For small businesses especially it has become a fact of life and an incredibly helpful tool in developing brand awareness and loyalty. Fact is, there are many benefits of having a website for your small business. Here’s why yours could do with one too:

• Increases credibility. Everyone likes transparency and your customers are no different. Today, consumers expect companies to have a web presence and might be turned off by businesses that don’t. Additionally, professional contact details are often a customer’s quickest way of vetting a company’s legitimacy at-a-glance. With a website, you can create your own custom email addition a touch of professionalism to your address.

• Extends your reach. Studies show that, in 2017 over half of humanity will be online. That means that your website has the potential to reach billions of people, some of which are potential customers. Especially if you have products to sell, a brick and mortar shop just can’t compare to the power, accessibility and visibility of a digital storefront. Your website can extend well beyond the local market and appeal to clients on a global scale.

• Cost effective. Unlike a physical retailer or print advertisement a website is always open, always available, and can be updated with the click of a button. Considering its reach, websites are endlessly more cost effective, especially if you use a website concierge service, which can save you both precious time and money, turning your website into an affordable commodity instead of a large investment.

• Great communication tool. Think of your business website as an online brochure or catalogue. You can use it to keep your clients up to date and informed about your company. Yet, in contrast to other media, you are able to use many different ways of communicating and engaging your customer base including videos. Plus, websites are great networking tools and a way for others to get in touch with you.

• Effective customer service. Since most customers nowadays expect you to have website, not having one is doing them a disservice that might drive them to the competition. In addition to that, you can create a lot of extra value for consumers by providing additional information such as FAQs, press releases, tips on how to use your products and much more.

As you can see, there are endless reasons to have a invest a little in building a site. What is a website if not the communication tool the 21st century?  Businesses who are not present online are sure to miss out on a lot of opportunities, visibility, and ultimately, customers.

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The process of SEO all begins with a want or a need from the potential customer. Subsequently, this encourages them to use a search engine to find what they are looking for. For example, an individual’s want/need for an Italian restaurant in London will prompt this search: “Italian restaurant London”. As an Italian restaurant in London, you would strive for your business’s website to be the first, if not, then at least on the first page, of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) for these keywords. The world’s most popular search engine, Google, has implemented various algorithms, which are designed to determine the ranking of websites. Here are the 5 tips from our SEO London team to help you optimise your web presence for SEO successfully.

 1. Great Copy & Content

A website should be a credible and reliable source of information on your product or service. A clear and concise structure is vital to your website as well as carefully crafted copy. The objective of creating great content is so that it is shareable therefore increasing your authority and rankings. We advise that every web page has a minimum of 300 words.

2. Social Media & Listings

The integration of social media on your web presence is, of course, interlinked with the best SEO practices. Signing up to some of the biggest social media platforms in the world, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn can boost your rankings. For instance, an active presence on Twitter allows for a search engine such as Google to discover your content much faster, thus getting more organic traffic to your website. Search engines like Google include social media sites in their algorithm. In fact, Google highlights Twitter accounts in their search results. Google and other search engines also have databases of local business listings. Placing your business in these databases is extremely helpful when implementing your SEO strategy. It is advisable to register your company on Google My Business, this listing allows you to post your opening times, social media handles, to enforce trust.

3. Measurement Tools

The best way of keeping track of your SEO progress is through tools such as Google Analytics. Amongst many metrics available through Google Analytics the most used ones include the number of impressions, number of clicks, and the overall position of your website.

Claim your business on Google Webmaster to be up-to-date with aspects of your website that need improvement. Google Webmaster is one of the tools we use for our clients in order to see what needs to be modified and improved.

4. On-site vs. off-site blogging

On-site Blogging: Incorporating a blog on your website provides you with the opportunity to increase your search engine rankings whilst offering useful information to current and prospective customers alike. An on-site blog allows you to showcase your business and act as a resource for information that is up-to-date and relevant to your industry. Additionally, having control over your blog allows you to link internally to your own website.

Off-site Blogging: Establishing a blog presence off-site is especially useful for public relations and publicity purposes. In regards to SEO, posts on external blogs need to be high quality backlinks; having a blog link back to your website will boost your credibility and rankings.

5. On-Page

H1 Heading – The H1 heading is essentially the newspaper headline of your page. The heading should consist of relevant keywords and clearly display the subject of the content.

Page Title – Page titles are especially important for SEO – they are the text that will appear on the tab of the browser window as well as in the search engine result.

Alt Text and Image Description – Optimising SEO for images on your web page involves implementing keywords into the file name. For instance, if you have a photo of Tower Bridge in London, the file name should be tower-bridge-london.jpg instead of IMG4958.jpg.

URL Structure – The website URL should have a clear path and display the content of the page. For instance: https://mbj.london/portfolio/

At MBJ, our professional SEO London team assists our clients every step of the way. We offer a subscription-based package called Website as a Service (WaaS), which is inclusive of the essential design, development, and maintenance required to craft an impeccable web presence. Website as a Service from MBJ also allows for clients to improve their website with extra add-ons such as SEO services, faster maintenance, as well as email and calendar accounts.

Get in touch today with our SEO London team to see how we can begin to help you improve your SEO and get more organic traffic onto your website.

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1. Branding & Design

Convey the brand suitably and creatively. Your website design should reflect the business the way you envisage it and how you would like it to be perceived by the public including prospective customers. Think of your website as a 24/7 public relations representative. Your website design should encompass the mission and vision which can be displayed in the user experience. When designing your website, consider the user journey and what your ideal customer should learn and/or do when they leave your website. Don’t underestimate the importance of good company branding.

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Readiness

Keywords: Keywords are an essential aspect of search engine optimisation that you frequently hear about. Keywords are relevant words or phrases that your prospective customer may enter into search engines to find your website. You should consider the incorporation of keywords in your website design.

Body Text: The body of your web page should be informative, describing your product or service with relevant keywords that your website is eligible to rank for.

Page Loading Speed: Slow loading times can highly effect search engine optimisation. Factors such as a low-quality host server and an overload of large images reduce the loading speed. It is also essential to make sure that any media on your website is optimised and has a satisfactory loading speed. You can test your page loading speed on GTmetrix. A good webpage combines fast loading speed with an appealing website design.

Page Titles: The page title is one of the most significant aspects of a website . Every page on your site should have a title starting with a relevant keyword and it is important that the context of the title matches the content of the page. Page titles should help you rank for a keyword and make users click through to your website.
The length of the page title shouldn’t exceed the recommended amount of characters. We usually advice page title not to exceed 65 characters where your focus keyword is at the beginning.

H1 Headings: An H1 tag or heading will usually be the title of a post and the most significant text on the page. The H1 heading is not to be confused with the page title, which is the title that is shown on the SERPS. There should be only one H1 heading per page.

URL Structure: A clear and concise URL structure should be in line with your page title and H1 heading. For instance, https://mbj.london/products/ has a crisp URL structure and clearly displays the content of the link.
Meta Descriptions: A descriptive text explaining and summarising the content of the page. The main purpose of a meta description is to get people to click through from search engines. We recommend meta description to be between 135 and 160 characters. Meta descriptions should be unique, it is better to leave them empty than copy/paste or have irrelevant content. If it is not filled, then Google will pull a snippet from the text containing the keyword used.

3. Social Media Integration

With 2.3 billion social media users in the world, it is safe to say that a thorough social media strategy is essential for businesses. In addition to a well designed website, a social media presence is important when attracting and maintaining customers.

4. Blogging

Bringing your brand name into the blogging world allows you to establish yourself as a credible source and a knowledgeable leader in your industry. Both on-site and off-site blogging are advantageous for SEO.

5. Maintenance

Developing and managing your website through a subscription-based Website as a Service (WaaS) option ensures that your web presence receives ongoing maintenance. Regular upkeep typically includes long-term (quarterly and yearly) updates to your web presence to ensure your website is running smoothly. Other important aspects of web maintenance include fast page loading, fixing any broken links and backlinks, as well as web analysis through Google Analytics and MOZ.

Bonus Tip – Hosting

The quality of your cloud hosting will also determine your website’s SEO ranking. Server Speed: Although the optimal loading time for a website is under 3 seconds, if the loading time exceeds 10 seconds, visitors are more likely to leave your website and go to one of your competitors. Speed and security are vital to the amount of traffic on your site.

Downtime: It is important to minimise downtime and make sure that pages do not become overloaded. This can interfere with potential customers reaching your site as well as search engines accessing it for crawling purposes. Amazon Web Services (AWS): At MBJ, we use AWS as our preferred hosting partner. Popular companies such as Netflix, Expedia, Coursera, and UniLever use AWS. It is the world’s largest and most secure cloud services provider.

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MoonROK – Winner

MoonROK is one of the only English language media outlets dedicated to Korean pop music (K-Pop) in the world. K-Pop has one of the largest fan bases of any genre in the globe, with many of its artists boasting hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions of views on their videos.

Ever since winning the MBJ LaunchPad competition MookROK have gone from strength to strength. Not long after returning to their native USA from the MBJ LaunchPad final, MoonROK won the KIC Challenge competition in Washington D.C. As well as a $10,000 cash prize, the team won one year of office space and accommodation in South Korea. They are due to move their headquarters from New York City to Seoul in June 2016.

MoonROK also recently returned to the UK in April 2016, having got to the final of yet another competition. This time it was for the Business Rocks event in Manchester. Whilst the team did not win the overall cash prize of £50,000 for their category, they came fourth out of several hundred finalists. Being in the UK also gave MoonROK the chance to pop into the MBJ office for a couple of days and work alongside our growing team.

To top things off, the team look set to have closed their first seed round of investment. As they continue their upward trajectory, we strongly advise you to keep a close eye on MoonROK.

moonrok.com

Beep Beep – Runner Up

BeepBeep, like most startups, have gone through several makeovers. The team has now found a winning formula: “On Demand Valet Parking”. They are initially focused on serving the city of Amsterdam, and soon, The Hague with further expansion planned in the pipeline.

When the Beep Beep team came to London for the final of MBJ LaunchPad the team was comprised of three co-founders: Scott Moran, Karan Bagai and Shashank Batra. Since graduating from their MBA program, Karan accepted a sought after position with an investment bank. Shashank took a position at one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms. Scott has remained CEO of Beep Beep and has since taken on three (soon four) new members.

The revised Beep Beep business model offers users the ability to drive up to anywhere in city centre, call a Beep Beep Expert Valet, who will whizz along on a scooter to meet the user and park their car for them in a local partner garage. When the user needs their car back, Beep Beep will guarantee its return within 15 minutes to anywhere in the city centre. Users can track the whereabouts of their car through the app to ensure that it is where it’s supposed to be at all times.

Avennu – Runner Up

Avennu is an online market place based in New York City whose vision is to connect professionals and businesses to urban spaces suited to their unique needs. They cater for a multitude of potential requirements such as weddings, photo shoots, charity events, and many more.

Since MBJ LaunchPad, Avennu has made big strides, partnering with London based Sofar Sounds. Sofar Sounds has a large presence in NYC hosting over 100 intimate music shows per month. Furthermore, Avennu has partnered with a 2000 sq. ft. event space in downtown Manhattan. They plan to use the space as a laboratory to try out several new technologies that will strengthen the business and its product offering.

Avennu are currently seeking new partners that share their commitment to community and creative industries.

www.avennu.com

After the huge success of MBJ LaunchPad 2015, the project was put on hold for 2016. This enabled the MBJ team to focus on growing the company internationally and to implement MBJ’s new Websites As A Service (WaaS) product model. Waas offers high quality, fully managed websites to small and medium sized businesses at affordable rates.

MBJ LaunchPad will make a big comeback in 2017. The MBJ team has already begun putting some stokes in the fire so keep an eye out for updates!

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