A guide to your website SEO with Dazzly (NZ)

It all starts with Dazzly...

Where your website ranks in search engines is determined by many factors, some of these are within your website (on-page) and some of these are off your website (off-page). Fortunately, most of these factors are things we can control.

Lets start with the on-page factors.

Within the Dazzly software you are given direct access to edit some of the key pieces of information on your website that search engines review when analysing your website to determine its rank in search results. In some other website builder software packages, it is either not possible to edit these settings or you would need to purchase expensive or complex plugins that never quite “work”. With Dazzly, as per usual, everything related to your website is all in one place and easy to access.

Although we're sure you’re excited to jump in and explore these “SEO Settings” (we’re very keen to show you!), we must first make a crucial decision. We must decide what keywords we are going to target to get your website visible in search engine results for the medium to long term. These “keywords” are what we’re going to include within these “SEO Settings” and your website content generally.

Over the last 10 years we have visited hundreds of businesses as a professional website design consultants. In that time, We’ve had many conversations with businesses, from the smallest to some of the largest in New Zealand. There are a few simple questions that can allow us to hone-in on the focus keywords for your website.

If you’ve already signed up to Dazzly – you’re entitled to one free SEO/marketing consultation where we will cover all of the below – call us on 0800 112 942 to redeem that consultation now or email support@dazzly.co.nz and we can book a time around your schedule.

Regardless of whether you’re already on-board with Dazzly or still making up your mind, this is what we will cover in the initial SEO consultation. If you feel like going ahead yourself then you can still redeem the above free consultation and we can talk about more advanced concepts and your businesses marketing/website content generally.

How do we decide what keywords are best for your business?

We’re going to talk about your customers and find out as much about them as we can in order to get into their heart and mind and give it our best guess as to what they’d search when they’re looking for a new provider of your services.

1. What is your business about?

   This question is to get familiar with the context of your business and will potentially highlight industry terms or common phrases about your product or service.

   Generally speaking, regional businesses stand to gain the most from improving their website traffic - more on this later.

2. Where are your customers located?

   Assuming you already have customers, where do they live? Does it matter where they’re geographically located relative to your business? Are they a one-off sale or representative as a customer type? Will they come back and purchase more?

   The purpose of these questions is to build a picture of your “audience” – who is the customer type that we’re targeting to receive your marketing message – this is typically several types with several distinct reasons for purchasing your goods/services.

3. What product or service did they purchase and why?

   Think about what your customers might search when looking for this product and the intention behind the search also. For example if you are a mechanic that also offers mobile servicing, you may want to target searches for "emergency roadside mechanic" or "mobile mechanic northland".

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Now that we have established a general picture of your product/services and customer, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of people matching the same general demographic as your customer and that are in the market to purchase your products/services. In-order to do that, we can think of some recent examples of your customers and try to envisage how they would seek you out online (assuming it makes sense that their demographic would seek you out online – this may not be the case e.g. for elderly customers may prefer telephone, human-to-human contact). Specifically, we want to focus on, if the customer went to a search engine – what do they anticipate they would have typed in to find your products and/or services?

If you were looking for an oil change for your family vehicle, ideally you would want to go close to home, so you may search “oil change Henderson”. If you’re budget conscious, it may be “cheap oil change Henderson” – depending on the values of your business and customer purchasing reason it may or may not make sense to target words such as “cheap”.

Note: If you’re a local business and your service must be done in-person then it almost always makes sense to target your city, suburb and the word “local” as part of your keyword list.

If you sold natural products solely through your Ecommerce Store website then your next customer could be located anywhere in New Zealand. Therefore, it would make sense for you to target keywords such as “buy natural products online”, “buy natural products online nz” and “buy natural products online New Zealand” as a starting point. These are phrases that you could easily predict would be searched by potential customers of yours and therefore your business needs to be visible when people type in such terms.

The aforementioned keywords are national-level keywords and targeting these would be ambitious due to high levels of competition (in a standard, established market such as natural products). While you should still set high targets, we would advise that you also mix in some less competitive, yet still relevant, niche terms such as “buy natural soap online nz”, “buy natural lavender soap online nz” etc. depending on the types of natural products you stock.

If you perform home plumbing and maintenance, you can only service a local area so you would be better suited to pick keywords such as “home plumbing Palmerston north” or “emergency plumber Palmerston north”. Note that again, depending on the population and level of local competition, you can be either more or less ambitious with your choice of target key words.

So make a list - right now, write down some possible keywords that your future customers may be searching for, and therefore that your business needs to be VISIBLE for.

The purpose of the exercise is to come up with 5-6 keywords (or more if you’re prepared to do more work) that represent what customers would search to find your offering. Your goal is to use the below steps to maximise the level of authority that search engines view your website in relation to these particular terms.

The ultimate goal is to build your website into an “authority” for certain keywords in the eyes of search engines such as Google. If they see you as an authority website for “home electrical north shore” then they can be more confident in ranking your website higher for such terms.

Your website content

If you’ve read this far then there is one crucial thing you need to know. Writing articles is a culture change. You need to build the habit of searching for content, taking those content ideas and writing Articles, publishing them to your website and then sharing them on 3rd party websites such as Social Media with links back to the specific Article page.

Write Articles including your target keywords.

Before you commit to reading any further, here’s proof of a local Auckland building company (Peninsular Builders) that took the time out to write a couple of Articles on their Dazzly website. Here’s the proof this works. Don’t believe us? Call Steve and ask him – it’s a real company operating in Auckland since 1985.

Case Study: Peninsular Builders

Peninsular builders achieves page 1 for two niche keywords and the valuable “decks whitford” keyword.

What results could you achieve for your website traffic and business enquiries if you spent a day taking photos of your work and writing short knowledge-based articles related to local jobs? This is the modern way of marketing your services, but it takes awhile to get your head around entirely. For now, read on, and hopefully you find these examples relatable.

Peninsular Builders demonstrates that articles work to rank for valuable local search terms. But how can I do that with my website?

If you haven’t already, take a moment to call the friendly team at Dazzly to discuss your business and join today to launch your website and get your website traffic off to a great start with our New Zealand based team. We’re keen to chat with you right now. 0800 112 942 and support@dazzly.co.nz

Publishing an Article with Dazzly

With our easy-to-use interface, writing Articles is an absolute breeze with Dazzly. It's as easy as writing a word document or writing an email to a friend.

1. Title

   The Title field is very short and Dazzly tells you how many characters to use, Titles such as “Quality Home Plumbing Services in New Plymouth | NP Plumbers” are valid.

2. Description

   Descriptions such as “For quality residential plumbing services in new Plymouth reach out to the local experts. Leaky taps, drainage and more.” These are just guidelines but also valid structures for your Title and Description fields – do not miss these.

   At this point it is fair to mention that most people who make websites do not either appreciate or know how to set these fields within their websites. Generally speaking, unless explicitly instructed, they will not take the time to carry this out so doing so will really put you ahead of the competition, particularly if you’re outside of major cities.

3. Main Image

   A relevant image is essential in order to make the most out of an Article. Photos taken on mobile devices can also embed location data, increasing your relevancy for search engines. Include a Short description of the image for those with limited or impaired vision or other disabilities, for more information please see the ARIA guidance.

4. Written Content

   Don’t go over-board with the keywords, keep it natural, you’re already doing well if you’re doing this regularly anyway. Some people will try to write “we’re the best wood delivery service in Auckland” several times, even within one paragraph. Modern search engine algorithms are advanced, they will detect this and essentially assign your content a lower score if there is a large, unnatural repetition of keywords – so keep it simple & keep it natural.

How often should I write Articles?

1 Article per month is excellent.

You want to ensure each article targets 1-2 major keywords – naturally by writing about recent plumbing jobs in New Plymouth you would be raising your reputation/authority score for keywords contained in that article. This, again, is why we ask you to put the keywords — naturally — in the title and description. Since you’re targeting multiple keywords and there will be existing competition it would really pay dividends to kick-start your website’s content with 1-3 articles about services or products you want to attract enquiries for.

1 per quarter should be your standard.

Depending on your existing business schedule, age of business and market competition, releasing one high-quality written piece per quarter is a great way to boost your organic rank for the keywords you are aiming for.

Setting Up Your Google For Business Listing

Having a Google for Business Listing only takes a few minutes to setup and verify. As shown, it is displayed to the right of search results and is separate and distinct from the website listing itself. Note that the High Maintenance Abseil website is ranked first when you type in your business name, this typically happens once the website has been indexed in Google (typically a week or two following go-live).

Create your Google Business Listing

Start building your Business Profile

• Enter your Business Name and category

• Choose whether your business has a physical address

• Enter contact information

• Verify your information with Google

Add additional details to your listing

• Add some photos and/or videos relevant to your business and location

• Create a single post for every article that you post on your website. In the Google for Business post link back to your website (more on this below). Make your first post – or better yet – write your first article and then make a post telling people to look at the article. When you get a few reviews then your post may be shown in local searches too!

Getting reviews

This is essential for local service providers – if you want to score an A+ in our books you need to find your review link and then include it in your email signature – and personally ask your customers to leave reviews when you do jobs at their home/workplace. If you naturally build up reviews from genuine people in your local community your will shoot up the ranks in Google and better still, your listing will be shown on the local search map, which is of particular importance for location based searches.

Register for a Google My Business Account Note that you will need a Google Account to use this service, if by some chance you don’t have one – then you can register one here .

Off-page links

Every time a website or webpage different to your own links back to your website - that is called a back-link or off-page link. The number and quality of these links can affect how your webpages rank in search engine result pages. Links that are of good quality often come from other sites that are deemed to be trustworthy, contain a lot of good and relevant information for your industry and get a lot of website traffic.

News sites are classic examples of this, e.g. nzherald.co.nz and stuff.co.nz. News sites often get a lot of traffic and are analysed carefully by search engines to maintain their authority. Business directories can also be an easy way to get links back to your website and these are often free.

Social Media can also be a good way to drive some external traffic to your website, though these links don't usually carry much weight for ranking purposes it's still a good idea to show search engines how other external content is related to your website.

Website Page Settings

These are really important to set as natural text but including a target keyword. Refer to Peninsular Builders Google Ranking Images Above – note the Title and Description come from the Title and ShortDescription field in Articles (we’ve done the work for you by using the Title and ShortDescription you entered when you created the Article). These will show in Google Search results and will boost their website’s relevancy for these terms.

Reminder – When you join the Dazzly paid plan and launch your website you’re entitled to one free SEO consultation – redeem it now and our friendly Auckland-based support team will help you with each step of optimising your website.

Social Media

Love it or loathe it, social media has a place in every business’s online presence. Whether there is an obvious synergy (online natural product seller using Instagram) or an industrial supplier of electrical services, social media plays a different but important role in both cases.

At a minimum, no matter what your business, you need to take the time out to create a profile on the following social media platforms and make a least ONE post referring to/linking back to your website. At the very least this will provide a basis for your social media presence and some basic off-page links to get you started.

We've put together some links to create accounts for the main Social Media platforms.

• Create a Facebook Account
• Create an Instagram Account
• Create a LinkedIn Account
• Create a Twitter Account
• Create a Pinterest Account

Once you’ve created these accounts and made a post linking back to your website you can pat yourself on the back, sign-out and never look back (just kidding). While not everyone thinks that social media is the next best thing since sliced bread, we should continue to look objectively at how it can be used for your business.

For the purposes of this guide we will use social media to periodically post links back to our websites with Articles to drive traffic there and to show search engines. Social Media posts accompanied by relevant Images and Videos are better still – and the same applies to Articles and Google for Business (note – video posting limitations ).