Welcome
Welcome to my first blog post on my new site!
I have decided to pay attention to the advice that I, myself have given to many of our clients. That is to use a blog in an attempt to encourage others to visit my site.
Why would that be important? Well two-fold really!
Obviously the more people that visit, the more chance that someone will want to use our service. This can only be good for business. However, the second reason is almost more important and has a big effect on the number of people that visit our site – or yours should you choose to follow the same method.
Now everyone wants to feature further up the search rankings, especially Google’s. You could be tempted to write a blog article that focuses on a key phrase that you want to rank for. And why not! I would certainly consider a topic, area or key phrase when writing any article in the hope that it could be found through a search. The more important consideration, however, is to write about something that is interesting or important to the reader. Perhaps it answers a question they want to know the answer to, is about a subject they enjoy reading about or offers them something they can’t get elsewhere. As Google is emphasising just now, you want to improve “user experience”. Do this and then you will see you site move up through the search results.
Why Does Improving User Experience Help Your Search Engine Ranking?
Well, in this situation it comes down to something called “bounce rate”. This is a number which measures the number of visitors who only visit one page of your site and leaves as a percentage of all those that visit your site. E.g. if everyone left after visiting one page you would have a bounce rate of 100%. If 1 out of every 2 visitors left without navigating to another page the bounce rate would be 50%. The lower the bounce rate the more viewers there are that are staying on your site for a longer time – visiting more than one page. Google therefore sees your site as being interesting and giving a good user experience therefore it will improve your ranking.
How Do You Make Your Site Interesting To Viewers?
Since many of our clients are small business owners who provide a service, I believe site owners should blog about their services. For example, there are many websites for painters and decorators. How will a potential customer pick one over another? Price only! Maybe, but if one site owner talks the viewer through the process of say, wallpapering the hall and painting the skirting, step by step so that the customer is clear what will happen, they may well go to that company or at least look further through the site, improving the bounce rate. The owner will have wallpapered and painted many rooms before and therefore will surely have been asked many questions. Answer these questions in your blog before they are asked again. For example mention:
- How long the job should take?
- How dirty it will be and how clean will you leave the house?
- Will you need anything moved in advance or will you do that?
- Who supplies the paint, the painter or can you get your own?
You will know many other similar questions.
Better still, on top of that have 5 or 6 pictures of a similar job and mention what is happening at each stage. Here you should be able to include a few key phrases in your description which match those that are being searched for which will also help ranking.
But I Don’t Have The Time!!!!
I appreciate that many small business owners are very busy running their companies and feel they don’t have the time to blog. Unfortunately many site owners think that once they have a website then the jobs will come flooding in. It’s not always like that. You have to work at it. If you don’t have the time, find someone in the company that does and make them responsible for your site. If there isn’t anyone, speak to us. We can find someone for you or do it ourselves. You need to get your name out there!
And now, after reading through this post myself I realise I need to have a mid-year resolution if such a thing exists. I WILL WRITE MORE BLOG ARTICLES – interesting ones at that I hope! If you have a web related query then please comment below. I may reply there and then or choose to write an “interesting” blog article about it in the not too distant future.
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Thanks for reading.