This is a worrying time for everyone, those of us running small local businesses feel very vulnerable with work drying up or customers cancelling orders and services.
Last week I read an article on managing time and remaining positive. One phrase in particular struck a chord, which was “time to work on your business”.
We thought a series of blogs that form a “Digital To Do List” for your business would be helpful and provide inspiration.
So, here’s our first.
Digital to do List #1 – Review your keywords
This is the backbone of your website content – whether you sell services or products, big or small. It’s important!
Reviewing your keywords can shine a light on any new industry terms, gaps in your content or ideas for new blog pieces.
A good example of this is if your target market has changed or been added to, you may be missing a trick. So, for us, we tend to find that our larger clients call our services web development whereas our small business clients call us web designers.
Over the years, it’s very much the case that it’s the intent behind the keyword, rather than literal. It’s more important that your website solves or attempts to solve the problem someone who wants your product or service addresses.
A good way to test this is to enter a keyword into a search bar and see what comes up. An example of this is “portrait photographer” – lots of result come up, but to give your keywords focus add in further refining words:
Family portrait photographer, relaxed portrait photographer or professional headshot photographer.
Step 1
Use a spreadsheet to note down 5 – 10 top level topics that are important to your business.
For example – wordpress website, squarespace websites, SEO and content management.
Step 2
The next step is to fill out level 2 – this is where you list keywords/phrases that fall under each level 1 category.
For example – wordpress website designer, wordpress website designer Richmond, how to brief your wordpress web designer etc.
These keywords and phrases often use a question and this is where the intent comes in – what are people searching for, what’s the intent behind their search?
There are three great free tools here – Google Analytics, Search Console and Google Related Searches. If you don’t have these – get them now!!
Google Related Search can be found at the bottom of the organic search results page – here’s an example:
Search phrase – cat sitter near me
Step 3
Check how your competitors rank and use keyword tools to check what they are doing – do they rank well, better than you, worse than you? Use tools to check monthly search volumes – this will give you an idea of competition – if it’s a high in demand keyword that is dominated by “big players”, are you better of focussing in further – specialist technology, size, location, colour, skill set, qualifications, service e.g Image consultant for mother of the bride in Kingston.
Adjust your keywords/phrases accordingly in Level 2…
Step 4
Walk away, leave it for a day or so and come back – does it make sense?
If you have any trusted customers or networking/business friends – ask them what they would search for if they are looking for your services – you might be surprised.
Step 5
Use this list to review your page, post, site title, page titles, meta descriptions etc..
It can take a bit of time (a couple of weeks or more or less!) for the search engines to crawl and re-index your site. You can check it by entering in site: https://my.site.com and see what results come back – this will show your re-freshed meta descriptions/site titles etc..
If you need help or don’t have the time to review your keywords, get in touch with TPG – your Richmond wordpress web designers!
You might like to read:
What to expect when you change web designer
Web content strategy services
