Hello Huddersfield!
Welcome to the Huddersfield SEO Guide. The goal of this guide is to teach you the basics of SEO for your business. That way when an agency tries to sell you SEO services you’ll have a better idea if they’re selling you something real or if they’re clueless. Or simply, you can do the bulk of the SEO work yourself if you have the time or internal resources to do so.
Then when you hire an SEO professional they can focus on specialist, technical or more complex SEO tasks.
What’s in the Huddersfield SEO guide?
Why Huddersfield?
I believe Huddersfield is a great town with lots of potential and SEO is a great marketing channel (I am of course biased). So if more of our local businesses know how to use search engines to their advantage then it will mean more income for those businesses. Which in turn means more job opportunities, a stronger local economy and hopefully better prosperity for us all.
Even better, your local business might be able to use SEO to win work nationally or globally which will bring external income into our region.
As for me personally, I’m a Huddersfield native. Not only that but I’ve also spent a number of years working in our town. My career started in Lindley working for a marketing agency, I freelanced for a while, worked in Wakefield for a little bit then I joined the University of Huddersfield – first as their Web Content Officer then as their SEO Officer. This has provided me with an opportunity to work on a wide number of marketing projects from small business websites through to the University’s large complex website.
Huddersfield is my home and if this guide can help just a little then I’d be chuffed.
SEO might not be right for your business at this time.
I’d like to start with the above caveat.
SEO can be a powerful tool for businesses, but it’s important to approach it with caution. By understanding the risks and rewards, you can make informed decisions about whether or not SEO is right for your business.
The biggest SEO risk is that it can take many months of continued work before you know if your strategy is working. So if you need instant results then look at another marketing channel as your primary, to bring in business while SEO builds up over time.
If you decide that SEO isn’t for you at this moment then that’s perfectly fine. Find a marketing channel that you feel comfortable with that can generate leads, sales and income for you.
Finding customers and serving them to the best of your ability is the foundation of business. Choosing a marketing channel comes down to personal preference and testing the success of the channel.
Huddersfield SEO guide – start here
First up, principles. Find a set of principles that make sense to you and they’ll be a guide throughout your marketing journey.
I’ve practised SEO since 2009 and my core principle of SEO has been a light through the many changes. To give you a quick summary, SEO is firstly about people – search engines want to help us complete the tasks we come online todo.
Take a read of my Core Principle of SEO and hopefully it’ll help you too.
Are you looking to hire a Huddersfield based marketing agency? Beware! Some agencies pretend to be from Huddersfield but they’re not really. I’ll show you how to spot agencies not from Huddersfield.
Basics of SEO in Huddersfield
On-page SEO
- What is the goal of the page?
- Search intent – Write down a list of phrases you would type into Google to try and find your page
Pick one of the phrases and naturally include it on the page in these locations:
- Page headline (H1)
- First 100 words
- Subheads
- META Title
- META Description
This is the checklist I use for enterprise SEO.
Also, make sure you add internal links from other pages on your site to this page.
Directories worth adding your website to – including Huddersfield directories.
Huddersfield news and community websites
- Huddersfield Hub
- Milnsbridge Village
- Milnsbridge Village Hall
- HD8 Network
- Carlisle Institute – Meltham Town Hall
- Kirkburton and Highburton Community Association
Hire me to help with your SEO
My speciality is structuring large complex websites, finding competitive content gaps and building content workflows to help your users complete their task. That task might be researching one of your products, discovering if you’re a right fit for them or registering for an event you run.
Whatever it is, the end result is that users to your website will be better served. And that will only make your business stronger and more profitable.
I’m also available for consulting. It might be that your website isn’t that large or complex, so hiring me would be over kill, but you’d like some guidance or support on what to do. That’s where my consulting and auditing services come in handy.