SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – Is Your Business Hiding ?
SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation ) is combination of skill, art, and best practice.
It is the process that increases the number of targeted visitors to your website when they conduct a search via search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Google is the giant of online search, and as such dictates most of the rules. They have over a hundred ranking factors that decide whether you will be found or not, most of them are secret. The main ones are obvious however, such as having a mobile responsive website. Other ranking factors are often known via research, and best practice standards.
SEO usually involves optimising your website in 2 ways:
- Ensuring your website provides value to your visitor and is easy to navigate. This will be the visible aspect of your website.
- Configuring your site to make it easy for Google to understand what content you are providing and what is important. This is the invisible aspect and is configured behind the scenes so that it does not impact the look and feel of your website.
The other major area that contributes to effective SEO, is backlinks from other websites. Primarily, backlinks from other authority websites in your niche. Backlinks from social media networks, and directory/business sites also play an important role.
Google rewards well-developed websites with high quality content. Conventional thinking says that these type of websites will ultimately find themselves on the 1st page of Google …. ‘eventually’.
If you need more sustainable and targeted traffic, then you need to consider implementing a Search Engine Optimisation strategy.
SHORT ANSWER:
By definition, Search Engine Optimisation can ensure that your website receives more targeted traffic from people who are more likely to be interested in your products, services or brand.
But is that all there is to it ?
LONG ANSWER:
Credibility – An effective Search Engine Optimisation project ensures that the website that people ultimately visit from conducting a search online, is professional, and brand-efficient. Holistically, there is no point in inviting people to visit your site if it is messy, difficult to navigate, and non-responsive on smartphones and tablets.
Authority – Being found on the first page of Google increases brand authority for your business. Simple.
Conversions – A best practice SEO project will ensure that consideration is given to increasing conversion success, once visitors click on a search result and find themselves on your website.
And yes … Traffic – Not only an increase in traffic, but an increase in targeted traffic. An ideal campaign will ensure that this targeted traffic is comprised of ‘buyer traffic’, that is, visitors who are ready to follow your Call To Action, to buy, to register and so on. Increasing visitors who simply want to browse and tyre-kick will not benefit your business in real terms.
Implementing an effective SEO strategy can help increase your strengthen your brand, increase sales, promote your newsletter and grow your community.
And much more …….
Start today …. create a document, spreadsheet, or powerpoint. Name it “Search Engine Optimisation version 1.0” . Spend a few moments deciding which search terms you want to be found for, over a steaming cup of coffee. Ensure you have content with these search terms and synonyms published on your website. This is one of several vital steps in your control. There are many others, but this is a solid first step.
Rinse then repeat. Execute. Or read the next Tab and let us help you on your journey.
You would be surprised how many businesses are frustrated that they are not being found for certain search terms, only then to realise that they have no content on their website with these specific search terms ! Google is very smart. But it is not a mind-reader. Not yet, anyway.
Our SEO strategy involves extensive keyword and competitor research.
It is very important to understand what the competition landscape looks like for several reasons:
- It is imperative to identify what successful competitors are doing and emulate them.
- You cannot compete against everyone. You may find that some keywords are not worth pursuing as the resources your competitors have at their disposal cannot be matched. We need to be strategic and understand which keywords are achievable within the budget and time frame required. The NET result will be an increase in targeted traffic, but without the empty pockets and the crying.
- It is often the case that targeting many keywords with lower search volumes can be more cost-effective, and time-effective than chasing ‘golden’ search terms.
The second part of our SEO strategy involves implementing both a high level and low level audit of your website, if required.
Google wants to provide the top 10 candidates on their first page of search results. Their bottom line depends on this. As such, recommendations are made regarding the look and feel of the website, mobile responsiveness, speed and functionality.
This is usually a collaborative exercise, together with key members of your organisation, and/or your 3rd party suppliers. As a certain amount of work resides with website content and optimisation, we often liaise with existing marketing or web guru resources to ensure best practice implementation. Alternatively, we can help project manage any SEO scope if there are multiple parties involved.
The third area of strategy focus is backlinks. We help you grow authority backlinks, using white-hat and best practice methods. If appropriate, we create and optimise additional digital assets to help promote SEO, like Google Maps, and social media network properties.
We help you create effective landing pages, as well as CTAs ( Calls To Action ) to increase conversion success.
We can help remediate any technical issues with your current website, that may have a negative effect on your SEO.
And importantly, we investigate whether your website is under any sort of Google penalty. This penalty may be holding back your SEO success, and may be a result of black-hat SEO attempts in the past, or may even be a result of negative SEO campaigns from competitors.
We are very pleased to have helped our SEO clients with successful campaigns with many effective search terms appearing on Page 1 of Google.
Having said that, it is against Google’s code of practice to offer any guarantee of being found on the first page of search results. So we won’t.
As we have already discussed, it is not the definition of SEO success on its own.
What we do guarantee, is by working with Webmentum, you will benefit from:
- An order of magnitude increase in targeted search traffic
- More leads
- Increase in number of prospects in your funnel
- Better search positioning compared to your nominated competitors
- Higher brand equity
- Identification/removal of any Google penalty, and ultimately
- A high functioning and Google friendly ( read: user friendly ) website.
If your website is currently hiding, we can help you with an effective SEO strategy and deployment.
Need more leads ?
A successful SEO campaign will increase the number of targeted visitors that already have purchase intent, grow your funnel and/or subscriber list and bring your business more leads.
Is your website suffering from a Google penalty ?
Your website may be subject to any number of Google penalties. Google can apply penalties for a variety of reasons, without formally notifying you, and previous SEO attempts or negative SEO campaigns, may be holding you back.
Do you know who your online competitors are ?
Webmentum can help you identify both your direct and indirect online competitors which will better position your website in the eyes of the search engines, and ultimately increase your organic search traffic.
