With so many websites out there, search engines use algorithms to ensure the most accurate, relevant and useful information gets presented to end-users. Several things play a part in your website's search engine optimisation - the usability, the relevance of information, the speed, motion graphics/video and its responsiveness are to name just a few.
Ranking
Google indexes every website submitted to it and uses organic ranking to determine its place results pages. This can sometimes be enough for some websites to achieve good results, specifically for companies/services/products not in a saturated marketplace or that are only interested in users from within a localised geographical area. Beyond that more is often required to beat the competition.
Converting visits to sales
If done right SEO can have a massive impact on your website traffic turning visits to enquiries/sales. But it's not just about getting traffic to the site, for it to be effective you want the traffic to convert into paying customers. You can use things like A/B testing, which tests to make necessary changes to your website and measure the conversion rate.
Landing page
A websites landing page needs to be as relevant as possible with regard to the words and phrases you believe your end-users will type in to find you. The homepage needs to feature call to actions and messaging that is relevant to your end-users so they stay on the page. The quality of these pages can have a dramatic effect on your conversion rate. A good agency can help you define what phrases and keywords will be used to search for your business/products.
Backlinks
Backlinks have always been an important factor for website rankings. Having good quality content across social posts, directories and other websites can attract better opportunities through backlinks. Getting your social post noticed is key, the more likes, comments, shares, shout-outs and links the better! Social media platforms make it easy to reach out and connect with your audience, and you can use that to generate more traffic to your website. However, we urge clients to be careful with backlinks – creating backlinks that search engines will deem irrelevant to your end users can go against you so resist the temptation of listing your site everywhere – select with care!
There are many different techniques and tactics to SEO and we hope this article has provided an insight into a few of the basics. Techniques are forever evolving as new algorithms/methods are created and your competition up their game. SEO plays a powerful part in online marketing and has become an essential tool that can generate a great return if used correctly. The best method of getting great SEO results is to work with a digital marketing company who can look at your whole digital strategy and analyse your pipeline.
