 My name is Caroline Wabara. I'm a SCU specialist and digital marketing consultant for small businesses in Nigeria. And today I'll be discussing, I'll be showing you simple tactics I used in helping clients to rank his website, his e-commerce website, a brand new website on the first page of Google, a WordPress, using WordPress and WooCommerce. So let me jump because I don't have much time. But why use, why SCU? The need for SCU is because today's online user is an informed buyer. So before they even come to you to buy your stuff or to do business with you, they've already done their background checks on you, they've checked out your site, they've also reviewed other people's site on Google before deciding, okay maybe you're trustworthy enough before me to buy from you. Also there are two types of audience online on Google using Google currently. The first one is the information seeker, why the other one is the buyer. Now these two people have different mindsets when using Google. The information seeker knows he has a pain that he needs to solve. And he's looking for a process to solve, it's meaning that he's not ready to buy yet, but he just needs to find an information, maybe he wants to learn how to do stuff. The kind of keywords they use on Google is usually what we are, they use question words, what we are, how and why. Now for instance, I want to start importing goods into Nigeria. What are the list of fast selling goods that I can import into Nigeria? Okay now let me ask Google. So he types in the keyword fast selling, either list of fast selling goods to import or fast selling products in Nigeria. Google shows in the relevant websites and he clicks on it to read the article. He's not ready to buy, he just wants to get more information before making the next decision. Now how do you make this information seeker to trust your website, come to you, read your article and then go to the next stage either to do business with you. What I usually do is find topics that they love to read and I use sites like Nairaland. Nairaland is a very popular forum where Nigerians go, someone called it Nigeria's B.A. Palo. Where people go to discuss stuff, some go there to abuse each other but people go there to ask questions, how can I do this, where can I buy this, where can I learn this, what can I do, on any topic at all. So they go there to ask questions. So this is the search phrase that I usually use when I want to filter out questions from Nairaland to find out topics or questions people are asking. It doesn't matter how long you go, they ask the question. It doesn't matter whether they ask the question 5-10 years ago so long as it's still ranking on Google that question they are looking for answers to such questions. So now here is an example, site colon Nairaland.com space quote how do I and import. Now I will put it in the search box and Google will filter out all the questions people are asking about how do I import goods within the comfort of my home, how do I start import of goods from China and all that stuff. So I will click on the question and then look at what study the conversation. So if there is no answer to that question I will go back to my client and say hey people are asking want to know how to import goods from the comfort of their home. How do we do that? The client will tell me the steps and I will go and write an article on it and publish it on his blog. Then I will still come back to that thread on Nairaland and then act like a thought party and say you can read more information on how to import your goods on this site and people start clicking from Nairaland to his website. This sample of a client's website where most of the articles on the site I got the questions from Nairaland 50 hot selling goods, people ask what are the hot selling products to a spot these are the questions I got from Nairaland and published on the site and he started ranking on Google. Now how do you make like I said make sure that your blog or your website answers the information seekers frequently asked questions write things like how to articles related to your niche what were, how, why some things like how much does it cost to build a website that's a topic that you can discuss because these are questions people usually ask what were, why they can also do video series on your YouTube channel and they can publish it on your blog you can do case studies as well depending on your industry people need to see examples of clients if helped in the part you can write case studies reviews on your blog and you can start ranking now the next person is the buyer this person understand they have the pain it keeps them up at night and they need to solve the problem they are ready to make payment for that to solve that problem and the kind of keywords they use on Google is usually price they find things like price by best location so they are things like interior design schools near me interior design schools in Lagos or price of water closets so these are the kind of questions because they are ready to make payment and these are the type of keywords that most businesses or e-commerce sites like targeting so this buyer's mindset usually I want to become an interior designer for instance where can I learn interior design online how much will it cost how do I register this is the search phrase the person types it to Google where can I learn interior design and you make sure that your website answers these buyer's questions from the brand name to the location to pricing, time reviews make sure you have all these elements on your site reviews, testimonials, features because it is one thing to bring people to rank on Google and then start driving people to your site is also another thing to convert them into customers for them to now trust you because if they visit your site and they don't see what they need they will just leave immediately and that's what we call bounce rate so they leave immediately and Google starts having this feeling that maybe your site is not that relevant and your ranking drops so make sure you have all these on your site all these questions are answered on your site so they can now take action and also make it easy for them to contact you put a live chat button on your site your phone number on your site I don't advise putting your email instead replace it with a contact form so that you can mine more data from your website visitor such as your name, email address phone number and maybe their company name depends if you want that on their location now how do you make your website easy for Google and your audience to trust you and find you and then help you rank on Google here is my client story Baron Bertrams this man came to attended by training earlier last day in March he limited that his website that he built over 2 years ago no customers coming from me nobody calls him rather his sales team keep going from door to door sell or do code calling and all that so he didn't know what to do so I had looked at his website and I said a lot of things wrong with the website which I go through so this was my strategy checklist I have the tools I select my SEO tools which I will discuss know your target audience I asked him a series of questions to understand who is the target audience did keyword research reviewed his competitors and then did an audit of his website created a strategy a roadmap on how to help him to start ranking on Google optimise the website created a content strategy that he will follow build back links to his website and then monitor the progress so the first step these are the tools that I use that you can start with the simplest form is using the google auto suggest on google just typing the keyword of the industry or niche type it in google will show you relevant other searches that people are searching for you can click on any of them another one for WordPress use SEO plugin is what I recommend for your for optimising your website then another tool I use is called the Screaming Frog SEO spider it crawls your website to see what is wrong with your website whether you have back links broken links duplicate content on your website whether your images are well optimised your head title tag are not that are well optimised then we have the excel should be your best friend that's an SEO specialist number one to excel for planning your SEO then next is google keyword planner you can use that but in place of that use google auto suggest to find keywords people are searching for then google search console very important you need to set up create your site map and submit it on google search console so that it will help google to start tracking your website indexing your website on google search and then showing you the keywords people use to find you online and they click through it then the next is bosumo I use this tool a lot to find to do competitive analysis to see what my competitors content they are sharing online and what people where their target audience usually hang out online which of their content has the most shares on social media so I use bosumo to find such content and then hubspots you can use that to for your blogging what kind of topic should I write about headline for your blog post I use that to generate headlines all you just need to do is put in your subject or keyword then next know your ideal customer who is your ideal customer very important for google search for su so that you don't attract the wrong customers to your website you need to know because for instance maybe you and conga are in the same niche you sell like my client and conga when I looked at his website I noticed that conga were ranking for those keywords but he said conga's customers are not his ideal customers his own ideal customers are architects building construction companies he's not looking for all these individuals to come and buy his bathroom accessories so he's looking for architects and builders so he need to know who they are and you start by asking questions answering such questions like what product or services do you offer these are the questions I usually ask what product or service do you offer who is your ideal customer and why would they need your offer so they answer they give me in depth answer why their customers need their product what keywords would they use to find your product or service on google and then who are your competitors I need to know before so they told me that their competitors were you bad know bad and beyond petrolman beyond and the fracking so those were his competitors and from what he answered I was not able to know his ideal customer person and I did it this way Femi is a building contractor he wants to furnish his client's office building the modern water closet and he doesn't want to go to the market to buy he would rather stay in his office and check what he needs online and then ask them to bring to come and do a demonstration show the samples of what he has they have at his office so he goes online to search for such information now he can type in things like WC toilet price in Nigeria and google will show him the relevant website ranking for such keywords by their brand name, location pricing, reviews and features now he clicks to visit the website or landing page to learn more and then make enquiry now unlike his competitors such as Konga he preferred not to put the price on his site because the target audience are not the ones that are looking to buy retail they want wholesale so he would rather fill the form and contact him for quotation and then he will send the bulk or deliver it to their location so this they now visit the website and make enquiry now you can study his buying behavior first he starts by browsing either by name, keyword location and price next he starts comparing by looking at reviews checking out other people's site and comparing it to his own checking out Naira Land for instance if he visits the site and he doesn't trust what he sees he can go to Naira Land to ask questions what do you guys think about this brand or what do you think I should go ahead and buy from them he can also look at google he reviews people are saying about them on google before he makes purchase like I said today's online user is an informed buyer next he confirms the ease he can now start making enquiries are your products good what how much does it cost should I make payment now or later then next he can now either book consultation or make payment so he can see the hierarchy to browsing compare confirm and then book so that's how your website should your SEO strategy should be so make sure that your website answers this person's questions make sure you have your brand name there location, pricing, time testimonials features and then assess like your life chart your phone number now who are your enemies or who are your competitors how I do this I type in his keyword in google to see who is ranking for those keywords the top 5 or top 10 then I check out their website to see what they are doing what is making them to be successful next I use a tool called the same rush someone said same rush is your lets you know whether you are bringing a knife to a gun fight so it helps you to know what your competitors are doing what their strategy is shows you how they are ranking on google who their other competitors are and who is linking to them what content are they sharing and who is talking about them and are they also running adverts you can see the adverts they are running if they run ads so this is the tool same rush to check their strategy and this is the sample so I used it to check their competitor I saw how they are ranking on google checked out the back links people linking to them to see ok should I go and meet if they are blogs should I go and meet those blogs or those bloggers and ask them to write about my clients I make such decisions using these two same rush ok and then I will also visit the competitor site and see do they have a blog ok what content are they sharing on their blog so I can also do same and start sharing contents on my own blog as well then I use this like I said before the auto suggest google auto suggest scroll down to the bottom when you type in the keywords scroll down to the bottom of your search result google will show you related searches for that keyword you are looking for like this search is relating to bathroom fittings in Nigeria now audit your website here is a simple format I use to see if their website is being indexed on google I will just type inside your website name.com or .ng depending on the domain you are using type it into google and google will show me all the pages on your website now in some cases where the pages can't show you could be that your web designer in process of designing your website he blocked the spiders from crawling your website in the robots.txt file so he put a slash instead of just blocking maybe the login to your dashboard he blocked the whole site I've seen such cases for a client of mine he blocked the whole site from being assessed by google and google will tell me instantly that sorry we can't assess your website and you also need to submit other questions you need to ask have you submitted your site map in google so your SCU helps create automatically generate a site map for you call site map.xml so your website name.com site map.xml so you can submit it in your google search console very important you create a google search console so you go to google.com slash webmasters to create and submit your site map then if your website optimized can see from the the title tag has to be you have your keyword so these formats are usually used for your title tag brand name plus industry keyword plus location so whether your brand name is say gtbank your industry keyword could be either online banking then your location either lego so Nigeria or leki depending on where the location your target in make sure you have it in your title tag and in your meta description as seen on the screen the meta description now also have that same keyword in your body the body of your page and also check out for things like duplicate content this is the tool I use this is how screaming frog does it across your website the way Google will crawl your website so you have to install it on your website on your laptop or your desktop say it doesn't work online you have to download it on your like the software on your laptop to use it so and it's free for the first 500 URLs that you crawl on your site so you can see all that it shows you the page title whether it's empty if it's empty it shows you the pages that are empty the meta description if you have 404 means the page doesn't exist so you need to redirect them to the new page do a 301 redirect now other questions you need to ask when auditing your website is immobile responsive you can do that directly for your browser by minimizing your browser and pushing it to the left hand side if it's your website falls into a single like that means it's mobile responsive if it's if it requires the person shifting scrolling left and right it's not mobile responsive can your website this to understand what your offer is there is this tool I use to check that it's a Chrome extension called landing page checklist landing page checklist you can use it to find out if your website is conversion friendly if it can convert your website visitors into leads so landing page checklist is the Chrome extension you need to install on your Chrome browser now is your website trustworthy you need to have SSL certificate this HTTPS Google has given a a rule that by July it is you start labeling sites that don't have that HTTPS not secure so when people see it they will see the warning sign that this site is not secure and you can make people leave your website immediately so you need to change it ask your web hosting company to have it installed on your cPanel now can people take action these are the questions that's landing page checklist to help you to find out if your website readable and informative the use SEO plugin can show you are you visible on Google start by typing your keyword on Google to check these are the things I found out on my client site they weren't visible on Google the questions they weren't visible on Google even though they had their Google map they weren't ranking their keyword with that Google map and they were also not active on social media and then who is talking about these are the questions you need to ask to find out all these the answers to them then have you installed Google analytics they didn't have Google analytics installed on their website so that means there was no way for them to find out how people are visiting their website where are they coming from what keywords they use to visit their site what devices did they use now have you submitted your site map this is a question you need to ask what actions did they take on your website Google analytics will show you all of that and the keywords they use to find your website now next I created their SEO strategy starting with their goal I asked them what are your goals they said they want to generate leads sales qualified leads from their this SEO that will do for them so they wanted to generate leads they wanted their website to be the source for all things bedroom accessories and all that they also wanted to increase websites from search engine they also wanted to create leads like I said so the KPIs was number of website traffic from different sources and then number of leads to their website generated from Google now the tactics I showed them the roadmap of things I will have to do I will have to define their target audience or did their website perform long tail keyword research create content team for writing articles that are related to their business then optimize the website get back links and then track where their leads are coming from whether they are coming from search engine or from social media from their email marketing campaign and others then these are the reports that I will be giving them every month at the end of the month total number of keywords number of website visits number of lead form fields and then attribute those traffic and leads to their various sources whether they are coming from social media or from search engine or others so this is the strategy I created for them next I went on to start optimizing their website this is step by step make sure that the keyword I used I found from Google I use it to optimize their URL you can see they place your keyword here the page title shouldn't exceed 60 characters meta description should exceed 160 I also have to keep those keywords in those places even their header 1, header 2 and the body of their content then also in their image I have to compress their image because it was so heavy Google complained that their site images on their site were heavy and the keywords were missing in the web design the former web designer just uploaded the images without renaming them with the ideal keywords of their products so I did all of that then link the website to the pages link the pages to other relevant pages on their website so this is the tool I used Excel, you can use Google Sheets or your Microsoft Excel so I divided this way the product or the page followed by the URL so I have to rename the URL followed by the meta description I'll write it the format then meta description you can see the numbers it helps me to count if I'm exceeding the 160 characters so I did all these in Excel for all their important category pages and their landing pages the meta keyword the header 1, header 2 and then the categories so everything has to be done quite fast the guru said SEO is like accounting if you miss one make one little mistake if messed up the whole thing so everything has to be done perfectly before you can now transfer it to their website to the Google Sheets to do all that then after that I can now go to the website make sure Google Use is installed and start adding the things I did on the Google Sheets I can start putting them in the use so this is the use SEO with this as a guide this analysis as a guide to help you know if there are some things I omitted so if it's good it shows good results so problems it shows me here so I add all that in the SEO title tag the meta description and the focus keyword because I know that I'm writing for human beings not just for Google search engine so it's very important that you also write for human beings and also for Google so this is the way I did it I'll ask the client for the details of the product what's the name of your product he says basic mixer what is it all about there are technical terms cartridge this and that then I ask about the benefits I try to answer the benefits of this basic mixer because I'm writing for human beings so I write the lifestyle and all that stuff then I'll make the customer a part of the product so this is the template I use for that then next the product description this is it here on this side of the page where I write everything following the Google guidelines SEO guidelines then the SEO title tag I put all that in here the long tail keyword so this is the one I've already searched on Google what people are currently searching for the keywords I put them in the meta description in the SEO title tag and the product in the product description once I'm done with it focus keyword I can now go and add it to their each of the pages now creating the content strategy like I said before find out topics your audience love to read I gave example of using Naira land so like I said your audience have different mindsets some come to your side they are not ready to buy now or they just want to check around read your content see if you are for real or even engaged with you sign off for your newsletter so make sure that your content answers them at their the different stage of their buying their journey the buyers journey on your website their awareness stage is for those who are not ready to buy yet they just want information so there are types I usually type in things like 10 ways to do stuff 10 best things to buy they watch videos they have they looking for checklist of things they need to do to solve their problem at that point so I create content for those people those information seekers then for those who are not ready to go to the next stage the consideration stage I type in things like this what how I get to know this by looking at the clients Google the Google analytics the questions they ask also check out questions asked on Naira Land and even on social media groups as well like Facebook group or WhatsApp groups I see the questions they ask there I can filter out the questions in Facebook group by asking typing things like challenges people will say I have a challenge I have this how can I do this I type in that and then I'll see the questions so I use this format these vessels that so for instance let's say you're selling land you're a real estate you're a real toy and you want to sell land so land with CO4 versus land without CO4 which should you buy or which should you go for this how it's done so land with CO4 which should you buy case studies how customer A became a millionaire with real estate investments that's examples of case studies reviews testimonials from clients client interviews I see some companies are brought to that they will just interview their clients on video and they tell them how the challenges they had at the beginning and how they moved they contacted the company to solve the problem for them and how the the result of what they got and so these clients interviews and then challenge so you can ask them join our 7 day challenge and learn how to rebrand your business so challenge these are the kind of blog posts that you can write it can even be a lead magnet so you can tell them sign up to get any of these to download this so they sign up to your newsletter and then you can start following up with them in bank so SEO is like the top of the funnel it's like the top of your marketing funnel to just attract people who don't know you yet to come to you then you can use this to as your lead magnet to get them to enter your funnel then you can start following up with them with your email marketing so don't expect that SEO might give you all the sales you need some will be ready to buy at that point others are still checking so have another strategy backup strategy to get them to convert into leads there's the for the consideration stage then the decision stage when the person is now ready to buy you see them the typing stuff like prize of this prize of that make sure you have things like how it works on your site so they can see how what they are going to buy how will it what will be the result for them at the end of the day so how it works is very important depending on your company then frequently ask questions what are those questions that people customers usually ask you like every time constantly repeatedly what are they list them out put the answers and put it on your site you can put it on your pricing page for those who are not checking out your prize and then they scroll down they see the questions and answers because they want to see what will life be like after I've invested in this your product or services my life be better will I get what I'm looking for that's the job of the frequently asked questions and then calculator could be for people in maybe the loan or insurance company they can use to check how much it will take for them to achieve the result so you can use any of this format for your decision for the decision makers now like I said before find topics they love to read I use Nairaland to find topics people love to read I use Ask the client now write about this after write I will go back to that same thread and then put the link on the thread to drive traffic listen to the conversation and then go write your article then this is my format for writing my blog post so everything what they could have said purpose before content so what's the purpose of your blog before you start writing what the goal of your blog post so you put the purpose either to entertain them or to educate them or to persuade them or to convert them or to retain what is the purpose then the blog post type is it a case study or is it a list post so what are they then the medium is it going to be text format is it going to be video format before graphic is it going to be audio you can put that there then your post title using the help of these two like I mentioned HubSpotBlogTopicGenerator I can get the topic that people will be interested in reading because the headline sells your content we convince people to either read your article or not then I can now start with the introduction I usually start my introduction with questions so before now you thought buying accessories choosing bedroom accessories was a problem well now it's no longer a problem you are about to learn the essential bedroom accessories you need for your who keep reading then I'll start writing list posts list posts formats then the conclusion either ask them to drop a comment and then at the end of the blog I always end my blog posts with a call to action getting them to the decisions either sign up for my newsletter or buy my product or service always have a call to action or a lead magnet to take them to the next stage because people after reading your content you don't know what to do next you just disappear from your website give you something return either their email address or to buy from you so tell them what to do next your call to action tell them what to do next then your meta description for SEO I write all that there and then the long tail keyword then next I start building backlinks because it's not just your website is so backlinks on your website very important so after publishing this content doing the own pages getting people attractive go to the website so I do things like forum posting blog commenting go to other sites to write comments on their blog social media posting writing articles on other people's site directory submission google maps, vconnect all these other listing sites make sure you have list your business on the site and put the link back to your website and the result of this was that their website this go started in June because of they were trying to reach out to the former web developer he didn't give them the login details we had to now build a brand new website for them so we started from June from July we started seeing results started increasing now your website has a ranking what next this is where our advice is don't relax because your competitors are also fighting to knock you off the first page so make sure you are seen everywhere by your target audience the same people who found you on google they are also on social media they are also on whatsapp they are also on other forums you should be everywhere use this when they visit their site as soon as you go to facebook you see their ads following you all over the place so invest invest in advertising very important create more content to encourage you to visit your website and be active on google social media capture leads and write articles on that blog and be the coca-cola of your industry thank you