To the solopreneur who feels terrified of SEO, I promise you it’s not as scary as you think! Here’s how to feel the fear…& do it anyway!

TRUTH: SEO freaked me out for the longest time! 

I knew it stood for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, and I sort of understood what that meant, but every time I heard or saw the word ‘SEO,’ I went into full shut down mode and I didn’t want to touch it with a ten foot barge pole! It sounded technical and way outside my wheel house, so I just thought ‘nope, nada, zip, zilch, not me.’ 

Until one day it clicked. It wasn’t just scary techno words anymore, it all made perfect sense. Just like everything, I found it boiled down to a list of achievable tasks - like achievable for me! (Not just the clipboard holding, lab coat and glasses wearing genius I pictured every time I saw the word).

Now (also like everything), that list of tasks can be as long or as short as you like, you can do more to level up your SEO game and you can do less, but here we’re going to break down the steps for the happy mid ground - delightfully basic SEO for beginners. 

We’ll cover everything you need to optimise your site for search engines in 21 simple achievable steps, which I’ll do my best to make as clear and non-intimidating as possible. 

Ready?

WHAT REALLY IS SEO & WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

It’s no secret that in today’s modern world, most businesses will need, or benefit from having a website. But it’s also no secret that a website alone will not magically magnetise its own customers, they have to get there somehow. They need to know you exist, and find their way to you one way or another. 

Now this could be through marketing, backlinks (a fancy term for what is essentially a back door into your website that skips entry through a search engine), word of mouth, direct searches, etc. 

But really, if you haven’t done your basic SEO, you’re kind of walking around with a hole in your bucket, wondering why it’s leaking. For all your efforts, people will be sliding through the cracks, and most people just won’t be finding you.

Think of it this way, in the physical world, if you were to open a shop, there would likely be many ways customers could find your shop. If you were located on a main road, they might happen upon you, wander past, get pointed towards you by a friend, or they may even directly search you out. 

If however, you are located off the main road, let’s say in the middle of the Jungle. Nobody knows you’re there yet, people can’t walk past and happen upon you, you’re pretty hidden by the landscape around you, and you don’t yet have any additional sources pointing towards your business (like directories, street signs, marketing, advertising etc.). Finding you is going to be difficult and require a lot of patience and hope on your part, plus a lot of extra effort on your customer’s part.

Enter Google (or whichever search engine you’d prefer to imagine). It’s almost like a taxi driver that personally concierges clients directly to your shop door. Dreamy huh! SEO is the reason the taxi knows where to go - without it, you don’t exist in the taxi driver’s mind, or you do, but you’re so far down the list of options, that it’s never actually going to drop customer’s to your door.

FLIP SIDE / WHY SEO SHOULD BE YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND?

If you think of google (or any search engine) as an earnest robot seeking approval and always on a mission, the mission being really simple: It really (really) wants to do a great job at helping whoever is typing something into its search bar, find what they are looking for. It wants them to think, “wow google, you knocked that one out of the park! That’s exactly what I wanted to know, thank you, good robot!” 

As an earnest robot on a mission to do a great job, in its spare time it researches the internet finding the perfect answer for every possible question or search that could be made and ranks its favourites - so its always prepared should the moment arise. This is your google ranking.

Lots of factors feed into it. Beyond the technical aspects, which we’ll dive further into in a moment, how long a visitor stays on a page is also a big contributor. From the search engine’s perspective, this tells it how useful the information on the page was at solving the problem they searched for. It also indicates how satisfied they were with the result, which could be impacted by visual design, user experience, load times, relevancy, value, high quality images, content and copy (words) etc.

ANOTHER KEY ASPECT TO CONSIDER : KEY WORDS & YOUR IDEAL CLIENT

Consider, what would a person be searching that you would be the perfect answer for? More than that, not just any person, but your ideal client.

If you have no idea who your ideal client is, or you’d love to dive deeper into this, check out my blog post : Unveiling your Ideal Client Avatar, or skip straight to my downloadable guide here 👇🏼

Understanding who you want to serve, and tailoring every aspect of your brand, content, services, design, user experience, and copy directly for that ideal client, will not only make you irresistible to them, it’s also really going to help your chances that google is going to put you front of mind when it comes to helping them find what they need in web land.

Let’s break it down into 4 phases:

• Before building your website

• During building your website

• During testing your website

• After launching your website

The 4 phases of basic SEO magic in 21 simple steps:

BEFORE DESIGNING YOUR WEBSITE

1.

RESONANT BRANDING

You’ve had the vision, you’ve laid the foundations and now you’re building your business into a reality. Whether you’re DIYing your Branding or investing in the help of a designer, creating a resonant brand in my opinion is SEO step #1. You won’t see it on ALL the lists, but I believe it should be!

The keys to resonant branding are knowing who you serve, how and why. Understanding your vision, mission and ideal client and weaving this knowledge throughout every aspect of your brand as you create it.

Along with using that knowledge as the starting point for every thing you create in your business. This is going to align you with that ideal client and make you the perfect fit (aka the best result for the earnest robot to pull from web land whenever that ideal client places a related search in google.

2.

CONTENT COLLATION

Skip forward and imagine you’ve created the foundations of that resonant brand. (Congratulations!) You’re now ready to collate your content for your new website. Of course as you treasure hunt your way towards that content, you’ll be keeping your resonant brand top of mind. But you’ll also need to consider these next 2 as well.

3.

GRAPHICS & IMAGES

Once you’ve collated the (on brand) photography and graphics you wish to include in your website, you’ll need to optimise them and rename each file in an SEO friendly way.

This means compressing the files to be smaller than 250kb (without sacrificing the quality below a certain resolution - more on that later). Which we do to optimise page load times - giving you brownie points with the google Gods.

Fast load times = big tick in google land.

You can find out how to do this in more detail further down the page.

You’ll also need to rename each of the image or graphic files you wish to include in your site with an SEO friendly name. The best way to think of this is describing what’s in or happening in the image itself.

If there is a genuine but strategic way to integrate a keyword into that description that’s even better.

A note to bare in mind : If you’re using a script font and importing it as an image (as opposed to embedding the font itself into your site creator), google won’t be able to read what the image says, so your image title needs to clearly say what the image text says.

4.

COPYWRITING

Whilst a whopping 90% of your message is conveyed with your visuals, that last 10% of impact is not to be over looked!

Web words matter! Whether it’s knowing your keywords and seamlessly integrating them into your titles, paragraph bodies, blog post content, image names, meta descriptions and URL slugs (don’t worry we’ll dive into those last 2 in a minute!), keywords are a vital element in your SEO success.

To find your keywords you can either use a keyword search tool (such as Ubersuggest), or climb inside the mind of your ideal client and imagine what they are going to search, that you’ll be the perfect solution for. Whether that’s in relation to their pain points and current problems, or the direct services and benefits you offer.

You can even pop the words into a search engine (eg. google or pinterest) and see what the suggested other similar searches are around that topic.

It’s also important to consider as you write your copy for your website, your main site goal and the goal for each individual page. Essentially everything needs to be pointing towards a clear ‘call to action’ (or CTA) for your site visitor.

You’ll also want to pay attention to what copy genius Ashlyn Carter refers to as “the 20% readers” these are your visitors who are skim readers. They’ll be skimming through your content, absorbing 20% of what you’ve provided and they need to still feel resolution and called to take action. This is a matter of strategic writing, harnessing your brand voice, and designing your text layout in a way which serves both the skimmer and the every word reader.

5.

STRATEGIC SITE DESIGN & USER EXPERIENCE

I’m sure you will at some point have visited a shop, cafe, or even friend’s house and experienced utter chaos. Not for any huge dramatic reasons, but just because the experience of you as a guest or customer really wasn’t very well considered.

Websites are no different.

Some sites you land on and gracefully breeze your way towards exactly what you’re looking for, others require an annoying amount of effort (and patience) on your part to find what you’re looking for.

Scary fact? You have 3 seconds to capture someone’s attention online these days (3 seconds!!!!). And with an entire internet worth of content, the likelihood of someone persisting if they don’t immediately connect, find value and feel ‘taken care of’ is slim to say the least.

Mapping out your site design and considering your user experience with VIP level attention to detail, is essential.

It needs to feel so effortless for them to find exactly what they need on your site, to answer their questions, book your services, purchase your products.

A great way to do this is to get really clear on the main goal of your site, and design with that goal in mind. Minimise the options in your header bar. Maximise the use of your less essential links in your footer. Strategically align your CTAs (calls to action) to the main goal of your site and the main goal on each page, so that your intended next action (and the most helpful suggested next action for your client) are always clear. This will help not only in general, but with your SEO visit times - and reduce the amount of ‘bounce’ - where customers land on a site, get confused, don’t find what they’re looking for and immediately exit.

DURING BUILD PHASE

6.

SITE DESIGN - MOBILE FIRST

There are many aspects to effective design, but in terms of SEO and site design the biggest key is designing with a ‘mobile first’ approach. Statistically an average of 61% of site visitors will experience your site via a mobile device, with an estimated increase to 92% by 2025 (according to What’s the Big Data).

This makes using a platform such as Squarespace, which prioritises mobile responsive design, such a huge advantage. You can preview how your site will appear on a range of devices and really make sure you are giving all your visitors experiences consideration.

7.

URL SLUG NAMES

Whilst it’s great to have short clear literal slug names, it’s even better to get SEO smart with them and tweak them for your benefit!

Let’s say for example you have a services page on your website. The link in your header will most likely be titled something like SERVICES, but you have the option to tweak the URL slug name to optimise the SEO of the page by pointing google towards the type of services you offer.

8ere’s an example from my services page (https://www.liberatedlioncreative.com/squarespace-website-brand-design-services). Instead of just going with .…com/services, I expanded it to include the exact type of services I provide.

BUT a word from the wise: if you intend to strategically curate your URLs to include a keyword and optimise it showing up in search results to your ideal client - I recommend doing this when you create the page, as opposed to when you’re ready to launch and have linked it all over your site…as none of your links will work and they’ll all need to be relinked to the new url name! FUN!

8.

META DESCRIPTIONS

For every page you create on your website (with the exception of pages you don’t specifically want google finding (such as thank you pages or unlinked pages for your reference only) write a meta description.

This can be found in Squarespace as follows 👇🏼 under the page settings SEO description.

You’ll want this description to include some keywords and really succinctly sum up your page content in an enticing and relatable, informative way. It will be the description that shows up on Google for that page.

You’ll also want to include a site title and description as well (the title can be located in the Header settings and the description in the Marketing settings as below 👇🏼). Here’s a really handy video description of How Google Wants You to Create Meta Descriptions from Neil Patel

9.

IMAGE ALT. TEXT

Every time you insert one of your images or graphics into your website design, go in to the settings for that image and add Image Alt. Text - imagine you are describing the image to someone who can’t see it (aka your earnest robot friend!). Again if there is a way to genuinely but strategically include a keyword or two, even better!

10.

SOCIAL SHARING IMAGES

It’s completely up to you how far you take this one - you can add social sharing images for every page you think might be linked or shared anywhere, or you can just add a really great social sharing image for your whole site which will work as a default. In Squarespace this is found in the site settings as follows 😊

11.

BLOG SETTINGS - SSL CERTIFICATE

If you’re blogging or intend to in the future, check that your SSL certificate is active. In Squarespace this can be found under developer tools in settings as follows 👇🏼✅

12.

INTERNAL LINKS

Internal links refer to links within your website, to your website. A perfect example of this is your footer or every call to action button you include which links to another page within your site.

These links help to strengthen your internal network. Not only is it helpful to keep putting relevant, valuable suggestions in front of potential clients to keep them on your site and engaging with your amazing content, but also so that google understands you have a comprehensive network of well connected, valuable pages and content to offer.

DURING TESTING PHASE

13.

SEO SPACE PLUGIN

Before you launch your website publicly and shout from the rooftops that it’s live and ready for action, I recommend installing an SEO plugin. If you are using Squarespace then SEO Space is an amazing option to get free feedback on how you’ve gone installing all your SEO tips and tricks. They do have paid subscription options as well, but the free option works great for a basic SEO check.

14.

LOAD TIMES

It’s also a good idea to check your load times. You can do this the old fashioned way, experiencing it as a fresh site visitor will in real time, or you can run your site through a test such as Page Speed. If you have kept your image and graphic files under 250kb this should be a happy experience! 👏🏼

15.

SCREEN SIZES

Check how your site design will appear on multiple screen sizes and devices. Many site design tools have integrated buttons to test how it will appear on both mobile and desktop.

One of the best things about Squarespace is their responsive design, which with a little know how keeps your site adapting responsively to nearly all devices.

You can also design for both mobile and desktop, without mobile just being a condensed version of your full design. This is so exciting as a designer and so beneficial for your visitors!

Browser Stack is a great tool if you’d rather see for yourself across more device types, or are using a site builder that doesn’t offer this function.

16.

TEST ALL YOUR LINKS

You can either use a broken links tracker tool or you can do it the old fashioned way, going through each page and testing every link, tweaking as you go. Both ways work.

If you’d like a tool, AHRefs one is a great one.

17.

CONNECT GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE - Submit your index map through google search console

This may be different depending on the design software you’re using, however, if you’re using Squarespace this one is super simple (and not nearly as intimidating as it sounds!).

Simply head to the Analytics tab on your main menu, and click CONNECT under keywords. Then you’ll want to head to Search Console and create an index map for your site.

Squarespace has a really simple walk through to follow here: Verifying your site with Google Search Console

AFTER LAUNCHING

18.

BACKLINKS

Back links are a term to describe links on external sites back to yours. Ideally reputable ones, where your link has been used in a really useful way so that when your ideal client clicks the link they feel satisfied that your site was relevant to why they clicked it - so they don’t immediately click away! (Which would hurt your bounce stats).

If you focus on #19 and 20 on this list these should naturally take care of themselves, but it will take time.

If you want to expedite the process you could reach out to other well aligned blogs and offer to create a post for them that they could link to your site.

Henry Purchase makes some other great suggestions in this article How to Acquire Backlinks

19.

MARKETING

No matter how great your SEO is, you’ll want to invest time and energy into at least one marketing strategy. Whether it’s paid or unpaid, consistently showing up, providing value and growing your audience, expands your potential exposure to dream clients. It also shows google that you’re real, current and valuable.

Win + win!

20.

CONTENT CREATION

Consistent quality content creation. Whether it’s a blog, YouTube channel, or podcast, consistently creating valuable and quality content is the best way to bring people to your site.

Making yourself the answer to your client’s questions is golden for SEO!

NOTE: if writing isn’t your cup of tea and you decide to establish a Youtube channel or podcast instead, consider creating a ‘blog’ that offers a transcript of the audio, as google can’t read sound (yet), so without it you’ll miss out on that extra layer of SEO goodness.

The more opportunities there are for google to reach for your website as the answer to your ideal customer’s search queries the better! This means you really want to be giving considerable thought to the kinds of content you are creating in relation to your ideal client and what they really want to know that you can help them with.

21.

GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

A shop with no people in it isn’t going to sell anything no matter how extraordinary the products are! The bigger your pool of potential clients is, the bigger the potential to close the deal is.

However you choose to grow your audience, whether it’s an email list, social media, or other content creation platform such as YouTube or a podcast, putting time and effort into really gathering a network of potential ideal clients is key.

Every time you create a new piece of content ensure you’re considering all of the above, then ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it valuable and does it genuinely serve my ideal client and help them with the problems they are currently facing? 

• Will they be typing the question into google that this piece of content is the answer to?

• Have I optimised the images and file names?

• Have I added alt. text into my image settings inside my website design platform?

• Have I added meta descriptions for all the pages?

• Have I optimised my url names to include appropriate keywords? And then double checked my links?

• When I wrote this copy, did I weave keywords in? Consider my skim readers? Write with my Ideal Client in mind? Communicate from my brand voice? Genuinely offering value and solving problems my ideal client is currently facing?

• Does my design work well on both mobile and desktop? Have I considered a variation of screen sizes?

• If it’s a new page on your site have you submitted that new page to your site index through Google Search Console?

• Remember, don’t be shy to include relevant and value packed internal links to strengthen your internal web and call site visitors to action to stay on your site!

• One last thing… If you are writing a blog post, consider your word count. Research on this varies significantly, however generally somewhere between 1200-2000words seems to be the most common answer for best performing blog lengths. The translation of this is, a tiny blog post doesn’t usually have enough meat to get google’s attention - it wants to provide the most valuable content and more words (if they’re good) equals more chances that you’ll be the suggested best answer.

What else can you do to help?

• Create strategic, beautiful and functional designs

• Consider your site visitor’s user experience at every step

• Create resonant branding that speaks through every facet of your business

• Have high quality on-brand photography and graphics woven throughout

• Ensure your copywriting (words) are well written, authentic to your brand voice, and curated for your ideal client, woven with keywords and value and ALWAYS considering your ideal client’s biggest pain points and problems and the myriad of ways you can help solve them.

• Attention to details like spelling and grammar

• Marketing! However you choose to do yours, this step is ESSENTIAL. Relying on SEO alone is going to take a long time to actualise real converting clients, so get out there, celebrate your work by sharing it with the world!

• Growing a following of ideal customers who wait with baited breath for the next great thing you create.

How to optimise your images

Aim to keep all images below 250kb and no larger than 500kb if reducing them that far isn’t an option. You can do this a couple of ways. 

Firstly a handy tip for you, jpgs are naturally smaller than pngs so in most cases they will be preferable - but they aren’t able to have transparent backgrounds so that’s where pngs come in. 

If you are using a program such as Canva, Lightroom or Photoshop, you might want to adjust the size before exporting it, keeping in mind the pixel suggestions below as parameters.

Alternatively, you can edit the image size in a program such as Preview.

But the best trick is to use something such as tinyjpg.com or tinypng.com to downsize the image. Just in case it’s not obvious, you only want to compress your image once - so if it’s really large you’ll want to adjust it before compressing it.

Keep an eye on pixel ratios as follows:

Banner images = 2000-2500px wide

Medium images = 500-1500px wide

Small images = 500px wide

(Handy tip: smallpdf.com is great for reducing pdfs too - not particularly relevant to SEO but a handy compression tip for your back pocket!)

CONCLUSIONS

That was A LOT of information and I’m here if you need any extra assistance or have lingering questions. Either drop a comment below or contact me here.

If DIYing your site is getting too much and you’d like some Web Design and Branding magician to swoop in and save your bacon, sing out! You can check out my services here 😊

Good luck and I really genuinely hope you found this helpful. May it make SEO infinitely less terrifying for you! 

Here cheering for you,

Ballantyne x.

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

If you’re curious about accessing my unique creative scope, depth, & skills to help get you luminous & unstoppable with branding & design that truly serves you. I can’t wait to show you exactly what I mean!

Let’s unleash the power of your authentic essence in your branding and make your business irresistible.

Together we’ll create the abundance magnet you’re proud to welcome your dream clients to - a site that really represents the heart of you and your business. Curious to know more?

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