- in Web Services by KeithR
Why is SEO Indispensable? -SEO Basics
So you have a website – it looks good, but there are few visitors, and even fewer sales! Why? Because you need to apply a few SEO Basics!
The fact is, if you let it just sit there and don’t promote it, it will probably never generate business. It’s the old story of build it and they will come! – then they don’t.
The services provided by RowleySEO are targeted at helping you to get your website ranked high in Google for the phrases people are using when they look for companies providing what your company provides.
If your site doesn’t appear high on page one, then you simply won’t be seen and found. And that’s where we can help with sophisticated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services.
What are the Myths concerning Engine Optimization?
Before reading any further, I want to warn you that there is more nonsense spoken about website promotion and SEO that almost anything else on the web.
Here are a few of the key myths and points of misinformation for you:
Do You Need links to rank?
In a nutshell – YES – almost always Google needs to know how popular your site is and what visitors think of its quality – which is measured by the links it gets – but it is complicated.
Do You only need the most powerful links?
Another false belief is that only powerful links are needed. If Google sees only the most powerful links appearing on your site overnight, then you will probably be penalized. It’s simply unlikely to happen unless your site already has a ‘track record’ of rising popularity on relevant sites and social sites like FaceBook.
If I just leave my site – Will it develop naturally?
Well it might – if you’ve got regular guest posts by famous people and a hugely popular social following; but otherwise, for most businesses, the site will simply sit there and remain unnoticed by people searching for goods and services.
Is SEO Dangerous?
I want to be very clear about this – SEO practiced by people who do not understand the risks is indeed dangerous; it can have a site penalized and make it plummet in Google rankings. But here’s the thing – every major corporation in the world spends millions on SEO – because it works when it’s done properly and the return on investment is huge.
Can a Poor Quality Site can rank highly?
This is a critical point. Google has been working hard and successfully for years to remove low quality sites from its rankings. You can have the best SEO in the world, but it your site is poor quality – low quality content, thin content, replicated content, poor structure – then it will be detected by Google and torpedoed.
SEO only works with good quality sites. Some affiliate marketers can still ‘churn and burn’ sites for short periods of time, but if your site represents your business for the long term, it must be of acceptable quality. We can help you with this.
How Does Website Promotion SEO Work?
When I talk about Search Engines here, I will be talking about Google – which is totally dominant. Of course, I do not discount the others – Bing and Yahoo, but ranking with Google is the key to success online and the basis of the methods I use.
Position 1 on page 1 of Google will get around 35% of the people looking for the keyword, clicking through to your site. This can be a substantial amount of focused, profitable traffic.
Position 2 will get around 20% of the searchers clicking through to your site
Position 3 will get around 15% of the searchers clicking through to your site
For lower positions the number of visitors just drops exponentially, and almost no one visits page 2!
What Are the Key Ranking Factors?
Onsite Optimization
This is what you need to do before doing any fancy tricks to rank better on Google:
| 1. | Make sure that every page contains enough original, high quality material |
| 2. | Make sure that every page is focused on keywords for which you need to rank |
| 3. | Make sure that the coding of the site is acceptable to Google – errors can be found using Webmaster Tools (don’t worry – we’ll do it for you). |
| 4. | Make sure that every page has a Google friendly structure |
| 5. | Make sure that your pages load in two seconds or less |
| 6. | Make sure that your site content has not been duplicated on or off site (Google HATES this!) |
| 7. | Make sure that all images are properly tagged |
| 8. | Make sure that your site is mobile-device friendly (CRITICAL) |
| 9. | Make sure your site is secure and that critical file parameters in access files, robot files and sitemap files are all optimally set (we will take care of this for you without techno-babble). |
| 10. | Finally, make sure that you update the content on your site with fresh high quality content at least every month |
Once you have done all of these things, your site is stable, acceptable to Google and ready for the offsite optimisation.
What is Offsite Optimisation?
This is what is needed to get your site floating to the first page of Google. No matter how high the quality of the site, unless it is visible to other sites and linked to by other sites, it will sit with millions of other sites that are simply lost in the mass.
What is the Definition of Offsite Optimization?
Offsite Optimization is the practice of building resources and pointing contextually relevant links to your site from other sites that you either own or negotiate with for those links. Technically, this breaks Google’s guidelines but practically, you are not going to rank without it unless you are prepared to wait a long time and work very, very hard at getting other sites to link to you. Click here to learn more.
