Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Did you know that 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine? (BrightEdge)

From humble beginnings, search engines have grown in complexity and sophistication to become the most widely used online tool. 

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a pretty big deal, and every business in {year} should at least have a basic understanding of what SEO is and how it works.

If you’re new to SEO, welcome to the party. You’re about to transform your digital marketing for your business. 

And if you’re looking to brush up on your existing SEO knowledge and keep up to date with current SEO trends and insights, you’re in the right place.

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation” and is the practice of generating the quantity and quality of targeted website traffic through the organic rankings of a search engine.

In essence, SEO is both the science and the art of optimising your website to rank high on the organic (or unpaid) listings on a search engine.

Let’s paint an example:If you operate a plumbing business in Sydney, you want to rank first on the first page at the top of the organic results when someone types in “plumbers in Sydney”.

The first three organic search results get 75.1% of all clicks (Backlino).

What is search engine marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a part of the broader discipline of online marketing, and incorporates both Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and paid advertising through tools like Google Adwords.

A central part of both of these disciplines is keyword research and analysis.

By determining the most appropriate and cost-effective keywords to target, and by using SEO and paid techniques, they raise your search ranking. 

SEO is used to increase your organic search ranking over time, which puts you in the unpaid results for a given search, whereas paid advertising can immediately put you on the first page of results (typically in sections known to users as paid ads). 

Because SEO can be a slow process, and because your search ranking relies partly on your website traffic, paid advertising is an essential part of SEM – especially while you are still trying to establish a consistent stream of visitors.

Higher search engine rankings correlate with a higher conversion of impressions – which means that more of the people who see your search listing actually click through to your website.

Why is SEO important?

We search for almost everything online nowadays. Our search queries are often very specific with high intent to find an answer or solution, hence why optimising your website for your audience and their queries are so vitally important. 

The whole point of paid advertising, social media and other digital marketing strategies is to drive traffic to your website, right? Well, nothing drives online traffic quite like search engines.

In fact, SEO drives more than 1000% more traffic than organic social media (BrightEdge).

How often do you actually click on the sponsored ads at the top of Google? As users, we are much more trusting of organic content as it’s more credible. In fact, 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and click on an organic result (imFORZA). 

SEO is an important strategy for every business with an online presence as it can continue to offer a return over time (when it’s done right). 

When you invest the time and effort into optimising your web content, you will be more likely to drive a continuous stream of organic traffic as opposed to momentary traffic from paid advertising.

Image source: directiveconsulting.com

How does SEO work?

When you type a or speak a query into a search engine like Google, have you ever stopped to think about why certain websites appear at the top? We’re not talking about the pay-per-click (PPC) ads at the top (businesses pay big money for those), but the organic listings just below.

Well, SEO is how websites get to the top of the rankings.

Here’s how it works: A search engine has aweb crawler orspider that collects information about all of the content it can find on the internet. 

The crawler brings all the information back to the search engine to build an index. 

The index is then sifted through analgorithm to match the most relevant content with your specific search query.

What are search engines looking for?

Google. Bing. Yahoo. Baidu. DuckDuckGo. There are various search engines. However, Google has over 70% of the market share (HubSpot, 2020). Needless to say, Google towers over all other options. 

Ensuring you are easy to find through Google and other search tools is a vital part of attracting traffic and building a healthy business.

But what are search engines looking for when it comes to rankings? How do they determine which website provides the “best result”?

Here are the things search engines look for:

• The relevancy of your content- the relevancy of your content in relation to the keywords and search queries you are targeting 
• The quality of your content- how authentic, valuable and digestible your content is for users 
• User experience (UX)- UX and SEO share the common goal of giving users the most efficient experience using your website 
• Site speed- the slower your web pages take to load, the fewer pages a search engine can crawl (and the chances you have to rank)
• Responsive design- ensuring your website is optimised for different devices (e.g. mobile, tablets and desktop) can benefit your SEO
• Internal linking- hyperlinks that direct the user to specific pages on your website
• Domain authority (DA)- the relevancy of your website in relation to a specific subject area scored from 0-100
• Metadata - meta tags (e.g. meta title and description) that display key information about your website. 

What are the different types of SEO?

There are three types of SEO: on-page SEO,off-page SEO andtechnical SEO. 

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO consists of any optimisation that you do directly on your website to improve the relevancy, quality and value of your content. 

On-page SEO tells a search engine that your website is useful, detailed and relevant to a user’s query.

How do you do on-page optimisation in SEO?

You can do on-page SEO optimisation by implementing the following on-page SEO components:

• Keywords
• URL slug
• Title tag (H1)
• Meta description
• Heading tags
• Images
• Alt tags
• Content 
• Internal linking
• Speed
• Mobile-friendliness 

How do you choose the best keywords for SEO?

Keywords are super important. They are the words and phrases people type into a search bar to find content that will answer their query or take them to a place where they will find out.

There are various steps to choosing the best keywords to optimise your content. 

1. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes:What keywords are they likely to use to find your product and service?
2. See what your competitors are doing:What body and long tail keywords are your competitors using on their site? What about the keywords in their meta title and descriptions?
3. Use SEO keyword research tools:Keyword research tools like SEMrush and Moz make choosing keywords so much easier. Gather data on keyword volume, competition, trends and long tail content ideas.

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page or off-site SEO involves the actions taken away from your own website to improve your website’s relevance, authority and trustworthiness - and ultimately, your ranking. 

Some examples of off-page SEO include:

• Backlinks (this is a really important one - we’ll dive into this a bit more in a minute)
• Guest blogging
• Social media marketing
• Influencer marketing

What are backlinks and why are they important in SEO?

A backlink is simply when one website links to another website. Backlinks are the bread and butter of off-page SEO. 

Why? Because when another website links to your website, it tells the search engine that your content is credible and trustworthy. 

Backlinking is a way of telling Google, “I vouch for this website”.

What are the different types of backlinks?

There are numerous types of backlinks you can use for SEO.

• Editorial backlinks
• Guest blogging
• Relationship-based backlinks
• Directories (general and niche)
• Sitewide backlinks
• Paid backlinks
• Badge backlinks
• Business profile backlinks

What is an example of a backlink?

Here is an example of a backlink:

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to all of the things that ensure your website meets the requirements of a search engine. If you’ve done the keyword research, optimised all of your content but don’t have the technical SEO in place, your efforts will go to waste as your site won’t rank.

The basic elements of technical SEO include:

• Crawling:When a search engine crawls your web pages to find new and updated content whether it’s a PDF, web page, video or image. If the content is deemed good enough, it’s added to a database (indexing) to rank in search engine results.
• Indexing:Content added by the crawler is processed and stored in the index and ranked on the basis of how well it solves user search queries.
• Rendering:Rendering is similar to indexing, but it focuses on the user experience of your site content (e.g. structure and layout of the site) as opposed to HTML coding. It then uses this information to decide how a page should rank.
• Website architecture:This refers to how web pages are structured and linked together. Good website architecture helps users and search engine crawlers alike navigate through a website easily.

Are there any drawbacks of search engine optimisation? 

The only real drawback is that SEM can take time to produce worthwhile results. While you will begin to see traffic immediately with paid techniques, you will find that gaining a valuable position in the organic search listings could take weeks or even months. 

If you are in a highly competitive niche, this may also require significant financial investment and a well-crafted strategy.

What are some common SEO technical issues?

SEO issues that can upset search engines and have a negative impact on rankings include:

• Keyword stuffing: Using unnecessary repetition of target keywords in an attempt to rank for that keyword in search engines.
• Excessive links:Low-quality or unnatural links (also known as spam links) and purchased/exchanged links can be penalised by Google as it sees that as an attempt to manipulate the organic search results. Be careful in your link building.
• Duplicate content:Content that appears more than once on the same site can lower your rankings on Google.
• Hidden links and texts: Hidden links and text violate Google Webmaster guidelines as they are viewed as an attempt to manipulate organic search results.

What are SEO best practices?

SEO best practices refer to the things you can do to start improving your website ranking.

 A quick search online will present you with an array of things you can do to boost your rankings, but we’ve picked the cream of the crop.

Here are some of the best SEO practices in {year} you can start implementing for your business:

• Always write for the user first, search engines second
• Position your keywords early on in your content
• Avoid duplicate content 
• Use high-quality titles
• Track the performance of your content regularly 
• Build backlinks
• Use internal linking
• Prioritise user experience (UX)

How do I measure the return on investment (ROI) of SEO results?

Good SEO can take considerable time, effort (and money if you decide to outsource), so of course it’s important to measure the ROI of your SEO performance.

There are several key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to track and measure your results:

• Organic click-through rates
• Leads and conversions
• Bounce rate
• Average session duration

How do I build an SEO strategy?

Developing an SEO strategy or an SEO approach is the first step to improving your search engine rankings. 

You can develop an SEO strategy by following these steps:

1. Analyse your competitors
2. Create a list of topics
3. Build pages for each topic
4. Create clusters of keywords
5. Optimise for all types of SEO
6. Measure, review and iterate
7. Stay on top of the latest SEO trends 

How long does it take for SEO to kick in?

SEO is a slow burner and it usually takes several months to start seeing results. But remember: when the results start to kick in, they will grow steadily over time for long-term visibility of your website.

Can I do SEO myself? 

The short answer to this question is yes - you can certainly do SEO yourself. 

With enough research and practice, you can learn how to do SEO for your business and start climbing the ranks of Google. 

There is a wide range of awesome SEO tools and software that can help you do so.

However, if you do decide to do your own SEO you will need to be confident with the fundamentals of SEO to ensure your efforts aren’t in vain. 

You will also need to stay afloat of SEO trends and industry insights, as Google and other search algorithms are updated regularly.

Should I hire an SEO agency?

SEO can seem quite complex to get the hang of, which is why many businesses hire an SEO agency or SEO specialist. 

They are experts in identifying the areas in which your website is lacking for SEO and implementing strategies to improve rankings.

You can post a project and we will introduce you to the bestSEO agencies who can help.