Celia Coughlin-Surridge, SEO and marketing wizard
“What is on your website and your overall online presence tells a story to Google that will then determine your SEO rank” -Celia.
Celia Coughlin-Surridge is an SEO and marketing wizard that uses her expertise to help small businesses develop their SEO and online marketing to grow and achieve their goals. She sat down with us on IG Live to talk about SEO and share her tips for better search engine optimization. SEO is the one way you can boost your personal and business presence by making it easy for people to find you when searching.
Here are Celia’s Top Tips For Optimizing Your SEO Potential
TIP 1: Have A Google My Business To Boost SEO Ranking Long Term
This allows you to validate your website and have domain authority which is essential to building up your Google score. It also allows for people to leave reviews, contact your business, schedule appointments if you offer them, and a ton of other features that will be housed in this My Business platform.
TIP 2: Use Consistent Terminology
You want to ensure that whatever your brand’s niche and unique descriptors are, you are using them consistently and frequently. The more they appear, the more they will be connected with your brand, and your SEO score will rise as Google will know to whom it should show your pages.
But it’s not only about describing your business but also the same throughout – for example, if you are a female-owned business, you should stick to that term versus using woman-founded, women-run since those might have different search rankings than those your original keyword.
TIP 3: Keep with your voice and be consistent
You want your blog to reflect your POV not only for the right people to connect with but because Google can recognize copy-paste style text and dock you for not having original content on your website. If you are using other text, make sure it is properly credited.
TIP 4: Backlinks
Backlinks are simply website links from other online hubs that track your audience back to you. Celia stresses never paying for backlinks as they are usually scams, and Google can recognize them quickly. A great way to build up your backlinks is by writing guest blogs and posts for other content creators that have your links attached. Having a constant flow of traffic from other sites where your website is linked will help increase your SEO Score because the more you have people staying online, the better for all parties.
TIP 5: Do your images have alternative text?
Google can’t read images, so you want to make sure any blogs or posts with photos are given alternative text that the search engine can read. Sum up the image in a few words that tie into the SEO keyword for the article. This will help boost your overall ranking while maintaining an aesthetically pleasing look to your blog.
