SEO Refresher: What is Search Engine Optimisation?
It’s been quite some time since we last covered Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO). So, let’s get back to the basics – what is SEO? And how does it work? If you’re intrigued to find out how search engines rank websites, then you’ve come to the right place.
What do we mean by SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essentially the process of optimising your website so that you can increase the chances of organic traffic. For example, organic traffic can be visitors who stumble upon your website by searching online for your service and view your website. This differentiates from users who reach your site by clicking through a paid advert or directly searching for your website address.
So why take the time to optimise your website? In an ideal world, you want your website to climb further up the page rankings on search engines such as Google and Bing so that your website has the best chance of appearing on the first page of search results. This will increase your visibility and likelihood of increasing site visitors. Naturally, those sites on the first page of Google are going to see more traffic than those on pages 10,11,12 for example.
For performing SEO work, we primarily focus on optimising for Google. This is because over 90% of online searches take place here.
How does SEO work?
To understand how SEO works, we need to first consider how pages are ranked on search engines.
Search engines want to offer users the best results, or they wouldn’t be doing their job properly. To source the best results, search engines send out ‘crawlers’ to look over new websites and review their content. Crawlers get a feel for what each page is about and take into account the keywords that have been used, as well as the overall accessibility and readability.
By keywords, we mean the phrases and words that you are using throughout your webpage content that makes it relatable to potential Google search queries. For example, if people are looking for help with SEO – they might search for ‘What is SEO?’ – and this will bring up a list of website pages, from all over the internet that contain keywords or relevant content such as ‘What does SEO mean’ or ‘Help with SEO’
Crawlers will scan your site, and useful and relevant information for search engines, including keywords, will then be ‘indexed’.
In summary, making sure all the content on your pages is relevant and optimised with keywords will allow a platform like Google to easily identify when your pages are relevant to people’s searches.
In turn, this will increase the potential for fruitful, targeted visitors.
SEO best practice
For the most part, Google remains on the secretive side about how exactly they index web pages.
However, what we do know is that content makes all the difference.
Be wary of having too much or too little content on your page, and make sure to update it from time to time so that what you are talking about stays up-to-date and relevant.
When copywriting for your website, we recommend around 300-500 words per page to make sure that you have enough content available for crawlers to properly assess your site.
In addition to the content on your website page, Google will also look out for reliable links, social media content, and favour page layouts and formatting that are clean and concise.
Final thoughts
If you’re new to SEO – it might seem like a lot of extra time and effort.
But, by carrying out some of the basic practices for improving your SEO, you will be ever-increasing your all important online presence.
SEO can include on-page efforts such as content and keywords, as well as off-page efforts such as pay-per-click adverts to get your website off the ground or collecting reputable reviews.
If you are looking for assistance with your SEO, contact us today on studio@yellowcherry.uk .
We offer monthly SEO and maintenance packages which include reports on how to improve your ranking. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]