SEO – an actual explanation of what SEO really is!
Happy Monday Marketers!
Let’s be honest, SEO is one of those digital marketing tools that your marketer is constantly going on about, but you have no idea what it is, what it does and how it works!
Today’s blog is going to explain what SEO actually is and how to make sure you’re maximising your company’s resources and spend on SEO interventions.
SEO – what does it stand for again?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And it really is exactly that – optimizing your website for search engines. And I know that doesn’t explain fully, so stick with me here, we’re going to unpack that further. But first, let’s have a look at search engines and how they work!
Search
When you search for something on Google (or any other search engine), you’ll notice that the most relevant results show up higher (have you ever clicked on page 2 of Google results?? Yeah, me neither). In digital marketing terms, we say that certain websites are optimised for certain keywords and phrases (the words you put into search).
Engine
What happens when you search those keywords and phrases is that the engine part kicks in. Search engines have crawlers – these crawlers go through the internet and find every piece of information connected to a particular keyword or phrase.
The second part of a search engine’s work is to index information. All the relevant information found is put together and indexed, ready to be pulled up when we search a topic!
The last little bit is ranking. This is when we hit the Search button and results are ranked in order of relevance to the searched phrase.
Optimization
Okay, so now we know that we input a search keyword or phrase. The internet then does its thing by crawling through its archives, finding all the content that pertains to the search. It then indexes the content and when we search, we get given a ranked display of results.
Optimizing your website will tell Google (or any search engine) which phrases and keywords you want your website to pop up for. Easy right? Right. Remember those crawlers we mentioned? That’s where an SEO strategy comes in! When you have the right content, relevant to a phrase or keyword, your content gets indexed accordingly and then ranked for search.
SEO Strategy
Okay, so let’s say you own a laptop repair store in Bryanston. To ensure your company website shows up when people need to repair a laptop, you need to make sure that your website content is optimized to show up when someone searches for “laptop repair Bryanston”.
You need to understand what your customer is looking for when they’re looking for you! Here’s the catch, search engine crawlers know spam when it sees it. So, you can’t just repeat the phrase “laptop repair Bryanston” in the hopes that makes your website more relevant to the search.
So, what can you do?
- Think about what your customers would search to find you, create a list of the most relevant search keywords and phrases that relate to your company
- Rewrite your website content in a way that is engaging and inclusive of the right phrases in the right places. Using headlines, sub-headlines, and the body of the content to creatively include the phrases and relevant content.
- Include a blog on your website, where you can add more content. A blog would assist in not only increasing relevance and ranking for specific keywords, but it also opens you up for more search keywords and phrases
- Check which pages of your website are not being crawled using an advanced search operator
- Include alt text when uploading images on your website. Alternative text is a short description you can add to images, so that every piece of your website is contributing to your SEO.
There are several tools you can use that help optimized SEO. Splendid Marketing has a dedicated SEO team. We’re able to help identify the right phrases and keywords and ensure that your website is organically ranked high in the search engine results.
We manage your blogs, optimise your website through content creation and ensure that the right pages are being crawled.
We hope that you’ll be paying closer attention to your website’s SEO. Google your industry. Understand how and where you rank, and if you’re not happy with where your website is sitting, make sure you follow the steps to change your SEO strategy!