Do you know what Search Engine Optimisation is?

‘SEO’ refers to the term Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the exercise of increasing the quantity, as well as quality, of traffic to your site. This is done by using organic search engine results.

All of the main search engines – such as Google, Bing and Yahoo – possess primary search results. Website pages as well as other content – such as videos or local listings – are displayed and ranked depending on what the search engine feels that are the most suitable to users. No money exchanges hands as occurs with paid search ads that one finds on Google Ads.

Although you may not have an experienced, in-house SEO member of staff, it is still possible for you to start making some positive alterations to your website and digital marketing strategy that will help you to improve your SEO scores. With a bit of SEO knowledge, you can be well on your way to growing your brand’s search engine ranking in absolutely no time at all!

The real meaning of SEO

There are several aspects that make up SEO. Here are some of these:

• The quality of the traffic

You can attract all the visitors which you can to your website but if they’re visiting your site because Google is saying to them that you’re a resource for Apple computers – when actually you’re a farmer who distributes apples – that is not traffic that you want. Attract visitors to your website who are truly interested in the products that your business sells.

• The quantity of traffic

When you have the correct people who are clicking through to your website from those search engine results pages (SERPs), the more additional traffic that you can get, the better it is for your site.

• Organic results

Advertisement make up a substantial portion of many SERPs. (Organic traffic is any traffic which it is not necessary for you to pay for.)

How do you go about SEO?

Step #1: Evaluate your target market

There are a number ways that you can put to use to analyse your target market. These are the following:

• Evaluating your website
• Studying your competitors
• Designing a list of keywords

Step #2: Exploration and Development of Keywords

Keyword research isn’t as straightforward as just plugging in a number of keywords into a keyword research tool. There are several steps that are included in this process:

• Keyword analysis,
• Baseline ranking assessment, as well as
• Goals and Objectives.

Step #3: Content Optimisation and Submission

Perhaps one of the highly relevant and significant aspects of SEO is content that is SEO-optimised. Here are several steps that you can use to make sure that your content is all that it should be for SEO:

• Generate page titles,
• Produce meta tags,
• Put strategic search phrases on pages,
• Build new sitemaps for Google and Bing, and
• Submit your website to directories.

Step#4: Routine Testing and Measuring

Study search engine rankings, as well as web traffic, in order to determine the effectiveness of the SEO programmes that you’ve applied. The procedures involved in this include:

• The assessment of the performance of specific keywords,
• Testing the results of the changes that you make, and
• Keeping a handle of these tracked in an Excel spreadsheet or a similar programme.

On a consistent basis, add and modify keywords as well as website con­tent. This process is necessary in order to constantly improve search engine rankings so that the growth of your website doesn’t stall or decline from neglect.

Evaluate your link-building strategy. Make sure that the links which come into and go out of your website are relevant to your organisation. A blog can give you the required structure and permit you to add content, which you need, easily. Your hosting company and/or website designer can assist you with the setup/installation of a blog.

SEO has to be one of the most efficient ways for your website to be found on search engines. Do it properly and this practice will continue to bring you traffic for many years to come.

How to calculate the value of a first-page ranking

To assign a value your current SEO ranking, it is necessary for you to calculate the return on investment of all of your organic search listings. The best instrument to use is Google Ads as this provides all the data that you need about individual keywords. Use the information given to determine the value of the traffic of each keyword. A straightforward calculation for the value of traffic value is earnings per click times by the number of searches times by the click-through rate.

Investigating the best keywords, and incorporating them in your content, is just one of the ways to improve your SEO rankings. If it is your goal to get to the top pages, you need to go a step further and, for example, optimise your entire site.

Google will penalise all of the pages on your website if it doesn’t meet quality as well as usability standards. Before you begin to publish content with targeted keywords, fix broken links and other errors that Google flags on your site.

To fix internal broken links, you can use tools such as:

• Search Console,
• Screaming Frog, in addition to
• AWR

These will tell you the page that the link originated from as well as where the link is pointing. Sometimes, it is possible to perform mass changes and in other situations you must go to each page in turn to fix the broken links.

Search engine algorithms change often, and this means that you have to be kept abreast with the latest SEO skills and of course understand the fundamentals as well.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about SEO? Check out the Digital School of Marketing’s SEO and Web Analytics Course.