What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It's the process of optimising your website so that it ranks higher in the list of search results Google gives you. 

The results shown when you make a search are called SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages). These are the pages that appear whenever you type in a search prompt on Google or any other search engine such as Bing or Yahoo. Paid content is usually at the top of the results demarcated as an ad and organic content is listed below that.

Note: SEO isn't just confined to search engines anymore. With the rapid growth of social media, social platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are being used to find information. Is TikTok becoming a search engine?

Having a higher-ranking page means your website gets more visibility. Which in turn results in your website being clicked on more. 

Ultimately the end goal of search engine optimisation is to attract the type of people who will eventually become customers, clients or a retained audience.

SEO is a crucial part of any company's digital marketing strategy. However, it requires a huge investment not in capital but in time and energy. Starting with creating the website page, whether it be a landing page, blog post or lead magnet and then writing the website copy, including keywords and then optimising the website.

Truth be told, SEO is a long-term game. It could take weeks, months or even years for you to reap the benefits. See, because SEO is unpaid it means you can’t just pay your way to the top of the SERPs. 

All the traffic you get from SEO is organic traffic, meaning it’s from people naturally clicking on your webpage in the search results. This is unlike PPC, in which you pay for each one of your clicks, as your ads are already at the top of SERPs.

SEO and PPC 

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a version of search engine marketing in which marketers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked on.

When deciding between PPC and SEO it shouldn't be seen as one or the other. They work complementary with each other and should be used together when making a search engine strategy (If the budget allows it)

Differences between SEO and PPC

Position

The first difference is that paid ads are positioned higher on search engine results pages than organic results.

The paid ads are shown by the images, anything under that is organic.

Time

Secondly, paid ads achieve results much quicker. Whereas organic search may take months, weeks or even years to yield results. But as soon as funding is stopped for PPC the results stop.

Share of Traffic

Organic search is responsible for 53% of all site traffic whereas paid search is only responsible for 15%. 

Types of SEO

SEO can be broken down into 3 core pillars 

Technical SEO: Optimising technical aspects of a website for example submitting your sitemap to google

On-Site SEO: Optimising the content on your SEO page such as adding alt text to your images. Overall on-site SEO focuses on providing a great user experience

Off-Site SEO: This is the process of building backlinks to your website. 

Technical SEO

Optimising the technical elements of your website is crucial for SEO success. Now why is that? 

Well as stated before technical SEO is all about the background works of SEO such as there being no broken pages or no broken links. 

There's nothing worse than being on a website that doesn't work when you're trying to find information for a topic. Having a fully functioning website is also one of Google's ranking factors for pages. Ask yourself, "Does this website work well?".

On-Site SEO

This is ensuring content is both relevant and up-to-date, to provide a great user experience. This involves including keywords in your website that users are searching for.

Your page should be optimised for both people (visual content that people see and read) as well as search engines (The code, the title tags, the meta descriptions).

Off-Site SEO

This is the process of bettering your website's search engine rankings through activities outside of the website.

This can be mostly done by building high-quality backlinks to your website. There are also a few non-SEO activities that synergise with SEO efforts such as Content Marketing, Listing management ( All activities involved in managing any information regarding your company or website) or even something as simple as responding to ratings and reviews.

How do search engines work?

Search engine algorithms are computer programs that look for clues to find the exact search results the user is looking for. Search engines rely on algorithms to find web pages and where to rank the pages for any given keyword. 

So there are three steps involving how search engines find and rank pages, the three steps are: crawling, indexing and ranking. 

Crawling

Search engines send out what we call crawlers to go and find and record information about a page. They’re also commonly referred to as “spiders” or “robots”

Their purpose is to discover new web pages and to periodically check on pre-existing pages to see if they've been updated or not.

Search engines crawl web pages by following links they’ve already discovered. So if you have a blog post and it’s linked to your home page when your home page is crawled the new link will be crawled too and then hopefully depending on a few factors ranked. 

Indexing

The next step is indexing. This is when a web page's content is deemed worthy or not. If a crawled web page has valuable content it will be put into the index, where its information is stored.

The index is a database where the web page is stored, where it can later be retrieved.

Ranking

Lastly, the ranking part of the process is the most important of the three steps. This only happens after a page has been crawled and indexed. 

There are over 200 ranking factors that search engines use to rank pages, they all fall under the three types of SEO, Technical, Off-site and On-Site.

Some of the ranking factors are: 

Keywords in the title tag - whether the keywords were mentioned in the title tag. 

Loading speed - how fast a page responds to users actions 

Mobile-friendliness - How optimised a web page is for mobile users

Reputable - whether the information given is reputable and valuable.

If you're looking for information about SEO and what it can do for you and your business, feel free to get in contact with us and schedule a meeting!

How does Google order and rank search results?

Google has over 200 different ranking signals. In a rare disclosure of its top ranking factors in 2016, google stated that its top three ranking factors were: 

Links: Backlinks to your webpage, as stated earlier backlinks are a vote of reputation from another source. It shows that your content or you as a brand give valuable information. 

Content: As obvious as this may be, high-quality content is and will be a top-ranking factor for SERPs. Write quality content!

RankBrain: Rankbrain, along with Hummingbird and Panda are responsible for ranking pages. 

It's a machine-learning search engine sub-algorithm. When Hummingbird sees a keyword it's unfamiliar with it's given to RankBrain which takes the word and connects it with other similar search queries through word vectors. It checks the search intent behind the word. (What's the context behind the search) 

It then converts these keywords into known topics and concepts to help google understand the keyword and topic better.

RankBrain rewards websites that provide user satisfaction rather than optimised keywords. In short, have content that answers users' questions! Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, what problem does your webpage solve for them?

For ranking you should attempt to use Google's EEAT(Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). It may not be a direct ranking factor but it’s a part of Google quality raters assessment criteria. 

And lastly, 

AI & the Future of SEO

In the new modern world of AI, it's only a habit to ask yourself, "How will AI affect this ?"

On May 10th 2023, Google announced its new SGE, Google Search Generative Experience. It's changing the visual look of SERPs. 

In essence, it's featured snippets gone wild. It will include an answer to the user's search query and an image carousel with suggestions. 

Will it wipe out the need for SEO, or will it make high-ranking SEO pages even more valuable than they are? 

Want SEO? Get In Touch!

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