What is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a range of activities designed to make your website more visible in Google.

Here is a definition:

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, which is the process of getting traffic from organic search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages. Remember, the higher the website is listed, the more people will see it.

The Digital Marketing Institute

The idea being that higher search engine rankings leads to more visitors to your website.

But does this automatically mean you get more business?

What is involved in SEO?

Many people think SEO is something mysterious that happens in the background. It is not!

That was partially true some years ago – when it was easy to cheat the search engines about your website content – but not now. Google has made progress in understanding the quality and popularity of website content and ranking. So Google ranks websites largely based on strong relevance to search and merit.

SEO has become more transparent and less of a black art. The result is today SEO is primarily all about quality of content and building links to your website.

Here is my more useful SEO definition for today:

Firstly: Making your website content more relevant to searches and visitors. Then: Marketing to get more visibility for your brand to attract visitors and increase business.

So, let me explain further what is involved:

You may have more questions about SEO, what SEO specialists do, what is Content Marketing, what Social Media fits in, are Adwords SEO … and so on. I have written a separate article covering these questions and more: What is SEO Really All About.

Isn’t Onsite SEO just a normal part of the Web Design process?

It should be, shouldn’t it!

It is with some good web designers but often it is not the norm. The norm is to treat web design as one thing and SEO as something completely separate. Worse still, some web design techniques hinder the search engines rather than help.

Today onsite SEO is about good visitor focused content working together with relevant keywords.

Often web designers are working with the content provided by the client. If this content is poor, then any SEO efforts are not going to be effective. So, it is possible to optimise a website and get very poor search engine results because the content is poor.

The difficult choice for web designers (and SEO specialists) is either, make the best of the content provided or, get better content.

Also nothing stands still for long on the web. Technology changes. Google is always changing how it measures websites. And the competition gets tougher. So it is quite likely that any initial onsite SEO is no longer effective.

I want my website on page 1 of Google! Can this be done?

Maybe, for some searches.

Basically, Google tries to rank the relevance of web pages by examining the visible text on each web page. Then makes numerous adjustments for technical issues of coding and popularity around the web. Think of it as coming up with a “score” for your web pages, then comparing your score to your competitors’ web pages, then ranking you.

So to get good rankings you need to get a higher score for that particular search than your competition.

So be realistic:

If your competition is relatively small then there is a good chance that SEO can get you high search rankings. So local based searches with say 20 to 30 direct competitors then, perhaps a good Onsite SEO project will get results.

But if the competition is large (as is the case for most non-local searches that are not very niche based) then the SEO work needed is going to be extensive. This will require an Onsite and Offsite SEO project, perhaps going on indefinitely.

Also, there are lots of different searches to target:

If you pick short keyword search phrases (say 2 or 3 words) that are quite generic with various possible contexts – then the competition is high and likelihood of success low.

On the other hand choosing longer keyword phrases (say 4 to 6 words) that are quite specific – then the competition maybe more manageable. With content specifically targeting these longer phrases you could get good search rankings.

Then if you consider possible variations on these phrases that may open up more opportunities.

However note, one web page can only target one search phrase:

A web page can only give the highest level of optimisation to a single keyword phrase. Others can be included but the level of optimisation will be significantly less. (See Where to put Keywords to understand this limitation.)

So 5 web pages cannot target 10 completely different keyword phrases. Each separate phrase requires a web page with a significant amount of good quality content strongly focused on that phrase to have any chance of success.

And Google provides different search opportunities:

Not so long ago there were just sponsored links (paid for adverts, Adwords) and organic (merit based) search results. Now if you do a search you might see:

These seem to change quite often (Google is like that) but, the point is, there are extra opportunities to appear in the search results with appropriately targeted content.

And if it is not practical to rank well on merit, then there is always paid for advertising.

So what is good content as it is so important for SEO?

Think of it this way: search engines want to give the best answers to the questions you ask. Therefore the best way to get good search rankings, that last, is to provide good content covering what people want to know.

I have written a separate articles as a guide on How to Write Good Website Copy which you may find helpful. Also here is some help on What to Write About.

Our SEO Services

Our SEO services can be on a once-off basis if you prefer or a regular effort to improve the search engine performance of your website. Successful Search Engine Optimisation projects tend to be based on a long term effort to establish and build a good presence in the search engines.

To Optimise your website for the Search Engine we:

• Work with you to review the main themes of your website
• Establish suitable key word phrases to target
• Help you review and refine or build your copy to support your target key words
• Review and amend the design and the code behind your web pages to ensure that the common problems are removed or minimised
• Review the ranking of your web pages in the most important search engines for your target key word phrases
• Look with you at the opportunities to build relevant and helpful links to your website and consider other marketing opportunities to build on the popularity of your website mostly by using social media

It is more straightforward if we can have direct access to amend your web pages, working through other web designers tends to be cumbersome and much more work.

Our SEO Costs:

It really depends on how much search engine optimisation is required to make an impact: Search Engine Optimisation is one of those things that you can spend as much time as you have available on. We, therefore, approach these projects from the point of view of limiting the effort to match a budget. But figures below show typical ballpark amounts.

Once-off Onsite SEO project

This is to sort out what keywords and phrases you want to target, benchmark current search engine performance, evaluate and perform a one-off optimise of your website pages and fix any technical SEO problems.

• If your website is in very good order (so technically SEO friendly and your content is good) this could be a small project which might cost £500.
• If your website is in a poor state from an SEO perspective it may mean a major overhaul or even starting again on a more suitable platform like WordPress. So this could bring the costs into the £1000 to £2000 bracket (assuming the site is not large or complex).

Then review search engine rankings after 1 or 2 months. It usually takes several months for the search engine optimisation efforts to take effect and there is quite a lot of trial and error involved and there are no guarantees that top ranking can be achieved.

Ongoing SEO: Onsite and Offsite project

Initial Onsite sort out plus monthly Onsite and Offsite SEO:

This will usually involve adding new copy to the website and marketing that on suitable social media channels, as well as further adjustments to existing website copy and code.

• Initial Onsite SEO – costs as above.
• Monthly SEO – This is likely to cost from £500 to £1500 per month depending on the level of activity and availability of content. (Fixed cost agreed in advance.)

We would normally suggest a minimum 6 month project. After 6 months we would then do a review with you to decide if there is further benefit to continuing.

Guarantees: We cannot provide any guarantee that any high search engine ranking can be achieved (no one can – unless they are talking about paid adverts) – this depends on how good the competition is but we can show you how to get the full long term search engine potential from your web site.

Considering SEO for your site: first steps

It would be a great help if you did some preparation ahead of any discussions.

• Make a list of keyword phrases – at least 3 words in each.
  • Test out your keywords in Google. Try them and look at the search results (ignore sponsored but look at the rest on the first page). Are the results all from your competitors? If not perhaps you are not targeting the right searches.
  • See what else Google has presented. Are there clues to other keywords you should consider. Did Google guess what you were searching for and made suggestions? Are they useful suggestions?
  • Try to get a feel for how Google is responding to your searches.
• When you think you have a reasonable list of keywords then compare them to the content on your website. Do they stack up nicely or is there little correlation?
  • Remember, basically one main keyword phrase per page. (Although very similar phrases can be attributed to the same page.)
  • If there is a lot of new content required, then give some thought to drafting some or at least what could be drafted.

Preparation like this will kick start us off in the right direction saving time initially on your SEO project.