3 Quick Changes For Boosting Website Traffic & Conversions!

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Overview

Good morning. Happy Friday. This morning, I want to talk about three quick changes for immediate website traffic and conversion boost. I just wanted to do a quick episode just to help you with things that you can change right away.

You could make changes today, and it would give you an immediate traffic boost and a conversion boost as well. So, it's one of those things that we often end up thinking of things as a mammoth task to do all of the things that we need to do to get our business optimised, get our website optimised, start working on our SEO and trying to improve things.

But actually sometimes the simple things that we do straight away can make a big difference. When I'm working with clients, that's the thing that we focus on first. We focus on making sure that the basics are in place first and we start at the beginning and we take it in bite-sized pieces so it doesn't feel overwhelming.

You know what to do, you know what to focus on first and then we'll go to the next step after that and I just hold their hand and guide them along the way to get to that point.

Tip 1: Using Google Search Console

So the first tip that I want to talk about. And this is something I have talked about recently. I meant to look up the episode number and I can't remember which one it was.

But recently I talked about using Google Search Console to help you with your website SEO. This is something you can do very quickly. Making sure you've got Google Search Console set up. Making sure your sitemap is submitted there.

Which sounds complicated, it really isn't. And it's something that I see time and time again. Where I'm working with clients or a client comes in, even for a power hour, and one of the things that we do within that time, if it's appropriate for what the power hour is about, because they're very focused on one particular thing.

But what we'll do is make sure, if they've got Google Search Console set up already, we'll make sure that their sitemap is in there. And the number of times they go in, and actually that's not, and that's something we can do, and straight away it helps Google to understand your site.

So your sitemap basically tells Google about the structure of your pages. It tells Google which pages it should be focused on. Tells Google which pages to put into the index.

Even just doing something as simple as generating a sitemap, which is always really simple to do. Most modern website builders will have already done that automatically almost, not all, FBA Create doesn't do it automatically, which is annoying. But, it's not a complicated process to do that.

Then you just have to go into Google Search Console and submit that. And then Google immediately understands more about your website. 

The other thing with setting up Google Search Console is if you have already set it up, and you've never been in there and looked at it, going in and doing that.

Making sure that you're aware of what Google is understanding about your business and your website. Make sure that that actually aligns with what you want Google to understand about your website and your business.

It's basically all about that. Making sure the search queries that Google is aligning with your website, does that actually make sense for what you want Google to show you up for in searches? And if it doesn't, how do you change that?

What pages aren't being connected with the search terms that they should be? What changes can we make to ensure that Google understands the key things about your business that it should? So that's Google Search Console.

As well as helping you to understand what Google is seeing about your website and understanding about your website, it also just gives you some actions to take. So you can, you can see which pages are actually getting lots of impressions, but not actually getting any click through.

Or you can see which pages are getting lots of impressions, but you're showing up in an average position, like between six and 20. Those are kind of the pages that actually, if you can see Google showing you up in a lot of search results, but you're always in those positions, six to 20, that the ones that actually, by just making a few tweaks to those pages, you could then hop up the rankings a bit more. That can happen really, really quickly as well.

So that's why I would say definitely Google search console is the first thing you can have a look at. If you're not sure about how to use Google search console, either check out my course about Google analytics for beginners and also Google search console.

And you can check that out or book a power hour and we can go through and look at your Google Search Console, look at what things to focus on first, look at what's happening, just it's, it's actually a lot easier to use than Google Analytics. I think people often forget about Google Search Console, but it's actually really good.

They have the insights panel, which displays things in a very clear language for Google, which isn't necessarily the best at displaying things clearly. Other than on the search results pages in the backend for us as website owners. Google isn't great at that, but Google Search Console actually does a good job at that.

It's one of those things that sometimes just ignoring it is easier, but just having maybe somebody to guide you through, well, this is the bit to focus on. You can ignore that bit. It does help a lot.

Tip 2: Optimising Your Google Business Profile

So change number two is to (this is one of my favourites) optimise your Google Business Profile. So if you're a local business, you've got a physical location especially, or even if you are a service area business, then optimising your Google Profile is something that can have an immediate effect.

The changes you make on your Google Profile today can show up today. So if I go into my profile, make some changes, then that can happen straight away. It's not like our website where we have to wait for Google to crawl through the website again and to understand those changes you've made.

It is something that happens immediately. So that's really, really powerful. And it's something that we often ignore. I see so many local businesses just ignoring their Google profiles. They're spending loads of time on social media.

They've got a beautiful Instagram account. And then the Google profile just is nothing. They're just not, asking people to leave them reviews or not interacting when people do. Not adding what's happening in their business, into their profile. And it makes a massive difference.

It's a free tool from Google. Again, like Google Search Console is a free tool from Google. But it's something that by going in and making a few changes to optimise your profile, making sure you're in the right category that you're using all the categories that are appropriate for your business that you've filled in all the sections that you can that you've added pictures you've added descriptions you've added your services in there if that's an option.

It's not necessarily always an option in every account. Making sure you've added your products in there. So if you don't have the option of services but you've got the option of products then just add your services in as products I would say to probably do that anyway even if you have both I know on my Google profile.

I've got my services listed as services, but also listed as products as well because then they show up in that side panel. When you're looking at that Google profile, when it comes up in the search results, it's going to show more information and people are then more likely to click through to your business.

So doing that making sure you update posts and things like that in there as well is another great thing to do. Making sure that you are using everything you can to make the most of that profile is really helpful. If you are a physical business, if you can encourage people also to go in and leave you reviews, that can be really helpful.

So even if you have a little QR code, if you've got a physical location, if you are a spa, a salon, or you've got a retail store. Having something there, how's your experience today, and a little QR code that people can scan to leave you a review, that's really helpful.

And once you get past 10 plus reviews, that has a bit of a, you can then have a bit of a leap effect really, that once you've got past 10, it's really helpful to be more likely to show up locally.

One thing I would say with the reviews. Every time you get a new review make sure you take a screenshot of it that way if Google does get snippy about your reviews and takes them away because that does sometimes happen unfortunately at least then you've kind of got evidence that they were there you can try and get them back.

You're much more likely to be able to get them back if you've got evidence that they were there in the first place, so I would say to do that. So definitely Google Profiles. You wouldn't want to rely on it as your only method of marketing and everything you're doing on your Google Profile ideally the same as anywhere where we're marketing our business.

We want to be bringing people back to our own website to our own domain, our own podcast. Whatever, you know, whatever it is. You're trying to get them back to something that you own. Ideally your own domain and that way it's all supporting your own website really. So yeah, make sure you do that.

I would also just think about if there's anything else that you can do to get customers to interact with your Google profile as well. If you've got a physical product that you're selling, if you can encourage customers to post their own pictures, or if you're a location where clients or customers come and visit your location, how can you encourage them to upload those pictures to your Google profile as well.

That's something that Google loves. User-generated content. So if they can take a nice picture and if you, you could do it with friends, you could ask a friend to come in and take a nice picture of something that relates to what you sell or is what you sell and put that on your Google profile, that will get a lot of views.

I do that. I've done that a few times with businesses where I've left a review, especially with restaurants where they get hundreds of thousands of views. There was one that I did in a restaurant in London, about 18 months ago. And it’s had something like, I think it was up to about 98,000 views or something like that, which is just crazy.

It's still all extra visibility for your business. Which is what it's all about really.

Tip 3: Enhancing Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

And then change number three is to optimise your page titles and meta descriptions. And this is something that, again, can feel like a big job, but if you do that, it can help Google understand what that page is about. So that's one of the ways that we optimise our pages on our website.

It can also help if you're already showing up for that, that phrase. If that page is already showing up in searches. If you optimise your meta description, which is your page description, you'll see it in your website builder either as SEO description, page description, meta description.

You'll see that there. It will be called something like that. If you optimise that, it can then encourage people to actually click through to that page. So you want to try and make it enticing for people to come through to that page. Make it try and help them take action.

You can use ChatGPT and Google Gemini to help you come up with some descriptions. Definitely run them through your human filter though. Ask it to write like a human for a human. If you're in the UK, ask to use UK English, those kinds of things.

Check the length as well, because often you'll ask it to write a meta description of between 119 and 135 characters, and it'll write one that's 250 characters. It does it all the time. Guarantee it.

So just make sure you check that yourself as well. Just go into a word or character counter. I'd use wordcounter.net. And that is really helpful. But making sure, yeah, you run it through your own personal filter, that you've included your keywords, ideally, in that title and that meta description.

And in the title, you want to put your keywords near the front. So whichever keyword phrase you're trying to get that page to rank for, make sure you've got that in there. But making those tweaks to those parts of your pages, the meta title and the description can be something that, again, once Google crawls through that.

So, if you've done that. Go into Google Search Console and there's a URL inspection search bar at the top. If you actually put it in there and then request indexing again, it tells Google you've made changes to that page and you don't have to wait for Google to naturally come around and re-crawl your site again.

It will crawl it depending on how often you do that. Like I do that with my weekly blog posts that I release. I submit them to Google and usually by the next day that page is indexed. So it does depend how often you are updating your content, but Google is usually pretty quick at coming through and actually indexing it.

So yeah. Making sure you do that. Making sure that they are enticing as I say. But that it does align with what you're talking about on that page and also that it is in alignment with your values as well.

To be ideally, not clickbaiting, just making it something that is actually true, reflective, but also it does encourage people to click through to that page. And that's not necessarily easy. And it's one of the things that I have kind of despaired a little bit with the marketing industry on how much mis-selling there is and how much like just fake urgency and FOMO and all of those things.

I think it feels really apparent for me at the moment. I don't quite know why it feels so so like that, but it's something that I am trying to make sure that I'm aware of when I am writing my own titles, descriptions, copy for my pages, thinking about that through the lens of this. Is this true?

Is it overinflated? Anything like that. It's actually, yeah. And especially where we are using AI and the part of us having to put that through our human lens of working out whether that aligns with our own values. I think that's really important. But it's important to make sure those page titles and descriptions are optimised as they can be.

And that's one of the things that I often see whenever I look at a website and the first thing I look at is page titles and descriptions. Are they optimised? Nope. That's something you could do and you could get a quick win with that really.

But making sure they're optimised, making sure that they entice people to, entice people in a nice way to click through to that page, and just really making the most of what you can. And that's things with quick wins that, with the page title and meta description, I would say focus on that.

Your key pages first. So the first three to five pages are your homepage. You're about page. One of your services pages. If you were sort of thinking, like if you've got more than one service or more than one sort of most profitable product, then you might focus on five, but certainly those three first.

Thinking about, and this is something with SEO in general, all we're trying to work out is what we want to show up for. So what are the keyword phrases that we want Google to associate with our website and our business? Working out which page of our website is the most relevant for that keyword phrase. And then optimising that.

And it's as simple as that. It's not necessarily easy, but it is as simple as that with SEO. It's literally working out what we want to show up for, what's the best page, and then making some changes to that that then helps us to show up for it.

And that sounds like that's sort of over-simplifying it. And there are a lot of steps in between. But actually, even just understanding that, having that thought of, okay, what do I want to show up for? What's the best page? How do I optimise that? And it can be that simple really.

Conclusion

So I hope those three tips are helpful. I have to run because I have an orthodontist appointment. I have, I had braces about 10 years ago and my nighttime retainer is falling apart. So I decided I need to get a new one.

So I'm doing that this morning. So I've got to go and have some impressions done on my teeth. And then it's Friday. So swimming tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be a bit clearer than it is today, but it's getting colder in the water.

It was 12 degrees last week. So the winter buzz is starting to really kick in. Have a lovely weekend, and I'll see you soon. Bye!