How can we get our business onto the first page of Google?

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Introduction

A lot of business owners would say that there now facing more competition than ever before.

Whether that’s because you run a global business, or perhaps you run a local business, yet you simply may have more competitors than ever.

What’s for sure is that most businesses now need to invest in a form of marketing that helps them to generate more business.

This is where SEO can help. SEO simply stands for search engine optimisation, which is the process of improving where your company website ranks.

So, if your website is languishing on page 10 of Google, well this blog post should be of interest to your business.

We are now going to describe a bit about this form of marketing, so you can work out whether SEO will be useful for your business.

Crawling and Indexing

You may have paid a small fortune to have your website designed, yet if cannot be crawled and indexed, well it’s pretty useless from an seo perspective.

To rectify could be as something as simple as correcting a “no-index” tab. Yet it can also be more complicated as well.

In a nutshell, its really important that Google can crawl and index your website. This basically means can Google read your website.

Google uses something called “Googlebot” to read your website. If Googlebot can read your company website easily, then it can then inform the algorithm how important your website is.

How important your website is depends on how strong your websites “ranking signals” are.

There are thought to be over 200 ranking signals, and these are calculated to work out how strong they are.

So, let’s say someone is searching for a hotel in an area like London, the websites that are most relevant for that query, and have the strongest ranking signals will rank at the top.

Seo agencies therefore spend their time optimising these signals.

To make it easier for Googlebot to read your company’s website, most seo companies should create a site map.

Also, sometimes your seo company may implement a lot of seo work, sometimes this is when some marketing agencies request a “recrawl”.

This is basically a request that is sent to Google, the request asks if Google’s algorithm can notice the changes that you have made to the website.

Sometimes, if the seo work that has been implemented is good quality, what we call “white hat”, then the website may improve in terms of where it ranks.

Google’s algorithm

Google’s algorithm is really clever, what we mean by this is that it’s algorithm has been perfected so that it returns the best answers.

It’s therefore an seo companies job to optimise a businesses ranking signals, yet make the website more relevant for the type of queries that people will make when looking for that business sector.

So, for instance, a family law practice wont just want to be optimised for “family lawyers”, often they will want the website to appear for questions asked about the divorce process.

So, it’s a marketing agencies job to work out what terms they want the business to appear for.

You can make a website more relevant by adding helpful blog posts, and offering first-class information.

Do not however think that old seo methods still work, as they do not. In the past rubbish seo companies would try and optimise a website by repeatedly stating the same terms they wanted the business to rank for.

So, for example, a skip-hire company may place an article on their blog post section, and keep repeating “skip-hire + area name” over and over again- this is not a good way of doing seo.

In matter of fact, if you use rubbish seo methods like this the website is likely to incur a penalty.

A penalty can mean that the website drops in terms of where it ranks.

Knowledge Graph

Google have made so many improvements to their algorithm it can sometimes be difficult to keep up.

However, a really important update was the “Google Knowledge Graph update”, this basically improved Google’s understanding of questions that are asked to it.

Google hates spam

SEO sure is a lot of work, that’s whether you run a large insurance business, or you are a sole-trader.

So, this inevitably leads to some marketing agencies wanting to cut corners, in essence try and fool Google’s algorithm.

However, trying to fools Google’s algorithm into thinking your business is more important, well that’s going to end up one way, and that’s a penalty being implemented.

A penalty can mean that a website drops, that’s in terms of where the business ranks. Also, a penalty can mean that the website is removed altogether.

It’s also worth mentioning that recovering from an algorithmic or manual penalty can take a long time, and sometimes be really expensive.

Expensive because sometimes some agencies will need to do a lot of work to correct the problems.

Therefore, cheap seo, and low quality seo can often be a false economy.

White hat

This is why its always worth investing in white hat seo. Yet, some agencies state they offer white hat seo, when in matter of fact they do not.

Does your business need help with its SEO?

If your business wishes to invest in online marketing, then why not talk to us? We offer affordable prices, plus we have some real marketing experts working for us, so why not give us a ring?

7 things you need to know about organic seo

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Introduction

It’s fair to say that SEO has been around for quite a while now. Sure, it hasn’t been around as long as some other forms of advertising, but it’s definitely nothing new.

Yet, with that said there are still countless businesses out there that haven’t invested as of yet.

These businesses may have held-off investing as they still see SEO as something they don’t fully understand.

Which is exactly why you may be reading this blog post, you may want to find out more about organic seo, and how it can help your business.

So, without further ado, lets have a look at 7 things we think you should know about organic seo.

#1 It takes a great deal of time

It’s fair to say that there are some businesses that invest in seo and then expect results to happen straightaway.

Yet for those in the know, well, they will know this is often unrealistic, and basically speaking seo takes great deal of time.

The reason being is this, the websites that appear on the first page for competitive keywords, well those businesses will have normally spent years improving their seo marketing campaigns.

Now, this is not to put you off, or to sound defeatist before you have even begun the seo process, but it is important to be realistic.

As your agency must weigh-up how strong your competitors are. This will then dictate how much work is needed, and therefore what the monthly cost is likely to be.

As your competitors may already have hundreds, if not thousands of good quality backlinks for example, so often there’s much catching up to do.

#2 Cheap seo is a false economy

Most of us will have bought something that has let us down because it was cheap. Whether that’s a car, or superglue, what’s for sure it can be a rather annoying experience.

As the old saying goes, buy cheap and you often end up paying twice. Yet with seo things can get even more complicated.

The reason being is some companies hire a cheap seo company, and then find that they are not delivering. So obviously you would change to another seo agency, right?

Well yes, but sometimes the first company will have made such a mess of the seo, so much so the website may now have incurred a penalty.

A penalty can be caused because of rubbish backlinks being built for example.

A penalty can mean that the website suffers a drop-in terms of where it ranks, or in a worst case scenario, it can even be removed from Google, or another search engine altogether.

Its also worth bearing in mind that when a website does incur a penalty, well it can take many months and even in some cases years to get back to where it used to rank.

So a word to the wise, only invest in quality seo.

#3 Location

Think about the location of where the marketing agency is based. If the commute requires hours of travelling, well you do have to ask is that practical?

It’s true that seo reports are a great way of finding out how well the marketing campaign is going, yet you’re still going to want a meeting every now and then.

#4 Over-optimisation

Over optimising a website means that again a website could incur a penalty. Often a business will want to rank for a certain keyword, let’s say “emergency locksmiths” for example, then the company in question may over use this term throughout their website.

There are other ways to over optimise a website as well, and this is worth bearing in mind. If you’re in any doubt its always worth paying a respected seo company for help.

#5 A website can go up, and it can also go back down again

Its worth knowing that seo can move a website up the ranks, yet it’s possible that your likely to have several competitors also working on their own seo as well. That is why a website can move up the ranks, and then sometimes move back down.

This constant movement, and the competition wanting to also climb to the top, is why organic seo is a constant process.

#6 Organic seo is continuous

Some businesses will look to pay a one-off fee for online marketing. Yet, most businesses pay monthly in order for their organic seo to improve.

The reason that most businesses pay monthly is because most businesses face stiff competition.

If your business ranks at the very top, this means the competition will be trying to obtain that position for their own business.

This means that your company website is in constant competition to stay where it is or improve.

#7 Algorithm updates will detect low quality seo

You can have some businesses that implement low quality seo, then on the other hand there are some marketing agencies that sit on the fence.

What we mean by this is that some businesses will implement seo that takes shortcuts, and these shortcuts may not mean that the business gets hit straightaway by a penalty.

Therefore, some seo agencies use such methods to save time. However, the respected agencies like our marketing agency, well we know its only a matter of time before all low quality seo methods get penalised.

So, its only worth in our opinion investing in quality work. That’s the type of work where your agency has spent great deals of time working on, and which can be deemed white hat.

Why not give us a call?

If your business requires help with its digital marketing then why not give us a ring?