What does “SEO” mean and how can Search Engine Optimisation be used to benefit a business?

SEO simply stands for search engine optimisation; it’s the process of improving a business’s on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. The overall aim is to get the business to appear on page one of Google for keywords that the business knows will help it generate more sales.

If you sell ski boots in the U.K., you will want to appear on page one of Google for them, as well as ski hats, goggles, and all the gear to ensure you enjoy your skiing adventures.

So SEO, search engine optimisation, is simple: The idea is to get a business on the first page of Google for products or services you sell within the first ten organic links.

However, to get there, well, it’s much more complicated. There are snake oil salespeople well at most turns. They will tell you it easy, it simple, and in the blink of an eye, we will get you there- well, nothing could be further from the truth and here’s why:

Google’s algorithms now only reward businesses with higher rankings if the work is quality.

– Google has “spam algorithm updates” to remove businesses that implement spammy SEO methods
– Google Helpful Content Update only rewards businesses which offer helpful and useful information
– The on-page SEO and technical SEO must be good to offer a good “U.X”, which is short for “user experience.”

Some of the different terms used to describe SEO

So today, you have businesses that are called “digital marketing agencies,” which is simply a term used to describe offering SEO, SEM, and PPC.

Let us explain what each of these means:

SEO is the process of getting more organic visitors from Google, Bing, and other search engines. For your business to obtain these customers, it’s free, so you don’t pay per click. However, to get there, on the first page, you’re competing with many, if not sometimes hundreds, of other businesses, so it’s hard work sometimes to get a business on page one within the organic business results.

 

Pay-Per-Click

Then there’s pay-per-click, also known as “Google Adwords.” Here, you set a budget, and straight away, your business can appear on page one of Google. You set the keywords you want to appear for, and then your business can start to gain more shoppers, well, sometimes almost instantly.

SEM is a more common term in America than here, but it refers to gaining more organic and paid results from search engines, so it is more of a blended approach.

 

Why is SEO important?

Is SEO important to a business?

Well, the short answer is that it’s very important and absolutely crucial for some businesses.
It’s not uncommon for some businesses to be solely 100% reliant on SEO and digital marketing to attract new customers.

It’s thought that more than 8.5 billion searches occur every day on Google Search, so if you want your business to obtain more organic visitors, you will often need an SEO agency to help improve the business’s organic SEO.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a large area of SEO, yet some of the more crucial aspects to pay attention to are ensuring the website can get crawled and indexed.

The Googlebot’s job is to crawl a business’s website regularly and index it. It spots changes, new pages, and blog posts and indexes them.
However, if technical SEO is stopping this, for example, a no-index instruction, well, that will stop Googlebot from indexing the work, which basically means that a page or blog post with no index instruction will not appear in Google’s results.

Website Speed

Another part of improving a business’s technical SEO is speed. Your company website should be fast. Sometimes, it’s necessary for a business to switch hosting to improve speed. Do pay for ultra-fast website hosting, as this can help to improve your business’s organic SEO.

Content optimisation (on-page SEO)

Content marketing

So, to get any business page one of Google, whether you’re a sole trader sparky or you run a large e-commerce business, and to improve the business’s SEO, a lot of quality content marketing has to be added to a website.

Since the Google Helpful Content Update and the Google E-EAT update, it’s more important than ever that the work be high-quality and well-written.

Therefore, a business should write many useful guides and content marketing to help customers. Think about writing articles to answer commonly asked questions that your business frequently gets asked. The work must be top quality, and for the content marketing to get on page one of Google, often, you also need to have good-quality backlinks.

 

Google algorithm updates

How often do you think that Google updates its algorithm?

Many businesses think that Google only updates its algorithm a few times a year. However, SEO agencies like us know that Google actually rolls out hundreds of changes to its algorithm every year.

Sometimes, massive Google algorithm updates shake up where businesses are ranked. For example, the Google Panda and Google Penguin updates changed where many businesses were ranked.
Our point is that it’s always a good idea to invest in an SEO tool to monitor where your business ranks and how well the organic SEO is improving monthly.

 

Would you like help to improve your SEO?

If your business would like help improving its local or organic SEO, why not give us a ring?