SEO basics

[Mark M]

Im considering getting a company in to look at our SEO as its an area I think could do with some improvement. However as this area is full of snake oil and complete chancers Im hoping to do some research so I have some knowledge of what to expect.

Are there any resources that I can look at to increase my very basic knowledge? I run a small accountancy practice with a basic Word Press site but think there is scope to target some more internet business.

 

[AHarvey]

firstly, does the site have google analytics setup? without this your seo efforts are kind of pointless as you'll never know what is working and what isn't.

Yoest SEO plugin for Wordpress was always the leading plugin for SEO, gives suggestions on each page and shows how well the SEO is doing as you're writing the page.

It's been a couple of years since I last really pushed SEO as I worked for a UK estate planning company and manged their SEO and £7k a month adwords account.

SEO has become such a joke buzzword with few companies really doing it properly, no one really knows what it entails. It's like HTML5, everyone threw it around without knowing what it really was. You can check out @timmccloud71 on twitter, I've had training from him previously and his company is very good.

People will argue over the old phrase "content is king", i still go by it. If your website is clean, informative, has good clear content that covers what you do, how you do it, where you do it and how much you charge then it will do well.

Social media links are still used in SEO so a facebook page does help, especially if it has reviews on it.

If you're not already, get registered with google so you appear on google maps and local searches. https://www.google.co.uk/business/?...ljxVzIU1-Rs2yl6TCc2ITb8u3m26dVW4aArT4EALw_wcB

What you need to do is ask yourself:

Why will people need my services?
What will they google to find what i provide?
What will they speak to search my site? (out voice searches are different than our typed searches)

For instance, Local accountancy practice covering X area gets you in the area. but you can look at other searches "when does my tax return need to be done for?", "Are accounts worth it when setting up a business?" "Can an account actually save me money?"

If you can answer these types of things on your site it'll start to rank higher.

Don't forget as well that if you're googling "local accountants" and you've been to your website several times it'll automatically put it higher in the results. Incognito mode doesn't really work as it often has location turned off but just download a browser just for SEO and use it for nothing else. Everyone focuses on google but there is Bing as well.

and I'll repeat, make sure google analytics is setup on the site

If you posted the url it may help give feedback, other than that, you'll often decent youtube videos about an hour long that may be good watches.

 

[AnneColeman]

AHarvey, thank you for your detailed answer!

 

[AHarvey]

AHarvey, thank you for your detailed answer!

I'm not sure how useful that will all be now. I had to log in for some analytics the other month while trying to find info on a visitor and it's completely changed, very little recorded from what I could see.

I've not been in SEO for several years now but a good clean informative website is always going to be a winner.

 

[RallyMotor]

Im considering getting a company in to look at our SEO as its an area I think could do with some improvement. However as this area is full of snake oil and complete chancers Im hoping to do some research so I have some knowledge of what to expect.

Are there any resources that I can look at to increase my very basic knowledge? I run a small accountancy practice with a basic Word Press site but think there is scope to target some more internet business.

I used to run 5 websites on Wordpress and despite what everybody is saying, they are not good for SEO. Or at least for that sort of SEO I was able to do myself. You mentioned accounting, and I also have one of my diplomas in financial management, but if you want to be good at SEO, you must start earlier. So if you want a shortcut with your website, then you must get some help with External linking from a well-reputed SEO company. They know how to work, so that your website doesn't get banned or brutely pessimized by Google. And they will know how to work even with Wordpress. Bottomline is that you must always think of a natual character of any of your website promotion activity.

 

[silent]

i use yoast on mine and whilst i'm not good at SEO, my products, computers etc, do show up on google at times when i put the SEO effort in. i am registered with google business and google shopping but thats another pain. my site is wordpress.

 

[AHarvey]

i use yoast on mine and whilst i'm not good at SEO, my products, computers etc, do show up on google at times when i put the SEO effort in. i am registered with google business and google shopping but thats another pain. my site is wordpress.

Yoast was always pretty decent for SEO, especially if you don't want to spend hours tinkering with landing pages, conversion rates etc. It used to be a simple traffic light system and developed from there.

Google Analytics was always great for SEO but as I mentioned previously, it seems to have lost half its functionality when I last had to use it, maybe GDPR related.

 

[DistrictRline]

you could check on Moz the beginner's guide first, that's what I did last year to pick up on the basis of how google crawl, index and rank your page.
then you'll begin to understand why keywords and content matter. You could hire someone to do the keyword research for your website, analyse your competitors and sometimes even copy some of their tactics at the beginning of the SEO project. These are pretty easy, you could even do it yourself by using some of the handy tools such as Ahrefs (for link building and competitor analysis), kwfinder (for keyword research).
For the technical part of SEO, I think you'd better hire someone to do that. Sometimes it requires to change the code and structure of the website and that's not something you can pick up in a short period of time.