One of the first things we advise when starting a business is to have your own website and to invest in content and organic traffic building. This kickstarts a long term strategy of search engine optimisation; which has more overall benefits than short term tactics.
Examples of Long Term Strategy
Long term website strategy is something you should look at from the very beginning of your business journey. Examples of long term strategies that are easy to implement and will reap rewards in the long term include:
- Site Speed and Mobile Friendly - When giving your design brief to your web developer, it's important to specify that you want a mobile responsive and lightweight site. Speed and mobile-friendliness are important factors in search engine rankings.
- Content and Keywords - An easy way to build your website profile early is to have quality content and use an SEO plugin to facilitate indexing. Adding useful information for your clients is an important way to add value and 'authority' to your website
- Consistency - Posting consistently signals to search engines that you are constantly adding value for your clients.
- Social Media - Creating social media profiles, connecting them to your site (to allow sharing, and enable automatic or scheduled sharing); and posting regularly to attract potential customers on social media are all good practice for off-page SEO.
Short Term Gains To Avoid
It's tempting when you get started to cut corners and try to artificially increase your online profile. But these tactics are not only bad practice, they can also be detrimental to your SERPs rankings and long term strategy goals.
These include things like:
- Buying followers on social media- Buying followers is a big no-no, and it's very easy to spot when it happens. We recommend growing your social media following with engaging and consistent content.
- Black hat SEO techniques - black hat SEO techniques are basically any activity that tries to cheat the system and gain search engine ranking through less than honest means. Things such as keyword stuffing, content plagiarism, and automated search engine hits are all techniques to avoid.
