A beginner’s guide to organic SEO for 2021

In this article we will talk about

• What is organic seo?
• What is Google’s algorithm?
• What are white hat methods?
• Why should my agency check that my website can be indexed?
• What is a Google algorithm update?
• What is Googlebot?
• Why is a Google Analytics account so useful?
• Why so many businesses use Google Analytics to monitor how many organic visitors they have
• Why so many Cardiff businesses use Google Analytics to monitor bounce rates
• Why so many companies use Google Analytics to monitor time on site
• Why is it so crucial that my company avoids at all costs incurring an algorithmic penalty?
• What is a manual penalty
• Why all Google penalties should be avoided
• What were the Google Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates
• Why is a Google Search Console account useful?
• Businesses often use “Google Search Console” to check the “performance” reports, as to where does their business ranks in the SERP’s on average
• What are ranking factors, and how do these decide where a business should be ranked?
• Why you should only hire a business that follows Google’s WebMaster Guidelines
• What are keywords?
• What is content marketing?
• What should the word count on my businesses content marketing be?
• Why should lower your companies “bounce rate”
• Why do so many businesses, in Cardiff, Wales, hire you as their digital marketing agency?
• What exactly are backlinks?
• What are do-follow backlinks?
• What are no-follow backlinks?
• What is anchor text?
• What is “link juice”?
• What are business citations? (NAP)
• How does Google’s algorithm use ranking factors to work out where a business should be ranked?
• What does my company need, a freelancer, consultant, web design company or an seo agency?
• What does white hat seo mean?
• Why should my company website be mobile friendly?
• What is mobile first indexing?
• How is AI, that’s “Artificial Intelligence” being using more and more?
• What does “Google’s RankBrain” mean?

Okay, so what does “organic SEO” mean?

Your business may well be very well established here in the great city of Cardiff, and you may have been trading for some time. Yet now’s the time for your business to expand?

And to do just that, well you’ve been looking at new ways of advertising your company, and you here from a lot of friends in business that if the quality of the organic seo is good, well, your business can climb up Google, you get more sales, and it can be an effective form of advertising.

Notice however how we use the wording, “if the quality” is good, well, that’s the key, you must hire the right agency, or company, that have super talented staff, and if they follow Google’s WebMaster Guidelines, they implement quality work, then good results can follow, however, if you hire a rubbish agency, one that doesn’t implement white hat work, well its possible, and likely the business will incur what is known as a Google penalty, and what happens then? Well, the business can drop down the SERP’s.

So, as a well-known digital marketing agency, here in the fantastic city of Cardiff, what’s the single best piece of advice that we can offer, when a company is thinking of hiring an SEO company, well, here it is, “hire an agency or company that offers truly top quality, white hat work, which follows every single bit of advice in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and make sure they follow the rules and don’t deviate, as if they do, a penalty could be looming!”

Why are businesses investing in this form of advertising?

That’s a super-simple one to answer, if done right, organic seo can be a fantastic way of generating sales for some companies, however, we have to stress, and labour the point again, if its done right! As it often is’nt!

I really don’t know what my company needs, is it a consultant, a large agency, or perhaps a web design business that offers SEO?

Well, ultimately it boils down to this, how big is your company? If you are a large business, with thousands of staff, well hiring a single seo consultant is not going to work, you’ll need an agency, so, it does come down to man-hours, but more importantly, it comes down to this, have you hired a person or agency which offers quality work?

So, all I want to know is this, how can I get my company onto the first page of Google?

Hold your horses, this is a question that most business owners fire across when hiring an agency, but here’s the thing, to climb the ranks on Google, in the organic SEO section, you have to have stronger seo than the business above, to take their spot and move up, so you guessed it! If they have been hiring a local seo business, for say 9 years, and you just sent your first payment to your agency, well guess what, that business that’s just started investing, your likely to have a huge mountain of work to do, that’s to start catching up. So, in a nutshell, don’t expect results overnight, its too unrealistic.

Why must the content marketing be high quality?

So let’s say you have a leaky tap, drip, drip and drip- get the idea, well its mighty annoying, so you look for some advice online, on how to fix the tap, as you want a good nights sleep, you don’t want to be listening to a steady drip in the early hours of the morning!

Now there’s one article, its boring to read, it doesn’t offer any good advice, it just keep mentioning “brand of taps + bathroom taps”- that’s rubbish seo, bound to have a super-high bounce rate, it is likely to damage the companies seo.

Now business two, well they got the problem nailed, they’ve hired a super-sharp seo firm, like us here at Tree Top, a Cardiff based SEO agency, and they have produced top-quality work, there’s step by step instructions on how to fix the tap, a YouTube video with a plumber talking you through it, there’s links to all the parts you will need, plus they offer free next day delivery- what more do you need? A plumber, well, yes that’s a given, but least you know how to fix the tap, and what parts you will need, so you can get them ordered.

Why must the do-follow and no-follow backlinks be good quality?

So many businesses from Cardiff Bay, through to large office blocks in Cardiff’s city centre, are home to companies that want seo, and think that more is better. However, a word to the wise here, more is not better when it comes to seo, what you want is quality, don’t replace this with quantity!

So, for example, let’s quiz you for a second, what’s better 100 links, where the quality is unknown, or 1 single really high-quality link, from a brilliant source, well, what would our seo agency say? We would say this, its better to opt for quality, only build top-quality links, every single link must be quality, it must be built using white hat methods.

 

What are Google updates?

 

 

Okay, so your company has a website, but it’s not generating much business?

So now this is got you thinking, how can you get your company onto the first page?

That’s the say how can you generate more sales and generate more enquiries?

A lot of businesses invest in organic SEO, that’s the say when you are looking for something let’s say you are looking to hire a company to build a new kitchen, the vast majority of the results will be the organic results.

Therefore it stands to reason, if you run a company, you will want your business on the first page.

But how to get there?

Will often you will need the help of agencies, sometimes a business will hire a freelancer, however if you run a fairly large business is likely that you will need an agency, because an agency sometimes employs copywriters, SEO managers link builders, someone who can help with your local seo

So basically an agency, normally employs a lot of people which can help to improve your businesses SEO.

Within this article we are going to explain why this type of marketing is not a fast process, we are also going to explain what some of the important ranking factors are, and we are also going to explain that the algorithm readily changes so you are going to need a SEO company that keeps their organic SEO knowledge up to date.

 

What does SEO actually mean?

Okay, so you might not actually know what SEO is, quite simply put let’s say that you run a business and you make wedding cakes, obviously for your wedding cake business you will want to get it onto the first page, and there are a number of different ways to do this, for example you might a per click, you might get your wedding cake business in the local business results or you may pay an agency to help improve your organic SEO.

So let’s imagine the business results as you would a piece of paper, that’s the say on an A4 piece of paper you would see the pay per click results right at the top normally then you might see further down the map and then three businesses alongside the map and then the vast majority of the business results will be organic business results now obviously for your wedding cake business you will want your business to appear as many times as possible, however for some companies it’s not possible to pay an company to make the wedding cake business appear at the top in the pay per click, and on the map and in the organic results as the business often will not have the marketing budget for this so often the company will just say to the marketing agency concentrate on improving the SEO so that they can go up the ranks in the organic results.

This can have a dramatic effect on a business, for example let’s imagine that you are in a major capital city and an agency is successful in getting you right to the top of the organic results for wedding cakes plus the name of the city in which the wedding cake business is based.

Obviously, somebody who is looking to find a “wedding cake business”, in that city is now going to be able to find your company much more easily.

So, this is how SEO can have a dramatic effect on some businesses, that’s because quite simply put, the agency can put your business onto the first page, but you must make sure, that the work you are investing in is white hat.

Why is it worth investing in?

Well, we would say that this depends, if you are going to invest in low-quality work, that’s to say low quality SEO, then we would say it is most definitely not worth investing in low quality SEO, as this often results in an algorithmic penalty, so it’s simply not worth investing.

However, on the other hand if you are going to hire a digital marketing agency that offers really hot quality work, which really understands your business and they also employ staff that keep their SEO knowledge up to date then we would say it is most definitely worth hiring a top-quality agency.

However, it has to be said that a lot of businesses simply will not be able to afford a top-quality agency, yet is not worth paying for cheap SEO that is low quality as this is a total false economy

Is it a fast process?

So is organic SEO a fast process, the simple answer to that question is this, it is not a fast process, however it does depend on how strong the competition is.

So let’s give you an example let’s say that you want to sell wedding cakes in the city in which your business is based, and there are say 20 other businesses that invest in SEO, well in this case it is relatively easy to start improving the businesses SEO as their own 20 businesses which are investing in SEO.

However, let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and your about to start your own solicitors practice new want a basic in a capital city, but it’s more than likely that you will be up against hundreds of other businesses, and a lot of these businesses are likely to be investing in SEO, so quite simply put, you will be up against a huge amount of competition, you will be up against hundreds of other businesses and these businesses may have heavily invested in SEO for a long period of time, so what we are trying to get at is that in order to overtake these businesses it will often take a long period of time and a large amount of money invested in SEO, so this is why SEO is never a fast process because you have to beat your competition, and if your competition is strong, for example you are up against hundreds or possibly thousands of other solicitor practices, then this simply means that SEO, will take a long time.

How can a business improve my SEO?

sometimes a business owner will incorrectly think that in order to improve a businesses SEO there are only one or two things that the SEO company needs to do, however this is not the case, there are over 200 different ranking factors, so what does this mean?

Well quite simply put there are hundreds of things that your marketing agency can do in order to improve your businesses SEO, they could build back links, they could improve the on-site SEO, they could rewrite the meta titles, they could rewrite the meta descriptions they could change the anchor text includes build business citations.

There are quite literally hundreds of things that an agency could do to improve the businesses SEO.

What is the algorithm?

So, let’s say that you travel to your SEO companies premises, you sit down and you meet the SEO manager, you might hear them talk a lot about an “algorithm”- well what is this algorithm, why do they keep talking about an algorithm?

Quite simply put it is the algorithm which decides where a company should be ranked.

So, how does Google’s algorithm decide where a business should be ranked?

Well, quite simply put the algorithm decides where the business should be ranked based on how strong the businesses “ranking factors” are.

So earlier you might have noticed that we mentioned that there are over 200 different ranking factors, so for example a ranking factor could be “anchor text” it could also be a “meta title” so what you have to keep in mind is, that the businesses which have the strongest ranking factors, will be the businesses which will be ranked on the first page.

How long will it take to get my business onto the first page?

This is obviously a question that companies get asked a lot, that is how long will it take to get the business onto the first page?

Well we would say this depends on the level of competition and also obviously which agency that you hire, now you might be wondering well, why did we say that it depends on the level of competition?

What quite simply put let’s say that you sell coffee online, that’s the say you sell organic coffee and you sell this in large bags and you sell flavoured coffee roasted coffee and whole bean coffee.

Now, you might be up against say over 1000 different businesses which also sell coffee online, so you would have a huge amount of competition, now when you think about this, those other businesses might have been investing in “SEO” for a very long period of time, that’s to say those companies might have been paying an “SEO agency” to improve their SEO for a very long period of time, so this simply means that your business that’s the business which sells coffee online, might have a huge amount of catching up to do, because the other businesses SEO might be very strong so in order to beat those businesses, your standard of SEO will have to be of a higher standard, so for the work to be of a higher standard, you might have a absolutely huge amount of organic SEO work to do.

What are SEO ranking factors?

So, what are “ranking factors”, well, quite simply put, it is widely thought by many different SEO companies, that there are over 200 different “ranking factors” and these are used by the algorithm to calculate how strong your businesses “SEO” is, now it’s not a case that all of the ranking factors are all worth the same, because quite simply put, a really good high-quality backlink is worth a huge amount more than say just a new “meta title” and “meta description” is worth, so the point we are trying to make here is, that some “ranking factors”, are worth a lot more than some others.

So, what you have to keep in mind is, whether you use a “digital marketing agency” which employs over 400 staff, or you use an SEO freelancer, that works from their home, the principles remain the same, and that is, the work must always be “white hat”.

What is content marketing?

So, what is content marketing, well you might have heard your marketing company talk about content marketing quite a lot that’s because it’s one of the most important parts of the organic SEO process.

So, for example it doesn’t matter if you run a business which is a transport business which runs say 1000 trucks or let’s say that you are a solicitor or you are a hairdresser, normally agencies will use content marketing in order to improve a businesses “organic SEO”.

However, this needs to be said, the work needs to be quality it needs to offer your customers something that they will want to read that they will find useful.

So, for example let’s say that you are a solicitor and your solicitors practice specialises in just one area of law and that is that you specialise in the area of law called family law and you specialise in the divorce process.

Now if you start to write really good articles that somebody who is going through the divorce process will want to read, and will want to find answers to the questions that they have then this will help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

Now, you might start to think well, how on earth would this help to improve my companies SEO, well quite simply put the more quality articles that your business writes the more your website can start to become an authority on the area of divorce.

So, let’s give you an example, let’s say that there are two divorce solicitors, one divorce solicitor has a really basic website, it just explains that the specialise in the area of divorce, and it might have a brief description of the divorce solicitors that work about practice and it might have another page which explains where the divorce solicitors are based, in a nutshell it’s just a really basic website.

However, there is another divorce solicitor, in the same area and they have a really good website, really high quality and they have invested a lot into really high-quality SEO.

There have hired a top-quality agency, that marketing company has put a lot of time and a huge amount of effort into writing articles that will interest somebody who is going through a divorce, and because of this, the website is now getting a lot of visitors, these visitors want to find answers to questions about the divorce process, so they are spending let’s say 20 minutes reading over the articles about the divorce process.

So, this means that this website has a really low “bounce rate”, however, when you compare this with the other divorce lawyers website, that is the business that has got a really basic website, while that’s website which is really basic have a really high bounce rate and that’s because people who are going through the divorce process are not finding answers to the questions that they have on that company’s website, so because that website has a super high bounce rate this means that it has weak SEO.

However, the other website has a low bounce rate and because it is writing really high-quality articles it has also managed to get a lot of good quality back links, and because these back links are really good quality.