SEO – Search Engine Optimisation put simply

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the unsung hero of any business. It is how Google and any other search engines rank your company. There is so many different ways Google can rank you, this is through something called crawling. It is what it sounds, bots will go through your website and scout out everything they can find, to put you in the right position on their search engine. This is what is called indexing, where they put together your websute, how they feel about, and collect all the information they need to rank it. Here we are going to talk about a few different ways  

SEO Keywords 

SEO keywords is such a vital part of search engine optimisation. They identify words that are used frequently throughout searches related to your business, that you may have on your website. there are a variety of types in the simplest of terms: short tail, medium tail and long tail. Short tail are keywords with no more than three words, and tend to be more broader, appealing to more people but not necessarily looking for what you offer. Medium tail are slightly longer phrases than short tail but up to about 5, so it is getting a bit more specific. Long tail keywords on the other hand, are long phrases 5+ words, which are far more specific. These will not get as many hits and results, but it will be specific enough to get results, as you showing up should be exactly what they want.

Keywords should be the most relevant words to your business, not just the one’s you have researched and think Google will like and bump you up. The crawlers are cleverer than you think, they will know whether you’re just putting keywords in there for shear SEO. So think carefully before you go throwing the 5 most googled words randomly and frequently onto your website.

SEO analysis 

Analysis of anything is important, especially SEO. It is a great way to sit down, and have a deep dive into you and your websites SEO. Using one of many free tools available nowadays (linked below). You can simply input your domain name, and it gives you a whole analysis, breaking down all the components you will need. From keywords, to traffic, bounce rates, and much more. 

It can be tricky to understand to start with for sure. It will throw a lot of numbers, percentages, stats at you, but when you look deeper into it, it can be very self explanatory. The first thing to do is see where you stand in Google in right now, as a starting point. You already know what keywords are, so that’s a step in the right direction. Then there is checking your website speed, which google has a tool for, along with having a tool for checking your mobile optimisation. Which now account for just over 50% of all searches, so it is crucial that it works, and works well.

As well as checking your URL’s and meta descriptions. So these are the descriptions that appear on your google tag on the search engine. With your URL, this is what your domain name is, and the bit at the end. The end of your URL is key, as that is the section you can change, you might want to change this to contain some keywords. There is so much more to look at but all these points are a great starting point that’s for sure, and if you feel you need more help with this check out our SEO packages!

LOCAL SEO 

This is becoming a more and more valuable aspect of SEO, local SEO. With there being more searches like “coffee shops near me”. If you Google that, before you even reach the search results, you will get 2-3 PPC ads, and then a google map view, with a few top rated coffee shops ‘near you’, and then the actual SEO search results. So this is why it is crucial that you do sign up to, if you haven’t already ‘Google mybusiness’. This is where you add any reviews, location of the business, business information. All of this information is key for you to fill as much of this as possible, because this will make sure Google tracks your business, and increases the likelihood of you being ranked higher. 

ON PAGE SEO

On page SEO is exactly how it sounds, it is the content on each individual page on your website. depending on the page, on your business, and what your competition are doing. The word count is recommended to be over 1000 words, which may seem like a lot, but when you’re typing away it soon comes around so don’t let that scare you! Go through all your images on the pages and chances are the file will be called “img_124841”, change that. Change it to a keyword maybe, or something relevant to the page and website. this is something so simple, but makes the world of difference.

Linking is another key aspect, whether that be backlinks or innerlinks. Backlinks are links to other websites that might help with the user, and then inner links are those which link back to another page on your website. the reason these work so well is because of adding other pages and/or websites into the SEO for this page means that there will be more impressions on you your website, leading to more potential clicks. With which ever page it might be, make sure you use hyphens to separate each word in a URL. As this makes sure google sees each word separately, where as underscores wont be recognised. 

All of these tips are a great starting point for you going forward with conducting some SEO improvements on your website. in the world and society we now live in, it really is so important that you keep on top of this. And once you’ve done it once you don’t just stop, one or two times a month check up and ensure all is well. 

Or if you don’t fancy doing all this work, then check out our SEO packages, and get in touch and we’ll do it for you!