Tonight over 100 aspiring entrepreneurs were treated to a virtuoso performance from Thomas Jeffs the founder and Chief Technology Officer of our partner Lucidica. I had attended his workshop on What is a CRM, and when are they best used by small business? In November and had been impressed.
The topic was how to climb up the Google page-rankings and was based on the story of how, within three months, Thomas moved Lucidica from page 47, to page 1 on a Google search for IT support London.
Although Thomas could have talked for hours on the topic (and in fact runs a four hour workshop on this very topic in the Business & IP Centre), he compressed his information into seven SEO (search engine optimisation) tips.
1. Get your business onto Google Maps – as it could get to straight onto page one.
2. Get techie (technical in IT speak) – understand the role of anchor text and meta tags. If it is too tricky, find someone who can do it for you.
3. Get links coming into your website – the higher quality the links which point to you, the higher up Google you will go.
4. Get socialising – LinkedIn is the best for most business to business, but Facebook might be more relevant for your business. Use as many social media platforms as you can maintain within reason.
5. Get commenting – instead of just spreading you name about on other websites and forums, think about what you can give that is of value to others. It’s a bit like Karma. If you give away good information people will talk about you in positive terms and link to you.
6. Get feedback and make it link – find out what forums and online spaces your customers hang out in and make your presence felt.
7.a. Get randomising – this one really surprised me. You have to make sure the references to your business are as varied as possible. If you follow the traditional marketing route of always using the same strapline when referring to your business, there is chance Google will think you are trying to cheat their indexing software, and send your pages results into oblivion.
7.b. Get listed – there a lots of great directories in the UK where your listing will boost your Google ranking. Thomas recommended Touch London at £150 a year. However, he warned there are a few dodgy listing sites who will take you way down on Google if you make the mistake of listing on them.
All in all it was a great evening, with an unlimited supply of excellent questions from the audience These were all met with even more impressive answers from Thomas.
Lucidica’s next workshop with us, is Designing, developing and maintaining an effective website next Tuesday, and there are still a few places left.