SEO FAQ

What is SEO?

SEO, in a nutshell, is about helping the search engines get a comprehensive and accurate picture of your site, so that they can assess a page’s relevance to someone’s search query.

Why does my site need search engine optimisation?

An optimised site will enjoy better rankings (greater traffic) for appropriate  keyphrases that will achieve better conversions (whether sales, subscriptions etc.).

What is the first step?

The first step is to make sure your site’s architecture and coding allows it to be crawled by the search engines and to optimise the content structure.

Is that all?

Not quite! SEO is also about making realistic choices about what kind of (keyphrase) traffic your site should compete for.

What is  a keyphrase?

Kephrases or keywords are search phrases you enter in the search engine to find a website.  For website analytics, these are the keywords that send traffic to your site. For example, the average searcher for ‘Chanel bags’ will click within the first few results on the first page. If they dont find what they are looking for on the first or second results pages, they are likely to rephrase their search, e.g. ‘trendy Chanel bags’ or ‘buy chanel bags’.

Are you saying I need to carefully choose the keyhrases I compete for?

Yes. If many brands, some with established websites, are competing for the traffic from the keyphrase ‘kitchenware’, you will struggle to compete if you are a new site. It is more likely that you will get a good ranking for a less competitive term, say ‘kitchenware uk’. An SEO consultant can help you choose the keyphrases you should be targeting.

After resolving technical issues and making keyphrase choices, what happens next?

The next stage involves building up your site authority as the search engines will always favour strong brands and strong webpages. This marketing phase involves securing appropriate links to your site which also builds your referrer traffc. There are many strategies for achieving this and an experienced Search Engine Marketing (SEM) consultant can maximise your time and effort if undertaking this in-house. Alternatively, they can run your SEM themselves, within the context of your wider digital strategy.

Do these 3 key efforts (technical, content and authority) need to be done in order?

No. Though resolving technical / search engine crawl related issues should be a priority to ensure your full site is indexed by the search engines.

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