SEO

SEO & Organic Search Marketing Explained

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or Organic Search Marketing is the practice of achieving high levels of targeted traffic from the search engines, such as Google and Bing, organic results. This is achieved by gaining exposure through high rankings when your products and services are searched for.

SEO has changed significantly over the last 2 years or so. Google seem to have launched a never ending stream of updates from Hummingbirds to Penguins and Pandas, some of these updates are Google’s attempt to stop the spammers from gaming the system to artificially gain top rankings on Google. Other updates, such as Hummingbird, are for the benefit of the user and to make search easier with the ever changing ways in which people use search engines, such as using voice search to ask questions via a smartphone.

With all these changes it is vital that a business chooses a reputable SEO consultant or company that follows Google’s published guidelines to avoid any future penalties, but also a company that will be innovative in its approach to your SEO campaign to attract as much targeted traffic to your website as possible. With this in mind all of our SEO services are bespoke to each individual client and is very much dependent on the current status of your site, levels of competition and of course your business goals.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation used to be relatively straight forward. In the recent past all you needed to do was have a well structured web site with relevant content, keywords on your title tags and meta data and as many links as you could get with your targeted keywords as the anchor text of the link. That was it, do that and you had a good chance of ranking well.

Nowadays it’s not so easy, even for a small localised business, your onsite content has to meet the demands of the Google Panda update and link building has become a bit of a minefield, thanks to another Google update, (the Penguin update). Then there is Social Media to think about as social signals are picked up by both Google and Bing. See my post on this subject here.

For a business concentrating on servicing their client base it can all seem a bit to much which is why it is vital you make the right choice when looking for a SEO consultant. We know what it takes to transform a business from obscurity to prominence and achieving a high level of visibility for your online presence is right at the core of that. By placing your business in front of those looking for the services which you offer, as well as working with you to ensure your website’s content sells potential customers the service you offer, we are confident that we can establish you as a local authority in your field and turn website visitors into enquiries, sales and conversions.

Onpage SEO

Some things haven’t changed a great deal, you have always needed a well structured website which has the following factors done correctly:

• Descriptive title tags which are unique to each page, contain targeted keywords and are descriptive
• Well written meta description tags, once again unique to each page, containing keyword(s) and descriptive but written in such a way as to encourage the search engine user to click on your result in the SERP’s (search engine result pages) as this tag is the two line description which will appear in the results
• Header tags (tags assigned to textual headings)
• Alt tags ( tags assigned to images)
• Internal links between pages
• Robot txt files to instruct search engines on what to index etc
• Well written content which is relevant to targeted keywords, written for the site visitor and not thin content purely created for search engines
• XML sitemaps to help instruct search engines of all page URL’s to give you the best chance of your web site being indexed

This is by no means everything that needs to be considered, but is the basic essentials that have to be done for all web sites. These onsite factors are just the start but once done you are at least showing Google and the other search engines that your site is relevant to a particular group of targeted search terms.

Off Page SEO

Now that your site is relevant you need to show Google that your site is an authority as well, otherwise you wont get to where all the traffic is, that’s page 1 of Google. When a search is done by your potential customers for the products and services you offer it is unlikely they will ever find you if you are not on page 1 of Google’s results.

How do you gain authority? Links, how do you get links? Well this is where a lot of site owners struggle, they even sometimes find it scary after hearing about the many sites being penalised and disappearing from Google’s index for having to many “spammy” links. What is a “spammy” link? Well these points are something to bear in mind when sourcing links to your site.

• Your link profile needs to look natural and not artificial
• Most people who link to you naturally will use your web address as a link and not a keyword as the anchor text, so don’t have more than a small percentage of your total links with keyword anchor text
• Do not get links from sites that look as though they were created purely to host links to other sites
• Make sure the sites you are getting links from actually serve a purpose. If when looking at the site you wouldn’t find it useful as a person interested in the subject matter then don’t get a link from it
• Do not list your site on thousands of directories. Yes you can use directories but look for good quality ones, preferably industry specific and/or localised. Also submit to the DMOZ and Yahoo directories
• Build relationships with other site owners and bloggers, perhaps try and get them to review your product or ask your customers to
• Offer to write a guest blog, with a link to your site in it, on a good blog which is related to your industry
• Generally get good quality content out there onto the web and also on your site that people want to link to. You can do this by having a blog on your site with regular well written content
• In summary get high quality authoritative content authored by yourself out there in the world wide web and the traffic and links will come

This is just for starters and if you don’t have the time or skills to do these types of activities then you will need the services of a SEO company or consultant like myself.

Then of course there is social media to bear in mind.

I am based in Lancaster but I can help business throughout the UK so if you would like a FREE SEO status report or if you need help with your business website and would like a no obligation chat please don’t hesitate to contact me.

By Chris Jones