Introduction

So, you may have forked out a lot on having a website designed for your business, so you might expect that all of the onsite seo work will be completed?

Well, sometimes it’s not, that’s to say, occasionally even the basic onsite, such as a meta description, well that might not even be added your website.

So, if your company website is brand-new, then sometimes the seo agency will have to work their cotton socks off, to improve the onsite search engine optimisation.

Sometimes, a business that has never hired a seo company, well, you guessed it, the onsite search engine optimisation might still need a lot of work.

And once that’s done, is it time to stick your feet up and have a good rest?

Well nope, is the answer.

That’s because onsite seo, well it needs ongoing work, such as regularly adding content marketing, and internal links, and meta descriptions for example.

 

So, in this article we will cover:

–        What is a Title Tag?

–        What is a meta description?

–        What is alt text?

–        What is duplicate content?

–        What is a robots.txt file?

–        What is Schema.org structured data?

–        What is page speed?

–        What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

As the name suggests, on-site search engine optimisation is all about optimising your website to improve where your company ranks in the SERP’s.

This can be done through a variety of different seo methods, including optimising your website’s   content marketing, adding schema as well as making sure your website is responsive.

So, on-site search engine optimisation is a critical part of any SEO strategy, as it helps search engines understand what your website is about, how it can best be served to shoppers.

In this guide, our seo consultants will give you tips on how you can improve your businesses on-site SEO, from the basics through to advanced techniques.

 

 

Table of Contents:

 

 

– The Basics of on-site search engine optimisation

 

– how to optimise your website’s structure

 

– how to optimise your website’s content marketing

 

– Advanced On-Site SEO techniques

 

 

The Basics of On-Site SEO

 

 

So, on-site seo is the process of optimising your company website with the aim of improving where your business ranks on Google.

This can be done through a variety of different ways, including optimizing your website’s code, structure, and content marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

Internal linking

 

 

Another important aspect of on-site SEO is making sure pages are linked together, using internal links, so that each page can be crawled and indexed.

Your seo company should make sure that your website can be crawled and indexed, otherwise that page or the entire site won’t appear in Google.

 

A well-organized website, is much easier for search engines to crawl and index, and also helps users find the information they’re looking for more easily.

So for example, if you sell e-bikes, and you’ve written a long blog post, describing a long range battery that’s fitted to a new bicycle, why not like to the product page?

To optimise your company website, start by ensuring that all of your pages are properly linked together using internal links, yet only use white hat methods.

You can also then use an seo tool like Screaming Frog to audit your website’s structure and identify any issues.

 

 

Optimising your website’s content marketing

 

 

One of the most important parts of improving a business’s on-site SEO is to add high quality content marketing.

To optimise your content marketing, start by making sure all of the text on your website is unique, so it can’t be copied and pasted from another website, also the work should be high quality.

You can then use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to find additional relevant keywords to target.

Once you have a list of target keywords, incorporate them into your content marketing in a natural way, (use white hat methods of seo)

 

 

 

Advanced on-site SEO techniques

 

 

In addition to the basics of on-site search engine optimisation, there are a few advanced techniques that can also help you improve your rankings.

These include adding schema, markup, as well as optimising your website for longtail keywords.

 

Bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors which leave your website after seeing just one page.

 A high bounce rate might indicate that your company website isn’t delivering what people are looking for.

So for example you may sell luxury chocolate, and have a lot of organic visitors, but people may well be looking for fair trader, or organic, or chocolates to give as a gift, yet you might not offer this, so you have a high bounce rate.

 However, it’s worth noting that not all high bounce rates are negative.

For example, a product page with a high bounce rate but a low average time on page may mean that visitors are quickly finding what they’re looking for and don’t need to look any further. On the other hand, a blog post with a high bounce rate and a high average time on page may mean that visitors are engaged with the content marketing but aren’t finding any calls to action to keep them on the site.

 

 

There are a number of factors that can contribute to a high bounce rate, heres just some of them:

 

– Poor website design or navigation

 

– Slow loading pages

 

– pop-ups or intrusive advertising

 

 

If you’re seeing a high bounce rate on your website, there are a few things you can do to try and improve it:

 

– Make sure your website is well designed and easy to navigate

 

– Check that your pages are loading quickly

 

– Make sure your content marketing is relevant

 

– Remove any pop-ups or intrusive advertising

 

 

By taking these simple steps, you may start to improve your businesses bounce rate, and give visitors a better experience.

 

The Definition of Bounce Rate, according to Google

 

Sometimes improving a company’s bounce rate can be difficult, but it’s definitely worth the effort, here are a few suggestions for lowering your bounce rate:

 

 

– Make sure your site is fast and responsive. People will leave if they have to wait too long for your pages to load.

 

– Improve the quality of your content marketing. If people find what they’re looking for on your site, they’re less likely to bounce.

 

– Make it easy for people to navigate your site. A clean, well-organised design will help keep people from getting lost and frustrated.

 

– Pay attention to your calls to action. Your CTAs should be clear and concise, and they should be placed in strategic locations throughout your site.

 

– Use popups and other forms of intrusive advertising sparingly. Too many of these can be annoying and off-putting for visitors.

 

 

By following these tips, you may be able to lower your bounce rate and keep people engaged with your site. So don’t wait – get started today and see the difference it can make for your business!

 

How Is Bounce Rate Calculated?

Bounce rate is one of the most important metrics when it comes to measuring the success of your website. It is a measure of how often visitors to your site leave after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that people are coming to your site and leaving without taking any further action.

 

 

There are a number of factors that can affect your bounce rate, including the design of your website, the quality of your content marketing, and the overall user experience. If you have a very high bounce rate, it’s important to take a closer look at these factors and see what you can do to improve things.

 

 

One way to reduce your bounce rate is to make sure that your website is well designed in a way that makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. This means having a well-organised layout and clear navigation. If people can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they’re likely to leave your site.

 

 

Another important factor is the quality of your content marketing. If you have thin or very low-quality content marketing, people are going to be less likely to stick around.

Make sure that your content is well-written and informative, and provides value to your visitors.

 

 

Finally, the overall user experience of your company website is important. If people have to struggle to use your site or if has glitches, such as main menu not working correctly, they’re more likely to click away.

Pay attention to things like load times, broken links, and usability when trying to improve your bounce rate.

 

 

If you’re concerned about your website’s bounce rate, there are a few things you can do to improve it. By paying attention to the design, quality of your content marketing, and user experience, you can make sure that people stick around and take action on your site.

Why Is the Bounce Rate so Important?

 

 

The bounce rate is a very important seo metric which you should track, that’s simply because it helps you as the business owner, or the seo agency to understand how well your website or blog is working at keeping shoppers interested in your products or services which your selling.

A high bounce rate indicates that people are leaving your site without visiting with any other content marketing, which means they’re not finding what they’re looking for. A low bounce rate, on the other hand, suggests that people are engaged with your site and sticking around to read or watch more.

 

 

There are a number of different factors that can contribute to a high bounce rate, such as confusing navigation, slow loading times, or irrelevant content marketing. If you’re seeing a high bounce rate, it’s important to take a closer look at your website and see what might be turning shoppers away.

 

 

 

Your bounce rate is just one seo metric to track when it comes to seo performance, but it’s an important one. By keeping an eye on your bounce rate and making seo improvements where needed, you can ensure that people are stick around to see what your business has to offer.

Introduction

It really doesn’t matter if your sole-trader business, that’s to say, a plumber who’s just starting up his / her own company or instead, on the other hand you might own a chain of stores across the U.K and employ hundreds, if not thousands of staff, you might want to use Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Because each tool that’s provided by Google has so many different uses, we are going to in this article concentrate on Google Search Console. Our seo consultants find this tool so useful they use it every-single-day, its essential to our agencies work, and as such, we thought we would dedicate a whole blog post to explaining why you may also find Google Search Console useful for your business.

So, what is Google Search Console?

Well, it’s a reliable tool offered by Google that provides you with a wide range of data, for example the data can range from “average position” data, so this will tell you where a keyword or a phrase rank on average for your business.

So, let’s say your business sells furniture online, you might want to track where you rank for “3-piece sofas”- you can use Google Search Console for this, that’s if your websites optimised for that term, so presuming you rank somewhere in the index for this term, so for example, as you improve your seo, you might want to check for example, if you’ve moved from position 33 to position 29 for example, or if you’ve gone the other way, and your site has moved to say position 50!

Yet, there’s so many more uses for this Google tool, that’s to say, you can see the number of impressions a keyword has, so for example, for “3-piece sofas” let’s say for example on average there’s say 5000 searches for that every day, so if you sell sofas, that’s obviously going to be one your seo company focuses in on.

Theres other really important stats too, for example number of “clicks” and also links to your site, so you can see, that if you run a company, and that company has a website, then you’re going to want to have a Google Search Console account.

Does your agency use this tool?

We most definitely do, yes, on a daily basis we use the “Performance Tab” to check where our clients websites rank in Google’s index. So, for example, we might have written a rather long piece of evergreen content marketing, we might have used the Google Search Console account, to make sure the written work gets indexed, then we will monitor to see if for a keyword, this improves, and we will also use Google Analytics to see the number of organic visitors to that piece of work, what the bounce rate is, also the average time spent reading it, we might then use other seo tools as well, to see if that piece of white hat, high-quality work, if its attracted any top-quality, do-follow backlinks, so that we can report this back to our customer.

Why would you need this if you already have SEO tools?

It’s true, there’s quite literally thousands of seo tools out there, some are used for SEO in a general sense, some just monitor incoming backlinks, others are used to send your social media advertisements when you want, that’s at a time or date that your specify, there’s a lot of different companies to choose from.

However, here at our agency, we use Google Search Console because its from Google, and because this is the search engine that our customers most often want to optimise their company website for, to improve the companies seo, well, we therefore use Google Analytics, and Google Search Console as the data is reliable and we think that these tools are very useful.

For example, at our agency, our seo consultants use the performance tab on a daily basis, that’s to check “average position” data, and to see incoming backlinks, and to also use the tool to see how we are improving our customers seo each month.

So, whether we are working on a really large e-commerce website, that’s selling, for example bathroom items, or we are working for a law practice, that has a lot of solicitors, we use Google Search Console because it simply offers data our SEO agency needs in order to see how well we are improving our customers seo.

The Performance tab, and why this is useful

Okay, so as mentioned, the Google Search Console tool has loads of different functions, however here at our agency, whether it’s a Monday morning, or a Friday afternoon, there’s a function that we use throughout the working week, that is the “Performance tab” its so useful, for example, our seo experts will check:

-Number of impressions

-Average position

-Total clicks

All of this information is in the dashboard, so with one glance, all of this information can be seen by the seo consultant.

Total Clicks, number of impressions, average position

Backlinks

Okay, so apart from the Performance tab, what does our agency use this seo tool for?

Well, our team uses the tool to see incoming backlinks, so for example, lets say we are working for a business in Wales, that retails luxury coffee, lets say this is not your normal coffee, its won taste awards, its ethically sourced, its organic, so needless to say with some PR effort, it gets positive thumbs up from food bloggers, newspapers, and also from cooking websites, and as any good seo agencies would do, we need to capitalise on this, by making sure that from these top quality websites, we get do-follow, quality backlinks, and yes, we use Google Search Console to see if we are earning these links, so that’s the other main use of this seo tool.

The manual action, and why you definitely be checking this

You most definitely do not want, a  Google Manual Action, you also don’t want any type of Google algorithmic penalty neither, as you can get these from doing SEO wrong, so this is why, a business should check its Google Search Console, to see if it does have any manual actions.

URL inspection and why this is sometimes used to speeds up indexing

Okay, so from time to time, we also use this feature, its true, if you have a website that’s ranked high on Google, then Googlebot will “crawl and index” the work- what does that even mean?

Well, think of Googlebot kind of like you would a hawk, now a hawk doesn’t miss much does it? It spots something, it then sweeps down to have a look.

Well, Googlebot is the same, it follows “backlinks” and also internal links, to make sure its “index” is kept up to date, and you may well be thinking well, what is an index? Well, an index is Google’s list of websites, pages, and blog posts.

Now, if you’ve just added a new piece of written work, that’s just finished 10 minutes ago, well, Google isn’t likely to know you’ve just clicked the “publish” button, and walked off to get yourself a well-deserved cup of coffee, nope, that’s because it hasn’t been indexed yet, that’s to say Googlebot hasn’t indexed the work, and used Google’s algorithm to work out how good the work is.

So, well your stood next to the coffee machine, waiting for your latte, the work wont have been indexed, and therefore wont be in Google’s index, so in order to help Googlebot, what some seo agencies do, ours included, is to sometimes help to speed up the indexing, that’s to say, we can log into a customers Google Search Console account, and manually enter the URL, so yes, you guessed it, we can help to speed up the time it takes to index the work.

Meta title:

Meta description:

Introduction

 

Let’s say that you’ve had a company website for donkey’s years, and let’s say that you run a pizza restaurant, it’s a popular business in Cardiff, based in the Cardiff Bay area. Yet now management have made a decision, you now want to expand, you want to deliver authentic Italian wood-fired pizza’s all over the great city of Cardiff, Wales, but how do you spread the word that your business is now delivering its pizza’s within Cardiff?

Well, as you will know, there’s so many different ways to advertise a business, print, online, radio- but what about SEO?

 

What about investing in search engine optimisation?

 

Well, this is where we come in, so if you are busy, with a cup of coffee, and you’ve been on Google looking for local SEO agencies, here in Cardiff Wales, well, why not pick up the dog and bone, that’s phone, and call us here at Tree Top?

 

Here at Tree Top we have years of SEO experience, we therefore have highly-experienced SEO consultant’s right here at our well-regarded SEO agency. So, if you do come into meet us, well, our SEO experts are bound to mention “content marketing”- but what is content marketing?

 

Well, you’ve come to the right company, that’s because our SEO team will now explain what “content marketing” is, and why so many businesses, here in the ultra-busy city of Cardiff, Wales hire us to implement organic SEO.

 

In this article we will talk about:

 

-What is content marketing?

-Why must the work be white hat?

-What is Google’s WebMaster Guidelines, and why should my agency follow the rules?

-Does your business write content marketing

-Why our copywriters work for many businesses in Cardiff

-What is Google’s RankBrain

-Why your business should have a Google Analytics account

-Why your agency should monitor your business bounce rate

-Why each piece of written work should be well-written and have a high word count

-Why every single aspect of the work should be white hat

-What are internal backlinks?

-What are meta titles and meta descriptions?

-What is Alt-text?

-Why must my work have a high word count?

-Why we should avoid “duplication”

-What are Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines?

-What is local SEO?

-How does Google’s algorithm decipher if the work is white hat or not?

-Why you need a quality SEO company like ours

-Why do so many businesses here in Cardiff hire Tree Top?

 

Okay, so it doesn’t matter if you run a really large multinational business, or you run a small business, and you are a sole trader- if your business is to improve its organic or it’s local SEO during 2021, then often you will need content marketing.

 

Content marketing is often therefore just written text, like what you are reading right here, however if the work is high-quality and if it is useful to your customers, then this can help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, for example, let’s say that you run a website which sells car parts, and you sell high-quality engine oils, if you write a blog post, with which explains a new type of engine oil, why it is so high-quality and which engines it is best suited for, then this might be a good read by people who are interested in car parts for that model car and who are interested in high-performance cars, and therefore they might read the blog post about this new engine oil, and they might make a purchase from you.

 

Now, there are so many SEO companies out there, that just write rubbish content, for example, let’s say that you run a solicitors practice, and the copywriter that works for the SEO agency might not have a clue about your business, or the various services that your business offers.

 

So, if they are tasked with writing say four blog posts every month, at 500 words each, so in total roughly around 2000 odd words, if the content marketing is not that helpful to your customers, then this means that your business is likely to incur a massive and sky-high bounce rate, which is not good your businesses SEO.

 

So, quite simply put, the written work needs to be very high-quality, in that it needs to be written by somebody that understands your business, or at least spent a great deal of time making sure that they research what they are writing about, so that the work is really good quality, and it is “white hat”.

 

So, what we are getting at is, if you are hiring an seo agency which is writing content which is not that helpful to your customers, then this could actually damage your companies SEO, what instead needs to happen is your marketing company needs to understand your business, and the questions that your customers often ask- they then need to answer these questions as well as they possibly can.

 

So, for example, let’s say that you are a mechanic and your garage specialises in fixing car brakes, exhausts and batteries, now, there are likely to be hundreds of other garages in the city that also offer the same services, so your website needs to be high-quality, it needs to offer helpful advice, for example, you might advise drivers on when they should get there car’s engine oil changed, or that your business offers a free exhaust checks, a free battery check, a free brake check.

 

Now, by advertising this, and also explaining why your garage also offers such a good service, and why drivers should go to your garage to get their car batteries, brakes, exhausts replaced, is likely to improve the company’s organic SEO if it is good quality seo work.

 

 

 

What is content marketing?

 

So what is content marketing?

 

While quite simply put it is often just written text, however the written text needs to be useful and white hat, so, for example if you are a solicitor that specialises in divorce, you might want to write articles explaining the divorce process, now, if this work is really useful, it is likely to have a really low bounce rate, and if the work has a low bounce rate, and it obtains really good high-quality backlinks, and backlinks are good quality they can really help to improve your businesses SEO,

 

so by offering a bit of free advice, say on the divorce process, what you are doing is offering free advice, that may mean high-quality websites might link to that work, and if the links are really good quality (White hat) then this can really help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

However, we must stress the point that the work must be high quality!

 

Why it’s important to regularly update your website, with high-quality “white hat” content marketing

 

Now there’s no point in investing in SEO to get your company onto the first page, and then stop paying an SEO business, and then the business starts to drop back down, obviously a business wants to stay on the first page for as long as possible, as if they get on the first page, for the right words, for example if you are divorce solicitor, you will want to be on the first page for “divorce solicitor” plus the name of the city, in which your solicitors practice, is based.

 

Therefore you should hire a high-quality agency, which can offer high-quality work, on a regular basis and this often means adding new blog posts to your company website.

 

Why you should we hire an agency that employs copywriters?

 

We would recommend hiring an agency that employees copywriters, as often copywriters will be needed to write the blog posts for your website, for example it doesn’t matter if you sell aluminium ladders or your business sells classic cars, often blog post will need to be written and sometimes these are long articles which are sometimes say 4000 words, which obviously take a huge amount of time to write.

 

Therefore you should hire a digital marketing agency which hires copywriters to write the blog posts, but the blog posts must be high quality and they must be white hat.

 

For example let’s say that you sell aluminium ladders, you may want a 4000 word article written which explains why your aluminium ladders are high quality and also what they are used for, for example you might have roofing ladders, and you might sell 10 different types of roofing ladders, you might explain different features that the aluminium roofing ladders have, for example the different safety features that they have.

 

 

 

Why the work must be useful

 

The work must be useful, for example there is no point in hiring a local SEO company and they write blog posts which your customers do not find useful. So for example let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and your divorce solicitors practice is based in a capital city and there are over 200 other lawyers in the city so you need to invest in top quality white hat SEO.

 

Yet there’s no point in hiring an agency which just offers cheap low quality work, for example they might write 400 words about how to cope while going through the divorce process, yet if them for hundred words are not useful to somebody who is going through a divorce then the work is likely to have a very high bounce rate, if the work has a really high bounce rate then this simply means that it won’t help the divorce solicitors practice to improve their organic SEO and it could actually damage the business so what needs to happen is you need to hire a company which offers high quality work and they can sustain that level of quality throughout the contract that you have with, it is therefore very important to note, that whichever agency will freelancer that you hire that they offer quality work with the quality is sustained throughout the time that they are improving your businesses SEO.

 

 

 

 

 

Why the agency must work hard to reduce your businesses bounce rate

 

So let’s say that you are a producer and you produce TV programmes obviously you want to keep your audience engaged in the program so that you can make money from adverts during the added brakes.

 

Now, you must take the same mindset when you are hiring SEO agencies, that’s because, if you hire the wrong seo agency, and they make the businesses “bounce rate” increase, this simply means that the website is losing your customers interest, therefore they are spending a lot shorter period of time on your company website.

 

So what we mean by this is if the bounce rate increases this simply means that more people are leaving your website, therefore a 80% bounce rate simply means that 80% of your visitors are leaving that page not visiting another page, so for example let’s say that you sell men’s shoes, and the bounce rate has increased on the homepage to 90%, this simply means that 90% of the visitors to the homepage of your shoe website have left the website without visiting another page.

 

Because you are not selling any shoes on your homepage, this means 90% of the customers are leaving the homepage without making a purchase, so obviously you are going to task your agency to lower the bounce rate, and therefore SEO company should work hard to lower your businesses bounce rate stop

 

Why it’s far better to have quality content marketing then to aim for quantity

 

So, when you are hiring a company, you should’s think that because they are offering you quantity that this is better, so what do we mean by this well let’s say that one agency says able to write for blog posts a month, but the other agency says able to write to, you might think well the agency there is offering more surely this offers better value for money?

 

But we would argue differently because it depends on the quality of the work, for example if you’re writing for blog posts but these are not very good, but not well written and they don’t offer any useful advice then these are quite simply a waste of time and it could actually damage your companies organic SEO.

 

However on the other hand if you hire an agency that only write to blog posts but these blog posts are absent quality, they offer useful advice and your customers will want to read them and quality like this is far better than opting for quantity, because if the bounce rate is too high then this will damage your businesses SEO.

 

Why does the algorithm only reward high-quality content marketing

 

Here’s the thing, let’s say that you are a electrician, in your city there are likely to be hundreds of other electricians, yet a lot of these electricians will want to also be on the first page- as then they can get more commercial and domestic work, so they might hire an “online marketing agency”- yet, if the seo work that they produce is not good quality, then the business might not stand any chance whatsoever of getting on the first page for terms to do with being a electrician and getting commercial and domestic work.

 

So what instead is needed is top quality SEO work, so in terms of the written work be in top quality you need to think of the questions that your customers are likely to ask you, for example you might want to explain the average cost of having a house rewired, you might want to talk about why it’s important to keep your fuse box modern and to make sure that it is checked by a qualified electrician, you might want to talk about why it’s important to have a rewire of a house on a regular basis you might want to talk about why it’s important to hire a commercial electrician who can install a electric supply to a large factory who has a huge amount of experience in doing this, therefore you are advertising your business you are adding written work which your customers will find helpful.

 

 

 

Why your business now faces more competition never

 

What you have to keep in mind is that a number of years ago it might have been relatively easy and straightforward to get your company onto the first page.

 

So, what do we mean by this?

 

Let’s say that you run a business and you run a construction company in a town, now a number of years back it might have been straightforward for the companies get your construction business onto the first page, yet now there might be say over 100 businesses that are investing in top quality SEO and therefore the standard of SEO to beat is now so much higher.

 

So, what do we mean by this?

 

Well, before you might have only needed 10 quality backlinks, yet now the businesses that are on the first page now have over 100 good quality backlinks.

 

So, what does this mean for your business?

 

Well, quite simply put some business owners think that organic SEO is like PPC, however, it is completely different from PPC, in that with organic SEO it can take a very long time sometimes to get a company onto the first page, for example, let’s say that you are a solicitors practice, it might takeover year for any agency get a business onto the first page.

 

So what you’re trying to say is this, is that with organic SEO it can take a long time to generate SEO results, that’s why it has to be considered totally different from PPC.

 

Why your content marketing should only be written by an expert

 

Here’s a really important point, that is when you are having blog posts and you are having content marketing added to your company website the work must be high quality and it should be written by an expert.

 

Now why did we say it should be written by an expert?

 

Well quite simply put let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and somebody is looking for some advice regarding their divorce, if they can’t find the answer straightaway the are likely to leave your company website, this therefore means that the bounce rate is increasing, if the bounce rate is really high your divorce solicitors website then this simply means that this will damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, this is why the work should be written by an expert, for example the copywriters at the agencies should ask the divorce solicitors questions so that they make sure that they are adding relevant facts to the written work, so that when somebody is looking for a answer to a question regarding a divorce, that they get accurate and helpful advice, and this means that they are likely to spend longer on the divorce solicitors website, they are likely to read more blog posts, they may even call the business to get more advice about the divorce process.

 

So what we are trying to say is this the work should be written by an expert, the copywriters at the SEO agency should readily called the business to see what facts they can add to the written work.

 

For example, if you sell electric bikes, let’s say, the marketing agency wants to write a detailed article about the top 10 bestselling electric bikes that you sell, then obviously the agency should call the electric bike business and they should make sure that they got relevant facts about electric bikes, so that they can include this in the article, so when somebody is looking to buy a brand new electric bike, they can read the article and they find it really interesting read, and therefore this can help to improve your businesses SEO and it might mean that person even buys the electric bike from your business, as it is obvious that you have given a lot of advice about electric bikes, so somebody can make an informed decision, about which bike is best for them.

 

Why the work must be white hat

 

The work must be white hat, it’s not just the written work the must be white hat every single aspect of the SEO must be white hat from the meta titles right through to the anchor text right through to the businesses back links every single aspect of the SEO must always be white hat, so whether you employ a freelancer works from home or you employ an agency that has 100 different stats such as back link builders, SEO managers, content marketing managers and whether they employ a vast amount of people, the principles still remain the same and that is that the SEO work must always be white hat and high quality.

 

Why is content marketing so important?

 

Without it some businesses might never reach the first page of Google, so what we basically mean is that let’s say that you run a divorce solicitors practice, or you run a construction business or your dentist, it is very unlikely for any business to get onto the first page, in a capital city, that’s unless it has invested in high-quality content marketing, whether that be high-quality “evergreen content marketing” or it is blog posts.

 

So, content marketing is very important to the organic SEO process, it’s also not a process that is a “one-off” and then that’s it, what we mean is, its not just a matter writing the evergreen content marketing, no, often high-quality content marketing, needs to be added to the blog section of the website every single month.

 

So, how does our SEO agency believe that content marketing has changed in 2021?

 

So we think that in 2021 it’s important to write blog posts for your company website which a high quality, for example used to be the case that you could write an article that the say 400 words, however now the text normally needs to be a lot longer needs to normally be a minimum of 2000 words yet the information should be useful.

 

So instead of thinking about improving your SEO, what you really need to think about is how can we possibly offer the best possible advice to our customers, so doesn’t matter if you sell bikes or you are a solicitor there is always questions that your customers will most likely have about your products or your services.

 

So for example if you sell bikes people might want to know the best electric bike to purchase for a certain amount of money, if you are a divorce solicitor then there is obviously going to be hundreds of different questions that people have when they go through the divorce process, so what you should aim to do is offer the best possible advice, you should aim to offer advice that is better than your direct competitors, for example let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor you should aim to offer better advice than the other divorce solicitors this way your website is likely to have a much lower bounce rate, and it might attract high quality links which could really improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, to answer the question, how do we think content marketing should be written in 2021, we would say that the work should be high-quality and it also should be white hat.

 

What is semantic SEO?

 

So what is semantic SEO, well this is a relatively new term that various SEO companies have started using, however it’s a really interesting area of SCO, it basically means that you can improve your businesses content marketing by making the work detailed and talking about entities.

 

So what do we even mean by this, let’s say that you sell high-value classic cars, and you ask SEO companies to provide quotes in order to improve your businesses organic SEO but on a global level.

 

Now the SEO companies might start to write blog posts about certain brands of car, for example you might sell very rare classic cars, so the marketing agency might talk about the model car a bit of a history about the car example you might have taken part in a really high profile race, so therefore the brand of the car would be an entity the race would be an entity and also you might talk about a famous driver that might have driven a car so the driver would be an entity.

 

So what are entities, what basically entities are things of importance that they can range from an event, to a product through to a person, is basically something that is important and it has facts about that entity, for example a racing driver will have facts that are known about the racing driver, for example the racing drivers achievements, how old they are, what races they take party, and what car manufacturers they represented when they were racing, so it is widely thought that was semantic SEO it’s a good idea to talk about entities and then by talking about these entities because they are all interconnected it becomes much clearer what that text is about.

 

So, if you are talking about a rare and high value classic car, you might mention the racing drivers name, the races that he has taken part in, and the brand of the car, it therefore becomes obvious that you are talking about racing cars and the automotive industry.

 

So entities can be used so that the algorithm understands what the article is about, in that it is talking about the automotive industry, and obviously as your marketing agency starts to add more articles which are talking about the automotive industry this then sends a clear signal to the algorithm that your business sells products or services that are to do with the automotive industry, therefore improving your SEO for automotive industry related terms, the more you start to talk about a certain brand of car using white hat SEO you can start to improve the businesses SEO.

 

What is organic SEO?

 

So what is organic SEO, well if you want your business to appear on the first page you can pay for pay per click, or you can pay an agency to improve your organic SEO or you can appear in the local business listings, now let’s say that you run an Italian restaurant, you obviously wanted to come up in the local business listings you may also want it to come up in the paper click and the organic results as well.

 

However, a lot of business owners simply want to appear only in the organic business results, now for this to happen, normally you will need the help of an SEO company and you must acknowledge that with organic seo it is not a fast process, in that you are not going to see results overnight, and for some businesses it might take many months, and sometimes for some companies, it might even take many years to see results.

 

Yet, with that said when you get your business onto the first page you may receive a lot more enquiries and a lot more sales this is why so many businesses want to get on the first page, but what you have to be aware of his to things that is the work must be white hat otherwise you could incur a penalty and the other thing is that you want to be on the first page for important words and phrases, for example if you run an Italian restaurant you wannabe on the first page for an Italian restaurant plus the name of the city or the town in which the restaurant is based, you don’t want to be on the first page for fine dining Italian restaurants plus the name of the city because less people are going to search for that, which means that you are likely to get less sales and enquiries because less people are looking for that search string.

 

 

Introduction

Google rolls out a lot of algorithm updates every single year- that’s to say Google is constantly working on improving it’s algorithm.

However, as many business owners have heard of the “Google Panda updates”, and the “Google Penguin updates” many businesses have now grown fearful of these updates, thinking that when Google rolls out these algorithm updates, a lot of businesses will move down the ranks, or some businesses may well be totally removed?

However, here’s the thing, Google only rewards quality

And what do we mean by this?

Well, this is simple, if a marketing agency or your business implements high-quality SEO work, which is sometimes referred to as “white hat” SEO, then your business is less likely to be hit by a penalty.

It’s the businesses that have cut corners, or the mass of agencies that have offered low-quality services, and also made promises that cant be delivered that will often get hit by a penalty.

And what do we mean by that?

Well, there’s now so many marketing agencies out there, so some will tell a new customer what they want to hear, such as “we can get you on the first page of Google within weeks”- yet this is often not possible.

Or sometimes it might be that the other respected SEO companies have stated that it may take between 6 and 12 months for the business to get onto the first page of Google- yet, one business then promises to do the same, but in under 3 months, and some businesses will not have a clue about SEO, so they go with the agency that makes false promises?

And what do we mean by false promises?

Well, if white hat work is to be delivered, and this means quality work, well, this will often take many days of work every single month, so naturally some businesses will try and cut corners, and these are often the businesses that get penalised when an algorithm update gets rolled out.

But here’s the thing, we think, and so do so many other companies, that the January 2020 update that Google rolled out wasn’t a penalty, that’s to say it wasn’t like the Google Penguin update that penalised websites that had rubbish quality backlinks.

No, we think that the new algorithm updates are now focusing more on quality, i.e the work may not be deemed as though it needs a penalty, such as the Penguin updates, but it may still be low-quality that its not very useful, so therefore it needs to be lowered in terms of where the business ranks.

And what do we mean by this?

Well, let’s say your business sells waxes, and paint repair kits to owners of classic cars, so these owners of these cars will obviously want a high-quality product.

Now, one business may have hired a marketing agency that’s not that good at what they do, so they have written content marketing, its okay, it doesn’t offer much useful information, and then the marketing company has put “classic car wax” and also “paint repair kits for classic cars” in places like the meta titles, meta descriptions, all pretty standard SEO.

However, business number two has instead opted for a well-known, and much respected seo company, rather like us.

And they have pulled out all the stops, the business has generated content marketing that could be considered better than what all the other businesses have invested in.

There’s detailed blog posts which explain how to repair paint chips, cracking of the paint and even how to remove dents from door panels on the car.

The work receives many readers to the company’s blog, the work is mentioned on classic car websites, many links are earnt.

Now, which business do you think would be less likely to be impacted by the January 2020 update?

Well, that’s really obvious, obviously the business that has invested in top quality seo will be less likely to be impacted.

So, what’s our recommendation?

Well, only invest in quality seo.

January 13th

If you were wondering when the date was when a lot of businesses reported that their rankings had changed, well, it was on January 13th, that’s according to Moz’s MozCast.

So do these algorithm changes happen a lot?

Well, yes, they do, however some are more important than others, for example there have been hundreds if not thousands of algorithm changes, however some stick out as being much more important than others, such as the Google Panda update, and the Google Hummingbird update.

Why you should use Google Search Console, formerly called “Web Master Tools”

Is your business currently using WebMaster Tools? Or Search Console as it’s now known?

Nope?

Well, why on earth not, its free and it offers some great data that you should find very useful, for example, with Google Search Console you can set a date, say yesterday and see where your website ranked, this is called “average position”.

So for example, after a major update, such as the January 2020 update, you may wish to check if your website moved up or down?

 

As you might expect, it’s a question that every digital marketing agency here within Cardiff will be asked on a regular basis- that’s to say we will be asked, “how does SEO work?”.

Yet with that said- this is a question that requires a very detailed answer, so often it can’t be answered with just one or two sentences, in matter of fact, we think that this whole blog post is needed just to cover some of the basics.

So, without further ado, here’s how organic SEO works:

Question or Query

Google will want to offer you the best answer it can to any question that it get’s asked, so in order for your business to be ranked on the first page of Google, your business must offer the best answer to that query.

So, let’s break this down a little bit more, it doesn’t matter if you sell skis for a break in the Alps, or luxury cars, if you want your business to appear on the first page of Google, these are the components that your website will need to have:

 

·        Relevant– must be relevant to the query

·        Quality– the website must be optimised using white hat seo

·        Best ranking signals- for a business to be ranked on the first page, that website must have the strongest ranking signals, so for example if you’re the 10th strongest, you will rank 10th  for that query i.e “pizza restaurant near me”.

·        There are over 200 ranking factors that Google’s algorithm will use to take into account how strong your businesses seo is

·        If the seo is not white hat, then your business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty  

So, whether the query is “find me a local employment solicitor” or “show me local pizza delivery business”– your business should aim to be the most relevant and best at answering that query- and how will an SEO agency do this?

Well, its not one thing, its over 200, that’s because most SEO consultants now believe that there are over 200 ranking signals, which means that there’s over 200 ways that an agency could improve your website.

Here are some of the ranking factors that most SEO agencies consider to be important:

·        High-quality backlinks

·        High-quality content marketing

·        Relevant

·        EAT- Expertise, authoritative, trustworthiness  

Google’s Algorithm

Crawling and Indexing

One of the first things your marketing agency must do is to consider can your website be crawled and indexed?

And what does that mean?

Googlebot

Well, sometimes something called the “No-index” tab can be left on, or the web developer may have written code which sometimes stops GoogleBot from crawling and indexing the website, sometimes this can be for one page, or sometimes it can be for an entire website.

And what does this mean?

Well, if a “No-index” or a “do not index” code was added to a website, this means that the website will not show-up in Google’s results, so this obviously this won’t help your SEO agency that’s trying to improve your businesses seo.

So, for example you may have a website that sells men’s clothing for example, and you may hire a digital marketing company to help you sell more mens shoes.

Yet, with that said, if the mens shoes section of your website cannot be indexed, for example, there’s a no-index tab that’s left on, then this will mean that the website is unlikely to appear in Google’s results for mens shoes, so the web developer should remove the code or switch the no-index tab off.

So, one of the first checks that your seo company here in Cardiff should do, is to make sure that GoogleBot can crawl and index your website.

Then the agency may start work on improving your organic seo, and as we said at the start of this article, there are over 200+ signals, so often there’s a lot of work for your agency to be getting on with.

 

Design

Why is the design of your website important?

Well, let’s say that you need a new pair of running shoes, and you find a website, and it has say over 2000 pairs of running trainers for sale, yet sorting through these shoes well, that’s hard work, right?

And why is this such hard work?

Well quite simply because you cannot sort these running trainers by colour, by size or trainers that are in stock, or even by brand, and guess what happens?

The bounce rate for that website is very high.

 

What does “bounce rate” mean?

Well, simply put it’s the percentage of visitors that do not go on another page on your website, so for example, they see that you sell 2000 pairs of running trainers, but then notice that there’s no way of sorting these trainers, so what do they do?

Well they leave, and this means that the algorithm may spot that your business is no longer that relevant for “running trainers” and may take your business from say the 3rd spot, to say the 6th.

Onsite SEO

Your SEO agency should make sure that your businesses onsite seo is done correctly, and why do we say this?

Well, onsite seo is like what a steering wheel is to a car, its essential, so there’s no point in building loads of high-quality backlinks, that’s if your website developer or seo consultant have not got the onsite seo sorted.

So what does onsite seo mean?

Well, there’s loads of ways you can improve your company’s onsite seo, such as fixing your businesses meta titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, anchor text, H1-H6 titles, plus also improving your websites design.

Offsite SEO

Again, there are many way’s you can improve your company’s offsite seo, such as building backlinks, and also building business citations.

So, for example, you could write an article, have this published on a newspaper’s website, such as The Sunday Times, and you could obtain a backlink, and because the backlink is high-quality, this will help to improve your businesses seo.

If Google’s algorithm was to spot that your business has hundreds or thousands of really good quality backlinks, and these backlinks are relevant to your business, then this is likely to greatly improve your company’s seo.

However, the backlinks must be quality, plus they must be relevant to your company.

So for example if you run a business that sells classic cars, there’s no point in getting backlinks from your golf club, as these backlinks are not relevant, you will want backlinks from a automotive website.

Content Marketing

So, what does content marketing even mean?

Well, let’s say that you run a solicitor’s practice, and your solicitors are regularly getting asked the same questions over and over again, so your marketing agency could then write a blog post that answers these commonly asked questions.

And why would this help your business, why would you give away free advice?

Well, because your business if it improves its seo to a good standard where your business is deemed as the best business to answer questions say to do with employment law locally, your business could be ranked number one.

So, when someone is looking for an “employment solicitor in name of city” your business could be ranked number one.

If you were to ask most digital marketing agencies what is one of the most important parts of SEO, they would normally say content marketing, as its very hard to improve a business’s seo without content marketing.

Link Building

If you want to get your business onto page one of Google, then often your business will need high-quality backlinks.

And what do we mean by high-quality?

Well, lets say that your business sells performance cars, you might write a car review for a widely respected automotive magazines website, this website is a brand that’s well known, plus the information about cars, the reviews of various cars, and also the website is good quality, so this is the type of website that you should look to get a link from if you are a car dealer.

Bounce rates, time on site and improving the design of your website

It’s really important that your seo agency works on lowering your company’s bounce rate, improves time on site and also uses split testing or A/B testing to improve the design of your website.

 

Introduction

No matter what type of business you run, whether you run a construction business, or a car insurance company, a lot of businesses these days invest in white hat seo.

An important part of the SEO process is to write content marketing, yet with that said, a lot of businesses here in Cardiff will not know what content marketing is, or it how it could help their business.

What does content marketing mean?

Often content marketing is a written blog post, or page like this blog post. However, what determines if the content marketing will help your business or not, is if the work is of high-quality.

And what determines if the work is high-quality? Well, often it’s the reader, as they will dictate if your business has a high bounce rate for example.

Yet it’s also the algorithms, so for instance, let’s say you run a business that specialises in selling classic cars.

Now, your classic car business wants to be on the first page of Google, that’s when someone is looking for a certain make and model of classic car, to help you to do this, you hire an SEO company.

Now if the work is good quality, your business is likely to draw in more readers, if the business draws in more readers, it may obtain more links, and if the SEO improves your website will rank higher.

How do you ensure your content marketing is good quality?

We ensure that our work is good quality in following ways:

White hat

All of our SEO work is always white hat.

Expert

We go to great lengths to understand your business.

Backlinks

If the content marketing is of high-quality, then this increases the chances of your business obtaining backlinks.

For example, lets say that you run a bike shop, and your business starts to sell electric bikes, well if you write blog posts which help people to understand which electric bike would be best for them, then if the work is useful, then its likely to obtain backlinks.

Not written to try and improve a business’s SEO

Here’s the fact that some SEO companies do forget, that is that the agency should just focus on improving the businesses SEO when writing content marketing, that’s because if the work is just focused on SEO, then its likely to not be deemed useful to a reader.

For example, let’s say you are a manufacturer of washing machines, now if you write a 500 word article, yet you mention “washing machine” over and over again, in way that does not read naturally, well this could end up damaging your businesses SEO.

The reason is your readers are likely to leave the website, as the work does not offer useful information.

However on the other hand, if you write an article that offers advice on what all the different features of the washing machine are, and what benefits the features of washing machine can offer, well, this is much more likely going to improve your SEO.

 

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.

 

Introduction

It’s been a while since Google first rolled out their Panda update back in 2011, yet this important update still impacts many websites today.

So, all that commotion surrounding this update may have died down a bit, but its still super important that both seo agencies, and clients alike understand what the Panda update is about.

The reason being is when your equipped with some understanding how this update works, you will have a better understanding of how to implement white hat seo.

It’s safe to say the days of optimising a website just for seo gain are now over, now websites should aim to be the best service by optimising the website in a white hat way.

So, SEO has radically changed, and that’s thanks to the Panda.

 

Which websites did the Panda update particularly target?

If a business had low quality seo implemented, then that business may have been impacted by Panda.

These are the websites that were most often impacted

 

Content thin

Ever landed on a company’s website and been unimpressed by the lack of information? Perhaps for example you wanted to purchase a new pair of shoes, and the only information on the shoes were which size you would like to purchase.

Instead you wanted to know if the shoes were leather, a bit more about the brand for example. Well websites with little in the way of information could be deemed as being “content thin”.

This is a sign that the website may well be low quality, as what is often needed is unique descriptions for each product.

 

Spammy

Often when a business invests in super cheap seo, there’s a reason for why the seo is so cheap, often it’s because the work is spammy or black hat.

Black hat seo will mean the website will incur a penalty. Spammy seo, that is just low quality seo which can also result in a penalty.

For example, you may well be looking to find an accountant in your local city, so “accountant + city name” may just get placed in the content too much.

Also, the meta title, meta description, alt text may well have “accountant + city” placed in every bit,  and us seo’s call this “keyword stuffing”- it’s a really poor seo tactic, one likely to mean the business will incur a penalty.

That is just one example of seo work that could be deemed as spammy, there are many more.

 

Duplicated content

If a website was to have duplicated content, then this can adversely affect the businesses rankings.

White hat seo dictates that all content should be original to that website, this means if you are retailer, it doesn’t make sense to copy and paste product descriptions that may be provided by the manufacturer’s website.

The Panda update is improving and sophisticated

It’s worth mentioning that the Panda algorithm update wasn’t something that was created, and then forgotten about.

Most seo agencies believe that the Google Panda update will be updated on a regular basis.

These regular updates of the Google Panda update will be to help Google weed out low quality websites, and as new rubbish seo methods are introduced to try and fool the algorithm, well you guessed in Google is likely to be one step ahead.

So how should our business be creating content marketing?

We believe you have to think of the following three factors when creating quality content marketing:

 

Relevant

We believe your content marketing should be relevant to your business. Now this may sound pretty obvious, but in matter of fact many businesses do not make their content relevant.

Sure, the content may be relevant in the sense that its about the business, but is it relevant to what the business offers as a service or product?

Let us give you an example, say you run a family law practice, and you specialise in the area of divorce.

Now what would you deem a better seo strategy, articles about how you’ve attended an awards ceremony and recap on what the business has been up to, or articles more focused on answering divorce related questions?

Well we think the latter, sure a few articles on what the business has been up to is okay, yet if you lose sight of offering information that really helps your customers, well the seo strategy is likely to fail.

So, you need to instead offer really good quality advice to your customers.

 

High-quality

All seo work must be high quality. By high-quality we mean white hat.

 

Detailed

You often see it on some company websites that they have invested in seo, but sometimes it may be a bit of a rubbish effort that is made by the marketing agency.

For example, they may add blog posts, but the word count may be on the low side. So, with just a few lines of text they just offer some company update, but in reality, it wont be of much use to in terms of improving the businesses seo.

So, we believe if your going to answer a common questions that your customers may have, well you have to push the boat out.

So here’s what we think your content marketing efforts should include:

 

·        Answer the question in sufficient depth, if the blog post needs to be over 2000 to answer the question then so be it

·        Offer quality not quantity

·        Link to where you have found the information, so basically cite your sources

·        Make it interesting, for example the blog post may contain all the relevant facts, but is it at the cost of sending the reader to sleep?

·        Make it white hat

·        Don’t copy other people’s work

·        Use titles, alt tags, meta titles and meta descriptions

·        Write or create content marketing that will be useful, don’t just focus on trying to improve your businesses seo

Google’s set of questions

Search Engine Land published an interesting article that is well worth a read, regarding the Google Panda update.

 

Quality

As already mentioned, focus on quality. All seo work should be white hat.

 

Must answer the question

Sometimes some digital marketing agencies have been focused on creating content marketing that is just written to a meet a word count.

Yet, as you can imagine often the information isn’t very useful. So, what you end up with is often 500 words of rabbling without offering any useful information.

This is often the type of content marketing that annoys customers. For example, say you were a bathroom retailer, and you published an article advising on how to fit a new shower enclosure.

Well, if the article just promoted various shower enclosures, and didn’t really offer any DIY advice, well as you would guess the reader is going to feel as though you have just wasted their time.

This means that they are likely to leave the website, and not visit anymore information that the website has to offer. Often the reader will quickly pick-up that the page is marketing gibberish, and leave the website, which means the website will incur a higher bounce rate.

Most digital marketing agencies, including ours, believe that a sky-high bounce rate can mean that some websites will see their rankings decrease. The reason for this is that it’s a clear sign that the website doesn’t answer the persons question.

White hat agency

If your business needs help with its SEO, then why not give us a ring?

 

 

 

Cost

 

How much do your SEO services cost?

There will be some SEO companies that offer fixed prices for organic and local seo, and these prices are mentioned on their website.

This can sometimes give a rough idea as to what the business might expect to pay.

However, every industry sector is different, so in some regards fixed price packages are almost a waste of time.

The reason that fixed price packages are often a waste of time is due to the fact that the level of work needed is dictated by your competitors.

This means if you have competitors have already set the SEO standard very high, well this will then have to be exceeded by your business, that’s if you wish for your business to rank higher.

So, as you can see, a local insurance broker calling an seo company to purchase a £250.00 per month seo package, to get the business ranked for the term “car insurance companies”- well that’s likely to be a total waste of money for that insurance company.

That’s because there will be many insurance companies that will have already be investing in seo, and investing millions insuring that their businesses rank on the first page. So, the local car insurance companies marketing budget is likely to be a drop in the ocean.

So this may sound a bit defeatist, but its important to be realistic when investing in seo, as too many seo agencies grab a clients money, make false promises, and then leave the business in question disappointed.

So, what you really have to look for is an seo agency that offers you the best value for money. This means you need to partner with a white hat seo company that informs you about what you can realistically achieve with your marketing budget.

This means we set our seo prices depending on how strong your competitors are. Some seo companies don’t do this, they offer a low price to try and secure a company’s business, however often this wont offer the amount of work needed for you to beat your competitors.

Often it will only get the business to rank for “longtail keywords” – which offer a lower amount of visitors, and are not as effective.

So our seo prices vary, they typically vary between £250.00 being our lowest price, and then we offer prices which can go up to £2000.00+ per month. For an exact quote, why not e-mail us today.

We can often offer your business a quote after a short period of time.

 

How long will we have to pay for?

If your looking to invest in organic SEO or local SEO, this means that you should be aware that its an ongoing process. This means that often a monthly investment is needed.

This is not to say you cant cancel at anytime with us, because you can, but its worth bearing in mind that organic seo often needs a monthly investment.

Now obviously from a businesses perspective you may well be thinking well, why do we have to pay monthly?

Why can’t we pay a one-off payment and your seo company gets our business to the top of Google?

Well, there are two very good reasons for this, number one your website is compared with your competitors, so as soon as your competitors seo is deemed better than your business they will overtake your business in a flash.

Meaning even when a business gets onto the first page of Google, its not guaranteed to stay there for any length of time, that’s because a competitor may overtake the website in a flash.

So this is why organic seo is an ongoing process.

As you can imagine there will always be a new group of companies wanting to take your space.

Also, our digital marketing agency doesn’t recommend that loads of SEO gets implemented in a one off hit of seo, and then nothing added for months after.

The reason being is Google’s algorithms will be looking for spam, and a website having no seo added to the site, then a massive amount of seo all in one go, well, it this seo work may well be deemed as spam, which could actually damage where your website ranks and not improve the seo.

 

Why can’t we just pay a one-off fee and you get our business to the top?

It’s probably one of the most common questions that we get asked, and its perfectly understandable why a business would want to pay a one-off fee and then get a cast-iron guarantee that the business gets to the first page of Google- however we don’t recommend this, and neither do we offer this.

The reason that we don’t offer this service is your business is in constant competition with your competitors. So this means that you may well have competitors that have been investing in seo for many years.

This means to bring you level with a competitors seo will often take a considerable amount of work.

But then what’s to say a competitor improves there seo, which most do on a monthly basis, so soon enough your website will start to drop back down.

But here’s the main reason we don’t offer seo in one off hits, and why so many other seo companies do not neither.

That’s because a website that hasn’t had any or little seo, which then has massive amounts of seo added in one hit, well this can look spammy.

It can therefore trigger the algorithms attention, for example why were so many backlinks built that month?

Or, why were so many blog posts added all at once?

The work could therefore possibly be deemed as spam, as it don’t look normal to have no seo added for years, then a massive amount of seo in say the space of a few months.

So this is why we don’t offer this service, as it could mean a website drops down the ranks, and not goes up the ranks.

This is because Google, and the other search engines are very cautious when it comes to spam, anything that looks like spam may well be subjected to a penalty.

For example a Google Panda penalty or a Google Penguin penalty.

So what’s the solution?

Well we would highly recommend that your seo work is drip-fed, and by this we mean slowly implemented every month by a white hat seo company.

 

Why is organic SEO an ongoing process?

Organic SEO is not a one-off process. This means that a business shouldn’t expect to pay an seo agency to get them to the top and then stop investing.

The reason is your business is in constant competition with other websites, so as soon as a competitor is deemed to have stronger seo, well that website will move up.

What often happens when a business stops investing is the competition will improve their seo, then they overtake a bunch of businesses, so it then becomes harder to overtake that business.

So a lot of seo agencies, including ours do not offer stop, start seo. Instead its better to keep chipping away at improving a website, and in doing so you can improve your businesses seo to a standard it makes it harder for competitors to overtake the business.

However, with that said, sometimes a business will simply spend so much money on seo that they leapfrog the competition, and therefore it often boils down to how much of a marketing budget the business has and how good the seo agency is that they have employed.

But one thing for sure, more often than not, if a business stops paying then often they are overtaken by their direct competitors.

 

Why do we have to pay each month?

Your competitors will often be working on getting their business onto the first page of Google, therefore all of the businesses on the first page of Google are all battling to either retain or improve where they are.

This means that there will always be other companies that want to take your position, or reach the top.

So this is why most businesses pay every month, that’s so an seo agency can keep working on the businesses seo and keep improving the businesses seo so that the website can constantly be striving to beat the competition.

Sometimes some businesses will face companies that have enormous marketing budgets, so sometimes its simply not possible to hold off such competition.

Yet to stop investing altogether, well as website will often keep going down the ranks, that’s while other businesses with better seo take your place.

So this is why businesses normally pay per month for seo. 

 

How does your SEO company know what to charge?

Our monthly fee is based on an assessment of how strong your competitor’s SEO is. For example if you have many competitors that have many good quality backlinks, coupled to good onsite SEO then we will know a rough idea of how much work is needed.

However it is also based on the current level of performance of your website, for example if we are taking over from another agency, and the seo that they have implemented is of a good quality, then this can reduce the amount of work that we need to do.

You may well be thinking, well why would you be taking over from an agency that was doing a good job- well sometimes this is due to the agency putting their prices up, so often businesses then shop around for a better quote.

However, our monthly fee is dependent on how strong your competitor’s SEO is. For example, if its apparent that some of your competitors are investing a lot of time every month on improving their SEO, then this will influence the quote that offer to customers.

 

Cancellation

 

Can we cancel at any time?

With our SEO agency yes you can, however some businesses do tie companies in to 12 month contracts.

So, if you want more flexibility in terms of being able to cancel when you want, well we can offer this.

 

Guarantees

Do you guarantee results?

From a customer’s perspective it seems reasonable that if you pay for something, that the business in question must then guarantee results.

However, many leading seo agencies do not guarantee results, and our seo agency does not either, but there’s a good reason for that.

That is when it comes to investing in organic it boils down to how much time a business can dedicate to the seo work.

There may well be a group of competitors, or a new-start-up business that will have a truly massive marketing budget, meaning that some businesses will not be able to compete.

This means a business with a £250.00 per month budget often cant compete with a company which has hired a well respected seo agency and is spending £10,000.00 per month.

However, there’s another reason that we don’t and many other businesses do not guarantee results, and that’s because it also boils down to how long has a business invested for?

For example, some of your direct competitors may have been investing in organic seo for say the last 8 years, so a business just starting to invest cannot realistically expect to make serious inroads into beating their competitors in just say the first month.

However, this is often not the facts that most seo companies want to draw your attention to right at the very start. Instead they often want to get your signature on a long contract, then they may start to get you quick results through what are called “longtail keywords” which can sometimes mean your website will be on the first page of Google, but for terms that nobody searches for, so are pretty much useless.

However, the businesses that know a bit more about SEO, well they know it is a slow process, and you have to partner with the best minds you can find to improve the site, that’s even if they don’t offer quick results.

So we don’t guarantee results, and that’s because your businesses place in the pecking order is often dependent on the time your seo agency can spend working on your businesses SEO. Plus you do have to factor in how long have your competitors been investing for?

If it looks like quite a while, that’s because they have say 1000 good quality backlinks, well often there’s much catching up to do, and this takes time. So the agencies that promise the earth, and guarantee that they will get you to the first page of Google in few months, well its down to you as the business to work out how genuine those claims are.

This is also not factoring in another thing that you should consider, that is the businesses that do guarantee results, well, sometimes they are not interested in doing any hard work, they want to cheat the algorithms into thinking your businesses SEO is better than it is, this can then cause a penalty.

A penalty, such as a Google Penguin or Panda penalty can sometimes take a long time to recover from, in the meantime your website may not be on Google, and if it is well it may have dropped significantly to say the 11th page of Google.

So often the agencies that promise the earth, for very little money, well the old saying does start to ring true- you do get what you pay for!

How long will it take to get my website onto the first page of Google?

This is solely dependant on your competitors. For example, if your business is up against businesses that have invested in seo, and have done so for a long time then the process will be much slower.

Some seo agencies don’t point this out at the very start, they are just eager to get your money, however we are different.

So imagine your competitors websites like you would a wall, well if your competitors have been building their walls for a long time, well that wall is going to be hard to scale.

This is why it sometimes takes many months, even years to catch up with the competition. Of course we can give an estimation in terms of timescales when you contact us, however its worth bearing this in mind, that is if your competitors have been investing in white hat seo for many years, well it can therefore take sometimes a long time to catch up with the competition.

This is not too deter you from investing, however its important to be realistic, as sometimes some agencies will be willing to make bold claims which can not later be backed up with following through.

You really do therefore have to work hard in terms of finding an seo agency that’s honest, and that has seo consultants that have up to date seo knowledge. As often when a business does get onto the first page this means that your businesses SEO agency will be competing with what are likely to be other businesses that have employed skilled seo companies.

So therefore just as your business is improving your seo, so will your competitors. This is why organic seo is an ongoing process. How long it take to get your business onto the first page is dependent on how good your competitors seo is, and how long they have been investing for.

 

Quality

How do we know the quality of the SEO work will be good?

Most businesses that invest in SEO these days rightly are worried about the quality of the SEO work they will receive.

For example, a website that pays for seo, yet the seo is low-quality may receive a penalty. For example, a Google Penguin penalty can mean that a website drops and sometimes some businesses are removed altogether from Google.

So its really crucial that the quality of the work is good. At our seo agency we will only ever offer white hat seo work, which means that we only ever offer quality work.

Google’s algorithm will reward good quality white hat work, so this is the only type of seo that our business offers.

Why should businesses that are about to invest SEO know about the Google Panda and Penguin updates?

There are so many seo agencies that compete on price, and sometimes the prices are so low that the seo agency then cuts corners. Now don’t get us wrong, it doesn’t mean that low prices automatically means that the business will receive low quality seo, that’s because some agencies have charged high prices that still provided low quality seo to their clients.

However, what’s important to remember is this, that is regardless of how much the seo cost, if the work is low-quality the business could incur a penalty. Google penalties are often given many different names, such as the Google Penguin or Google Panda penalties for example.

These penalties can mean that the websites rankings drop, plus sometimes a penalty can mean that a website is removed from Google, or the other search engines altogether.

So, its important for businesses to know that low quality seo can sometimes mean that the business will incur a penalty.

Its important to know that also many businesses have then subsequently turned to other seo companies in order to rectify the problems caused by the previous seo agency. This means that the business may then pay a lot of money to correct the problems with the businesses seo.

 

Organic

What is organic SEO?

Let’s say you are looking to purchase a new coffee machine online, and let’s say you are using Google to help you locate your perfect coffee machine.

Well normally the results for the coffee machines will be like this, PPC adds at the top, then if your looking to purchase locally you may have some local business results (Google My Business). Then underneath those businesses, you will normally have roughly ten organic business listings.

Now this means that the majority of the page will be taken up by organic business listings, so this is why so many businesses want to be on the first page of Google within the organic business listings.

That’s because organic business listings are the bulk of the results, but also because if your business is ranked higher up the page, in the first business position well its likely to get more clicks.

So organic seo is the process of improving your businesses seo so that your business climbs up the organic business results.

A lot of companies therefore pay an SEO agency, like us to help improve where there business ranks.

Normally seo companies charge a set monthly fee. We charge our clients per month, and we determine the price on how strong your competitors are, meaning we assess how much work is needed to beat your competitors seo.

 

How is this any different from say PPC?

PPC is totally different, with PPC you set your budget, and which keywords you want to rank for. As long as you pay the fee your website can appear in the PPC adds.

However, with organic SEO you don’t pay Google for your website to rank, instead you may wish to partner with an seo agency like us, this is so we can improve your businesses seo so that your business ranks higher.

Most seo companies, including us charge per month for the time we spend improving your businesses seo.

 

Is organic seo a fast process?

The truth is no, often it is not a fast process at all. This is what can deter a lot of businesses from investing.

The reason that so many businesses do not invest is because of the amount of work that is often needed for that company to catch up with their competitors seo.

For example, you may have a direct competitor that has invested in organic seo every month for say the last 8 years. This means that the businesses seo is likely to be very strong and therefore a lot of work would need to be implemented to overtake that business.

So this means that the business with the strong seo, well that business may have say 1000 good quality links. And this alone may take some other companies many years to catch-up with that number of good quality backlinks.

So as you can see, organic seo is not often a fast process, however, for the businesses that do succeed and do partner with the right seo companies, well often organic seo can offer their business a big competitive advantage.

However, the business must invest in white hat seo, and must partner with a white hat seo company.

Why do some agencies charge low prices and some charge very high prices?

A lot of business owners can get confused as to why the quotes that are offered by marketing agencies vary so much. That’s to say one company may quote £250.00 for local seo, while another seo agency may quote £2000.00- so why is there so much of a difference.

Well, as you can imagine there can loads of different reasons why the quotes offered by different seo companies vary so much.

However with that said, you do have to figure out whether one agency is offering white hat work, and perhaps another agency isn’t.

White hat seo, which is often referred to as quality seo means that the agency should be implementing seo the correct way. However, some agencies say that they are offering white hat seo, when in matter of fact they are not.

However, with that said, sometimes the really cheap quotes can be offered because the agency is cutting corners. For example the marketing agency may well be using automated link building, which is most definitely not recommend, as this form of seo could lead to a penalty.

Having said that often cheap seo is offered because there’s not actually much work that an actual seo consultant is doing. That’s to say the company may well be cutting corners, so often this is why prices can vary so massively.

 

Why should the organic seo work be white hat?

We strongly recommend that you only invest in white hat seo. However, some agencies say they are offering white hat work when the work is not white hat.

White hat simply means that the marketing agency is using the correct ways to implement seo, they are not therefore cutting corners.

However, as mentioned a bit earlier, sometimes an agency will make promises which are false, such as work is white hat, when it sometimes not.

 

Local

What is local seo?

Whether you run a local pizza take-away shop or an accountancy practice, its most likely that your business could benefit from investing in local seo.

Local seo is the term that’s used to describe work that can get your business listed in the Google My Business results, and the organic business listings.

So for example, your pizza take away shop will most likely want to be ranked at the top of Google for “local pizza take-away shops”.

Now if your seo agency correctly implements your businesses seo, so for example they build good quality backlinks, they improve your businesses NAP information by building business citations, well your website stands a better chance of ranking higher.

However, its also more than likely that there will be other businesses in the area that also want to rank high on Google. So, this means that often they will be employing an seo company to improve their seo, let’s say by adding blog posts each month, so this is often why so many businesses hire an seo company.

 

Why do most businesses invest in both organic and local seo?

Let’s say for example you run a local solicitors practice, and your solicitors practice specialises in the area of divorce.

So when someone searches for “divorce solicitors near me”- your business would obviously like to appear on the map and within the Google My Business results. However, where there was once on average seven businesses ranked here, now there are normally only three businesses.

This now means that many businesses don’t just invest in local seo, but also organic seo as well.

The organic business results take up the majority of the page, that’s to say when looking for a divorce solicitor you may well be presented with 10 organic business results, so it therefore makes sense to aim to get the business to rank within the local business results, and the organic business results.

 

How much does local seo cost?

How much local SEO costs is dependent on how much competition your business is up against.

For example, let’s say you run a dental practice, yet there may be 20 other dentists that are also investing in seo.

So this may mean that most of the dentists have been investing in SEO for a very long time, let’s say for example for the last 8 years.

This means that over the 8 years these businesses have improved their seo, this now means that their seo is very strong.

This therefore means that a business that’s just starting to invest in SEO, will have to catch up with these businesses, and catching up is just the first part, then the business has to have better seo if it is to rank higher than these other businesses.

So, this means that often there will be a lot of seo work needed, such as building links, and this is what dictates how much the monthly cost for SEO will be.

So for example, for a business that doesn’t have much competition, let’s say a local pet shop, well it may well be so that the business may only need £250.00 pound spent on the businesses seo with us, however if the business is a solicitors practice, and the competition have very strong seo then the monthly cost may well be £2000.00 plus per month.

 

Why should the work be white hat?

We only ever recommend investing in white hat seo. If you do not know what white hat seo let us explain.

White hat seo basically means that the business is implementing seo correctly, however here’s the thing, some business state that their work is white hat, when in matter of fact it is not.

This is why you really do have to think carefully about which seo company you choose, as your business only wants to be investing in the best quality work.

If your business does not, and you invest in seo which is low-quality, well the business may incur a penalty.

For example many businesses have received a Google Penguin or Google Panda penalty and this is because the business has used low quality seo.

So often one of the signs that the seo work will be low quality is if the marketing agency is offering the work at a really low price, as realistically how much quality work can be offered for a low amount of money?

But its not just the agencies that offer low prices, sometimes the agencies that charge high prices  may implement rubbish seo. So, you really do have to pick a company that offers quality work.

 

SEO

What does link building mean?

One of the main reasons that some businesses are ranked on the first page of Google is because they have good quality backlinks.

For example, let’s say you’re you run an architects practice, and you have links from construction businesses, your business may have 100 good quality backlinks.

So this is often the reason for why one business will be on the first page of Google and other architects may well be on page 11 of Google.

However, some backlinks can help to improve your businesses seo, because they are good quality and relevant to your business, yet other types of backlinks, such as low quality backlinks could damage your businesses seo.

For example, so many businesses falsely believe that the more backlinks their business obtains the better, that’s regardless of quality- however this is not true.

Its really important that you only obtain good quality backlinks, and we can help your business to build backlinks.

However, its also important to know that building backlinks are only one part of the seo process, that’s to say seo agencies like us normally work on improving many different areas of the businesses seo.

In matter of fact there are over 200 ways that an seo company could improve a businesses seo, that’s  because there are over 200 ranking signals.

So often a digital marketing agency like ours will quote to improve many different areas of the businesses seo each month.

What does content marketing mean?

Content marketing is another really important part of the seo process. Many businesses think that content marketing is just merely written words, like the text you would read on a blog post.

And it is true that most content marketing is written text, however it could also be a YouTube video for example. Or perhaps the business uses a combination of YouTube and written text.

Sometimes some businesses think that by adding a few blog posts to their website that the seo will improve.

However, it’s the same as building backlinks, that’s to say if the quality is really good, then this can help the businesses seo. However, with that said, if the work is low quality, for example it doesn’t really answer the question, well this could be deemed low quality seo, and could therefore actually damage the businesses seo.

It could damage the businesses seo because the website may incur a higher bounce rate, that’s if a lot of the content marketing work is deemed not good quality. Also, the work may not be created in a white hat way, so this means that for example the author may have mentioned certain words that they want to improve the businesses seo for too much.

So for example, let’s say you run a dental practice, and you want to attract more customers who want their teeth made whiter, well, you may mention teeth whitening too many times.

That’s to say for someone reading the work, it may seem odd that you keep mentioning “teeth whitening” too many times in the article, well Google’s algorithm may detect that you keep mentioning this phrase too much also, so much so that work may well be deemed as spam.

This means that the business may incur a penalty, such as a Google Panda penalty.

So what is content marketing?

Well, it mostly is written text, however the quality must be really good, and by that we mean that each article should be:

·        Written by an expert on the subject

·        We always think that blog posts should be over 500 words

·        Written in a white hat way, so no adding keywords repeatedly

·        Should be well researched, so if you do mention someone else’s work, then we would recommend adding an outbound backlink

·        Should be checked for spelling mistakes

·        Must follow white hat rules

 

Reporting

How will I know if my businesses SEO is improving?

We simply send an seo report every single month you invest in organic seo with us. And some marketing agencies send seo reports which are simply full of marketing jargon and complicated graphs.

We think that some seo companies use such reports to try and pull the wool over their clients eyes.

That’s to say if the website’s seo hasn’t improved too much, well they will have so many seo metrics that they just focus on the one which has improved.

However our seo company is different, we focus on the really important figures, such as how many organic visitors has the website received?

 

Also what’s the bounce rate like, is it high?

Also we will look at what are the best performing keywords, for example, if you run a solicitors practice and you specialise in divorce, well is your website ranking for divorce related terms?

So our reports focus on the really important parts of improving a businesses seo. The marketing jargon we do not add, this way a business owner, or indeed an internal marketing team can see straightaway how the business is improving, in terms of its seo, and therefore we offer seo reports which make it clear to see how your organic seo is improving.

 

What does your agency use to track SEO improvements?

We use a number of different seo tools, we use different tools to spot new backlinks that have been built. But which tools we use is dependent on the client, for example if we are working for a large business, that sells a lot of products we use different tools for that client than we would for some other businesses.

We therefore use a number of seo tools, we also use Google Analytics and we also use Google Search Console.

 

We therefore monitor the following:

Bounce rates

If a website has a really high bounce rate, well its often up to the website designers and the seo agency to figure out why this is so.

A high bounce rate means that a lot of people are visiting your company website, then leaving more or less straightaway.

So, for example, let’s say you run a restaurant, its kind of like 90 out of the 100 customers popping their head around the door, but then leaving. That’s of course if the bounce rate is 90%.

So basically the higher the bounce rate, the more people that are leaving your website straight away.

Some businesses think that this only matters for e-commerce businesses, i.e businesses that sell items online. However, its not just e-commerce businesses, its also websites that sell services as well.

For example, let’s say you run an accountancy practice, and your website has a bounce rate of 90% and one of your direct competitors, their bounce rate is 10%.

Well, business number two, that’s the business with the 10% bounce rate well that’s obviously keeping people on the website for longer. The algorithms are therefore likely to determine that this website best answers the question, as otherwise why would a visitor bounce off the website, its most likely because it didn’t answer the persons question.

This is why seo companies, and website designers often spend considerable amounts of time trying to reduce a businesses bounce rate.

Sometimes this can be achieved relatively easily, for example a homepage with just 2 lines of text, well why not add more information, why not make it 30 lines of text that is likely to be useful to your customers?

However often its more complicated, such as is your website easy to navigate, for example if you sell a lot of items such as clothing, and your brown shoes are not selling very well, is that because its hard to find the section of your website that sells brown shoes?

Is it because your website doesn’t allow clothing to be sorted into what the customer wants? So as you can see often an seo agency and a website design company will need to work together to improve a businesses bounce rate.

 

Number of organic visitors

Obviously if you run a shop you want more customers to come into your shop, well the same can be said about your website.

However, even though you want more visitors, and for these visitors to find your business through your organic business listings, you want customers that are likely to purchase something.

Or if not purchase something, get in touch with your business and request more information on what your business offers.

This comes down to the skill of the seo company, as its relatively easy to get the number of organic  visitors to increase, but the seo agency has to ask are these visitors buying anything.

So what we mean by this is say you run a solicitors practice, and you specialise in the area of divorce.

And your seo company adds a number of blog posts, these blog posts talk about high-profile celebrity divorces.

Well, these blog posts are likely to attract readers interested in that couples divorce, yet are the blog posts attracting readers who will then contact the solicitors practice and pay for divorce advice- probably not is the answer.

So your seo agency has to implement seo, but always be aiming to attract the right customers, customers who are likely to buy something.

 

Time spent on your website

This point is similar to your businesses bounce rate, that is you don’t want most of your businesses visitors leaving your website straightaway.

Instead you want them to shop around, and purchase something. So, in order to work out if your business is attracting the right visitors, one way is measure the average time spent on your businesses website.

For example, is the average visitor spending 30 seconds on your website, or are they spending 6 mins and 30 secs?

Obviously the longer the better, as they are more likely to be shopping around, and more likely to purchase from the business. If the visitor is leaving more or less straight away, well why is that? it obviously shows that what the business is not offering what the customer wants.

Perhaps it’s the price of items, or perhaps its because each product lacks a detailed product description? So your seo agency has to think about this.

 

Number of backlinks

Your seo company should be checking your businesses backlinks, that’s in terms of how many backlinks your company has, also whether or not the backlinks are quality or not.

Your seo agency should check that the backlinks are quality, as if they are not quality this could mean that your business incurs a penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty.

So your seo company should check the quality of your businesses backlinks on a regular basis.

Where your website ranks for certain words

This is probably the most obvious point, but your seo company should be checking where your business ranks for certain words.

For example, are the words that the business ranks highest for relevant to the business? For example lets say you run a dental practice, well you may well be aiming for the business to rank for “dentists + name of city”.

However, if the website ranks instead for “how to floss your teeth” and “how to brush your teeth” well this is great, but its not likely to bring in much business.

So it’s the seo companies job to make sure that words the business ranks for are relevant to that business, but also likely to bring in paying customers.

Introduction

When first investing in SEO, its common for a marketing agency to state loads of work that your website needs.

And this is all well and good, but if you haven’t got the foggiest clue as to what any of the terms mean, well you could be left just a little bit confused.

But do not worry, as here at this marketing agency we explains things very clearly. Within this blog post we are going to explain what schema mark-up means, and also how to add this to your businesses website.

Collaboration

Now when your reading about various forms of SEO, its pretty safe to say that the vast majority of agencies focus on optimising your businesses website for Google.

However, with schema you may here that this form of seo is promoted by most of the large search engines.

The reason being is that Google is said to have worked in collaboration with other search engines to help create schema.

Yes, but what is schema?

Well, when you on a website, say a website that reviews brand new cars, there’s likely to be tons of information.

For example, articles dedicated to explaining the performance of a new car, and what the car handles like.

But this mass of information is what we in SEO called unstructured data. Which basically means its useful from an SEO perspective, but it can sometimes be hard for the search engines to decipher what the page is about.

However, the search engines have got very clever at knowing what a page is about, and most SEO consultants believe massive leaps forward came from the Google Hummingbird updates and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

However, what if there was a language that most search engines understood, where you could mark up the really important areas of your website. Such as your businesses reviews, its contact details and also opening hours?

Well there is and this is called schema. So, basically instead of Googlebot having to work out what a page is about, after reading hundreds if not thousands of words, well Schema helps cut through all that, and allows you to highlight the really important details.

Rich snippets

Have you ever searched for a business, such as a hotel, and the listing that really stood out was the one that looked different from the other business listings.

For example, you were looking for a hotel, and the star rating appeared in the results, and all the other businesses didn’t have this?

Well this wasn’t magic that was taking place, it was most probably the hotels clever seo agency implementing schema to mark-up the businesses reviews.

As a hospitality business they know good customer reviews are essential to getting more bookings, so some businesses may wish to draw attention to the reviews that their business has. Schema can do this.

But rich snippets hasn’t got to  just be business reviews, it could be opening hours and many other details as well.

Local SEO

Digital marketing agencies, like our business use schema to mark-up details that are essential to improving a business’s local seo.

In SEO we refer to the name of the business, its address and phone number as “NAP” information.

You can use schema to mark-up the NAP information of your website. This way when Googlebot next crawls your company website, well you would have made it super easy for Google to know your businesses NAP details.

And this is pretty important, as with all the information on your business’s website, if you can make the important information, such as the NAP information standout, you will be helping to improve your businesses SEO.

So, how do you actually add schema to a website?

Adding schema to a website has never been so easy, that’s thanks to Google, which has a structured data mark-up helper.

Does your business require help with its SEO?

If your business needs help with its seo, then why not give us a ring? We are organic seo experts.

We offer affordable prices.

Introduction

As most of you will be aware, Google is constantly improving its algorithm. And every so often Google rolls out a pretty hefty update to its algorithm, and these algorithm updates are normally given rather interesting names such as Google’s Panda and Penguin updates.

However, there was one update in particular that made a seismic change to how Google’s algorithm works, that update was called the Google Hummingbird update.

A brief history of Google’s Hummingbird update

Google first introduced the Hummingbird update in August 2013, and it is reported to affect about 90% of Google searches.

Many SEO experts have commented that this wasn’t like any normal update, it was somewhat of an overhaul of the old algorithm.

Yet, with that said, some of the old parts that made the algorithm work, such as Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, well they are most definitely carried across to the new algorithm.

That’s to say Google’s previous updates, that helped to eliminate low quality seo, well they were incorporated into this new algorithm.

Does quality still matter?

Most definitely, quality still matters. That’s to say if you employee or an seo company, then its important that you implement good quality white hat seo.

So, what changed? How did the Hummingbird update change SEO?

Google was really good at answering questions before Hummingbird, yet Hummingbird made the accuracy of the answers even better.

For example, imagine a question that could have loads of different meanings, such as where’s the best place to go for a pizza?

Well that could mean a few things, such as where’s the nearest supermarket, Italian restaurant, or even where’s the nearest pizza take away shop?

Google may be able to work out where your standing, where the nearest pizza shop is, and as you’ve asked where’s the best place to go, Google will most probably offer you customer reviews so you can make up your mind as to where to go.

Before Hummingbird, the algorithm may have focused more on keywords that have been written into the query. So, for example Google may have displayed multiple different answers, not knowing exactly what you wanted.

For example, you may have shown a recipe for how to make a pizza, or a list of Italian restaurants that are not based near you, and only if you mentioned your location, you will have had pizza restaurants listed your location.

So, Google’s Hummingbird update basically allows the algorithm to work out intent, as in looking beyond just the words, and focusing more on what does the query mean.

Voice search

Now, most of us know that voice search is now becoming popular and also very convenient for Android users.

And now you can see how SEO companies now understand that Hummingbird allows Google to answer more complicated questions.

Such as “what are the most comfortable running trainers that you can buy”- this is a complicated query, yet with the Hummingbird update, Google can offer better results.

For example, the query displays an intention to buy something through the word “buy”, yet the query doesn’t just specify that the person wants to buy any old running trainers, no, they want “comfy” running trainers.

So, you got it, us seo agencies now know that Google can return accurate answers to what we call more “conversational” searches.

So just as you would speak to a friend, you can now speak in the same manner to Google, and the algorithm will be better equipped to understand what you mean even if the question you are asking is much more complicated.

How does this change SEO?

The rules regarding seo haven’t really changed that much, that’s to say your business, or your appointed seo agency should create good quality work.

However, one aspect that’s now more important than ever, and that’s to create really good quality content marketing.

This means that you should aim to offer better advice than any of your competitors. For example, let’s return to our example of comfy running trainers’, how would a business rank high for “comfy running trainers?”.

Well our marketing agency would say that the best way for your business to rank for such a term would be to create content marketing that explains your product clearly.

The work should clearly explain the benefits of using your product, and also answer as best you can the likely questions that your customers are likely to have.

Therefore, the old seo methods are somewhat dead, that’s trying to optimise a website by adding in the phrases that you wish your business to rank for, by writing them over and over again on your website.

Now in this new era of the Hummingbird update, Google will connect a query such as “comfy running trainers” with a website that’s offering the best advice.

The normal seo rules apply in terms of the seo business should aim to build good quality backlinks to that page. As the more good quality and relevant backlinks sending “link juice” to that page, the higher the chance of that page ranking higher.

So now businesses compete on who can answer their customers questions the best.

Therefore, the very best seo companies now don’t just optimise a client’s website by trying to fool the search engines with simple seo. Now seo companies optimise a website by making it as relevant and useful as they can. 

By offering quality advice, your website should benefit from better rankings.

Does your business require help with its online marketing?

If your business requires help with its digital marketing, then why not give us a ring?

Introduction

Are you starting a brand-new business? Well, if you are, then its more than likely that you will want to get that business onto the first page of Google.

After all, if you’re not on the first page of Google, then you could be handing a massive competitive advantage to a rival business.

So without further ado, we are going to explain the basics of seo, so you can work out if this form of marketing would be suitable for your business.

Crawling and indexing

You may have an impressive looking website, one which may have cost your business quite a lot of money, yet if it can’t be crawled and indexed then its useless from an SEO perspective.

So, first things first, your seo agency must make sure that Googlebot can crawl and index the website.

This basically means can Google read your businesses website? Your seo company should create a site map for your business.

Also, if your digital marketing business carries out a lot of SEO work, perhaps for instance your website has been redesigned, then they may request that the website gets recrawled.

Its important to remember that Googlebot will recrawl your website on a regular basis.

So, with this in mind, if your company website is down for any great length of time, perhaps while it is changed, well this can mean the website drops in terms of where it ranks.

A good seo business should therefore make it easy for Google to crawl and index your website, so that Google can spot new work that has been added.

This is why businesses regularly add blog posts, its so Googlebot can spot the changes, and if the seo work is of good quality, the algorithm may reward the business with higher rankings.

Algorithm

You may have noticed that we have mentioned the word “algorithm” within this blog post quite a few times already.

The reason for that is it’s the algorithm that decides where a business should be ranked. That’s to say it’s the algorithm which decides should the business be on the first page of Google, or the 10th?

The algorithm is thought to take into account over 200 factors, that’s when deciding where your business should be ranked.

So, as you can imagine, this is what keeps us seo companies very busy indeed.

Some businesses think that once a website reaches the top of Google, that it stays there permanently.

However, this is not the case, that’s because Google’s algorithm makes changes to where all businesses are ranked on a regular basis. So, if a competitor has a stronger website, it terms of its seo, then will overtake your business.

White hat

It might be at this point that you are sold on the idea of SEO, yet its worth knowing this before you do find an seo agency.

You must invest in what is called “white hat” seo, the reason being is if you do find an seo company, and they implement low quality work, this could result in a penalty.

Now a penalty could be that your website drops, that’s in terms of where it ranks, or it could be removed altogether.

So, in a nutshell, low quality seo is often a false economy.

Organic seo

When you invest in digital marketing, the different services can all sound really confusing. For example, there’s PPC, social media advertising, local seo and organic seo to name just a few.

However, the majority of the SERP’S (search engine results pages) are made up of organic business listings.

This means that businesses often face fierce competition to get onto the first page. To climb the organic business listings most businesses therefore pay an seo company to implement organic seo.

How we can help

We are a white hat marketing agency, we offer affordable services. If you would like a quote, then why not give us a ring today?