The power of online digital marketing is huge. With Google processing an average of over 40,000 search queries every second, SEO and Digital Marketing is essential to ensure your website performs well in these competitive results.
Ranking highly in organic (unpaid) search results is a great way to increase traffic to your website: creating more potential customers and improving the visibility and trust in your business.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the overall process of getting your page listed higher in the search results. There are a wide range of factors that come into play with how your site is ranked, both on and off your website.
The second pages of search results are only viewed around 6% of the time, and so it’s vital to get your website ranked highly if you want to grow your potential customer base and gain an advantage over competitors.
The elements of SEO needed vary depending on the individual requirements of the business or website. The main areas cover keyword research, content and on- and off-site optimisation.
Keyword research
Finding the right keywords is the first step in any SEO project or overhaul. Keywords, or search queries, are the words or phrases that a potential customer will type into a search engine in order to be given the search results.
In order to be effective, you need to find and use the terms which potential customers are actually putting into their searches and using these keywords across your website.
We can help you narrow down a list of potential keywords relevant to your product or service. These search queries can then be evaluated against local and global searches and trends in order to deduce the best keywords for you to use. This is an essential part of getting your website put in front of the right customers and increasing your traffic, and provides a basis for your SEO strategy in other areas.
On-site Optimisation
On-site optimisation covers all the ‘back end’ work that makes your website as effective as possible, both to potential customers visiting in and search engines ranking it.
On-site optimisation works as a foundation to be built on by your other work on off-site optimisation.
Search engines rank sites on a technical point of view, with Google thought to have over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm.
Some of the main factors include adding keywords into the URL (or web address) and meta descriptions which are picked up by search engines. Condensing your site by removing pages which don’t have much useful content on them makes your site higher-quality overall, leading to a better user experience as well as improving your ranking.
Getting your site to load quickly both helps your ranking position as well as retaining potential customers visiting your website. Internet users have high expectations of being able to use sites quickly, and too long a loading time is likely to lose customers.
Using an SEO service is a great way to analyse how well your site currently performs on these factors, as well as getting advice and support to get your site working to its full potential.
Off-Site Optimisation
Around 80% of a website’s ranking is determined by off-site optimisation, so this is a really vital element of marketing your website. Increasing links to your site from external websites has long been a bit part of this; however large quantities of low quality backlinks will no longer help your site’s rankings.
Link building does still play a big part in search engine algorithms. Developing high quality links from external sites with great content is the way to do it.
Off-site optimisation also covers other areas of your brand. Having a fantastic product or service is essential: both on- and off-line, people will be saying great things about your company. This leads to more traffic coming to your website, positive reviews on third-party websites and more sales.
A good social media presence can help you develop a positive perspective of your brand and build good relationships with potential customers. Guest blogging on other sites and producing high quality content for these blogs can also help to place you as an expert in your area, increasing web traffic and brand trust.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a hugely effective tool for online marketing, and should be part of everyone’s marketing strategy.
Benefits include not only improving your SEO, but also generating more potential leads and improving your brand’s reputation.
Content marketing involves creating and sharing material, or ‘content’, online. For many brands and businesses, this can be in the form of blog posts with ‘how to’ tips or discussing relevant news or issues. Content can also include material such as videos, infographics and e-books, depending on what is most relevant to a business and its users.
The aim of much content marketing is to provide something useful to the consumer, rather than an outright sales page. This can help capture an audience looking for instructions or advice on the internet. Providing something that they find useful will help develop their trust in your brand or company, and over time can establish you as a leader in your area.
The content can also be designed to increase interest in your services or products and drive traffic to your website, generating additional leads.
Content marketing can be outsourced to a Digital Marketing company, who can create and regularly publish content to your site and social media channels.
These four areas cover the main overview of good SEO and Digital Marketing practice; however there are many more ways to improve your site and online marketing and get it performing at the optimum level.
For analysis of your current website and advice and support to improve your online marketing strategy, get in touch with our SEO and Digital Marketing Services to discuss your needs.