Getting Started with SEO
SEO can be difficult to understand, the first thing to know is SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.
Search engine traffic could be the cause of your company’s success or failure! They play a part in your publicity, profits and exposure to the public on a much larger scale than other methods of promotion. Whilst social media and various ways of marketing may cause your website visits to increase, search engines are the primary way of navigation for most internet users. Your website could be incredible… but without the help of search engines no one would be able to appreciate it.
How Does SEO Work?
When people search for what you offer and come across your website, you can thank search engines. What a consumer types into their search box will determine whether they are led to your page.
Once someone has pressed enter on their search, using Google, for example, links will be displayed that have been calculated as the most relevant to their searches.
Basically, SEO’s purpose is to make sure a website will appear in search engine results when words and phrases relevant to what a site offers are used. It’s like a vetting for websites, search engines don’t want consumers to have to wade through several links of useless information.
Why Is SEO Important?
Users trust search engines and therefore are more likely to click on the highest-ranking links on their result page. So, if you want a lot of visitors to your site, you need to be one of the top pages!
With SEO, you’ve got the opportunity to be ahead of the competition. If a website sells products like yours, an SEO website (that is correctly optimised) is likely to have more customers as it will appear higher on result pages.
What Is the Process Of SEO?
SEO can be divided into two stages:
On-site SEO: It’s in the phrase, improving SEO through the website, making your site search engine friendly. I find it easiest to understand it as improving SEO by improving the website internally.
Search engines and customers need to be able to…
– Understand what your page is all about – make it crystal clear what the purpose of your site is
– Find the site valuable – your site needs to have relevant keywords that suit the search query
You can improve your on-site SEO by these simple steps…
– Be detailed – little content is on Google Panda’s hit list (Google’s algorithm that lowers the ranking of ‘low quality’ or ‘thin’ sites).
– Think of your customers – can they navigate around your site easily? Are they bombarded with ads and affiliate links?
– Your site must be original – don’t just duplicate your content to fill up extra space.
Beyond the content on your site, you should consider the following to improve your ranking on SERP (search engine result page) …
– The time it takes for your page to load
– Screen responsiveness (does your website adjust its content to fit the device’s screen?)
– URL structure (Uniform Resource Locator – is an address that will lead to your page on the internet – keep it simple and logical)
– Everything is about making a user’s experience with your site as smooth as possible. The more valuable a page is, the better your SEO will be!
Off-site SEO: Increasing the ranking of your site by promotion
Also known as link building, Off-site SEO is about other websites linking to yours. Website ranking is a competition, whoever is the most popular will come out on top. Links act as votes, and the more votes you get the more favourable you are and the higher your ranking will be.
You can get links in a variety of ways, there’s 3 main strategies….
Organic links: it’s like being popular without the effort of trying to be. These kinds of links just come to you, you’ll be even more in favour on SERP if your link’s source is a popular, credible website. The link could be from someone else’s blog or website and they happen to think your content is worth sharing to their visitors.
White Hat SEO: complying with search engine rules and policies to reach a human audience. The use of key words, conducting research and analysis, rewriting and link building to give your website a high ranking. Uses of White Hat SEO tend to treat their website as a long-term investment.
Black Hat SEO: improving a site’s ranking by violating search engines’ rules and policies. Black Hat SEO tactics are not recommended, your site will likely be banned from search engines. Tactics include hidden text / links, article spinning and subdomains with duplicate content.
Are you an SEO newcomer? Do you want to increase your ranking on SERP? Different Gravy Digital are here to help!
We offer a full SEO service including;
- Coding in line with latest algorithms & best practice
- Quality & relevant content
- Link building
- Keyword research
- Paid advertising
- Re-targeting
About the author:
Marie Harwood is a Digital Marketing Assistant at Different Gravy Digital, Hale, Cheshire.
Different Gravy Digital are a full service Digital Marketing Agency operating in the Hospitality & Leisure, Financial Services, Legal & Property sectors. Products and services range from; 3D & 360° Tours, Website Design & Build, Social Media, Video Production, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Content Creation, Email Marketing, Online Feedback / Review Systems and Paid Advertising (Google, Bing and Social Media).
Contact Details:
marie@differentgravydigital.co.uk
0161 706 0004
120a Ashley Road, Hale, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 2UN