Well, first, what is SEO?

SEO stands for ‘search engine optimisation’ and these days it is considered to be an essential marketing activity. SEO is the process of getting traffic from search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages (known as SERP). Remember, the higher your website appears on the list, the more people will see it. Not too many of us search beyond the first page of results.

Some of the things you need to do to get good SEO include identifying relevant keywords with good search traffic potential, creating great content and optimising it for search engines and users, and, where appropriate, including links from high quality sites.  You then need to regularly measure the results to make sure they are providing the result you want. You want to get more people visiting your website.

How search engines determine ranking

Search engines, such as Google, use an algorithm to decide the order of websites for any particular search. These search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information. Luckily, Google ‘s search ranking factors, its algorithm, are public which means that if you follow their guidelines, you can rank your content toward the top. However, the algorithm changes frequently due to new issues and interests that arise each year. Hence, why you need to regularly measure your SEO results to stay up to date and at the top of that search list.

Using SEO helps you position your brand and can ensure that your marketing strategies match your prospective clients’ behaviour. Let’s face it, most of us use a search engine to find products, services, investigate holiday destinations, look for information on specific topics etc. It you’ve got a service to offer you want to be at the top or very near to the top of the list that comes back from a search on your type of services. This type of ‘advertising’ has taken over for many businesses now as the way to get known, and get business.

To optimize your website, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — onsite optimisation (or technical website setup), content, and links.  Remember that the search engine, that’s crawling through lots of sites, needs to be able to find your web pages, scan them for keywords, and add them into that all-important index that leads to your website showing up in relevant searches. The search engine, however, only sees the text on you web pages, not the graphics, not the lovely colours or photos – just text.

Your technical website setup is important

It ensures that your website and pages allow the search engine (e.g., Google) to scan and index them without any problems. So, set the navigation and links as text-only and keep your URL’s short. Limit them to the main keyword/s for which you want to optimize the page. Also look at how long it takes to load your pages – search engines use the load time as an indicator of quality, so no dead links either and be careful about duplicated your content. Duplicated content confuses search engines and they consider it as a negative factor.

Optimise Your Content

Every time you, as a user, search you’re looking for information, whether for a product, a service or a problem. This information is content. Optimizing content begins with keyword research. With SEO you need to discover what phrases potential clients enter into search engines. The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then converting them into your initial keywords then searching to uncover other terms your prospective clients would use. Once you have your list of keywords then you can optimise your content using them. Again, remember you should be regularly measuring the results to make sure your keywords/content are still relevant.

Using links to build popularity

While onsite optimisation and content focus on increasing relevance, links are responsible for popularity. Search engines prioritise pages they consider most relevant but also popular – they use the quantity and quality of links as a signal of a website’s authority. Any link from a domain that search engines consider an authority will naturally have high quality. Links from domains on a topic similar to yours will carry more authority than those from random websites. And, just like with popularity, search engines also assess a website’s trust. Links from more trustworthy sites will always impact rankings better. 

Think about how you can build quality links. The easiest is usually to add your website to all appropriate directories. These could be local, industry-specific, or major ones, like Google My Business.  Then, link to your website on social media, share your blog posts on various platforms and ask your close affiliates for links.

So, now it’s time to start your own SEO journey, if you haven’t already. You now know the fundamentals of SEO and it’s time to put them to work for you and your business.