In the run-up to GatorCon2018, we’ve been speaking with Ben Brown, an expert on all things SEO. Ben is the founder of Surrey-based SEO company, B2Bmetric, and has worked with businesses big and small. He will be sharing his advice on how to improve your SEO ranking to rank on Google’s first page!

It seems like SEO covers such a huge area, and really has an enormous impact on how well a business performs. What initial advice would you give to someone looking to boost their SEO score?

Ben: SEO really is such a broad topic, which we’ll be trying to break down in about half an hour! Historically, those at the top of the search were at the top. That’s not the case anymore. We try to break it down into tangible elements, so that people know what they need to do, and how to rank from it. Typically, there are three main elements to focus on. Firstly, technical SEO: ensuring your site can be indexed and easily read by search engines. Then you have to consider content: the keywords you’re using, what the market counter is looking for and how to optimise your content for SEO. And finally, making your website an authority. This comes from traditional PR to gaining backlinks through various different strategies.

One or two companies will dominate simply due to size, but by focusing on a small aspect of what you want to rank for eventually, you can make yourself an authority in this area, and then continue to build from there.

What would happen if you don’t focus on SEO?

Ben: Well, the biggest issue would be that nothing would change. And if nothing changes, then you’re pretty much moving backwards. Whilst it can seem like an investment in the short-term, long-term you create an environment where you get passive traffic to your blog, and then that qualifies them onto product pages. In B2B businesses, SEO can be hugely underutilised, even in massive companies. It is easy to ignore, but if you do, then nothing changes, and nothing develops.

As an SEO expert, you must be pretty clued up on getting a company to rank on page 1. What is your approach to increasing someone’s ranking?

Ben: Follow the process. We’d start by looking at the market to see what’s out there already, seeing what content has already done well, and looking at creating content with a unique twist. Making it different to what’s already been done, then you’ve got a niche.

When you’ve got that, you can build within your niche, and get out there as an expert in that specific aspect. When you do, you can then get more links, more citations, and the more this happens, the higher your site will rank. Working a creative angle can help make your site an authority.

Can you tell us what you’ve got planned for your talk at GatorCon?

Ben: I’ll be looking to make SEO tangible, by breaking it down into the main aspects. We’ll discuss the main three areas we look at. We’ll consider the technical side of things, including how to make it straightforward to get your site indexed and easily crawled by Google. We’ll think about content. We’ll show you how to optimise a product page, how to find keywords to be used on key pages and ways of driving ideas for blog content in relatively untapped areas. And we will also be looking at creative link building ideas. With a working case study, we’ll think about how to build your linking process.

Overall, we’ll discuss ways to make sure you can track all the changes afterwards, and award it back to the SEO efforts. Obviously, SEO is such a huge area, so it’s the most important parts in each element that we’ll focus on, giving examples where possible, but obviously, we’ve got to keep some secrets back!

If you want to think up some questions ready to ask Ben, take a look at his far more in-depth ebook on getting your site to Google’s 1st Page here. You’ll have the opportunity to absorb Ben’s wisdom at 3pm on Thursday 22nd November. There’s still time to book your place, but don’t hesitate!