Search Engine Optimisation – Dark Art or Science?

So, you want more customers.

How are you going to attract them?

Unfortunately for you, the likelihood of any potential customers waking up and thinking, “I must visit XYZ’s website this morning,” is slim to none, and Slim just left town.

Strange though it may seem, Google is much more likely to be their first port of call. So, unless your website is effectively optimised for search engines, it is unlikely that it will pop up in the first few pages of the search results.

This means, of course, that your website will effectively be invisible, except for those who know you already.

SEO is the art and science of getting your company, product or service to the top of Google’s organic (free) results. It is valuable because, as stated earlier, nearly everyone turns to Google first to find information on products, services or companies.

Painting the Forth Bridge

The expression “like painting the Forth Bridge” was coined to describe a never-ending job, one which takes so long that when you have finished it, it is time to start again. Well, unfortunately, search engine optimisation (SEO) is a bit like this.

Whilst there are some excellent basic tricks that can be carried out in the meta tags and on page content of your site, if you want to consistently be on the first couple of pages of search results, you are going to have to have an ongoing SEO strategy in place.

The days of stuffing as many keywords into the source code on your website have long gone. Google constantly changes its algorithms to deliver the best possible search results for phrases/questions entered into its search engine.

SEO Process – Getting your house in order

As a first step, there is a lot you can do to improve your search results. The search engines are looking for consistency and evidence that your site offers the information you say it does.
It’s important to remember that you are not competing against Google. You are competing against your competitors and generally, they are unlikely to be much smarter than you, in fact you might even have the edge over them.

The good news is there is a simple SEO process you can follow that will deliver good basic SEO results and it is:

1. Define your business – what you sell, who your customers are and how best to reach them. Also set clear goals as to what you want your website to achieve: acquire sales leads, collect email addresses, make online sales (ecommerce), etc.
2. Discover your keywords and phrases – Whilst Google now abhors keyword ‘stuffing’, keywords and phrases remain a vital tool and drive nearly every aspect of SEO, so it is essential to do your keyword homework.
3. Use your keywords and phrases on your website pages – There are key places you need to use your keywords and phrases. Without getting too technical, the first use of them is in the HTML tags in the page source code – title, meta, description and img (image) alt tags.
   Secondly, the visible text on each page of your website needs to include a fair use of relevant keywords and phrases. It’s important, however, to get the balance right. Remember that your pages have to be read by humans as well as search engine robots!
4. Create great content (after all, it’s King) – The more content you can create which includes your keywords and phrases, the better. Press releases, blogs, case studies, white papers, they all help to build great content for your website.
5. Use links and social media – By building good, relevant inbound links and using social media you will boost your website’s ‘authority’ on Google.
   Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz (a company that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages). Page Authority scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

Measuring and reviewing

Once you have your SEO strategy in place it is important to measure the results and review them on a regular basis so you can make progress and learn what works and what doesn’t.
Remember, Google does not want anyone to believe that SEO is easy. They like to mystify it because then they make more money out of Google Ads.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Ads can be a very powerful tool when used correctly, but it is far from a magic bullet when it comes to SEO.

There’s no point trying to pull the wool over your eyes, SEO is time consuming to do well. So, if you want to get the most out of your website but haven’t got the time to devote to B2B SEO, give Alan Myers a call at Leapfrog Marketing, he’d be delighted to help with SEO services… 0116 278 7788 or email alan@leapfrog.uk.com