Search engine optimisation (SEO) can feel like navigating a minefield, with constant algorithm updates and in-depth technical issues. However, we are here to help demystify the process.
Ranking in Google can be a juggling act.
Over 93% of consumers in the United Kingdom use Google when looking for information.
As you optimise and try to rank for one keyword, your rankings for other keywords can begin to drop. This is why no SEO campaign is ever finished and why all SEO strategies should be ongoing.
There are a few key insights that you need to consider when getting a picture of your site’s overall performance.
These include:
- Benchmarking your current data- is the most efficient way to start setting goals, tracking results, and analysing what’s going well and what isn’t.
- Organic traffic – this is how many visitors visit your website from organic (non-paid) searches.
- Keyword ranking- this is your website’s organic position for a particular keyword when searched and it’s how high your pages show up on Google. Keyword rankings are essential because higher-ranking pages gain more organic search traffic.
- Backlinks – Websites with many backlinks usually have high organic search rankings. The goal is to be in the top 3 positions for all chosen keyword phrases. If reliable sites link to yours, search engines can assume it’s worth surfacing on the search engine results page. Backlinks are a vote of confidence.
Content is king but backlinks are key pieces of the SEO puzzle. You will likely struggle to rank without them. An excellent way to achieve these is by conducting a backlink gap audit and finding websites that link to your competitors but not to you. If they’re linking to competitors, the chances are they might be happy to link to you too.
This is particularly beneficial if you also create better content than your competitors, which of course we highly recommend!
You should start by identifying your main competitors, for your chosen keyword phrases. These will be websites that are competing for your chosen keywords in organic search, and beating you to the top three positions.
Analysing competitors’ SEO strategies helps you:
- Capitalise on your competitors’ limitations!
- Duplicate your competitors’ strengths!
- Prioritise the most influential SEO tasks!
Discovering effective keywords that your competitors currently rank for, but you don’t, gives countless opportunities you to attract additional website traffic.
Common on-page SEO practices include:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Headings
- Internal links
- URLs
Off-page SEO are actions taken outside your website that affect your rankings.
Getting your on-page SEO correct is vital for your SEO strategy as it still plays a key role in Google’s ranking factors. On-page SEO is enhancing your web content for search engines and users.
Common off-page SEO actions include:
- Building backlinks
- Encouraging branded searches
- Increasing engagement and shares on social media
But, above all else, building backlinks is at the heart of off-page SEO.
Setting goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) is one of the more valuable steps when building an SEO strategy. It assists you in evaluating progress attainment and deciding if any further changes are needed.
Five KPIs you should keep a close eye on:
- Organic traffic
- Keyword rankings
- Backlinks
- Average click-through rate (the percentage of people who click on your site after seeing it on Google)
- Coverage issues (happen when a search engine attempts to reach a page on your website but fails)
To ensure maximum efficiency, measure, and report on your KPIs every month, ensuring your progress is on track to meet your goals.
Any business that has an actual location can benefit from local SEO. Local SEO can help your business appear in Google results for searches like these.
How does local SEO work:
- Relevance
- Distance
- Prominence
SEO is made up of many elements and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO can be so important to the growth of your business. To conclude, SEO is vital to your business as it makes your website much more visible and that results in more traffic and opportunities to convert potential prospects into customers.
The ultimate goal is for businesses to generate organic traffic, through clicking through your website from the search engine results page. As your rankings improve so will the number of people visiting your website. Good SEO helps your web pages appear higher up in the search engine results pages and the higher up the better, since over 28% of people click on the first organic Google result.