Search Engine Optimisation: A Buyer's Guide
This Buyers’ Guide was written in partnership with SEO Business Experts SearchQuest.
SearchQuest are one of the UK's first SEO companies, having been established since 2000; providing cutting edge internet marketing, web design and web development services to a wide range of businesses in a variety of industries, ranging from the small home business all the way through to multi-national blue chip companies.
The UK internet economy is forecasted to grow to as much as £228bn by 2015, by which time there will be over 50m UK internet users. Along with the growth in usage statistics, people’s behaviour is also changing: e-commerce is seeing incredible growth rates, despite a decline in high-street sales and the majority of people will now turn to Google to find a service provider, or follow a friend’s recommendation on Facebook or Twitter, whereas previously they may have used the Yellow pages. Also growing very quickly is mobile search with over 50% of the UK population the owner of a smart phone. With such a fast growing and accessible market it’s unsurprising that the online space is so competitive and that search engine optimisation is such a sought after service.
Is your website currently on page 1 of Google?
If your website does not appear at the top of the search engine results when a user searches for products or services offered by your business, you are missing out on valuable enquiries and sales. It is vital that your website appears as high as possible on the list of results and generally speaking, the higher up the results you are, the greater chance you have of a potential customer visiting your website and, as a result, making an enquiry or a purchase.
A search engine optimisation (SEO) company can help you appear higher in searches for relevant terms on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, increasing traffic to your website and raising your share of that incredibly lucrative and rapidly expanding online market.
Search Engine Optimisation: What is it?
SEO is the process of ensuring a website appears at the top of the search engines when a user types key phrases which are relevant to the business. A variety of different techniques are required to achieve this and Search Engine Optimisation can include the traditional on-site optimisation, content creation and link building, as well as branching out to other internet marketing techniques such as social media.
Common SEO techniques used to effectively optimise a website are:
- On-Site Optimisation
On-Site optimisation involves making changes to the content and script of your website to ensure that the search engine ‘crawlers’ (i.e. the automatic software that reads and indexes web pages) find it as relevant as possible for your chosen key phrases. For example, if your website sells paper planes you’d want the search engines to find your homepage to be very relevant for the term ‘paper planes’. Making sure that the phrase ‘paper planes’ appeared in the places in which the search engine crawlers look for it e.g. the page title, tags, textual content, headings, picture titles etc is a good start.
- Link Building
The search engine crawlers use links to travel around the internet, reading and indexing pages as they go. A search engine measures the authority of your web site by the number of links pointing to your site and the quality of the web sites that those links are coming from. It is vitally important that you choose the right SEO Company, since the Google Penguin update of last year a poorly managed link building campaign can do far more harm than good and cause your site to lose all of its rankings. A good SEO company will obtain a variety of high-quality links for your website in order to inform the search engines that your web site is a high authority brand.
- Content Creation and Marketing
Search engines like Google love blogs. They assign them high importance which means blogs, and links from them, are very valuable. It is a common SEO technique to implement a blog onto your website (if you don’t already have one), adding regular blog posts which cover subject matters relevant to your industry and linking through to your website’s main pages from these. Another major change from Google last year was the Panda update and one of the areas this concentrates on is the quality and freshness of content. An excellent way to meet this requirement is to have a blog or news section on your website; it can also tie in with your social media efforts and is an excellent way of keeping customers up to date with what’s happening in your business.
- Social
Social media signals are now a ranking factor with search engines and platforms like Facebook and Twitter are further channels through which you can engage with your target audience. It is also a great way to leverage industry connections to gain further links and improve general brand awareness which drives traffic to your site. Social media also links up perfectly with your website’s blog, allowing your followers and fans to be informed of new postings on your website, urging them to take a look.
So far we’ve only talked about search engines but SEO is also about optimising your website for users. If people can find and engage with your online content easily then they’re more likely to become a customer or, if they’re a customer already, more likely to remain one.
SEO: What isn't it?
There are many pitfalls that an ill conceived or badly executed SEO campaign can leave you exposed to. As we mentioned earlier, search engines change their algorithms frequently, not only to improve their services but to stay ahead of the element of so called “search engine optimisation specialists” who are trying to ‘game’ the system by using spammy techniques. As a result, putting all your eggs in one basket can leave you exposed to huge losses in traffic when these changes kick in. For example, if you’ve concentrated all your SEO efforts on link building over recent years with specific targeted keywords in the anchor text of the link then your site will likely have lost all of its rankings due to last year’s Penguin update.
Google and other search engines also provide a set of guidelines on what kind of optimisation techniques are acceptable. Straying too far to the dark side (black hat SEO) can land you page rank penalties or even a lengthy ban, damaging your traffic and, presumably, your revenue.
So it’s massively important to employ a search engine optimisation company which uses ethical techniques which has experience and has a proven track record of boosting their client’s rankings and traffic as well as providing an excellent ROI.
SEO Companies: Finding Them, Checking Them and Comparing Them
Unsurprisingly enough, searching for SEO companies on internet search engines (using whatever keywords you feel appropriate) yields a list of companies who obviously know how to target relevant keywords and get to the top, or near the top, of the results for highly competitive terms. These however aren’t necessarily the best SEO companies for you. They’ll also probably be the ones that charge the highest rates. It’s worth continuing down the results and looking at as many companies as you can. Another good source is social media spaces: if you’re active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc, ask your trusted professional connections for recommendations.
When comparing SEO companies, factors to consider include:
- Results and Experience
Most SEO companies will have a portfolio of previous clients on their websites. Check for testimonials and references to tangible figures that prove their effectiveness. Also, the website itself can give you a feel for how good they are at optimising for users. If an SEO company has achieved top positions for their other clients, there’s a very good chance they’ll achieve the same for you. Be sure to double check on Google the positions they claim to have achieved.
- Costs
Prices for SEO vary wildly. Initial contact should give you an idea of whether a particular company is within your budget range.
Tips for Interviewing SEO Companies
Once you’ve whittled the list down to two or three candidate search engine optimisation companies, it’s time to get proper quotes and proposals and invite the agencies to pitch. Look for answers to the following questions:
- Do you have any experience in our particular industry?
Most SEOs would find it easy to optimise a site for a trendy or sexy product but what about bath mats, doorknobs or guttering? Find out whether the SEO agency has the imagination and versatility to build great content and links for a company in your field.
- How do you measure your success?
This should be an easy one. Many, many tools and metrics are available for tracking the success of SEO campaigns. The company should be able to convince you that they can prove their effectiveness and back it up with concrete data.
- Who’s on your client list?
Do you want an SEO company working for both you and one of your competitors? It’s worth considering but whilst you may be concerned about a company working for a competitor, if they’ve achieved strong positions for them, they’re likely to achieve the same for you as well.
- Who will be managing my account?
As stated earlier, effective communication between you and the SEO company is essential. Find out how often they will report to you and what reports they will include? Will you be able to easily speak to someone whenever you need a query answered? Remember, the account manager is your go-to-gal so make sure that your happy with these points and that you get on well.
Don’t even start talking to a SEO company that doesn’t give you a no obligation proposal and current web site status report, this should detail what they aim to achieve for you, the activities they will carry out and some extensive information detailing your web sites current status.
Once you’ve identified the right SEO Company for you all that remains is to agree to terms. Ideally you should look for a company that offers monthly terms with no minimum term contract, if there is a minimum contract length make sure there is a performance related aspect to it which will enable you to stop using their service – you don’t want to end up contracted to, and paying, a company who aren’t doing what they said they would.
Once everything is confirmed and you are happy with your choice, you and your new search engine optimisation company can start building your ideal SEO strategy and start carving yourselves a bigger piece of that internet pie.
This Buyers’ Guide was written in partnership with SEO Business Experts SearchQuest.
SearchQuest are one of the UK's first SEO companies, having been established since 2000; providing cutting edge internet marketing, web design and web development services to a wide range of businesses in a variety of industries, ranging from the small home business all the way through to multi-national blue chip companies.
