The term search engine optimisation (SEO) gets thrown around a lot. Without a clear understanding of what it involves, it’s easy for businesses to dismiss SEO as yet another digital marketing buzzword. However, it is an essential part of a business’ online strategy.
So, really, what is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or web page from search engines. According to Google, it is the process of optimizing your online content so that the search engine shows it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword. In short, it is optimising content to achieve the best possible rankings in search engine results.
Consider this scenario – there is you, the search engine and the searcher. If you had an article about making good old meatballs, you want the search engine (Google, in 90% of cases) to show your article as a top result for someone searching for a recipe for meatballs.
On any given day, peopleworldwide conduct over 2.2 million searches – and that is on Google only, it does not take into account the other search engines available. Therefore, showing up on the front page of Google can be the deciding factor between a business that’s thriving and another that has the proverbial one-foot-in-the-grave.
Marketing legend has it that if you ever need to hide a dead body, put it on the second page of Google search results…
Two types of SEO
- On-page SEO refers to all of Google ranking factors that they determine by directly looking at the page you are trying to optimise. These are things like your content, headlines and sub-headings. It further includes the quality of the writing, use of keywords, freshness of content and meta descriptions. Simply put, on-page SEO would be the garden path leading to the door of your home. If the garden is overgrown and full of weeds, no visitor will even make it to the front door to see what’s inside.
- Off-page SEO is all factors outside of your website that may affect its search engine rankings. This depends on other sources such as social media, backlinks and other blogs in the industry. Let’s look at the above explanation again; off-page SEO would be that same garden path being lush, green and beautifully kept. While visitors may follow that path to the door of your home, they don’t want to be met by chaos inside.
They’re different, but you need to get both right in order to do well with SEO. This means keeping both the garden path, as well as the inside of your house neat and tidy.
That’s where Digital Gap digital marketing agency comes in. We clearly understand both on- and off-page SEO, keyword analysis, back-linking, seed methodology and gap analysis. As well as all the other geek-speak services.
