Why Search Engine Optimisation is Important for Your Business
Would your business like to benefit from higher rankings in Google?
But how do you get higher rankings in the searches?
This can be done with Search Engine Optimisation.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a Long-Term Strategy That Helps Your Website Increase its Ranking on Google After we Make Changes to Your Website (i.e. Optimisation).
These changes help your website to become more compliant with Google’s guidelines – I.e. rules Google have set out for websites to follow. Those websites are rewarded with higher rankings after implementing those changes (or have a more ‘optimised’ website).
The effects of optimisation can take anywhere from 3 months to over one year before you notice results, but the investment in search engine optimisation is absolutely worth the time and effort.
Some businesses may prefer running Google Ads instead if this length of time does not appeal to them.
Google is your website’s best friend. It’s where people go to find businesses like yours and it’s important that you’re in a prominent position in the searches. This allows you to be found more often by potential customers.
And the best part about Google – people searching actually have intent to buy from or enquire with the businesses they are searching for, also known as a ‘warm’ customer.
Our Approach to SEO
SEO Audit
The very first step to carrying out search engine optimisation is to determine where you are on Google at this point in time for keywords relevant to your business.
We start by understanding what your business does and do keyword research to discover what people are actually typing in to Google to find businesses like yours. This is invaluable information.
Most businesses make the mistake of assuming which keywords people are typing into Google and become fixated on those keywords and why they are not appearing for those irrelevant keywords. This is why keyword research is important, because optimising your website for the wrong keywords will hinder your results.
After we have created a list of keywords that people are using in the searches to find businesses like yours, we then determine:
- Where you are ranking now for those keywords
- Where your competitors rank for those keywords
- What needs optimising on your website (whether you have a sitemap in place, a 404 error page, website speed, header tags, alt tags, meta tags, pages with not enough content, excessively large images, and more)
- How many backlinks (websites that are linking to your website) you have and if any are malicious
- The frequency of your blog posts (if any), as well as their length and quality
- If you have any broken links
Content Marketing
Content marketing is where we create high quality content on your website, such as pages with infographics to convey important information and statistics in a well-designed and appealing way, or in-depth blog posts that have been created around keyword phrases that people are typing in to Google regularly and offer a lot of value when they read your blog post.
The in-depth blog posts allow your website to be found in Google for topics or questions that are being searched for often in Google, such as “what is the difference between a therapist and a life coach” as an example. Then, when your blog post is clicked on and people are reading your post, you then also add a few links to other pages on your website to promote your products and services.
When you have pages on your website that contains useful information (such as pages with infographics or high quality, in-depth blog posts), other websites, over time, begin linking to your content when they stumble across it or when we approach websites and ask them to link to your content if they find it useful – this is a part of link building.
Link Building
Link building simply means creating more links to your website from other relevant websites (also known as backlinks).
As above, we look at blog posts you/we have created (if any) and reach out to specific websites that may be interested in your content, in terms of, if I linked to this blog post from my website, would my readers gain value? And it’s those blogs/websites that we reach out to on your behalf to ask if they would place a link to your website from their website.
We also submit your website to various directories and content websites (such as SlideShare) on a monthly basis.
Why is link building important?
Backlinks are a major factor in your ranking in Google. It shows how popular your website is and if many relevant websites are linking to your website, then it must be a good resource in Google’s eyes.
Optimisation
After we have determined where you rank in Google and what improvements need to be made from the SEO audit, we then get to work on optimising your website for Google.
This is where we make changes to the content on your website in line with what Google expects, such as:
- Structuring your pages in a better way by using H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5 tags and/or dividing content up on to new pages
- Implementing keywords within the content (images, text, meta tags, etc.) of your website, helping Google to understand what your page is about and its relevancy to specific searches
- Working with you to increase the length of the content on pages, as Google loves lengthy in-depth content (I.e. if you were selling a car, you wouldn’t just have one paragraph describing the colour of the car, how much it costs, and the location of the car – you would go in to complete detail, such as what brand the tyres are and why they are great tyres, how the colour of the car is a bespoke colour and has a protective layer, how it being petrol is better than diesel for this type of car, why this car having four doors is great, etc.) – we work with you to find every angle you can talk about in your content to create higher quality pages that offers more value to people coming on to your website, and this is one of the key reasons that websites rank highly in search results
- Adding links to your content, as Google likes to see links to your other pages and other relevant websites in your paragraphs, as it makes your website more user-friendly
- Adding alt tags to images (i.e. text that is displayed instead if the image does not load or is used to describe the image for text-to-speech software that is used by individuals with sight issues)
- Decreasing the loading time of your website
- Creating quality META tags for each top level page on your website (i.e. the title and description that appears on your Google result)
- Disavowing any negative backlinks to your website
- Fixing broken links
- Creating more user-friendly URLs
- Installing Google Analytics to track visitor statistics
This stage is absolutely crucial to putting the foundations in place for improving your ranking in Google.
After we have optimised your website, we manually submit it to Google so that they can rescan your website and see what changes have been made to begin affecting your ranking.
Monitoring & Monthly Report
The last thing we want is for all the hard work that has been done to come undone. Therefore, we set up notifications to let us know if your website is down, so we can act quickly. We also regularly monitor for broken links or for any other errors on your website that could affect your ranking.
We believe that you keeping in the loop about what is happening month-to-month is also important, which is why we send out monthly reports of how your website is performing in the searches, in terms of the movement in your rankings (and for which keywords), how your competitors are ranking (and for which keywords).
Improvements
Based on the reports and statistics, we make changes every month to your website to continue building on the foundations we put in place in month one, in the optimisation stage (as detailed above). This involves us further optimising your website, creating more content, building more links to your website, implementing new SEO tactics and seeing how Google responds to this month to month.
SEO Timeline of Results
In terms of timelines, there is no shortcut to increasing your ranking. It takes time and is not an overnight process. We do not guarantee results, but we do achieve great results for our clients.
If we take three of our clients as examples:
They started out at the bottom of page 6 for “boiler repair Halifax”. Now 6-7 months later after we optimised their website, they can be seen at the bottom of page 1 or the top of page 2.
For “boiler services Halifax” they are seen on page 1 on Google. Halifax Gas Solutions do zero marketing and receive regular enquiries from people finding their website organically (i.e. free, non-ad result) on Google.
Lincoln Towbar & Mobility Centre
They were nowhere to be seen for “motorhome levelling ma-ve” and one month later, they were and are seen on page 2 of Google. For “car towbars Lincoln” they dominate the first and second result in Google.
After we optimised their website a few years ago, they have been maintaining the top spot in Google for “joinery services Lincoln”.
As you can see, our results typically range from one month to 6 months, but it does depend on the keywords you want to be found by and the amount of competition there is.
We always recommend a trial period of 3-6 months to see results in Google, but results can appear faster than this time frame.
In Conclusion
We want to help you appear prominently in Google searches, to be seen by potential customers/clients, allowing you to be discovered by them, to learn about your business by browsing your website, to then contact you or buy from you and for that cycle to repeat again and again so you can be generating a steady stream of enquiries from Google.
We do that by implementing the SEO foundations to create a well-optimised website and continually improve your website each month with our proven tactics to help increase your ranking in Google.
We want you to succeed and the best way to do that is to receive visits to your website from the relevant people, i.e. potential customers/clients who are literally searching for your services/products and are ready to contact you or buy from you.
Get in Touch to Start Increasing
Your Google Rankings
For a Search Engine Optimisation quotation, simply call us on
01522 300 165 or use our online enquiry form.
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