What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website and its content to improve its visibility and rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The goal of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of organic (unpaid) traffic to a website from search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and more.

Conducting website SEO involves a variety of techniques, including keyword research, content creation, on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

Keyword Research

Keyword research (KW) is the foundation of all of your SEO efforts. It involves identifying the keywords and phrases that people use to search for products or services related to a particular business.

KW research is a crucial aspect of SEO because it helps you align your content with what your target audience is searching for.

By optimising your content around relevant keywords and key phrases, you can increase the chances of your website ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Content Strategy & Creation

Content creation involves planning and creating relevant content that is of a high quality. High-quality content needs to be relevant, engaging, helpful, and informative.

Content is king in the SEO game. It’s of the utmost importance that any content you create is specifically written to help and inform your target audience.

When creating your high-quality content, it’s essential to write for humans as your first priority. Your content should answer questions, provide solutions and satisfy the search intent of your target audience.

If you get caught up trying to create content just to impress a search engine, it is unlikely you’ll achieve the ranking results you are wanting for your business.

On-Page Optimisation

On-page optimization involves making changes directly to the webpage itself to enhance its relevance and user-friendliness for both search engines and website visitors.

On-page SEO is a broad topic. Here are some of the elements associated with on-page optimisation:

Content & Keyword Optimisation (avoid keyword stuffing)
Meta Tags
URL Structure
Header Tags
Image Optimisation
Internal Linking
Mobile-Friendly Design
Page Speed
User Experience (UX)
Readability
External Links
Conversion Rate Optimisation

Focusing on the key elements of on-page optimisation can significantly boost the SEO of a local business website when done correctly.

It really goes hand-in-hand with technical SEO. Both of these techniques aim to continually improve your website in every possible way.

The aim is to have a business website that provides the best user experience and content for your visitors whilst being easily accessible and highly relevant to search engines.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO includes optimizing the technical aspects of the website to ensure the site provides a good user experience and is friendly for search engines to crawl/index.

There are many elements that fit into the category of technical optimisation such as:

Crawlability
Indexability
Web Hosting Environment
Site Speed
Core Web Vitals
Mobile-Friendliness
SSL Security
XML Sitemaps
Robots.txt
Canonical Tags
Hreflang Tags
Structured Data Markup
Responsive Design
Redirects
Broken Links
HTTP Status Codes

The majority of the elements relating to technical SEO often only need to be fixed once.

Although, as your website evolves and changes over time it is possible for technical issues such as broken links, crawl errors, poor core vitals and indexing issues to arise again.

Once technical issues are resolved, it is important to have a routine in place to monitor the technical SEO aspects of your website to ensure it remains optimised.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO relates to optimising the online properties relating to your business and website that are out there on the internet.

When conducting off-site SEO, you will be working on things like:

Backlinks & Link Building
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Online Review Management
Directory Listings & Citation Building
Social Media Signals
Online Reputation Management
Guest Blog Posting
Brand Mentions
Social Bookmarking
Content Sharing
Forum Participation
Online Community Engagement
Public Relations (PR) and Press Releases

The main aim of off-page SEO is to build and grow your business’s online reputation and authority through:

Getting relevant backlinks to your business website
Attracting referral traffic from other websites
Increasing mentions of your brand across the internet
Gaining positive reviews of your products and services

Outcomes of quality SEO

By implementing effective SEO techniques and continually improving a website, businesses can increase their online visibility and ranking on search engine results pages.

This can lead to increased website traffic, higher visitor engagement, more leads/sales and increased revenue for a business.

The benefits of SEO far outweigh the costs and just about every business should be investing in website SEO.