The world of Search Engine Optimisation is open ended and for some it can be a complicated concept. We thought we’d break down SEO to help you discover exactly what it is and dispel any myths about how it works.
You might hear people who work with websites or within digital marketing talk about SEO quite a lot. “Oh you need to improve your SEO!” or “What’s your SEO strategy?” And quite frankly, it sounds far more complicated than it is!
How does it work?
As alluded to in the introduction, it stands for Search Engine Optimisation (and in a nutshell that’s what it’s designed to do – if you get it right!) It’s the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of your website traffic as well as awareness and exposure of your online brand through free (non-paid) search engine results. This is also known as “organic” search results.
More specifically, “organic” meaning that a web search engine user types in a search term off their own back rather than being targeted with a specific paid advert to click the right links.
We believe that the power behind SEO lies in understanding a little bit about the psychology of the user in understanding what they might be searching for when they type into that Google search bar, the answers they might be looking to receive in return, the words they are using (even down to spelling) and the sort of content they spend their time consuming. Knowing the answers to these questions can be instant SEO success and will allow you to connect more effectively to these users who are searching for the product or business that you’re offering.
SEO in practice is then taking this knowledge of your internet user and delivering it through website content so that ‘crawlers’ can find it, understand it and deliver it to said user.
Imagine search engines as these massive robots with endless lists of memory that they scour every time someone searches the internet for something. They’ll run through billions of pieces of content instantly and serve you results which they believe best answer your query. This process is known as ‘crawling’ or ‘indexing’.
What is an SEO strategy?
Basically, a detailed plan in order to improve your website’s search engine rankings. What we all want! Capturing more organic traffic should be built around technical SEO, on-page SEO, link building, user experience and content planning. Your plan should outline how you’re going to deliver relevance and value to your online searchers (and in turn, website visitors).
What do I do next?
Depending on your time, your willingness to learn and understand the process plus getting to grips with the complexity of your website, you might decide that hiring a professional to help you solve the above SEO conundrums is the best fit for you. And we might be biased but we wouldn’t blame you! activ has a wealth of SEO knowledge to draw upon and help you discover your users’ needs, what they’re searching for and help you design content that will be much more successful in delivering your website top of the search ranks! Click here for more details.