What is SEO?; A Beginners Guide

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation” and is the process of carrying out certain activities on your website and other digital channels to try and make your website appear when particular terms are typed into Google and other search engines.

SEO is also called “organic ranking” where “organic” essentially means “earned”. Another process to appear at the top of Google results is by using paid adverts. This is different to SEO as with paid advertising the website owner pays the search engine to appear as the top result – or close to the top, whereas with SEO the search engine recognises the website as having the best answer to the query and choses where to rank them.

How Does SEO Work?

You may already know that search engines like Google, Bing and many others use bots to crawl web pages; once pages have been crawled they are then indexed. This means Google has essentially read them and stored them ready for when they are needed.

When a user types something into the search bar (known as a search query) Google scans its indexed webpages and shows the user the ones it believes to be the most useful in order, with most useful at the top. Most people have their search engines set up to show 10 organic search results per page so to rank on page 1, your rank needs to be less than 10, which can be very difficult for the popular search queries.

To choose which pages to place in each position, Google has a huge number of “ranking factors” which are analysed during the crawl process. This includes a wide variety of trust signals, on-page and off-page factors as well as previous data and insights. Some of these are discussed further down this post.

Why is SEO Important for My Website?

According to Search Engine Journal 25% of people click on the first search result and less than 1% click on any results shown on page 2. So ranking on page one is so important if you want to grow your organic traffic.

You can use SEO to promote your products, services, and events and get found on search engines.

Many of the factors used within SEO are also useful for user experience. And the way someone interacts with your site can give Google insight into how user-friendly your website is, which is then another ranking signal for your website.

So focusing on SEO can help with your user experience and vice-versa.

Elements of SEO

So how do we “do” SEO?

There are so many different factors search engines are looking for when crawling your site. There are some we have more control over and others we rely on user behaviour or external companies for.

On-Page Factors

These are the ones which are completely in your control. They are all about building and creating content for your website and more importantly, your website users. On-Page factors include; incorporating keywords into your content, ensuring your headings are clearly labelled and tagged correctly, ensuring your content is updated regularly, making sure your site is loading quickly etc.

On-page SEO activities happen on the website usually by the website owner or an associated agency.

Off-Page Factors

These SEO factors are harder to control but are things you should still be working on. These include but are not limited to; gaining external links to your site (a process known as link building), online reviews, social media presence, guest blogging, speaking in forums linking back to your site etc

Off-page SEO is essentially any activity taking place with regards to your website which doesn’t happen within the website itself

SEO is Ongoing

It’s important to note that SEO is an ongoing process, not something that can ever be “finished”.

Search engines favour sites which are kept up-to-date regularly with added new pages, updated pages and news, stories/blogs and articles. These can be based on company news and case studies or the current search trend of your prospective audience.

Measuring and Reviewing SEO

There are many different tools you can use to measure the effectiveness of your SEO. Google offers Analytics and Search Console. Using these two together will inform you which pages your audience like and highlight any potential issues within your site (missing redirects etc).

How Bubble can Help and Support Your SEO

At Bubble, our goal is to work smarter. We know the ins and outs of SEO and getting found online, we can make it work for your website. Let’s work together to get found online.

Contact us today to have to chat about options and ideas. We will create a tailor made plan to suit you and your Business goals.

We’re also happy to answer any questions you may have around SEO for your business. Fill in our contact form and a member of the team will get back to you.