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, whereas previously they may have used the Yellow pages. 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, make 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 keyphrases which are relevant to the business. Essentially, it is ensuring that the website is search engine friendly and that it effectively informs both users and search engines what the website is about.
Search Engine Optimisation will usually comprise of a range of techniques, including on-site optimisation, content creation and link building, as well as branching out to general 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 keyphrases. 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. If they find lots of links that point at your site which include the text ‘paper planes’ they’re more likely to think that your site is a great place to go for info on paper planes and rank it accordingly. Getting another website to link to you is like getting a vote of confidence from that website. But not all votes are equal. An SEO company will obtain a variety of high-quality links (votes) for your website in order to inform the crawlers that your website is relevant for specific keyphrases.
- Outreach
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, linking through to your website from these. A blog also meets the search engine’s suggestion of regular content addition, again a reason why they love blogs and why they come so highly recommended and used.
- Social
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are further channels through which you can engage with your target audience and leverage industry connections to gain further links and general brand awareness which drives traffic to your site. Social media 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 search engine optimisation specialists who are trying to ‘game’ the system. 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 filling your pages with keywords and then Google changes their algorithm so that overusing keywords negatively affects your rankings then you’re in trouble. (This has actually already happened; ‘keyword stuffing’ is now likely to get you nowhere SEO-wise).
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 with experience, cunning and smarts that have 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. The account manager is your go-to-gal so make sure they’re delivering the pitch and that you get on well.
Once you’ve identified the right SEO company for you all that remains is to agree terms. Make sure there is a performance related aspect to the terms of the contract or payment schedule – 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.
