Perhaps you just had a brand new website designed? You will now be eager to embark on your SEO journey and start optimising the site to reach the first page of Google.co.uk.

Yet, it’s essential to note that nearly all businesses want higher rankings —that’s to rank higher on Google.
However, do believe us when we say it’s one hard and long slog. This is especially true if your website is brand new.

Table of contents:

• What exactly is SEO?
• What are the main components of SEO
• Can you tell us how search engines like Google work?

Is hiring an SEO specialist worth it?

What exactly is this search engine optimisation?

There are now numerous marketing strategies that businesses can employ to attract more customers.

This can range from hiring social media influencers to promote products to investing time or money in organic search engine optimisation (SEO, for short).

In a nutshell, your SEO is all about generating free traffic from search engines like Bing or Google.
However, securing a spot on the first page, let alone the top four results is a position that businesses fiercely fight over. For example, a business at the top of Google, in position one, could be capturing all the company, yet a business on the first page, in position 10, could hardly be getting any calls.

As you can imagine, with high-demand products and services, the difference in ranking at the top of Google and the bottom can mean a difference of millions of pounds.

What are the main components of SEO?

How a car engine is assembled means it often has many different components working in harmony for everything to function correctly and for the engine to operate properly. This is the same for a business’s search engine optimisation.

Over 200 ranking factors are used to determine the strength of a company’s SEO. These include content marketing, link-building, and technical SEO, which are often referred to as the pillars that underpin any business’s SEO strategy.
However, with that said, these are the main categories; numerous different ranking factors fit into each of these categories.

Let’s start with technical SEO

Technical SEO is, by definition, technical; however, if you understand the basics, you can start to make some headway in terms of improving your business’s search engine optimisation. One of the most critical areas to consider, first and foremost, is page “indexation”.

For example, can a website get indexed?

Can it get indexed by Google?

Is there an XML Site Map in place?

Are the pages you want to appear in the search engine appearing?

Is the website fast? Or is it sluggish?

What is on-page optimisation?

On-page optimisation is one of the main parts of search engine optimisation. If you are just getting started with improving your organic SEO, start with on-page SEO, as there is no point in building backlinks towards a content-thin page.

On-page SEO encompasses a variety of elements, including title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, and the content itself. Google E-EAT will be used to evaluate and determine if the content marketing is of good quality.

As we shall elaborate on later in this article, the quality of content marketing is crucial to get right. A blog post that is poorly written and of little value will not even get indexed, making it a total waste of time.
This is why content marketing must be top quality.

How do search engines work?

The process by which search engines work is highly complex. The reason it’s so complex is because the algorithm is constantly being adjusted and improved. These changes to Google’s algorithm are referred to as “algorithm updates” or “core algorithm updates.”
Therefore, it’s like a vehicle technician getting used to a specific engine but being revamped and improved, let’s say, every six months by the manufacturer. So, you have to constantly be learning for example, how did Google RankBrain change SEO? How did Google’s Hummingbird update change SEO?

This is what keeps SEO experts on their toes, namely the Google algorithm updates.
However, with that said, how the search engines work can be summarised neatly into just one paragraph. The algorithms are constantly assessing the quality of the content marketing and the links to your site. If you follow best practices for white hat search engine optimisation,

your work will be of high quality, and you will improve your business’s ranking for relevant keywords.

In theory, it sounds relatively simple; however, many businesses, as well as other companies, make the mistake of trying to cut corners by using black hat methods. These are frowned upon; they will result in the website incurring a Google penalty.

Crawling and indexation

We’ve seen businesses that have invested time and money into content marketing, yet the work remains unindexed.

Indexation issues are simply problems with web pages that cannot be indexed by say Googlebot, therefore, cannot appear in Google’s results.
Consequently, the page must be crawlable and indexable. Anything that delays Googlebot, such as causing an excessive amount of time to index the page, or entirely blocks the Googlebot indexing page will result in the page not appearing in SERPs. (not-indexed)

You want to make it as simple as possible for the Googlebot to go about its business of crawling and indexing the pages you want to be indexed. Therefore, you must give Googlebot a helping hand by considering adding an XML site map and internal links. You should also manually check whether the pages can get indexed using Google Search Console.

How do search engines determine where to rank a website?

So, we’ve cleared the first hurdle: the page is being crawled and indexed by Googlebot.

Now, it’s about Googles algorithm or whichever search engine you are optimising your website for to rank the work in its index.

Now, the algorithm, Google’s algorithm as we mentioned earlier, is constantly being improved and refined.
Google also keeps how its algorthim works top secret.

Therefore nobody outside of Google really knows how it works.

However, you should be aware of the many “ranking factors” that Google takes into account to decipher and decide where your business ranks. In a nutshell, the content marketing is of top quality, and the backlinks are of superior quality, which will help it start to move up Googles ranks.

Why you can never afford to get lazy

With SEO, you can never afford to take your eye off the road.

What we mean by that is that if you use lazy black hat techniques, you will be removed from Google.

Also, the algorithm, as we mentioned, is constantly shape-shifting.

Therefore, you could rank third on Friday for a keyword that’s important to your business, and seventh position on the following Monday.

Therefore, across the board, all of the various ranking factors need to be optimised. There are over 200 different ranking factors, and you need to improve these using the best white-hat methods.

Google EEAT

This is not something that enough SEO agencies discuss in our view or talk about.

However, Google EEAT, well its now a massive part of SEO.

The EEAT framework is used to measure your website’s experience, expertise, and authoritativeness, and also trustworthiness.

Googlebot then first crawls and indexes the page. Then EEAT is used to evaluate the page, in terms of the knowledge of the products and services you are selling; in essence, you are evaluated on 200 different ranking factors as well.

This is why SEO is now hard work, not just must be the backlinks leading to the page be, well of superb quality but the on-page must have a high Google EEAT score.

However, Google EEAT is an overarching framework that is used to assess whether, for example, you are an expert on the products you are selling or not.

For example, if somebody is selling a pair of ice skates, is it apparent the person writing the product description and review knows what they’re talking about? Have they demonstrated real expertise in the product or service they are writing about?

Its only when you show real expertise and experience regarding the product / service you are describing that Google will place that page higher on Google.

Or alternatively if a copywriter just written two lines of text about the item?
As you can imagine, Google want to place the business at the top, that have genuine experiences to express their opinion on products.

Have a strategy: don’t go in blind.

The problem that many businesses face in terms of improving their organic SEO is that they go all guns blazing, make a complete hash of the SEO, and then give up shortly after. It’s a long fight, one that you must be committed to be in over the long run.

You have to think of SEO like a dripping tap; it has to be carried out over the long term, drip by drip.

Typically, massive SEO work, completed in a short time frame can even be of good quality, but it can damage your business’s rankings if its all completed in a short time frame. Instead the work must be implemented over a long timeframe.

What is therefore preferred is quality work sustained over a long period, slowly drip-fed.

Which metrics should I be monitoring?

Some SEO agencies primarily report on vanity metrics, which are about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Instead, you must look at the key metrics, (Google Analytics and Google Search Console) the more important ones, such as where your website ranks for certain keywords is crucial to your business’s success.

So for us, its important to use Google Search Console, to see where we rank for “SEO Bristol” for example. As that is important to our business.

How much organic traffic did you receive that month compared to the previous month? You can use Google Analytics to check this.

What is the dwell time like?
How long do visitors stay on the website for?
What is the engagement rate like?
Is the average visitor spending a long time on your website?
How low can you get the bounce rates?