Search Engine Optimisation, commonly referred to as ‘SEO’ is the process of developing a website’s on-site and off-site digital profile in order to increase search engine visibility and organic (un-paid) traffic to a website.
On-Site vs Off-Site
The differentiation between on-site and off-site SEO is relatively straight forward; on-site refers to all of the elements within your website and off-site refers to everything that is not on your website.
Before we undertake any SEO work for a client, we will always conduct a full on-site and off-site analysis. We will then put together a report detailing the all of the work that we would recommend and the keywords that we will target.
On-Site
There are many on-page factors that affect search engine rankings, these include:
Content
(Body Text) – Always make sure that the content on your website is unique (not copied from another website) and provides value to your user. Also remember to include your keywords within the text as naturally as possible whilst ensuring that it is humanly readable.
Title Tags
– Perhaps the most important aspect of on-page SEO, we always recommend optimizing your Title tags as the first action point for any SEO campaign. The title tag is the listing title text that is displayed on Search Engine results. Always try to keep Title Tags between 50 – 60 characters and remember to include your most important keywords for that page.
URLs
Best practices for URLs include:
- Under 100 characters in length
- Words separated by hyphens or dashes
- URLs should include no more than 3 subdirectories. The ‘/’ within a url indicates a subdirectory
If you’re looking to rank for location-based keywords, be sure to include those in your URLs
H1 and H2 Tags
– The H1 and H2 tags highlight which part of the text is important and are very effective as a way of telling Google which keywords are important for your business.
Image Alt Tags
— Your images should be assigned ALT tags that describe the image and should also contain your keywords when it is natural to do so.
Blog
– We always recommend setting up a company blog (if you don’t already have one) and regularly updating it with fresh, unique content. Blogs provide a very effective method for creating high quality, fresh content for your website which will help improve your SEO.
Although we have listed the factors that we believe to be the most important, there are also many other on-site SEO factors that will all have an impact on your SEO performance.
Off-Site
Off-site optimisation is an ongoing process and we would only recommend beginning work on your off-site optimisation once you have carried out the majority of your on-site work.
There best approach for off-site optimisation will depend on many different factors and there is no set strategy that will work for all businesses. However, there are various ‘best practices’ that are the same for all websites. Off-site SEO is also an ever-changing process with regular Google Updates and Algorithm Updates.
Social Media – Make sure that you have a Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus page for your business. Also make sure that you regularly update your account with high quality content as Social Media can be a great way to gain high quality back links from authority websites. It is also worth setting up Social Media accounts on other websites such as; Instagram, Pinterest and Linkedin.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
– Use Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising to gain instant new visitors. Constantly review and adjust ads to improve click through rates and reduce the cost per click.
Content Marketing
– Contact companies and bloggers from relevant websites within the market that you operate in. Request to publish content on their websites which links back to your website.
Reviews
In Yelp, Google+, and Other Sites – It is always important to ensure that there are reviews for your business on websites such as Yelp, Google Plus and others. Set up a Yelp or Google Plus page (etc.) and encourage your customers to write a review for your business. When you have enough reviews for your business, Google will display a review rating for your Search Engine Results listing.
Alternatively, contact us and we would be happy to go through with you why search engine optimisation and marketing is so important.
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