Our SEO company in Essex want to help your company climb the Google rankings. We don’t just work in the Essex county; we have clients all over the UK, and even a couple in the USA!
The fact is, if you aren’t ranking at the top of Google, you’re missing out on work. There are around 3 million posts published on websites every single day and a significant proportion are never even read. To stand out from the crowd, you need to make sure you are working on your SEO consistently.
There are different ways of helping your website rank, on and off-site SEO. With these, there are multiple marketing methods to achieve the specific type of SEO you are looking to accomplish. Today our SEO company in Essex are going to discuss how you can push your site up the rankings.
What is on page SEO.
On page SEO are the steps you take on your own website in order to increase your rankings on search engines like Google.
Your on page ranking factors have a significant impact on how and where your page is showing up. The biggest factors have been listed below with a brief explanation.
Content
The content of your page is what people read when they land. If it is not high quality, informative, and of course, what they are looking for, it won’t make you a sale. Furthermore, if Google determines that your site is not these things they will not want to rank it. So, from an SEO standpoint you need to put a lot of effort into creating quality content. Generally speaking, this is relatively lengthy too. The thinking behind this is; if you are explaining something of value and in any depth, it is unlikely to be a few hundred words long.
The general consensus tends to be that content can be considered high quality when it is over 1,000 words. In summary, there needs to be a demand for it, and it needs to be linkable (have it’s own URL). Remember too, not every blog or page is going to rank well, in fact 10% of your content will generate 60% of your traffic. Content is quite a broad term too, so it could be related to images, video, or written content, for example. Irrespective of the format, any and all content should be created for the benefit of users, not the search engines. Regardless of if our SEO company in Essex is creating content for ourselves or our customers, we try and make the information as in depth and informative as possible. Google aside, it’s a great conversion tool because people know that you really are an expert in your field. So consider every visit to your website as an experience.
Keywords.
One way that Google can tell what the topic of your page is about is through the keywords that you select.
When you select a keyword, don’t do it randomly. Choose something that is popular and relevant that you are also an expert in. The quality of keyword research you carry out will directly impact your SEO results. Imagine your key word or phrase as a compass for your search engine optimisation. If you want to get to the top of Google, you need to give them direction.
First of all, brainstorm a list of topics, for our Essex marketing agency, that could look like this:
- Social media marketing
- Public relations
- SEO
- Content marketing
- Pay per click
- Email marketing
- Business Development
- Photography
- Videography
- Graphic Design
- Website Design
Note – these are not keywords; these are topics. You will work with these to pick specifics out. For example, rather than ‘SEO’ you could have ‘Link building agency in Chelmsford’.
Finding Keywords
There are numerous ways to find keywords. One of my favourites is Google Search Console. On here, you can see what people have clicked onto your site for. That’s great, but what haven’t they clicked on and rather just had an impression from? You can quickly determine what people have searched, and in what volume, but you aren’t ranking well enough for. You can then work on that key phrase. In some cases, this could be a case of refreshing on, and expanding, existing content. In others, it may be a case of starting from scratch. Another source, surprisingly, is Wikipedia. Just visit the site and type in a broad keyword. You will be taken to a Wikipedia entry for that keyword. From here, there will be a contents section and within that are subtopics. Every page you click on will dive deeper and deeper into a topic and will provide you with keywords which generally, are in blue.
You can also simply Google a phrase and scroll to the bottom of the page where you will find a list of eight keywords which are closely related to your search term. This is particularly helpful because if Google is showing them you know that people are quite literally Googling them. Once you have exhausted these key phrases, you can scroll to the bottom of another page, click on another one of the eight terms; rinse and repeat. Finally, everyone’s best friend, Google Keyword planner. This is, without question, the most reliable keyword planning tool available. (Plus it’s free.) The downside is it’s made for ads not keywords, but it will still do what you want!
Choosing Keywords
Once you have established what key words you want to use, you need to decide how competitive it is to work with and if it is going to be worth your while. Realistically, if it is really competitive, you will have problems getting past page 3.
Generally speaking, long tail keywords are not as competitive. There are three different types of keywords, which are as follows:
- Head terms aka a single word eg – SEO
- Body keywords aka 2-3 words – SEO agency Essex
- Long tail keywords aka 4+ words – Essex SEO agency specialising in link building.
The conversion rate on 4+ word key phrases is high, simply because people know exactly what they are looking for. If you Google ‘SEO’ you could be searching for an image, a dictionary definition… the options are endless!
If you want to look at how difficult a key phrase is to rank for, you’ll do really well to check it out on a platform like SemRush, Moz, or Ahrefs. Google any of these websites, pop the keyword in and it will tell you what the competition is like.
Now you need to look at the volume of search. You don’t want to put all your time and effort int ranking for a word that is only Googled once a month. That being said, what is the cost per click? If that one click Is a guaranteed sale, and your basket value is high, you’ll still want to rank for it!
Don’t forget it need to be organic too. For example, the keyword for this page is ‘SEO company in Essex’. However, this isn’t going to fit into every sentence smoothly so I could also put Essex SEO agency or Chelmsford SEO consultants.
As much as the keyword is important, it should be organic and sound as natural as possible to the reader. You have to remember that if you were talking naturally you wouldn’t cram ‘SEO company in Essex’ into every sentence, you would only use it where works and actually makes sense. Keyword stuffing is something of the past and as such, should be avoided.
URLS
Along with your on site linking and keywords, you’ll need to consider your URL structure. Build your site so there is a hierarchy. For example, your website – industry – speciality. Due to the hierarchy, search engines can tell that the post isn’t general but directly links to a particular topic within a specific industry. This can massively help your SEO efforts. As and where you can, you should use your keyword within the URL too, and as close to the start of this as possible.
What is off page SEO?
Off page SEO is how you optimise your website using everywhere else on the internet other than your own domain. This could be through high quality links, social indications, Google My Business, reviews, and various other methods. All of this works to increase your position on search engines such as Google.Only by using a combination of on and offsite techniques can you effectively climb the Google rankings.
One of the things most people talk about are backlinks. Historically, all you had to do was create a high quantity of any link back to your site and boom; top of the rankings. As with anything like this, people started to abuse the system. As a result, people where creating links for links sake. Often these were on, for example, directories. Once Google realised what was happening, they stopped ranking you on low quality backlinks and started putting an emphasis on relevant, useful, and reliable links. Our SEO company in Essex have an in house PR team who work hand in hand with our SEO department. They actively work to get our clients featured in the press because links from media sources have an excellent chance of helping your website ranking. Of course there is then the additional benefit of everything PR offers a brand; which is always a welcome addition to any marketing strategy!
What to consider before starting an off page strategy.
Prior to starting your off page techniques, make sure everything covered in our previous on page section is completed. Remember, there is little to no point driving people to a website if they aren’t going to buy from you and in some cases this can be damaging.
- Have you optimised your domain for link building?
- Have you got content on your site that is link worthy?
- Is your site relevant and is your content good quality?
Link worthy content should be unique, high quality, and show you are knowledgeable about your industry. Good content will not only help you attract links but can also be a driving force.
Links
Different links look, well, different. A branded anchor text means that your brand name is in the anchor. Naked links could look like this – https://www.linkedin.com – and generic anchor is when the link is embedded is casual conversation, such as this one.
There are also image links to consider. A search engine cannot read images; so we use the text in the ALT tag to show what we are taking about. As a result, Google, for example, will count that ALT text as an anchor. There is a correlation between every type of link that is the keywords are closely linked and relevant; it will help your SEO ranking.
Social Bookmarking
You can visit social bookmarking sites and save links to use in the future. If you are social bookmarking you are effectively adding your domain so people can see it publicly; effectively marketing it to a wider audience. Someone else may do the same for you if your content is high quality. This technique is absolutely about the quality though. Do not go through and bookmark multiple pages without a strategy to back this up.
Examples of places you can do this include:
- Scoopit
Forums.
This is a technique that can be frowned upon, however this is predominantly because people abuse it! To do this properly you will need to find a handful of high quality blogs that are related to your site or industry. Start a discussion, share posts, comment on feeds, answer questions… There are multiple ways to draw attention to your website in doing this but again; and I really can’t stress this enough… quality.
YouTube.
Again, our SEO company in Essex wrote a whole blog post on this, which you can find by clicking here. In short, people love video. It’s becoming the most popular way of digesting information and as YouTube is part of the Google family it can do absolute wonders for your SEO. Create useful videos of your product or service; this could be a tutorial, how to, review… the options are endless. Make sure that you optimise these videos within YouTube too so that people can find them. Following this they will need to be shared to social channels for best results.
Reviews.
Business reviews, especially on your Google Places page, are really important. Obviously, this is because people will often read reviews before they make a buying decision. However, they are also invaluable for SEO. This does also rely on your replying though so don’t be shy about thanking people for their contribution.
Contact Us
We hope our SEO company in Essex’s beginners guide to improving your SEO has been helpful. If you don’t have the time to invest, or don’t understand what to do, just click here to get in touch. We offer either a full service, where we will manage the entire process for you; or a consultancy where we will simply offer advice and training. No matter what you need, our friendly team are here to help and offer a completely free website review and proposal.