and offering advice, pages and profiles for what’s happening in your business, information about your services and promotions
sales etc. Commit to posting regularly be honest give people helpful advice, don’t be salesy and post a promotion once every now and then.

Freelancer websites

Not for physical businesses, upwork.com and http://freelancer.com are examples of remote work websites where you can offer your services and are ideal for coaches, virtual assistants, web designers, graphic designer and most any online service you can think of.

Offline

Referrals

Ask existing clients to refer people they know are looking for services you provide.Local magazines
Local magazines and community publications are a great source for promoting your business. Search for parish magazines in your area as these are golden nuggets when found.

Flyers/postcards in shop windows

Great for promoting events and workshops.

Networking events

Join  your local Chamber of Commerce and business breakfast clubs to offer your services and meet other business. owners.

This list only touches the surface of business promotion and if you have any you think are worth a mention please. let me know.

Lets not forget our Existing clients, these are an important resource for new business so I thought I’d include them here. Don’t forget to keep in contact with your existing clients, you could write a physical letter or send newsletters through an email marketing platform offering free advice or your latest offer or development in your business.

I hope you find this useful and get some value from what I’ve included here, even though I don’t offer SEO I do provide WordPress management hosting and design if you have a need or know someone that would benefit from these services.

I wish you well in your online and offline endeavours and am here if you want to chat more.

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