Tell me about SEO…
SEO is an acronym for search engine optimisation. There are two forms of SEO, organic and pay per click, sometimes known as PPC or Adwords. Adwords is a product by Google and they show when you search for a phrase or keyword in a browser as the three or four results and at the top. These will display an ‘ad’ icon next to it. Organic SEO, also known as natural listings, are the positions that everyone really wants in terms of ranking. You could imagine pay per click like a sunflower, it grows very quickly. On the other hand a plant that grows slower and remains strong would represent organic results.
When you are starting out a new business, it is ideal to run pay per click campaigns, as it takes time and hard work to get to the top with organic results, but you should also have some organic programme in place alongside.
How can SEO benefit a small business?
SEO can benefit a business of any size! We have a client at GMA who came to us years ago because their business was beginning to collapse. We achieved top rankings on Google through four different countries for their major search terms, and their business came flooding in. In every three enquiries they gained, two of them became customers, and they received between 50-60 solid enquiries per month.
Their dip soon became a rise in turnover and they still rank number one in the search results in various countries! This just proves that with good SEO your business can benefit massively. SEO is also about good quality. The enquiries GMA receive are mostly through SEO efforts and are always the best quality leads.
How has SEO changed over time?
I’ve been doing SEO for 14 years and it has changed massively.
It is much more difficult to do now. A lot of SEO companies have given up because of the amount of hard work it takes to get your website ranked in a good position. Google like to change the algorithm frequently, over 500 times a year in fact!
Rules to remember for smooth SEO
Far too many to list here, but the content you have on your website is important, and lots of it. If potential customers have a need, you can serve them with relevant content and images and then all you need is a call to action, all from one-page visit! You have to include key phrases which are in the copy throughout each page for your website for Google to be able to rank the website. Social media is also a huge factor of SEO and today it is so popular Google have added it to their algorithm.
Blogs and journals are a must-have now, as they can bring you website traffic and boost your search engine rankings. The more you update content on a page, the more it will help with your SEO, which is highlighted in the recent Penguin and Panda updates from Google. Make sure that your site has good technical attributes such as fast loading, clean URL’s, no missing pages and that the site is mobile optimised are also big factors this year.
There really is too much to go through here.
I am going to be running an SEO course in the new year under a new training brand called GMA Academy. Please use the contact form if you are interested in attending the course.
