So you’ve hired an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation expert, if you haven’t! ) and you’re wondering what they do, and what benefits you can expect to see- and most importantly for small business- by when.

SEO involves researching key phrases, and in 2019 it mostly revolves around long-tail keyphrases, and if they are in a frequently asked question/s format, all the better. For example, a FAQ that is also a likely question asked daily by vegan foodies in London is:

Where can I find healthy vegan food in North London?

This will also rank for variations of the same question, where to find healthy vegan food near me, healthy vegan food near me, etc. assuming the searcher is in in North London.

Now, we’re going to break down this question and check what key principles we can garner from it for optimising headers, and your websites text content in general.

               1. Its relationship to your business is specific.

We specify a kind of food, we specify that we want it to be healthy and that we note the location we are searching in.

Being specific is useless alone, you need the keywords to directly relate to what your restaurant does well because if it doesn’t and you get a visitor you risk getting a bad review.

This brings us on to our next principle:

               2. Only include keywords and try to rank for phrases that are actually relevant to your business.

For example, if you’re an Italian pizza takeaway and try to rank for fine dining experience when you have a couple of tables and more of a rugged dining experience, then sell that. Don’t try to deceive people.

This requires you to be honest with yourself about your business, but trust us: it pays off. You get the customers that suit your business in its current state. In turn, those customers will go there and find exactly what they expected, and review it on that basis.

Its better to be accurate than to oversell, no matter how tempting it may be. This way your customers’ expectations will be surpassed!

               3. It’s in both a long-tail key-phrase and a question format.

This is fantastic for headers on your page, for titles of blog posts and important announcements both through your social channels, Google My Business page, and on your main website.

Why Should you Value Question & Answer Formats in 2019 SEO?

Well because will always be new Google search algorithms such as BERT, like them that way. BERT is all about intuitively responding to search queries. The ways to do this are question formats, and text that is thought out with the answering of common and uncommon questions in mind. The more useful information you can include the likelier you are to land those big search query spots in the SERPs.

Why is Voice Search Important in 2019 SEO?

Over 50% of search queries in the United Kingdom alone are predicted to come from voice search in 2020. Google’s new BERT algorithm is anticipating this- although it only affects 1 in 10 search queries, it’s highly likely that Google’s forthcoming algorithm updates will also head in this direction.

Remember: think of frequently asked questions, make sure your description matches up to the reality of your business.

Get on Google my business today!

To start collecting reviews for your business you’ll first need to follow the steps in our guide and sign up to the free service.

After this, simply encourage customers to leave you reviews by either collecting their email or telephone number or asking them to do so in person.

What to expect in Part II:

We’re attacking optimisation step-by-step: Pt. 1 includes the most recent developments in SEO from Google, which is of course ever-changing. Part 2 will go through some of the subtler optimisations, from images to meta tags, to backlinks and building a reputation for yourself.