The purpose of a search engine is to provide the best result possible for a search query and understand the searcher’s intent. Having a well optimised website helps search engines to understand your business and drive more relevant traffic, which in turn helps generate leads and boost sales. Read on for our advice on what to expect from an SEO strategy and how SEO will benefit your business.
SEO is Not a Quick Fix
An effective SEO strategy revolves around having high quality, unique content. Search engines need the right volume of good content to be able to understand your business and rank your webpage. Your customers will also respond well to quality, well optimised content. Relevant, high quality content is not just about cramming in as many key words as possible; it is about creating well written content which is guided by keyword research but still flows naturally. SEO is not a quick fix for your rankings; it is a long term process which needs continual work to improve your organic search presence. Especially in some competitive niches, topics and industries, it may take months or even years to appear in those coveted first page results.
How Social Media Affects SEO
A good social media presence is imperative for boosting your search rankings. Your competitors are likely to be taking advantage of social media, so you could be missing out on customers by not maintaining social media activity. Search engines recognise when visitors have landed on your webpage from social media platforms, so creating engaging posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn which are relevant to your target market can drive traffic to your website. Blog articles are another way to start conversations on social media and get your business noticed. Having a blog is important for improving search rankings, as blogs are a form of shareable content which can begin to rank very quickly in organic search results.
Play by the Rules or Face a Penalty
SEO should be approached carefully to avoid infringing Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. The Webmaster Guidelines are a set of rules which all websites should follow in order to satisfy the search engine algorithms and rank highly in organic search results. Using SEO tactics such as hiding text, having too much content copied from other websites, over optimising web pages and having too many low quality or unnatural inbound links will not rank well, and can potentially incur a penalty. With SEO, results do not happen overnight, so even after the issue is fixed; it could be days, weeks or even months until your site recovers.
A well optimised website is the first step towards driving more organic traffic and increasing conversions, but it is important to get it right to meet the requirements Google’s algorithms. Use our full service digital agency based in South Manchester to guide you through the SEO process and begin to boost your business up the Google rankings. Get in touch with our SEO experts to find out how SEO can help you.
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