Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the process of promoting your web pages in such a way that they gravitate towards the top of the organic (non paid/sponsored) search engine results pages, for particular keywords or key phrases that a customer, looking for your services, is typing into the search engines.
The truth is no one really knows 100% what factors each search engine like Google or Bing use to rank web pages (except for the search engines themselves of course). But, we can with thorough testing, trial and error, and in depth research, make educated decisions regarding what factors are important in ranking a web page and then take appropriate action on those decisions.
Currently we know, pretty much for a fact that some of the most important elements of SEO are:
- Links – i.e. one way, quality, incoming links, from external on topic/relevant web pages to your web pages, with the correct anchor text used in those links.
- Content – unique, relevant, plentiful, fresh, textual content about topics in your industry or chosen website niche.
- Site architecture – ensuring the search engine crawlers / bots can ‘spider’ your website easily and gather all the information they need for their algorithms to rank the pages within your website accordingly. Sitemaps (xml) can help with indexing too.
- On page factors – relevant title tags, meta description tags, H1…H2 etc tags , image alt tags, and well structured content focused around keyword phrases that you are targeting.
- Domain Name – relevant (to keyword phrases being targeted) domain names are currently seeing favorable results.
- Social Media – more and more we are seeing your website / businesses social presence is being factored into search engine rankings.
These are just a small sample – there are probably 101 other factors and these also vary by search engine.
At intearctive3 we have years of experience of optimising web pages for top placement in the major search engines and we have achieved stellar results in many, many industries.
However and this is key………it is important to rank for the correct keyword phrases. This is the real skill in SEO.
There is no point ranking for the phrase ‘hotel’ if you are a 3 bedroom B&B in Torquay in Devon. Like wise there is no point being in the number one spot on Google for the phrase ‘glass’ when you only manufacture specific glass components for the medical industry.
You need to be able to rank your pages for phrases that potential customers are using in the search engines to find your business (or those of your competitors). Finding those keywords is a long process and involves trial and error. But we have a tried and tested process of analysing verticals and industry sectors quickly using a mixture of publicly available and in house developed tools.
We ensure you are targeting the phrases that generate buyers / leads / enquiries and cut down on irrelevant traffic.
We do not operate SEO on an ego basis – really anyone with a little knowledge and time can get a web page to rank for specific keyword phrases – it is just a matter of knowing the basics and consistently executing on a plan. That’s the easy bit. Making sure the traffic that comes from those rankings, is relevant, focused, and has a high potential to buy from you is the harder bit – that is the area in which interactive3 excel.
To find out more about how we can generate targeted, qualified, traffic to your website via SEO, please call us today.