What is SEO?
The short answer is SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s the process of optimising your online presence to improve search engine rankings. In the search results Google™ lists the websites that are most relevant and authoritative for the search term you entered.
Most of us get stuck there, and understandably so! While that’s the short answer it doesn’t really tell us much about what SEO is. As a business owner you want to have a reasonable understanding of what you’re investing your valuable marketing dollars into.
How Does Google™ Rank Pages?
On a basic level Google’s™ Search Engine compares websites using three main indicators. Let’s reveal what these are and explore the process of SEO. Breaking SEO down the process into it’s core components we have:
- Links
- Content
- Website
What is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)?
Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of increasing an advertising campaign or websites Conversion Rate. The most common method of Conversion Rate Optimisation is called Split Testing or A/B Testing.
Links
Links are text when clicked take you to another page or website. Website menu’s are made of links, Google’s search results are made of links and websites like Yellow Pages directory have lists of businesses with links to their website.
Google counts and values the quality and quantity of a websites links. Take for example two scenarios:
Scenario a): A business decides to outsource their SEO offshore to save costs. The offshore company build hundreds of low quality links to their website because they are fast and easy. The website ranks well in the short term however as Google’s computer program travels through the internet recognising all these links and suspects the website is attempting to manipulate the search results therefore penalising the website. The business loses it’s initial rankings and is now left with a penalised website with hundreds of low quality backlinks. Their domain authority is ruined and will take literally years to recover from. The reverse is now true, someone must now remove these low quality backlinks if they can be. Google’s computer program must then travel through the internet and recognise the links have been removed.
Scenario b): A business decides to use a local SEO provider. The local provider builds consistent, high quality links to their website. The websites rankings increase consistently and incrementally month after month until that business reaches the top of the search results.
A website with a high number of quality links built over time will usually rank quite well. A website with a high number of low quality links built rapidly will usually be penalised by Google.
The golden rule for links is Quality over Quantity. Slow consistency is also important, a large number of links built quickly is unnatural and raises suspicion.
Content
Content is King. Google is essentially a content curator. Google is endlessly adding websites to its index and ranking them accordingly. When someone performs a search on Google it’s valuable content they want. Rich, engaging and valuable content is essential to ranking well. Not only does Google compare websites link profiles. Google compares the websites content. How? By measuring how short or long someone stays on the website, whether or not they visit additional pages and whether they return to the search engine and keep looking. These key indicators help Google separate the low quality content from the high quality content.
Website
All websites are not created equal. Your website must be technically sound. Websites are written in a number of programming languages e.g. HTML, PHP, JavaScript and CSS. Similarly as there is good and bad grammar, there is good and bad programming. A well built website has an advantage over a poorly built website. For example in most service industries the businesses on the front page of Google have invested in a custom built website designed specifically for their business. A new business would learn slowly the hard way it is foolish to expect to rank higher than these websites using for example a free template, a Wix website, a DIY job or a friend of a friend who designed it for a few hundred bucks.
- Load fast
- Mobile friendly
- Well programmed
- Visually pleasing
In summary, in order to rank higher than your competitors, your links, content and website must be better than your competitors. Why else would Google rank your website over theirs if it is not better? If you’d like a free Gold Coast SEO analysis of your website detailing how you compare to your competition on these three key metrics get in touch with us today.
