HGB’s guide to search engine optimisation
By Rohan Xavier, May 20 2020
When was the last time you bothered to click to the second page of Google search results?
Can’t remember? The state of your website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) could be all that stands between you and a successful transaction.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimising your website in a strategic way to be read by search engines – namely Google’s algorithms. If done correctly, your website will rank higher on the first page of search results for selected keywords. Not the very top, though. Those are the paid search results, as in Google Ads. We’re talking the next lot down.
At the end of the day, Google wants its users (your potential customers) to find what they’re looking for. By serving highly relevant and quality content to its users, said users will return again and again to Google to search for what they need (there’s a reason why Google owns over 90% of the search engine market share!).
SEO is a series of optimisations that will tell Google your website content is worthy of being served to its users. If your SEO isn’t up to Google’s standards, Google won’t rank your content.
Why do you need SEO?
Google search results look for certain aspects to be present in your website. Beginning with solid keyword research, we can identify relevant and high-volume search terms and optimise your website to align with those terms. As more people click through to your website, Google’s confidence in your content increases, which in turn increases your search rankings.
As well as the quality of your SEO indicating to Google the quality of your website, when you break it down, Google search results fall into two categories – organic and paid. Organic rankings are due to great ongoing optimisation, whereas paid rankings are due to – you guessed it – ongoing payments to Google! Thus, the better your SEO, the sooner you can turn off those Ads.
How do we get better at SEO?
SEO is like physical fitness – you can’t go to the gym once and expect to keep that beach bod! You must keep at it. And just like the gym, we can give you a programme, but will you follow it? Chances are you need a Personal Trainer to help you keep ticking along and consistently building on your results. A good SEO programme considers the following:
- Your website can be indexed by Google’s search engine bots and they can read all aspects of your website.
- Keyword research – find relevant keywords with good search volume.
- Website content – ensure your content speaks to the search terms customers are typing into Google.
- Ensure backlinks are coming from other good-quality websites (high domain authority/rating).
- Website load speed and user experience (UX).
- Informative and highly relevant blog articles/content pieces.
- Title tags, meta description, URLs to get higher click through rates.
- Schema Markup – to stand out in search results as well as provide extra information to search bots.
Looking to improve your SEO? HGB’s SEO experts are ready to be your personal training team! With our SEO packages, we’ll optimise, measure, monitor and tweak your website’s content to improve your month-on-month rankings.
Get in touch with the HGB team today, and get ranking!