If your business coach has advised you to invest in “SEO” or hire a search engine optimisation specialist to help you with your website, but you aren’t really sure what it all means, this article is for you.
Because in this article, we’re going to go over exactly what SEO means, how it works and what an SEO company does
What Is SEO & What Does It Stand For In Business?
In business, SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”, which is the practice of making changes to a website, or websites associated to a website, in order to make it rank higher in the search engines.
These search engines include Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo and more (with a strong emphasis placed on Google as it’s used by the most people).
By ranking higher in the search engines, you can get more potential customers on your website – making SEO a great method of advertising.
And the best part? If you rank higher by optimising your website’s SEO, you’ll get people clicking on your listing for free! Which means you don’t pay per click. Instead, you pay for the SEO companies time to get you there (in most SEO pricing models).
Some companies prefer to pay per click, which is also possible in the search engines using search engine advertising, however this can be considerably more expensive and doesn’t have the same level of scalability that SEO has.
With that being said, many SEO agencies use a combination of both SEO and paid search engine advertising for clients depending on the industry and project requirements.
The Types Of SEO
Generally speaking, there are 4 types of SEO offered to businesses:
- Local SEO
This involves ranking a company’s website and Google My Business listing for various local keywords in the search engines. These might include: “plumbers near me” or “accountants Colchester”. The goal is to get your website in front of local people who are looking for your services. - B2B SEO
B2B SEO generally involves ranking for the type of keywords other business owners look for when in need of a service. For example, a business owner might search for “leased line providers” or “construction site CCTV installation”. These keywords are usually nationwide, instead of local. - Ecommerce SEO
E-commerce SEO involves ranking an online shop for keywords that show “buyers intent”. An example might be ranking for “cheap washing machine” or “buy toaster”. The goal is to get more people who are searching online for products the company sells onto the website. - Enterprise SEO
This usually refers to performing SEO on a very large website or across a company’s collection of websites to maximize performance in the search engines. Common goals on enterprise SEO projects include online reputation management, fixing crawl budget issues to ensure priority pages get indexed, cleaning up branded SERPs, providing a great branded search engine experience and more.
What The SEO Company Does:
Depending on the type of SEO project, an SEO company’s work will usually fall under one of the three categories: On-Site SEO, On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO.
All three of these SEO categories are critical to the success of a project. Here’s what they mean and entail.
On-Site SEO (AKA Sitewide SEO)
On-site SEO refers to changes made across an entire website to improve rankings in the search engines.
Anything that affects the website as a whole will be considered as On-site SEO implementations.
Some of the most common On-site SEO tasks include:
HTTPS & SSL Certificate
The SEO company will test your website to make sure it redirects to your preferred version. Having your website indexable at http:// https:// http://www. and https://www. causes duplicate content issues which can harm your rankings.
If you do not currently have an SSL certificate installed, most SEO companies will set that up for you as it is now a confirmed ranking factor in Google. This will change your website’s overall URL structure.
XML Sitemap Setup
An XML sitemap is basically a list of all the pages you want to be indexed in the search engines, written as an .xml file. The SEO company you decide to work with will most likely install a plug-in that allows them to quickly make changes to the sitemap and update Google.
As an ongoing process, they will also make decisions as to which pages get added to the sitemap and which get excluded.
Silo Structures
The SEO company will analyse your website and design what is called a “silo structure”. This basically means structuring your website into groups of related information to help improve your websites topical relevancy around a given subject.
This helps Google understand your website is relevant to a specific industry and helps the SEO company plan out the most important pages to get built on the website.
Keyword Mapping
Keyword mapping is where they audit all of your existing pages and determine which keywords are most suited to each page. This decision is made by looking at the page’s current performance, comparing that to competitors and then digging deeper into other ways potential customers search for the product or service.
It’s important to look at the website as a whole when keyword mapping to avoid keyword cannibalisation, which is where you have multiple pages competing against themselves in the search engines.
This will also help the SEO agency identify additional pages that need to be built out in order to rank for more keywords.
Mobile Friendliness
Ever since Google announced it’s mobile first indexing, mobile friendliness has been of high importance for SEO firms across the world. Mobile first indexing means Google uses the mobile version of the website when considering it for rankings.
This, combined with the fact that most people on the internet are using mobile phones, makes mobile friendliness highly important.
Page Load Times
SEO professionals are always looking for ways to speed up how long it takes for a website to load, as this is another confirmed ranking factor Google is hot on.
Some of the common practices include minifying HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, reducing image file sizes, caching, removing render-blocking JavaScript and more.
Google Search Console
Integrating your website with Google Search Console allows the search engine optimisation company to see the keywords that are currently bringing traffic into the website. This can be analysed on a page by page basis and is very useful when keyword mapping.
This tool also allows your SEO to get new pages indexed in Google fast, as they can literally submit it directly to google.
Another key reason SEO’s use Google Search Console is to analyse the results of any implemented changes and quickly identify any faults that may be losing potential traffic.
Google Analytics
Although most websites are built with Google Analytics tracking installed, most sites aren’t even scratching the surface when it comes to the level of data a marketer can use to improve both traffic and conversions.
Because of this, the SEO company will want to implement Google Analytics conversion tracking to see exactly where leads or sales initiated from and what their user journey looked like.
With this data, a good SEO firm will be able to improve your websites traffic and overall performance.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to updates made on a page by page basis to improve the rankings/traffic of a specific web page.
Common on-page SEO tasks include:
Searcher’s Intent
When performing keyword research, the SEO agency you hire will spend a fair amount of time analysing the searcher’s intent.
Put simply, this means figuring out exactly what the person searching for the keyword wants and making sure your page gives them exactly that.
This is an important ranking factor because Google is analysing web pages: bounce rates, time on page and more when choosing where to rank a page. By meeting the searcher’s intent, we can continuously give Google the positive signals they want to see.
Page URLs
The SEO company will also go through and analyse your web pages URLs to ensure they are friendly on both users and search engines. This is because including your main focus keyword in the URL of your page is another known ranking factor
Title Tag
The title tag plays a vital role in the ranking of your web page and so the company you hire to manage your SEO will make certain optimisations to them.
The title tag should almost always include the keyword your page is targeting and also be written in such a way to increase the amount of people who will click on it in google.
By increasing the click-through rate, your pages are likely to rank higher in the search engines.
H1 Tag
Your pages H1 tag is another important ranking factor Google looks at. Which is why the company you hire to do your SEO will likely make changes to them to improve your rankings, and also rank for additional keywords.
This is achieved by including keyword modifiers inside the H1 tag – helping you get the most out of your page.
Content
The content on your webpage is another important consideration, as Google is literally indexing content on your site. Because of this the company you hire may decide to add additional content, or in some cases remove content.
Most experienced SEO companies will use a software to analyse what’s currently working in Google for a keyword such as Cora or POP. After they figure out the keyword density, LSI keywords etc. they will make adjustments to the content on your web pages
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions play a vital role in the click-through rate of your page, and so they’re often rewritten and tested to encourage more clicks.
By including some of the keywords inside the meta description, you can get bold text in your SERP listing, which is a great way to get potential customers feeling like your page might be the most relevant to them.
Schema Markup
Schema markup also known as structured data markup is hidden code that the SEO company will place on your website to inform the search engines about the topic of your page. In some cases, this has been directly proven to increase rankings and so it is very important to get done right.
At the very least, schema markup can help your SERP listing stand out above the rest in Google, which is a great way to increase your CTR.
Images
Image SEO is an often overlooked method of attracting new visitors to the website through Google’s image search. By carefully naming image files and setting alternative text, you can help create more relevance on your web page, provide a great user experience to the visually impaired and rank in the image search.
The SEO company will often rename images and add more images to improve your website’s traffic.
Internal Links
Pages that receive a lot of links from other pages are looked at as important in the eyes of Google. And so it’s important to plan out which pages will receive the most internal links.
The SEO company you choose to work with will analyse which pages currently receive the most internal links and prioritise linking to your most profitable pages.
Off Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to any action taken outside of the website to improve its overall position in the search engines. Here are some examples:
Link Building
SEO companies will build various types of links to your website to improve the rankings of your pages. There are multiple types of links, some more effective than others.
The best SEO companies will avoid buying low quality links, as these can get you penalised in Google and Bing. Instead, a strong focus will be placed on the quality of backlinks attained.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
Unlinked brand mentions are where references of your business name are featured across various websites. This has shown positive ranking signals for some time now as Google interprets it as a natural sign of popularity.
The SEO Agency will come up with some creative ways to get more unlinked brand mentions for your business.
Advertising For Branded Search
Companies who get a lot of branded search (searches for their brand name in Google) typically rank better for competitive keywords. This is because Google sees them as an authority, which gains them or trust.
And so a well integrated SEO Agency will advertise both offline and online to increase the amount of branded searches your business gets – helping you achieve rankings for more difficult keywords.
Social Media Marketing
Although “social signals” have been debunked for many years, the “traffic signals” social media can send to your website does have a positive impact on your SEO.
By sending local/relevant traffic to your website through social media, you can increase Google’s confidence in your website’s quality.
A good SEO company will utilise social media, along with every other tool at their disposal, to increase traffic to your website.