If this past year has taught us only thing, it is this:
Online is the present, the recent past and the future.
With the furore over Boris Johnson’s revamp of number 11 and the dismissive comments about John Lewis, it’s probably the last thing Sharon White wanted to hear, as she’s battened down the hatches on high street department stores, with high profile closures in Aberdeen, Birmingham and Sheffield.
John Lewis have invested heavily in a website and app, and, if figures are accurate, 70% of its revenue is now generated online and not in store.
Primark queues disguise the losses of the past year, where their website only sold gift vouchers and not products.
You see where this is heading?
SEO
It’s a bit of a dark art, a vague science, used by “SEO experts” to occasionally fleece start ups and established businesses. I know there are 200 factors that determine Google ranking – from site speed, to content, to sitemaps. The biggest fault though with many businesses is to not have a grasp of what customers are searching for – and then how to rank for this.
6 years ago, in a depressed, anxious state, I set up this business as I was effectively blacklisted in teaching for boat-rocking. I set out to become a professional copywriter and blithely began this website as a simple four page project of Home About Blog Contact and merrily plugged away with articles aimed at “Great Yarmouth copywriter” or “copywriter Great Yarmouth”. I got to page one quickly.
But.
No one – and I mean no one – is searching online for a copywriter in Great Yarmouth.
Lesson learned.
Content was being targetted at a dud search term.
What did I do then?
I broadened my search engine horizons to include Norwich and Norfolk, and rose quickly there but the work began to accumulate through the channels of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, but mainly LinkedIn.
That kept me busy with copywriting and social media marketing, until I tilted career again and taught myself web design.
Remember too that my professional background is as a teacher of English. I graduated in 1986 from Sunderland, did a PGCE in Leeds and taught English from Year 5 to Year 13 for 27 years.
Web design was never part of my academic background, but I’ve taken to it like a gammon to Brexit, or a duck to water.
SEO for web design
Now, Get Pro Copy sits loftily on page one of Google for several long tail searches and I’m aiming for page one for “Freelance Web Designer” where I currently sit nationally between pages 6 to 8 (ie, invisible).
If I can manage to get to page one for 5 search terms with good monthly volumes, I can do it for you.
It’s not an overnight journey – this business has taken 6 years to reach heady heights of page one and a loyal following on my social channels. Click any of the social icons to see if I’m walking the walk (I am).
Where to start?
Your starting point has to be a commitment to growth, a medium to long term commitment. John Lewis and Amazon haven’t achieved those huge sales online by accident – they’ve ploughed money and time into success. You need to, too.
The first step is a website audit by me.
This starts from £200 plus VAT where I analyse your current website, its monthly organic traffic, its social media presence, its speed, its backlinks and turn a 12 page PDF into an action plan.
That SEO action plan tells you what to do
If site speed is poor, I can get you faster hosting via a CDN and 20i. If backlinks are non-existent, I can implement or tell you how to develop aggregator links.
If keywords are mis-aligned, we can change those, as well as a doing a blog page, with me suggesting 100 or more topics to get Google purring.
Now you can pay £200 + VAT and then crack on with the outcomes. Or you can say to me, “Stuart I’ll let you quote to get me on page one for the search terms you’ve identified.”
My point is – I’ve done it for this business and others
You can trust me.
I won’t exploit you financially, I won’t lead you up a Google garden path to a barred entrance (spot the metaphors from this ex teacher) and I won’t tie you in.
I see SEO, web design, copywriting and marketing as a partnership. I have enough clients to be choosy as to who I work with. Arrogant perhaps, but learned from experience. If I find you and your colleagues painful to work with, nit-picking and micro-managing, we part ways after a month. I don’t write a negative review of your company, I don’t post disparaging comments, I just don’t work with you and probably block you online if you’ve really irritated me.
Works both ways – if you find you can’t work with me, we part company quickly and you find someone you can work with.
I’ll leave you though with a wonderful Google review from David Hammond, of Seymour Sign and Print, Manchester, who I have worked with since November and am now completing another website with him. You guessed – he’s wonderful to work with and we gel.
I’ve had the displeasure of working with a number of ‘SEO Experts’, ‘Marketing Experts’, ‘Web Designers’, who charged the earth for zero ROI, and every conceivable excuse. Stuart from Get Pro Copy was a breath of fresh air. Firstly his no nonsense approach, not getting bogged down with paperwork and contracts, but an informal chat we learnt about each other, our businesses, and clicked from day one. No elaborate promises, just straight talking, honest service.
So what’s he done? Revamped an existing website we’d built in house, it’s now more aesthetically pleasing, along with more functional. Adding content to the site, that’s relevant to our business, rather than writing content to generate poor quality traffic.
We’ve since continued to work with Stuart providing exceptional value for money, and his service far exceeds some of the larger agencies we’ve worked with.
Reviews like that leave me glowing with satisfaction.
Finally, if you want to grow your business, be seen online, we need to talk – fill in the contact form or ring me today on 07462923476.
