Introduction

So many businesses think that when investing in organic SEO, all they need to do is pay a monthly fee, and then the business will start to appear for certain keywords.

So, for example, let’s say you run a dental practice, and you want to promote teeth straightening here in the U.K, so you partner with a white hat seo agency.

That agency can implement work that’s in order to improve where your business ranks organically.

Yet, this means that the seo company will need to work on strengthening your businesses “ranking signals”.

This means in order to beat your competitors, your business must have stronger ranking signals. Plus, your website must be deemed the most relevant for which keywords you wish to improve the businesses organic ranking for.

So for instance, lets say you are currently positioned 22nd for the term “teeth straightening” here in the U.K, well you have to Improve your website to the point that it is deemed better that the other 21 businesses before you.

So, as you can see investing in organic SEO doesn’t mean just investing money, and few clicks and suddenly your business is ranked higher.

No, instead the major search engines, such as Google are thought to take into account over 200 ranking signals.

And this means in order to beat your competitors, your website has to have stronger SEO. So how do you evaluate how good your competitors seo is? Well here’s how we do it.

Onsite SEO

Looking at your competitors onsite seo is where we start. Now a skilled SEO consultant is likely to consider many things when evaluating why a competitor is deemed to have stronger SEO, yet here’s some of the main things they are likely to consider.

Structure                      

Has your competitors websites got a logical layout? And is the website structured in such a way that it makes implementing SEO easier?

For example, let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice, and you offer many different services, such as offering employment law advice, family law advice and also advice over business disputes.

Now, if all of these services were described on one page on the website, well it would make it very hard to optimise the website for all these separate terms.

So, what a digital marketing agency may recommend is that the various services have their own page.

Then your SEO company is likely to evaluate your competitors, for example how have they split their services. Do they offer the same services as your business, if so does every service has its own page?

Have your competitors optimised their websites for services that your business offers, yet they have done this in a better way.

For example, some our competitors may just state they offer organic seo, yet other businesses may mention they offer link building, content marketing and local seo, so this may be deemed a better way of optimising the website, rather than grouping all the different services just under the banner of “organic seo”.

Internal links

Internal links can be really useful to a visitor on your website. For example, you may well be a divorce solicitor, and you may have just published a blog post on your website, where in that blog post you’ve mentioned that you offer a mediation service, now a reader may not know what “mediation” means, so you could use an internal link within your website, so that the reader can then click the link, and then find out what mediation means.

Internal links if implemented in a white hat way, can help your SEO.

So do look at how your competitors are using internal links, you may find that the main menu may have a list of pages that describe the businesses services, yet then internal links are used to take a reader to other pages, which describe that service in more detail.

So, for example, we may on our website that we offer “Local SEO”, yet on that page we may use an internal link to a page that’s dedicated to explaining how we build backlinks.

Therefore, internal links can be used to help visitors to your website to find out more about what your company can offer.

NAP

How have your competitors mentioned their NAP details on their websites? Have they mentioned the NAP information in the footer of the website, or has it been written in a large font on the contact us page?

White hat?

Are your competitors only using white hat seo methods? We would strongly recommend that your business only implements white hat seo.

If you do not know what white hat seo means, or whether your competitors are implementing white hat seo, then we would recommend that you work with a white hat seo agency.

Blog posts?

Are your competitors adding blog posts to their website on a regular basis? Are the blog posts high-quality, meaning that a lot of effort has been made to offer quality information, that will be really useful to the reader.

For example, let’s say the business in question is an electrical retailer, and they sell electric ovens.

Now somebody who is buying an electric oven may not know all there is know about electric ovens.

So, a blog post that explains what all the different options are, well this is likely to be deemed useful.

If its useful more people are likely to read it, which means that it can help to improve the businesses SEO.

Plus, if the work is really good, well other websites may link to the work. For example, a interior designs website may be talking about luxurious kitchens, and therefore may mention the website has a good place to find out all the different features that an electric oven can have.

Offsite SEO

Backlinks

Your seo agency should evaluate your competitors backlinks.

Can our business help?

If your business requires help with its seo, then why not call us?

 

Introduction

Each and every week countless SEO agencies publish articles about something that’s changed to white hat seo.

Whether that’s an update that’s occurred to Google’s algorithm, or that an seo business has a theory on how to get businesses onto the first page of Google.

However, we think that business owners often don’t want to have to piece together a million articles to try and get a sense of how seo is best implemented.

Instead we think businesses want a no-nonsense article that explains some of the factors that agencies use to get a website onto the first page of Google.

So, we thought you know what, let’s write a rather longwinded, yet informative article about what we think are some of the most important factors your business should consider when implementing white hat seo.

Let’s start right at the start, how good is your businesses website?

By how good is your businesses website, we don’t mean how much money have you spent on it, as that’s rather irrelevant.

We mean how good is it at doing its job? That’s because you can have spent a small fortune on your websites design, but if it has a sky-high bounce rate and doesn’t convert, well its about as much use as a chocolate tea-point.

From our experience some of the best websites we have ever seen are very simple.

 

So, here’s some the questions we ask ourselves when we are presented with a new website to work on:

·        Does each main service that the business offers, or group of products have its own page?

·        Does the website load quickly, or is it slow to load?

·        Is it content thin? Do the descriptions for each product lack detail?

·        Is the website easy to use, so which ever page I land on, can I quickly get to where I want to be?

·        Are there calls to action?

·        Does the website answer frequently asked questions?

·        Does the company publish blog posts?

 

And there’s so much more our seo consultants would consider, yet the questions above are ones your seo company should also consider.

What’s the user experience like?

So, let’s say your website sells luxury chocolates, so how does the website offer its products?

Does the website look cluttered? Or is there more of a minimalistic style? If there is a minimalistic style does the website offer enough information to allow someone to make a buying decision?

Does the business make is easy to buy products? And is there an FAQ section so that customers can find answers without having to e-mail the business?

These are just some of the considerations that our seo would be asking our clients.

 

Bounce rates

The bounce rate for a website is quite simply the percentage of visitors that have landed on your companies website, yet then decided to leave more or less straightaway.

So we always give this example to our clients, its kind of like launching a restaurant, and then people sticking their heads around the door, yet then leaving without purchasing anything.

This is where your marketing agency must work out what’s causing the high bounce rate, and is there anything you can do to reduce it?

Google’s RankBrain

Many digital marketing agencies think that RankBrain is being used by Google to monitor how engaged a visitor is with a website.

For example, does someone land on your chocolate website, and do they spend a great deal of time to look at what your business has to offer?

Or do they bounce straight off the website? Many believe that RankBrain is an AI programme that’s used by Google to work out which websites best answer a question.

Have you set-up your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts?

So many businesses embark on the SEO process, yet they do not set-up a Google Analytics or a Google Search Console account.

It takes mere minutes to set up a Google Analytics account, and its definitely worth doing as you will be able to obtain important data to help your businesses seo efforts.

For example, what’s the bounce rate for each page? How many visitors have the website obtained last week, last month or last year?

Google’s algorithm is always changing so make sure you keep up to date

Whoever is implementing your seo for your business, whether its yourself, a team of marketing experts or an seo agency, their knowledge must be up to date.

That’s to say an seo company may have been regarded as one of the best a few years back, yet if they do not keep their knowledge up to date, on how Google’s algorithm is changing, well its easy to implementing ineffective seo.

All seo efforts must always be white hat, as otherwise if white hat seo isn’t  implemented then your website may incur a penalty.

Put yourself in your customers shoes!

So much content marketing is produced just to try and improve where a business is ranked.

Now, you may say well that’s the whole point of content marketing, right?

Well wrong, as many leading seo companies now think that unless the work answers the question that it sets out to answer, and offers really useful information, well its not going to help your businesses seo.

So now instead of concentrating on seo factors, you must think how can we answer this question better than any of our competitors?

 

What are keywords?

Before your digital marketing agency embarks on implementing any seo, they should have a marketing strategy.

And a central part of that strategy should be which keywords your business is targeting.

For example, you may run an accountancy practice, well which sorts of customers do you want to attract?

Are they business owners that wish to obtain help with their self-assessment, or do you want to attract work from large businesses, that which for you to help them with an audit?

This needs to be thought out from the start, then once you know which customers you want to attract to the business, your seo agency should do keyword research.

This is obtaining an understanding of what people are typing or using voice search for in order to find businesses within that business sector.

So for example, if you want to attract businesses that need help with their VAT returns, people may well be searching “accountancy practices that specialise in VAT returns” – therefore this is the phrase that your seo company should be optimising your website for, in a white hat way.

All work must be high-quality (white hat)

Whatever seo work you are implementing or your seo company is working on, the work must be white hat.

Onsite SEO

Sometimes when a business is first investing in seo, sometimes that business will think that all that is needed to get the business onto first page of Google will be to optimise a few ranking signals.

However, there are in matter of fact over 200 ranking signals. Now for those that do not know what ranking signals are, these are simply the signals that are calculated by Google’s algorithm in order to work out how important that website is.

So, the websites that are ranked on the first page of Google, they will be the businesses that have the strongest ranking signals, yet also that website that is deemed the most relevant for that query.

 

How many pages does your website need?

Sometimes a business will have a website built, yet each main service will not have its own page.

So for example, lets think about a dental practices website, often they will offer many different services, such as teeth whitening and teeth straightening services.

Yet, if these services are all described on just one page, well it makes it a lot harder to implement the seo.

Often what an seo will advise, is that each main service that the business offers should have its own page.

This makes it much easier to optimise each page for different keywords. So for example, the seo company can optimise the “teeth whitening” page through using white hat methods, such as optimising:

·        Meta title and meta descriptions

·        Alt tag

·        Service description

·        Internal links

 

Product and service descriptions

This bit is really important, often when a website is designed, a website designer may copy product descriptions from another website, such the product manufactures website.

Yet, if your website has duplicated content, then this can mean your website incurs a penalty.

All work therefore should be unique to your website. If you do copy any work, then your website may incur a penalty, such as the Google Penguin update, which would most likely mean your website will drop in terms of where it ranks.

 

Meta titles and meta descriptions

Often when you get your new website back from the website designers it won’t have had the meta titles and meta descriptions added.

Yet, this is such a simple task to do, your seo should be able to add these to each page in a short amount of time.

With that said, meta titles and meta descriptions are really important. For those that do not know what this means, the meta titles and meta descriptions are simply a few lines of text that is used to describe that page.

This description then appears in the serps. So your seo agency should be aiming to improve your businesses CTR.

CTR stands for click through rate. So lets say your business sells mountain bikes, and you stock a particular brand of mountain bike that’s really popular, well you may mention that brand within the meta title or meta description.

Now, someone who’s looking through all the various businesses that offer mountain bikes, quite simply has loads of businesses to choose from.

So that’s to say even if your business gets onto the first page of Google, there will still be loads of other businesses. This means their will be businesses that have organic business listings and also PPC adds.

So its really important that that your business stands out, one way to do this is to write your meta title and meta description so that there’s a higher chance of people selecting your business.

This means if your business has a sale on, or you know a brand of bike that sells well, you may wish to mention this in the meta title and meta description.

 

What are alt tags?

Alt tags are simply a description that is added to pictures on your website. So let’s say for example you retail winter jackets, well you should add a description to each picture of each jacket.

So, for example, you may write the alt tag such as “winter jacket, olive green, large parker jacket”.

This can therefore help improve the onsite seo for that page, as its another clear message that this page sells olive green parker jackets.

 

Duplicate content

Here’s another top tip, do not use any duplicated content on your website. So, for example, let’s say you have a website designed, and your website designers have wanted to make the website look complete.

So instead of writing each product description, they may have copied and pasted the product description from the manufacturer’s website.

This will cause a duplication issue, which means your website could incur a penalty. A penalty, such as the Google Panda penalty can mean that your website drops in terms of where it ranks.

So just to be really clear, do not use any duplicated work on your website, and only use white hat methods.

 

So, what exactly is Schema?

Schema is a type of structured language, its used by seo agencies to mark-up important information on your website, such as the businesses NAP information.

So, for example, lets say you run a solicitors practice, well there’s most likely going to be loads of information on a solicitors website. So, using Schema allows the parts that are really important, like the NAP information to stand out, as this will be marked up using Schema.

Blog posts

Adding good quality blog posts to your website is a really important part of SEO. Yet, so many businesses and even seo companies get this part wrong.

That’s to say quite often businesses focus too much on trying to improve where the business ranks.

And now you might say, well that’s the whole point of SEO right? Well, not really no, as you should always aim to offer a good service to your customers first.

The reason for this is if you don’t put your customers first, the seo will most likely fail. It will fail because the bounce rate will increase, the level of conversions is likely to decrease.

So let’s say for example you retail bathroom products, such as claw legged Victorian baths, now if your business was to offer really good advice on how to replicate a Victorian looking bathroom, well then the business is likely to sell more items.

Yet, if the seo business that you’ve appointed uses rubbish seo methods, then this can mean that your businesses rankings go down.

A common mistake that so many businesses make is to write the keywords they want the business to rank for too much within the businesses content marketing.

So, for example, the seo company may keep writing “claw legged Victorian baths” too much, and Google’s algorithms will detect this.

The work could be then deemed as spam, and this could mean that the website incurs a penalty. 

 

Does your business have a mobile version of your website?

So many businesses have a mobile version of their website, so they think that is all that is needed to obtain more sales when people are looking at the website on smartphones and tablets.

Yet, your digital marketing agency should work with your business to optimise the mobile version of your website. That’s to say is the mobile version easy to use? Are the product descriptions easy to read? Is the website well designed? Or, does the mobile version of your businesses website have a high bounce rate?

Your SEO agency should be asking these questions.

What is content marketing?

An essential component when it comes to implementing a successful seo marketing strategy is to create content marketing.

Now content marketing can be used onsite, which often comes in the form of written work, or it can be used offsite.

The main purpose of using content marketing offsite would be to obtain a backlink, which is then directed at a page on your website.

However, here’s the thing the quality of content marketing can vary massively. For example, a digital marketing agency can create work which can help to improve where your business ranks, help to bring more visitors to your website, and sometimes even help to obtain more backlinks.

Yet, with that said, some seo agencies and business get their content marketing wrong, this is often due to them mentioning the same keywords too much.

So for example lets say you run a car dealership, well if your seo company was tasked with helping to sell a certain brand of car they would often use content marketing.

However, if say to the seo business, we want to appear on the first page of Google for “brand of car + the name of the city”.

Well, the marketing agency may then write “brand of car + the name of the city” too much into the content marketing. This is sometimes referred to as keyword stuffing, and this could mean that the business incurs a penalty.

So, as you can see, its really important that which ever marketing agency you choose, they must use white hat methods.

What does offsite SEO mean?

What exactly are backlinks?

Earlier on within this article we mentioned that there are over 200 ranking signals, and these signals are used to calculate how important your website is.

So for example, lets say you looking to purchase a new set of drums, so you may search for the brand of drums, and the model you wish to purchase.

Now there may well be thousands of companies up and down the country that sell those set of drums. So Google has to work out which business is best placed to answer your question.

And the business that has the strongest ranking signals will rank at the top. So, as you can see its really important that a business works on strengthening their ranking signals.

Now, what many seo companies believe is the most important type of ranking signal is backlinks.

So, often the businesses that rank at the top of Google will have the strongest backlinks.

If you don’t know what an external backlink is, well its quite simply a link from another website that is directed at your business’s website.

These links pay well be directed at a page on your website, or the homepage.

If the backlinks are of good quality, and are relevant to your business, then they can pass link juice.

That is if the backlink is do-follow. The more high-quality backlinks your website has the better.

So in a nutshell often the businesses that rank at the top of Google have really good quality backlinks.

Yet, the businesses that have low quality backlinks, well these are likely to incur a penalty.

Anchor text

Anchor text is quite simply the text that you click on in order to follow a link. So let’s say you are on a dentists website, and you are interested in getting your teeth whiter. So you see an article about teeth whitening, and click a link that states “click here to book an appointment”.

The line of text that states “click here to book an appointment” is the anchor text.

White hat SEO agency

We hope this guide has helped you to understand some of the methods that seo use to improve a businesses SEO.

If your business requires further help then why not give us a call?

Introduction

Back in April 2012 Google announced its latest update, the Google Penguin update. In a nutshell it was an update that would clampdown on websites that used low quality links.

As here’s the thing, SEO can fall squarely into one of two boxes, that’s the we want to do things properly group (white hat) and we want to cut corners group (black hat).

Now the group that likes to cut corners, well they are constantly scheming to come up with new ideas of how to fool Google’s algorithm. That’s to more or less try and fool Google into thinking the website is more important than it is.

However, trying to fool Google’s algorithm is not a wise move, Google is very good at detecting low quality seo and spam.

So if you do try and fool Google’s algorithm, well its more than likely going to result in your website dropping in terms of where it once ranked, or alternatively it may disappear from the SERP’s altogether.

This means Google has got very good at detecting businesses, or indeed SEO companies that try and circumvent the rules. And one such filter is called the “Google Penguin” updates.

 

Hmm, so how exactly does Google’s algorithm know which links are low quality?

If you run a business, or you own a digital marketing agency your focus should just be on earning good quality backlinks. And these backlinks should satisfy the following criteria:

·        Good quality

·        Relevant to your business

·        The anchor text should be optimised in a white hat way

·        You shouldn’t obtain too many links from just one source

·        You want as many good quality links that you can obtain, that are relevant and from as many different websites (that are good quality!)

So let’s say you retail sports cars, and you want your website to be more visible, so more people from around the world see your website, and the latest cars you have for sale.

Now, this is where you should obtain backlinks from other websites that are to do with cars. So a good example is a respected motoring magazine may have a website, they may publish an article about a classic car you have, and therefore you may be able to obtain a backlink.

This will be all well and good for your seo. What wouldn’t be a good idea is try and build a load of low quality backlinks, as this will result in your website incurring a penalty.

So, when some SEO businesses offer super cheap SEO, is this because their building rubbish links?

Well, regardless of what the marketing agency charges, it all does boil down to whether the work is of a good quality.

That’s to say even some of the swanky upmarket agencies may implement low quality seo. Yet, as a general rule, we would say if the agency is quoting you really cheap prices, well you do have to ask yourself, how on earth are they doing that?

Because here’s the thing, to implement really good quality seo, well this takes an awful lot of time and effort. So, if a business is offering their services for peanuts, they could be using automated methods.

Automated link building normally spells disaster. As links need to be built in a white hat way, so you cant hand this responsibility over to some code to start building backlinks for you, this will result in a link penalty.

So, in a nutshell, whether the agency charges a million pounds a month, or two hundred pounds a month to do your seo, you still have to check that the work is white hat.

A word to the wise, don’t use black hat seo methods!

Sure, organic seo is often a slow process, there’s no getting away from that fact. However the impatient among us may try and speed the process up with black hat seo, however this is never a good idea!

Black hat seo will result in your website incurring a penalty. A penalty can mean that your website drops, but also that it can take a very long time to recover from such a penalty.

Okay, it’s too late for all that, my website’s been hit by the Google Penguin penalty, what should we do?

Well, we would recommend looking at whether your current seo company are to blame, if so then you may wish to change agencies.

Next thing, obtain reliable advice from a respected white hat agency. Every single businesses backlinks are likely to be different, so an seo consultant will need to look at the backlinks, and work out which backlinks are spammy, and which ones are low quality.

In some cases the seo business may recommend disavowing backlinks, and a change of approach in terms of how the business is building backlinks. So in a nutshell, you need to obtain quality advice.

What exactly does it mean to disavow backlinks?

If a website has accumulated a load of low quality backlinks, then sometimes an agency or a business may deem it appropriate to disavow the backlinks. This basically means asking Google if they can disconnect the backlinks from the website, its then up to Google’s algorithm to take into account the disavow request.

However, a word to the wise, disavowing links should only be undertaken by an expert. The reason for this is if you disavow all links, or get the process wrong, well you really could make your website drop even more! So do consult with a white hat seo expert.

Why should my business be checking our backlinks?

Simply put if employ SEO consultants or you hire an seo company, they should be checking the health of your businesses backlinks on a regular basis.

The reason for this is rather simple, if your website accumulates a load of spam links, or just low quality links, then this could result in a link penalty, like the Penguin penalties.

So, if your marketing agency or your business spots this problem early on, the better you will be equipped to rectify any potential problems.