When looking into the where’s and how’s of SEO services, you might find yourself getting a little lost along the way. The truth is, search engine optimisation is an incredibly complex area of marketing. Not only does this require an elite level of technical skill, but also, years of hands-on experience too. Unlike social media, SEO isn’t something you can attempt yourselves, making a team of professionals a must-have.
At VerriBerri, SEO is one of the many things that we do best. Having helped hundreds of clients conquer the search engine results page (SERP), it’s safe to say that we know a thing or two about improving your sites health. With an elite content team and masters of the Google algorithm on standby, you can be confident in our ability to deliver.
What is SEO?
For those of you who are feeling a bit overwhelmed, let’s take it back to the basics…
Starting simple, SEO; also known as search engine optimisation, is a way of manipulating your website to better fit with search engine algorithms. Essentially, the more boxes you tick, the higher you rank when people carry out searches that relate to your company. The better your positioning, the more exposure you generate. And the more exposure, the more sales. It’s as simple as that!
What is an algorithm?
Each and every day, millions of new websites get published to Google for the world to see. Of course, not all of these are going to be relevant to what you’re searching for, hence the need for an algorithm. Algorithms are used to solve problems, in this case, they provide structure when it comes to which content you see and how it ranks. Naturally, Google want their end user experience to be the best it can be.
This means making sure their audience are able to find the information they’re looking for at the touch of a few buttons. Unless they achieve this, individuals will start moving over to other engines such as Bing, for example. So that they can ensure users keep coming back for more, they need to be selective when deciding how they rank content. As you can begin to see, staying on the right side of the algorithm is incredibly important if you want to be seen. It’s vital you don’t overlook this.
How does Google know where to place my website?
When a website is published, it then undergoes a process known as indexing. This is where Google send out bots known as ‘spiders’ to crawl your site. It is their job to determine how much of the algorithms criteria you satisfy, and ultimately, how ‘good’ your website is. The better your score, the higher your SEO value.
How to improve your SEO
As we touched on earlier, SEO is a highly skilled area of marketing and not something you should attempt without prior experience. So that you can better understand SEO, here are a few examples of the types of things Google look out for…
On-site SEO services
The term ‘on-site SEO’ refers to any modifications you make directly on your website. This includes changes in the back end, as well as creating optimised blog content, landing pages and website copy.
When writing content for your website there are several different rules you should follow if you want to make it SEO optimised. For starters, you need to be including keywords. In short, a keyword is a term or phrase that someone might type into Google when searching. For example, before stumbling across this blog, you might have searched for ‘SEO services.’ Depending on the length of your content, this needs to be featured regularly throughout. It should also appear in the first sentence too.
Other ways to optimise your content include:
- Keeping sentence lengths to a minimum
- Including relevant internal and external backlinks
- Ensuring your writing is of an optimum length
- Utilising imagery
- Generating persuasive meta-descriptions
Back-end optimisation also falls under the on-site SEO umbrella. This includes any modifications made behind the scenes such as optimising your site for mobile devices, writing alt-text, and compressing image sizes. The list is endless.
Off-site SEO services
When it comes to off-site optimisation, this includes anything carried out outside of your site that has a direct effect on your SEO value. You can optimise your site in this way through backlinks generated through PR and activity carried out on your social media feed. Features in digital publications, such as The Mail Online, for example, generate what we call backlinks. This is where one website links to another and this can have a huge baring on your SEO value. Publications utilise these backlinks in order to make their articles more useful. Not only does this boost their own SEO, but it also means that viewers can easily reach your website for more information after reading. Before featuring in any credible publication, this platform is likely to have put your business through a number of background checks. Google know this.
Therefore, if a trusted platform is willing to promote you, they are too. Providing your back links come from an authoritative source, these are going to work wonders for your ranking.In addition to their algorithm, Google also use the anagram EAT to determine your positioning. This stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. If you have a high following and engagement rate on social media, this tells Google that people find value in the content you are producing. Furthermore, it proves that you meet their EAT criteria. As a result, you’ll rank higher on the SERP.
Contact us
With site health being so fragile, there really is little room for error when it comes to SEO. This in mind, you need a team behind your project that you can trust. That’s where we come in!
If you’d like to know more about the SEO services we provide, get in touch! You can reach a member of our team by calling the offices on 01376 386 850, or by clicking here.