What is ‘foundational SEO’ and why does it matter for your small business website?
In this article, I’m explaining what ‘foundational SEO’ means and why it’s important for your small business website to be optimized with it.
You’ve probably heard the term SEO before but maybe aren’t quite sure exactly what that means and how it can affect your small business website. Let’s start with the definition of SEO. SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and is the process of optimizing a websites content to help search engines (think Google, bing, yahoo, etc) do two very important things:
Understand its content
Help users find it
So what is foundational SEO? It means utilizing all the features on the backend of your website to setup a solid foundation of optimizing your website’s content. You wouldn’t build a house on top of land without a solid foundation - and you should think the same about your website.
If you created your website without SEO in mind, without conducting keyword research and seeing what top performing competitors websites are doing, then you’ve just built a house on top of land.
The copy (aka all the words and content written on your site) must have an SEO purpose based on the research you’ve done while also incorporating your unique brand message.
*PRO TIP: Writing the copy is the first thing you should do before actually building and designing your website!
Completing keyword research and researching your specific market will help you identify the keywords you should be targeting and then you can create content around those keywords so when someone puts them into a search engine like Google, it will point users to your website.
Before I begin any design project, I always send my clients a detailed brand questionnaire and brand statement form for them to answer. This gives me the foundation I need to setup the copy on their site and optimize that foundational SEO for them.
What does foundational SEO optimization look like on the backend?
It looks like this:
Step one: writing copy with *target keywords
Step two: creating specific title tags with *target keywords
Step three: writing meta descriptions with *target keywords
Step four: writing image alt text with *target keywords
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.
Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Your specific target keywords are the cornerstone to writing your copy. They solve your ideal clients problems and identify the terms they are searching for in Google. And when you set a proper foundation to get found on Google, you increase your websites chances of getting found and converting visitors to clients.
*Lightbulb!!!
(If you read that in Mr. Gru’s voice - then we have the same brain)
It’s important to note that foundational SEO should not be confused with an SEO strategy. The strategy is a unique plan (specific to your individual business) of how to continually update and add to your website’s content which will help drive traffic long term. Google is constantly looking for new content thats relevant to users search queries. You should always be adding content to your site to keep it relevant and on Googles’ radar.
Depending on your business, your ideal client and the problems they face, this will determine the strategy that you use to help people find your site. The strategy builds on top of the solid foundation that was already laid out when your site was first created and launched. You can hire an SEO agency to help you create your strategy.
I highly encourage you not to skip this step when designing your site and deciding what content to put on it. Providing the solid foundation for SEO best practices is a service that I believe is equally as important as design itself. A pretty website doesn’t mean anything without a solid foundation. If DIYing your website is still something that you’d rather not spend the time on….