What actually is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and in simple terms it is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility. The better visibility your pages have in the search results, the more likely you are to attract potential customers to your website.
The ultimate goal is to reach page 1 on the search results page (also known as the SERP). Page 1 captures nearly 75% of the search traffic clicks, which is why you want to ensure that your pages are ranking here. If you think about it, how often do you click to the 2nd page for search results?
How does SEO work?
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo have bots, which ‘crawl’ pages on the internet, going from site to site and gathering information which then gets put into an ‘index’. Think of an index as a massive library of web pages.
Then, the search engine uses an algorithm involving many ranking factors to determine which web pages in this library are most relevant for the user who has typed something into the search bar. SEO involves trying to optimise website pages as best as possible for these ranking factors, so that your page is the one which gets picked for Page 1.
What are the different types of SEO?
There are three different branches of SEO, which categorise the different ranking factors we can influence. These are on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO. Whilst this might seem like a lot of different information to take in, each will be explained below with examples!
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimising the content on your web pages for specific keywords, in order to increase visibility. The first step is to research your target keywords (these will be terms you think your potential customers would search on Google). You might have a rough idea of what these are in your head, but to do this properly it will require using specific software that can determine your current position on the SERP, the search volume and the keyword difficulty.
Once you have a list of suitable keywords, the next step is to start optimising the content on your page against them to boost your rankings. You will need to focus on:
– Title tags (HTML code tag that allows you to give a web page a title)
– Meta descriptions (the small blurbs that appears underneath your website name on the SERP)
– Headings (the titles on your page)
– Content (what you write)
– Internal links (internal linking between different pages in your website which make it easier for Google bots to crawl)
These are all parts of your webpage that contribute to Google’s ranking algorithm. If Google thinks that your on-page content is highly relevant for your chosen keyword/search term, it will rank you higher on the SERP.
Filling out all of this information in the back office of your website will be very helpful if completed alongside a keyword landscape. Filling this information out with no knowledge of your most important search terms is not likely to have the same effect.
Off-page SEO
In contrast to on-page SEO, off-page SEO refers to actions you take outside of your website to impact your rankings. The main off-page tactic is normally considered to be link building, but you can also boost rankings with techniques such as content marketing, social media, reviews and local listings.
Link building is the process of creating a profile of hyperlinks (also known as backlinks in the SEO world) from other websites, that point towards yours. This is one of the most important SEO strategies, and all business owners should be getting interested in this if they want to build their online presence.
Link building is so effective because it increases your domain authority (how much the search engine trusts your website). If there are hundreds of trustworthy websites pointing towards/recommending yours, Google believes it is reliable, relevant and interesting so will rank you higher.
So how do you go about building a backlink profile? You can either let this happen as a natural process (which would take a very long time) or start with a link building campaign. There is a right way and wrong way to go about this campaign, as links from irrelevant or spammy websites can severely damage your rankings. You need to ensure your links are high quality to avoid receiving a high toxicity score from Google and being penalised. This is why link building is normally best left to a specialist.
Equally, using social media can encourage clicks to your latest content, and having a good profile of Google reviews can help to increase your authority and credibility in the eyes of Google. Whilst these are not as effective as backlinking, they still have an effect and can be easily carried out/encouraged by your own team.
Technical SEO
Without diving into too much technical jargon, this type of SEO is all about improving on the technical elements of a website, in order to improve the user experience. Google wants to provide the best experience possible to users, so they do not like recommending pages that are slow to load, have a bad mobile experience, or use messy code.
If you have an old website, or one that has been created with a website builder or very low budget, you might find there are a lot of issues on your site stopping it from ranking so high. After a site audit from an experienced web developer, many of these issues can be easily sorted. However, in some cases the issues could run so deep that it would be beneficial to have an entirely new website. You will be surprised to see how your search rankings jump after receiving a new website with clean code and fast load speeds!
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Whilst investing in all types of SEO might not feel like a priority, it is a great way to improve visibility and rankings. If you would like to discuss your requirements, please get in touch. We would be really happy to discuss what may work for you and your business. Email at info@xist2.com or call us on 01993 835 117.
