You might have wrapped your mind around the general idea of search engine optimization (more commonly referred to as SEO). In a nutshell, SEO involves all the tricks, hacks and techniques needed to increase your online visibility and landing you on Page 1 of a potential customer or client’s search results.

There are three main strategies used to optimise your content and to get your site up the rankings. These are known as on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO. Let’s briefly recap what each of these involves.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves more or less what it says on the label. This is mostly to do with content and what will meet the eyes of your potential customers. Although all the other prongs of the SEO fork are important, if you don’t the on-page SEO right, the other two will fall over on their butts; without the right on-page Google juice, the off-page bits and pieces just won’t happen.

On-page SEO primarily involves creating great content – the sort of thing that people like to read, either to get more information about your products, services, etc., as well as informative blogs and newsletters. Get this part right, and you can often get your customers and clients coming back for more and starting to build a relationship with you. As part of creating useful content (blogs, product descriptions, videos, pictures, etc.), you also have to think about the keywords and search terms (absolute gold for getting your site ranking on Page 1 of the Google results), and it’s useful for you and for your customers to have plenty of internal links from one part of the site to another. Links out to authoritative sites that are relevant to your business or services are also useful to use!

Technical SEO

As part of having those internal links as part of your on-page SEO strategy, you have to make sure that they work. This is where technical SEO comes in and this is something that a lot of business owners wishing to increase their online traffic need help from an SEO expert with. Technical SEO refers to all the things to do with how your website performs on your potential customers’ and clients’ laptops, tablets, desktops and mobile phones. Believe me, Google has a number of AI algorithms looking out for such thins; delightfully, they’re referred to as the spiders that crawl about the world wide web.

Technical SEO can sometimes work with content and sometimes against it. On the one hand, although a picture speaks a thousand words, if you have too many pictures on one of your pages that takes far, far too long to load and eats data, you’ll increase your page load speed. Pages that take too long to load really put potential customers right off. You probably know how peeved you get with slow-loading pages from your own experience. However, on the other hand, if you create good metadata with lots of yummy keywords that search engine algorithms love, as well as creative alternative text for images just in case they don’t load and display properly.

Technical SEO gets pretty, well, technical (duh!) and takes a fair bit of explaining. It also often requires a sharp-eyed SEO consultant to pick up where you can tweak things there and there.

Off-Page SEO

OK, now we can get to the bit that you’ve been waiting for: answering the question about what off-page SEO is and whether it really works. To start with, we need to take a trip back in time slightly to the early days of the internet and search engines.

When Google first got started, they had to find some way of presenting the results of a search with particular key words. Alphabetical order might have worked for a very short time when the internet was very, very small, but it was pretty clear that this wasn’t going to work for long. Instead, Google created its Page Ranking algorithm. Because the internet is indeed a world wide web with lots of links and connections, the general idea was (and still is) that something that has a lot of links leading to it is likely to be important and trustworthy and popular, so the Page Rank algorithm hunted for the pages that had the most inbound links and rewarded these by putting them at the top of the list (as long as they matched the keywords that the user was searching for, of course).

Human nature being what it is, it didn’t take long until the internet was filled with horrible link farms that led people to bad, spammy sites with badly written content. After we had all suffered at the hand of black hat SEO (things that used to increase rankings but now get penalised), Google’s smart boffins came up with an algorithm that rewarded the good sites that were trustworthy, authoritative and useful. Inbound links are still useful and are still used to rank sites, but now Google and other search engines look for quality links that prove a site to be a quality site that people can enjoy using to find what they need online. It’s possible that having good backlinks is at least half of the SEO equation when it comes to landing on Page 1 of the search results.

Are There Different Types of Backlinks?

Yes, there are. Links can be categorised in three main types:

Other Off-Page SEO Activities

Another method that isn’t really one or the other of these is to get involved in writing guest blogs and in trying your hand at video marketing campaigns on YouTube or Instagram. These get a buzz going (and boost your page rankings) but can require a bit of assistance from your friendly SEO expert.

What Results Is Reasonable to Achieve with Expert Off Page SEO?

An SEO agency that delivers ranking results to their clients is your way to a great online exposure and increased bookings. Laser targeted on-page and off-page SEO plus expert technical SEO will bring you a number of benefits. It is reasonable to expect that you will improve your:

And best of all, once your website is on Page 1, the number of visitors and the time they spend clicking on your pages, reading your content, and acting by calling your phone number will keep your website anchored there long after paying for search marketing ends, and establish your brand as the best in town.

Now that’s an ROI worth its weight in gold.

I’ve got a mental picture of you scratching your head, running your fingers through your hair and frowning while you think “Is it worth hiring an SEO agent? Is it worth getting someone to do my SEO? Is it really true that an SEO agent will get my business the results that I need?”

Well, unless you’ve already got an SEO expert on your staff or you are one yourself (in which case, why are you reading this post?), you probably do need some sort of help from someone who knows what he/she is doing. You might need a whole lot of help in the form of a complete overhaul of your business website, for example, or you might need just a few tweaks and hacks to generate a bit more organic traffic and get your page higher up those good old Google rankings.

There are quite a few good reasons why you ought to get in a professional to help you with your search engine optimisation. Here’s a few just to get you started:

Crush Your Google Rankings

OK, maybe “crush” isn’t quite the right word, as you want to get your ranking up on page 1 rather than squashed down somewhere on page two (or lower) and buried on the internet. But you get the general idea. You see, an SEO expert is trained in all the tips, tricks, hacks, tools and techniques to generate more and better organic traffic, which is the secret to increasing your Google rankings. Getting onto page one and staying on page one is the secret to doing great business online. After all, 75% of users hunting for something online don’t look beyond the first page of results. Only 25% are patient or persistent enough to trawl through the second page or beyond, so if that’s where your page is listed, you’ll miss out on potential business.

Bring More Organic Traffic

Organic is always better, and we’re not just talking about fruit and vegetables. Organic traffic is what Google’s clever little algorithms are primed to look for and reward, so increasing your level of organic traffic is the very best way to soar up the rankings.

What’s organic traffic?

I hear you ask this question a lot. Well, organic traffic refers to the site visits and page views you get from real live humans. Organic traffic can come from clicking through on links in emails or posted on other sites (including social media sites) or it can come from search results. Organic search results are the results that turn up from real live searches done by real people who are actually looking for a business just like yours. All of these are SEO gold but it’s the organic search results that really count – and this is just what a professional SEO consultant will help you get right.

Organic traffic and organic search results are the opposite of artificially stimulated page rankings, commonly known as paid ads. If you’re like 80% of online users, you’ll probably skip over those paid ads that appear at the top of your search results, all nicely highlighted and tagged as ads, and you get down to the real deal results. I know I do, unless the ad is from the store I was specifically looking for. You have to pay a truckload for these ads, especially for the popular keywords that get a lot of competition, and it really doesn’t bring the best return on interest.

How Does Google Send Traffic Your Way?

So what does Google look for when it decides what does and doesn’t go on Page 1? There are a number of things that it looks for, a lot of which are in your control, especially if you get an expert on SEO to give you a hand:

Keywords

Google looks for keywords that match the search terms entered by users, as well as close synonyms. The closer the match, the higher the rankings! What’s more, Google et al. look for what’s in the titles and headings. The algorithms look at what’s on your site and compares it to other sites to see if what you’ve got is relevant to the keywords. Most keywords are actually key phrases about 2–4 words long – something to keep in mind. However, Google also penalises keyword stuffing rather heavily, so resist the temptation to do this. Your customers will hate it, anyway! Go for natural language instead.

Fresh content

Older sites tend to be less active – and tend to be the ones that break all the rules because they were created before Google became more sophisticated and learned how to penalise “black hat SEO”. Fresh content is the way to conquer this hurdle. In fact, sites with fresh content get 67% more traffic than those with older bits and pieces. But would a blog work for you? What about completely overhauling your home page? Your SEO expert can advise you.

Links

Inbound links to your site are an old trick, but outbound links to authoritative sources are another great way to increase your traffic. This is because Google rewards sites that are trustworthy and are of good quality. And what better way to show this than a link to a well-known authority on the topic. Just make sure it’s relevant!

Video Content

Video content. Sites with video content tend to pick up 50% more traffic than those without. However, getting started with videos for your sites can be a bit daunting. What sort of video would drive the most traffic for your business, for example?

Of course, there are other things that Google looks for, including technical aspects of your site.

Improve Your Brand's Online Visibility

We’ve discovered something very interesting about your potential customers, although if you observed yourself online, you’d probably come up with the same general idea. People aren’t silly and they don’t tend to buy from the first site that they find with their first search. Most online users hunt around a bit before deciding to take the plunge, and they’ll do this by trying a number of closely related searches. Now, what would you do if the same business site turned up on Page 1 of the search results every time you tried slightly different keywords? Chances are that you’d think that this site just might be the right one for you because they seem to be experts in this area.

This sort of behaviour is just what you need to leverage to drive organic traffic to your site. However, you need to have the right strategy when it comes to keyword selection. In some ways, you need to be able to get into the skin of your potential customers and clients and think what they will use as search terms. Then you’ve got to be able to work these keywords into your content in a natural way that doesn’t make readers think that you’re desperate for a sale and/or a weirdo.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget that a whole lot more people these days use voice-controlled assistants (e.g. Alexa) and voice searching tools (e.g. Siri). When people use these tools, they use natural spoken language. Once again, the better your content matches what people search for, the better your rankings. This means using natural language in your content, folks!

It’s not easy to get behind the eyes of your customers, so to speak, and predict what sort of words they’re going to use to find your site online. You just about have to be a mind reader. However, as well as using natural empathy and imagination, an SEO professional also has a few simple tools and apps available, and he/she will use these to get into the heads of your potential customers and pick just the right keywords to include in your page content.

A Great SEO Expert Will:

Keep The Momentum Going

Even if you’re already getting plenty of business right now, you know that it’s important to stay that way. You might be so busy with your core business that you don’t have time to tweak your website. To keep the momentum up, you need an SEO ninja to work with your site and ensure that you maintain your lead over the competition!

Talk to us today about how we can help you with your online strategy. With a bit of help from us, you’ve got this!

OK, so you’ve got the general idea of SEO and that this is the Number 1 way to ensure that you get onto the first page of a potential client’s or customer’s search results, whether this is on Google or some other search engine. We won’t count paid ads, as quite a few customers ignore these unless they happen to be absolutely and precisely what they’re looking for, which isn’t always the case. Organic traffic is what really counts and this is the ranking that most business owners and entrepreneurs are interested in.

Well, so how long will it take a local business to rank well above his competitors on page one of the search engines, mainly the Big G?

However, once you’ve put a website together and started things off with a friendly SEO expert, then how long will it take before you see your site turning up there on Page One of the Google search results?

By the way, in this article, we will refer to Google when we talk about search engines and page rankings because this is by far the most common one used out there. Yes, there are other search engines out there but we also know that Google is king of the search engines. It’s also got the best known algorithms and probably the biggest collection of commonly used search terms and keywords. What works for Google will work for all the lesser minions… oops, I mean other search engines.

Anyway, back to the question as to how long it will take before your business website turns up on the first page of the search results. Like the answer to many other questions, the answer isn’t just a simple number pulled out of the air. Honestly, I’m not hedging or trying to stall when I give the answer “It depends,” to your burning question about how long it’s going to take.

There are a lot of factors out there than influence how long it will take before you get the ranking results you want and need. Keeping the concept of organic traffic and organic results in mind, you could try thinking of what’s happening like growing a garden. You plant the right seeds and provide the right amount of fertiliser and water but there are still plenty of other factors that influence how long it’s going to take before the seeds come up and start producing what you want. What’s more, as anybody who’s had a go at growing a garden knows, the organic way may take a little longer but the results are so much better!

Here is a Short Case Study About The Ranking Journey of Our Own Website London SEO Guy

The Main Factors Contributing to the SEO Ranking Schedule

Sure, good things take time but as a business, you want to see results and a good return on investment fairly promptly rather than goodness knows how many years down the track. To get the SEO ranking timetable hustling along so you can get the views, clicks and interactions you need, there are a few factors that you need to get right. Think of these as the fertiliser needed to grow your online presence.

Some of the factors are on-page factors and the others are off-page factors. The really good news is that the on-page factors are all completely in your control. Off-page factors that boost your SEO ranking are a bit fiddlier to get working in your favour, but this is where a good SEO expert can help you out, as this is the sort of thing that they know back to front and sideways. To keep the gardening metaphor going, you can think of an SEO consultant as being the professional gardener or the knowledgeable old guy next door who takes a look at the soil, shakes his head and tells you to add a generous dressing of gypsum.

Just to clarify, the on-page factors are the things that you have on your website – the content that you create. Off-page factors are the things that happen on other sites managed by others.

On-Page Factors That Speed Up Ranking

Getting the on-page factors right to maximise your SEO and get your site up there on the page rankings isn’t actually all that hard. The good news is that Google’s algorithms are designed to think like your potential customers and will reward the sort of features and content that make your site more user-friendly. When you get down to it, it’s just plain old-fashioned customer service and creating trust between you and your customers – something that has been essential for business success since well before the invention of the internet and even before the invention of electricity. Back in prehistoric days, Thag the Caveman was more likely to barter those newly knapped flint arrowheads for a mammoth hide from the chatty hunter who folded up the hide nicely and pointed out the weak spots rather than the one who just grunted and shoved the hide over.

The best on-page factors that speed up your ranking are the following:

Other on-page factors that help increase your visibility online relate to site design and technical bits rather than plain content. Being mobile-friendly, having a faster load speed, not having duplicate content, getting metadata and image alt text right, and not having broken links all count big-time for the quality of your site and Google is looking for this sort of thing when it evaluates sites for quality… which counts for rankings.

Off-Page Factors

Google has always rewarded inbound links – links from other sites to yours. Thankfully, the days of link farms and spammy sites are gone and get penalised, but inbound links are serious Google juice. This is the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth: when people tell other people about you and your site. The importance of bloggers, Instagrammers and social media influencers is on the rise, as customers trust them, so if you can get one of these on your side and linking to you, good for you! You want inbound links that are trustworthy and, preferably, organic rather than forced.

This is just scratching the surface, of course. However, if you want to increase your online visibility and get your site soaring up the rankings so that it can land on Page 1, then have a talk to us and we’ll see how we can help you.

What Is Search Engine Optimisation?

You may have heard the term SEO being bandied about here and there in discussions on online marketing and website creation. However, for you, it might be one of those terms that although you think you know what it means, you’re not entirely sure – and you don’t really want to display your unfamiliarity with the term for fear of appearing less than au fait with the lingo (come on, you have to admit that this happens from time to time – I know it’s happened to me). Anyway, this is where you can lay your fears to rest and find out exactly what they’re talking about.

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. That’s the first part of the question answered, but you need to know a bit more to really come to grips with the concept. In a nutshell, SEO is how you get found by your customers and clients who are searching for businesses like yours on their computers, phones or tablets. There are a lot of people out there looking stuff up online – it’s estimated that at least 2 million searches are conducted on Google alone every day and the actual number is likely to be a lot higher than this. Some of these two million or more people are folk hunting for services and products just like yours, and you want to be able to make sure that they can find you. It’s not just luck or fate that will do this; being found by your clients is all about good SEO.

Why SEO Matters For Business

You might wonder what on earth the problem is. If you’ve got a website, you’ll show up on Google or any of the other search engines, won’t you? Well, yes and no. To illustrate, we’ll keep using Google as an example as it’s the biggie to think about, even though there are other browsers and search engines out there. Anyway, when someone punches in what they’re looking for (these are known as keywords in the lingo), Google will list them all. As you may have noticed in your own browsing behaviour, there can be millions or even billions of matches. Google can’t present them all at once but has to list them in some sort of order. To do this, the matches aren’t presented alphabetically like they were in the old telephone book days, but they appear in rank order. Where your business’s website appears in this list is known as your page ranking.

Now, it is possible to pay a premium for Google ads so that your page appears up the top of the search results. However, people these days are getting a lot more cynical and suspicious about paid ads turning up in their search results. An awful lot just skip over the ads, especially if they’ve had a few experiences with paid ads that aren’t terribly relevant turning up. I know I do! What’s more, paying for ads isn’t cheap and doesn’t have the best return on investment. It’s far, far better to jump through all the hoops and create the sort of website with the sort of content that search engines love and reward by ranking highly.

To keep all those algorithms ticking over nicely and moving your page up the rankings, then there are three main tools that businesses can use to increase their online visibility. These three are great content, killer keywords and links.

1. Content is King

Let’s start with content. Google’s algorithms and AI have got a lot smarter since the early days of the World Wide Web and now know how to recognize good content from bad. Let’s face it: nobody wants to read something (or buy something from) a page that’s badly written, boring or irrelevant. This is where having good content is so important. A page or site that’s great for your customers and clients – and for your search rankings – is one that has tons of information that’s interesting, relevant, great to read and possibly even entertaining.

Content comes in a range of forms, from your bread and butter home pages and descriptions of your services and products, through to blogs and videos on topics related to your particular service or business. Pictures and memes can help as well, but you have to take care with these so that your site is mobile phone friendly – but a good SEO expert can help you here.

2. Keywords are SEO's Bread and Butter

Keywords are your second important tool for boosting your page rankings. Most users over the age of 10 know that in order to find exactly what you want and not have gazillions of vaguely related pages that aren’t really what you want, you have to be precise in your search times. For example, you don’t just type in “piercing” if you’re looking for a place to get a nose ring (note: example doesn’t apply to actual 10-year-olds!); you get a bit more specific and type in something like “nose piercing in [your nearest suburb or city]”. Hey presto, up pops a list of the sites with those precise words. The trick here is to identify these long and precise “long-tailed search terms” or “long-tailed keywords” and make sure that your online content has them somewhere in the text. Google helpfully collects the terms that people use most often when searching, and these are your hot buttons to boosting your rankings… as long as you don’t sacrifice the quality of your content to do so!

3. Links - Every Website's Voting Rights

Last but definitely not least of the tools in your SEO kit is the use of links. It’s called the internet because of all the links from this site to that site. One of the things that Google has used since the 2000s (the noughties) to rank pages is the number of links leading to a particular page. The bad old days of link farms are gone, thank goodness, but links leading in – and out, these days – are still important SEO tools.

Admittedly, building links is the hardest part of SEO and it often takes an expert to help you build them, especially if you’re busy doing your business. Having social media accounts for your business is one simple way but there’s often more to it than that. For example, you have to have social media accounts on the right platforms. Then there’s the bright and exciting world of social media influencers, guest blogs and more, for which you might need an expert to help you navigate so that you can get the best out of your website and absolutely crush the SEO thing.

Hmm, Using an SEO Agency Looks Like a Great Investment

Here is reason No.1 why you should invest in boosting the rankings of your business website (which is your best salesman by the way) - PROFIT! Increased online exposure leads to more visitors ---> more enquiries ---> more profit in your pocket. An expert SEO company can make a great impact on your bottom line while being able to maintain your rankings for a long-term ROI.

Long gone are the times of marketing your products and services through printed Yellow Pages directories, hand delivered printed catalogues, leaflets and cards through the letterbox (exception are maybe local pizza and takeaway delivery companies).

Enter the almighty Internet and the SEO marketing services. Since its availability to the masses the game was changed for good. We are going through exciting times. Every little guy just starting out in business now has a chance at succeeding in taking a market share from the big boys in each industry. But how?

Search Engine Optimisation. The dark arts of ranking a local business’ website in the top ten search results in the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing provides leverage to the every small guy taking on behemoths in his niche.

SEO is what I do.

In the New Year of 2019 I have planned exciting things. There will be an ocean of pure SEO awesomeness. I am so pumped up to showcase my ability to outrank dominate any local competitor in any competitive niche.

2019 is going to be great for my Search Engine Optimisation and Digital Marketing clients. There will be a ton of mind blowing surprises.

Until then – stay safe, enjoy the festivities with your family and re-charge your batteries, for the ride to the next level is about to begin shortly.