The Simple Stuff About Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is a many-layered and complex field, but it’s arguably one of the most important components in any digital strategy. As one of the core services we offer, we at 21 Digital are dedicated to helping you understand exactly what SEO is, what it does and why you should be focusing on it. This is the first of several articles dealing with the subject, which aims to build your knowledge from the ground up. Don’t worry though! We’re starting with the basics. First off…
What Is SEO?
Basically, SEO is short for search engine optimisation, which is the name given to any activity that increases visitors to a website by obtaining a prominent placement on search engine results pages (SERPs) – such as those of Google, Bing and Yahoo. To determine the order of these placements, search engines use algorithms: computer programmes that use a number of factors to decide how high up the rankings to put your website when someone types in a relevant term.
SEO is an ongoing process of making sure your site is working with the frameworks that these algorithms use. For example, the quality of your content is an important factor – the algorithms will only reward sites that are quality resources with unique content, prioritising them over lower-quality sites.
Another important distinction to make is the difference between paid and organic results. Essentially, organic results are those that arise from decisions made by the engine’s algorithms, whereas paid results are those that appear just above them at the top of the page, which have been paid for through successful Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Long term, it’s better financially to be found organically than it is to be found through PPC advertising.
Why Your Business Needs SEO
If your business has a website, it needs to have an SEO strategy, and it’s fundamental to get it right. Unless you invest in SEO, your website will have a hard time making it onto the results pages of search engines, which therefore makes it more difficult for customers to find you – and there are very few benefits in having a website if people can’t find it through natural, unpaid search results.
What’s more, a successful SEO strategy requires careful and considered forethought into established SEO techniques. Like many digital disciplines it’s an ever-evolving art, and the algorithms themselves are always changing, becoming more intelligent with every new iteration. This means that since the early days of SEO, once-effective techniques are now penalised by search engines because they don’t add value to the user.
For example, algorithms once judged results based on the sheer density of relevant terms on the sites. However, “stuffing” the same words over and over again onto your website today is likely to cause it to be pushed even further down the list of results. Ultimately, this means that in order to create a successful SEO strategy, it’s important to have a thorough knowledge of the workings of search engines and algorithms.
At 21 Digital, we’re committed to providing sustained benefits for your business through considered, well-researched and long-term SEO strategies. We don’t just focus on short-term gains – as a key part of online marketing, a good SEO strategy is a long-term investment that often requires patience and continual analysis in order to reap proper returns for your business.
An SEO Strategy That Works For Your Business
Of course, it isn’t as simple as just saying: “we need to do more SEO”. The question is what you want to achieve and what’s needed to achieve it. Do you want to increase lead generation, or website conversions (that is, getting people to actually follow through on buying your product or service)? Are you simply focused on getting higher volumes of traffic? That too needs careful consideration. Successful search engine optimisation isn’t just about getting traffic to your site, but making sure that it’s high quality traffic. After all, it’s not enough if the whole world sees your product, if only a tiny fraction of them want to buy it. Like any form of marketing, it’s about making sure that your business is seen by the right people in the right place, at exactly the right time.
And that’s where we come in. SEO is one of the core digital services we offer at 21 Digital, which means we’ve made it our business to master established and emerging techniques and practices, so that we know what works best for you. Our dedicated search specialists have years of proven experience behind them in helping businesses just like yours make it on the web.
Why not give us a call today on 01254 660 560, or email us on hello@21digital.agency?
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