A short, sharp briefing note for senior executives and business owners
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the marketing skill of ensuring that relevant pages on your website appear at the top of Google’s “organic” ranking results for a given phrase or “keyword”. The organic results in Google and other search engines are different to the paid “Sponsored Listings” or “Ads” found at the top and to the right of the search results. You cannot buy organic search results, but you can influence them using SEO skills.
Why does it matter?
Only 35% of people ever click on the adverts on Google. Over 50% of people click on the first organic search result. Whoever is in this spot is most likely to win the business and has a huge competitive advantage.
Isn’t SEO just a dark art?
No! SEO is a core marketing skill that has well-defined clear processes and workflows, which any consultant can and should share with you. It should sit alongside other core marketing skills whether digital, like managing pay per click advertising, or traditional, like public relations. There are technical skills involved as well and a good consultant needs to have real insight into your business.
So how does it work?
In simple terms, it is a three stage process:
1. Market research and business insight
A good SEO consultant needs to understand your core business and what you are selling. He or she will research your online marketplace thoroughly to find areas where there are significant relevant volumes of online traffic without excessive competition. This will enable you to find qualified prospective customers to convert to sales. This is the market research, known as keyword research as it will throw up the target keywords to focus on.
2. Building the website and landing page correctly
The consultant will advise on how to build the website properly for your target keywords. Keywords will target individual web pages which will be absolutely relevant to the user’s search. That way you meet Google’s aim to provide the most relevant information. In addition, you need to grow and build your website to contain more high quality content over time.
3. Promoting the website
Web pages build authority (known technically at Google as PageRank) by the number, authority, reputation and relevance of links pointing towards them from other web pages. SEO work involves building relevant links to your website in a number of ways. In association with social media campaigns, traditional marketing channels, and providing high quality relevant content on and off your website, you will achieve ranking results.
How long does it take to rank on Google?
Results of an SEO campaign are not immediate, but they are likely to give far more stable long term results than, say, advertising. Results may take anything from a few weeks for easy keywords to over a year if the keywords are highly competitive. Good research, focus and sensible processes should result in SEO campaigns winning growing traffic over a period of time. If there is urgency in a marketing campaign, paid advertising can generate traffic until the SEO work takes over in a much more economical way.
What does it cost?
SEO work will be monitored and will be able to provide clear information about your return on investment (ROI) through detailed analytics. A more relevant question is “What will it save?”
Take an example: The web page at the top ranking position for the keyword [Buy to Let Mortgages] in the UK will expect to have 559 visitors a day. To advertise with this keyword on Google AdWords would cost an estimated £10.69 for each click. Businesses are paying that. The top organic ranking position is therefore worth nearly £6,000 a day or over £2 million a year in equivalent advertising spend. The keyword phrase is a target of medium difficulty for a good SEO campaign. That campaign would cost a tiny fraction of the advertising equivalent.
At the other end of the scale, a recent test campaign we ran resulted in a 650% increase in traffic to a single product page over just two months.
Why isn’t everyone doing this?
Why indeed? Something like 90% of internet marketing spend is on advertising. Many large corporate firms just don’t understand it. Most small businesses don’t understand it. SEO levels the playing field and enables SME’s and even tiny bricks and mortar local businesses to compete effectively at a national level.
What do I do now?
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