SEO is the set of methodologies used to climb your page in search engine rankings. Search engines employ ‘bots’; programs that crawl the Internet trying to find pages relevant to the search phrase entered. By serving these bots, you can get your page recognized by that search engine and, if you are skillful enough, appear on the first page. Getting on the first page will put you in front of the maximum number of people searching for that keyword.

Understanding why you need to get to the top of a Google search, or to the top of any other search engine, is critical to successfully integrating SEO into your website. To sell your products, you need to get in front of the right people, and since 97% of all purchases start online, you need to make sure you have a viable online presence. But simply ‘getting to the top of Google’ is not enough. You need to make sure you hog the relevant keywords. For example, if you are an organic tomato seed company, you want to be in front of organic gardeners and farmers, not those looking for tomato plants, tomato canes or tomato cans. Researching the right keywords for your business is critical to getting noticed by Google. If you appear on the first page in front of the target audience, they will likely click through to your site before anyone else, and if your content is strong enough to hold their interest, they will turn into customers.

Evaluate your site in terms of its SEO strategy. Does your website sound like this?

• Our company does not appear well in a Google search for the services and/or products we offer
• The company could appear better in a Google search – i.e. we need better/more effective SEO

SEO is a powerful tool that can put you miles ahead of your competitors if implemented correctly. Every business needs SEO; how can we help yours?

Google ranks your page using a long list of criteria that is very complex, but can be assumed into two categories. Google analyzes internal content and external links. Internal content is the text you have on your site, including the structure, name, and copy that is loaded. Bots crawl the site looking for certain criteria and base their rankings on that. External links are created when another website places a link to your page or is shared by other media. The bots recognize the link and assume that the content you have is important, and desirable enough, that it has been posted by another site. The more popular the site places your link, the more bots rank your site for the link.

Google receives around 90% of all queries from search engines, so it’s easy to focus your efforts around them. There are other engines like Bing and Yahoo, and if you have the resources, it’s a good idea to focus some of them on those search engines, but remember the balance of power. 9 out of 10 queries are on Google, so 9 out of 10 SEO hours need to be spent working on Google. Successful SEO takes a lot of consistent time and effort, so use it where it’s most effective. Don’t be tempted to spread your efforts too thin across a wider range of search engines, it’s better to be the master of one than the servant of three.

If you have a website, you need SEO. By researching how much traffic and different keywords in your industry receive, you will see the power of SEO for your website. If traffic or competition is low, basic SEO might be all that’s needed. An SEO campaign needs a big investment of time and resources, so make sure you put in the appropriate amount to get the highest ROI. If there’s a lot of traffic or competition for keywords specific to your industry, you won’t be able to make an impression without using advanced SEO. By getting in front of the right people early in the search for the products and services they need, you increase the amount of leads in your sales funnel, which increases sales. Every website needs SEO, it’s just a matter of degree.

All content uploaded to your site needs to be relevant to your industry and your keywords. Along with keywords, SEO robots will look for related words in your text, so the more relevant content you have, the more value your website has. Your content should be created and managed with a focus on SEO, but also with the art of making it engaging so it can be read and shared. The more relevant content you have, the more sharing happens, which increases your search rankings. Your blog, added text, and articles need to be optimized so that your SEO strength increases with each share.

The most common method of tracking SEO page rankings is Google Webmaster Tools. Google tracks many different factors to decide where your page ranks in a search, but its metrics show how many people visited your page, how many clicked, and where you rank. If you rank number ten or less, you’ll be on the first page, and if you’re in the top three, you’ll be considered exceptional, but Google Webmaster only tracks the last three months of activity. We use a more sophisticated tracking program that tracks your page’s performance indefinitely and allows you to compare yourself with other pages. This means you can measure your page’s performance and make any necessary adjustments to climb the rankings, and then track your progress.

Basic SEO can be implemented as a website is being developed and can be completed quickly. Researching which keywords are most important to your website will take longer than implementing basic SEO, and this is the most important step. When you find the keywords you want to focus on, the optimization process can begin. It can take some time for the effects of Advanced SEO to manifest, especially if you are in a competitive industry. Successful SEO is only achieved by consistent and intensive application. You should constantly add keywords to your website and social media, evaluating your ranking position and which keywords are most profitable. This requires a lot of resources to achieve, but you have to be patient and wait for the results to come, which takes time. For advanced SEO to really take effect and have a chance of making it to the first page of results, you will need to wait at least twelve months for the bots to rate your site and rank it high enough to be their premium recommendation.

Yes definitely. People pay to be at the top of the first page on Google, which you can see if you search for any phrase in a search engine. The search engine will bring up two types of results, paid results and organic results. In general, people have become immune to these paid ads at the top of the page and move to the organic searches below. These web pages are the ones that land on the first page of the search without paying for it. If you’re on the first page organically, your property’s value is worth what others are paying for the same position.