How Does SEO Work?
Many people assume that search engines are smart enough to know exactly which website a visitor should be directed to. However, it’s not quite that simple. Have you ever wondered why a website appears on the first search engine results page (SERP)?
That’s SEO at work. SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization”, a digital marketing technique that aims to improve your website’s position in search engines such as Google.
All those websites that have first page ranking among the major search engines have been carefully crafted with SEO in mind, ensuring that as many potential customers as possible visit those websites. So – how does SEO work?
SEO works through a combination of scientific and creative techniques that position your site as the most relevant result for an end users’ search query. The top search result will answer the user’s query the best, have a great user experience and have positive link signals from other sites.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| What is SEO? | SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimising your webpages to send signals to the search engines that your pages should be ranked in the SERPs (search engine results pages) ahead of your competitors. |
| How are sites ranked? | There are hundreds of ranking factors that search engines take into account when ranking pages. But at the top level, the three core SEO (search engine optimisation) practices fall under: content generation, links, and technical optimisations. |
| How do you measure SEO? | You can monitor your positions for a series of search phrases in the SERPs (search engine results pages) using specialist SEO software. You can also monitor your competitor’s positions. You can also measure monthly organic traffic levels and conversions in your web analytics system. |
Ranking factors at play
There are hundreds of ranking factors that are considered by the search engines when ranking a website. At the top level, there are three core pillars to a great search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign: content, links, and under the hood technical factors. We’ll go through these in succession:
Content Management: Unlocking the Door
Many badly optimised websites already have masses of unique content, not being optimised as it could. A big part of SEO is auditing all of that content and ensuring it not only adds great value to the end user, but also is optimised for search. We can then work with you to develop a content strategy, developing new content that lets you speak to your target audience and also grow your search rankings.
Write your content for a real, live person who’ll be able to breeze through what you have to say without tripping over a bizarre choice of words or using a thesaurus. If your writing is stuffed with keywords, or if you spin it beyond recognition, Google will not reward you – it’s more likely to penalise you
Write so your reader doesn’t have to stop and wonder why you used such a ridiculous synonym in place of a perfectly simple word. Write for your target audience, not for your search engine, and with this you will be seen as a relevant and trusted resource.
Link building: it’s not easy!
Getting the wrong links to your website can be detrimental to results. Building a fantastic network of links will be a key part of ranking top for any target search phrases. Part of our process of optimisation even includes removing bad or low quality links that are harming your site. Nowadays link quality is more important than quantity, and we use two key metrics to judge the quality of a donor site: trust flow and citation flow.
News websites, special interest websites, profiles, directories, social networks, blogs, industry websites and local websites are all great potential sources of links to build popularity with search engines. Engaging these sites through journalists or outreach is the hard part, something commonly called Digital PR. We have created millions of links for our clients and our company has a team of in-house, full-time link specialists who build quality links over time.
Technical Aspects: Under the hood
The strength of any aged website is a great asset which needs to be harnessed correctly. Having strength and content is not enough, unless the key technical elements for SEO are right. Our technical team will look under the hood at the code that Google sees. We will review and amend technical aspects of your website such as site speed, user experience and internal link structure which are crucial for success online. The SEO Works can then help your business take advantage of the content you have and existing strength of your domain.
Is SEO a do-it-yourself job?
That depends! If you have extensive knowledge of the latest search engine algorithms, know how to uncover the best intent-driven keywords for your business and are a ‘whiz’ at coding and content development, chances are good that you can do a great deal of your own SEO work.
However, the reality is that most business owners and marketing managers understand the basics of SEO but simply do not have the time or skills to maximise the effectiveness of their website. That’s where an experienced professional SEO company can help.
How do you choose someone who knows how SEO works?
When you are searching for trusted search engine optimisation companies, there are many questions you will be asking yourself. Because you have to pay for great rankings, it’s vital to make 100% sure you select the solution from a reputable SEO agency. You should ask them about previous results, their own rankings, awards they have won, how they measure success, and how transparent they are in delivering an SEO service.
So why choose The SEO Works?
- Ethical and sustainable SEO is at the forefront of our company values
- We’ve been around for over 10 years and have developed an unique methodology that gets results
- Award winning: national and international awards set us apart from the competition
- We have retained over 85% of our client base (over the last 9 years)
- The leading SEO company in terms of our own results online – check our rankings
- Our own sites have fantastic results – just like our clients – see our case studies
- The SEO Works offers affordable pricing solutions
- Our company manages 100+ websites for clients across the UK, we know how SEO works!
- We focus and speak in terms of return on investment. Looking beyond rankings to truly identify how our work is helping your business.
Why is The SEO Works Different?
In the SEO industry it’s easy to hide. There are more than 100 companies just in the UK offering SEO services, and we are sure you get many emails offering the same thing. The one thing they have in common? They are not visible! We’re visible on page 1 of google for dozens of SEO related queries and we’re also visible through our office premises where our clients are welcome to visit for campaign review meetings.
We believe as a company the proof is in the pudding and the regular awards we win for our work show that even the industry recognises the impact we make for our clients. The SEO Works places a great emphasis on bridging the gap between poor SEO companies who can hide behind bad performance, and the professional expertise they really need to succeed. Over ten years we have developed an unique methodology that applied over time generates strong organic results.
Our team is on the ball when it comes to industry changes. Our SEO blog is a chronicle of all things optimisation, including the latest news from Google webmaster central, industry chatter and more. SEO changes all the time. Digital marketing changes all the time. Technology is constantly evolving. We have an experienced SEO management team, with hundreds of combined years of SEO experience, dedicated to understanding what’s required to dominate the search engine results.
How Does SEO Work on a campaign basis?
Hopefully this post gives an insight into how SEO does work. But you shouldn’t have to worry about that too much, just leave it to experts and get on with focussing on your core business priorities. A campaign will look to address the issues of your site in order to improve it’s overall organic visibility over time. The SEO Works applies commitment, consistency, expertise and most importantly – sustainability. As the preferred partner of over 100 UK based companies, we are proud to be considered the leading SEO company in the UK.
Most of our campaigns include the following type of on-going SEO work:
- Keyword research for target phrases which will attract the right traffic.
- Competitor research to identify how your competitors are performing and discover other competitors you might not know you had.
- Overall digital benchmark and development of an overall strategy and key KPI’s.
- Support from our expert management team. This includes on-site, face to face, email and voice calls.
- On-site SEO support including content management, internal link building and meta work, compliance support and HTML structure.
- Hours and hours of manual link building services, increasing your websites popularity with search engines and increasing referral links.
- New content creation from our team of journalists, researchers and writers.
- Off-site search engine optimisation services such as article writing and submissions, content creation and outreach for back-linking plus extra brand exposure.
- Unlimited support from our account management team for on-going advice – regarding SEO queries such as new content, URL structuring, link building best practice methods etc.
- We show you our efforts so you can understand the process, making all our website marketing services tangible.
- Included as standard; monthly comprehensive reports for key-phrase movement, traffic summary and our off-site work.
To get moving towards better rankings, traffic, sales and ultimately profits – contact us online or call today on 0800 292 2410. We really know how SEO does Work.
