Case Study: Norfolk Express (SEO Work)

In order to provide some information on what I do as an SEO Specialist, it’s important to occasionally do a write up of what I’ve done in order to show customers, potential customers and my boss that the work I do is valid and beneficial.

My mission sounded simple: Get the Norfolk Express Chinese Takeaway Website on Google. Normally when you’ve got a website that consists of the name of a company, say McDonalds or Boots, the site ranks because you’re looking for the name of the website which is the name of the company. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of companies in Norfolk with the words Norfolk Express in them. The Norfolk Polar Express, The Norfolk Lights Express at Norfolk Railway, big deal websites, strong companies, which have been up there for AGES. But it doesn’t stop there! These companies also have Tripadvisor links and other links which feature their names and services. Basically I’m sunk before I begin.  So I shouldn’t be able to get results like this just a month into doing work on the company.

So how does one kick a new website up Google? Well part of it’s luck, part of it’s knowledge, and part of it is having the willpower to sit through HOURS and HOURS of mindless psychosis inducing labour.

Let’s do a breakdown.

• Get Website on Google Business Profile
• Optimise Site
• Install Google Analytics
• Acquire Sitemap for Site
• Add Sitemap to Google Search Console
• Write a TON of Blogs (Or get my brother to do it *Cracks Whip*)
• Add blogs to site, and add other blogs full of related content to other sites. (If you have trouble with this or lack another site to link from, mail me original blogs to alex at chanwalrus.com and I’ll add them to my article site for you. It’s a free service because I get ad money from the site so why should I charge for it?)

These are the simplest of steps. I’d be lying if I said that was all I’ve done, but I need to keep some damn secrets or I’ll be fired or replaced by AI. So I’ll go into a bit of detail on these steps which will help you rank,

Website on Google Business Profile (Previously known as Google My Business) – *Note Most people still call GBP GMB so this helps me get my posts seen. This is using keywords that are IMPORTANT for the business. Will go into that later, as that’s more  ‘blogging’ territory.

Optimise Site: Information on how to optimise your site will be found here at Alex’s Supreme SEO Checklist. It’s not a total list of everything you need to do but it’s enough to run laps round most of your competition. It will be updated if and when it needs to be. by following the advice on that page, you will be leaps ahead of your competition because no one can be assed with SEO apart from lunatics like myself who have nothing better to do than waste their lives writing blogs like this.

Installing Google Analytics into your site isn’t too hard, you just need to follow their instructions. Google Analytics will help you learn about your traffic, where it’s coming from and it’ll also help Google spy on your site, which will help improve it’s viability. Google makes no claims of this but I can’t see why they’d need certain information they record for any other reason.

Getting a sitemap can be a pain in the neck. If you have WordPress, I’d recommend a plugin called Yoast. They make a nice functional XML Sitemap like the one on my personal website: https://chanwalrus.com/sitemap_index.xml If you’re wondering why I’m linking out, it’s because I’m writing this blog and I want to hijack some of the delicious sultry SEO juice from it and use it to support my own selfish endeavours. I do it because it’s effective. Also the one this site uses was set up by my boss, and I can’t recommend it to newer SEO enthusiasts (can we really be enthusiastic about something so boring?) a it’s convoluted and annoying to set up. Yoast is fast, efficient and easy. It’s named after Joost De Valk, who’s name is pronounced Yoast. So it’s nothing to do with Toast, which I recommend with country life butter.

Adding the Sitemap to Google Search Console is a simple matter of following all the instructions they set you up with. They change it occasionally so it’s not only easier for me to say: Do as they say, it’s also more accurate in the sense of keeping this content evergreen. Note that I’m linking back to other pages on the site, to help weave my blog post in. This is part of good SEO. (I’m also tired, so forgive me if I’m all over the place, but the information is still good, so it shouldn’t matter!)

Next I added some blog posts which I hired my brother to write. (I did NOT commit human rights abuses, I did naaaaaht.)

A little look at the Norfolk Express Chinese Takeaway

This is an example of a blog for the Norfolk Express Chinese Takeaway, located on Sprowston Road in Norwich, and that was an example of information on the business I’m talking about in this blog so that the blog is providing relevant information to help boost Norfolk Express in Google SERPS more.

Information that’s good to include in your blogs:

• Business Name: Norfolk Express
• Business Type: Chinese Takeaway
• Location: Sprowston Road, Norwich.

These things will help you rank if you’re trying to rank your business. This blog itself is also helping Norfolk Express rank, and helping it beat it’s competition thanks to backlinks and relevant information.

Next I wrote a blog on how to create Chow Mein, and linked that back to the website. The page it links to is a page on the history of Chow Mein. This is on the Norfolk Express website. This means I’m providing relevant related backlinks, useful information and it’s there to support the business.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done for Norfolk Express, and I’m very satisfied with the results. I haven’t included absolutely every little thing I’ve done because some of it’s pointless and annoying, and other things are what makes me worth paying for. One thing is for certain though, if they weren’t one of the best Chinese Takeaways I’d been to, I wouldn’t have tried so hard.