What Does Search Engine Optmisation (SEO) do?
This is an article on the process of SEO, that can help clients get to grips with Search Engine Marketing , Optimisation and what to expect of their SEO service.
What is Search Engine Marketing and SEO?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the use of search engines to promote an online destination, such as a company website. Special consideration is given to a strategy for attracting searchers that are relevant to your business, and trying to turn them into customers. These searchers may not already be aware of your business/brand but are using search engines (such as Google) to find something related to what you offer.
SEM is part of a wider strategy of online marketing that promotes online and offline activities of a business. The aim of this is to increase brand awareness, convert visitors into customers and build “link equity” (an important currency for a successful website). An increase in all of these areas leads, ultimately, to more customers and sales.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the technical art of making sure that the pages of your website appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). SEO starts by looking at your business and brainstorming related keywords and phrases that a searcher might use. After the initial ideas, I then do a detailed Keyword Analysis to discover the volumes and frequency of related searches. Using KW analysis tools, we are then able to choose the key phrases that we wish to target. These are based on relevance, search volume and the relative competitiveness for each phrase.
Search Engine Optimisation is not just about getting to the #1 spot in a Google search (although it is highly possible) but about making sure that your website appears on the first page of SERPS for a wide range of targetted key phrases. This leads to an increase in searcher traffic from the major search engines. The results of Search Engine Optmisation work should be measured in the increase in relevant traffic, not the ranking position for one keyphrase.
Is SEO magic or techie voodoo?
SEO is about research of searcher activity and creating a website that will rank well in SERPS. Marketing and visitor experience are the most important things for any website. SEO uses a mixture of marketing and technical expertise, some of which relates to the “nuts and bolts” of the website – structure, code etc. Even if I am not directly responsible for building the website, as an SEO expert I will always have some involvement in how the site is constructed.
Search Engines are always tweaking their systems and Search Engine Optimisation techniques change over time. The thing that remains constant is that search engines are always trying to provide the most relevant results to the searcher. The creation of a website that provides relevant content to searchers is timeless.
What actually happens during SEO work on my website?
Before any content is created or code written, the process of Search Engine Marketing should begin. A list of events in the Search Engine Optimisation process, in order:
- Site marketing ideas and rough keyword areas are brainstormed.
- Thought is also given to the possibilites for creation of a “linkworthy” site.
- Keyword / Keyphrase analysis tools are used to create a larger list of potential searches.
- The KW are narrowed down and important “major” phrases are zoned in on. These phrases are often relevant to the different “areas” of your business.
- Choose other important KW from the research and order into their different “parts” of the website.
- The resulting map then gives us a blueprint for some, if not all, of the “site structure”. The site stucture is how the pages of website are linked together and navigated by the user. This must be easy for the visitor, not created for technical SEO benefit.
- Based on the site structure, discussions take place about the technical aspects of building the website. How it is formatted and coded.
- Content is created, copywriting done. This often benefits from some SEO “tweaking” and/or some expert advice it’s potential to promote your business.
- The site is built or worked on. I keep in close contact with the site builder / web developer and assist with any technical questions they have about Search Engine Optimisation. The site set-up must include some good quality Visitor Analytics - tracking the visitors and their activity, including which keyphrases are used to find your site.
- The site “goes live” and waits for search engine activity. It can take a while (several weeks) for the search engines to discover, index and list your site pages in SERPS . I do everything I can to make sure that this “settling in” time is as short a possible.
- Further discussions are had about the future direction of the site, ideas for future content etc. Launching a freshly SEOed site is only the start for your promotion.
Do you guarantee the #1 rankings?
No. It’s impossible to guarantee something that I don’t have control over. At the time of writing, I have websites that rank #1in Google for the sites most competitive keywords. Last month, one dropped from #3 to around #9 or #10. Next week, who knows? The SERPS are constantly changing and Search Engine Optimisation is not an exact science.
What I can guarantee is that the work I do makes a significant difference to a sites visibility and visitor numbers. With a new site, it is harder to measure success against a benchmark of previous traffic. After a site has been live for a while and becomes more stable in the SERPS, a degree of success can measured by the current visitor statistics and the searches the brought them.
Will my site rank number 1 for my most competitive keyword straight away?
It’s unlikely that a new site will hit the #1 spot instantly for a competitive keyword . As the website ages and the new structure settles in, your rankings improve for a number of reasons but the one you have a degree of control over is “link equity”.
Search engines currently use links to your website (from other sites) as “votes” for you. These “backlinks” are used by the engine to try to work out if your site will be good for their searchers. The more high quality “votes” you have to your site, the more highly you are rated by the search engines. This makes good backlinks a highly prized commodity and they can be hard to come by. Once you have exhausted your supply of backlinks (from friends, business partners etc) we need to think up ways of getting more. Creating a “linkworthy” website is about providing something worth linking to – sometimes harder than it sounds for a promotional business website.
Without long term commitment to your site, spending money on Search Engine Optmisation is like buying a car and then letting it fall to pieces. The Search Engine service I provide to business websites includes work and advice on the creation of a “linkworthy” site, as well as some tips on promoting your site in the future.
