What is SEO and how does it work?

In a nutshell, SEO is making your website as appealing to Google and other search engines, as they aim to send their users to the best possible websites. Over the years people have tried to make SEO sound more complicated, and whilst there is an understanding needed at quite a technical level to delve into algorithms and other things, if you built your website with the question ‘is this the best possible website I can build, and would users have a good experience on the site?’ you won’t go far wrong, and you’ll rank well in organic listings.

How long does it take for SEO to work?

This is entirely dependent on many different variables including the industry you’re in and the competition level of your target phrases. As a benchmark, you should expect to see some progression by month three of your campaign, and start seeing solid results at around six months

How does link building help SEO?

One of the biggest rewards in gaining an increased number of links pointing to your site is gaining Google’s trust. By earning/getting links from relevant and/or high in authority websites, Google will see the trust other sites have given to your site and will start to trust it themselves. The ultimate result of this is Google ranking your site higher for various keyword phrases in its search engine, usually resulting in higher traffic.

Is HTTPS better for SEO?

Simply, yes. Having your site on a secure server (which is what HTTPS signifies) is a sign to Google that users on the site can trust you. Most websites can obtain a free SSL certificate, and it’s quite easy to implement. This would be one of my first port-of-calls when looking at a new site from an SEO perspective.

What is on-page optimisation in SEO?

On page optimisation is ensuring that various signals on the pages of a website send the appropriate signals to Google that help to improve rankings. Whether this be great content, improved page titles with reference to the topic written about, or inter-linking content are just a few examples of on-page optimisation.

Is SEO or social media a more important marketing priority?

Digital marketing is working together more than ever before and having a well-rounded strategy including different channels – including SEO and social media – is the key to create the greatest amount of online visibility. Whilst some industries will suit one digital marketing discipline or the other more, it largely comes down to where you audience is looking for your services. Paid options when applying social media marketing also mean that if you’re looking for a quick short-term return this could be the better option – again, depending on your product or service.

What is enterprise SEO?

“Enterprise SEO” is typically mentioned when working with large companies whose websites run into thousands of pages, and in some cases, millions. For this you need a solid SEO campaign managed by an experienced team of people who understand how the strategy can scale and have a positive effect on the website as whole. Managing even thousands of pages individually isn’t realistic, so every decision needs to be based on how it will effect everything, not just a certain area.

How to write meta descriptions for SEO?

“Meta descriptions are not as important to successful SEO campaigns as people may think, but they are important to write correctly, so that they entice users to click on an organic listing following a Google search.

What is image optimisation in SEO?

Image optimisation is a tale of two halves, the first being focused around ensuring the image is compressed as much as possible without loss of quality. This allows the image file size to be decreased, and therefore load quickly. You should also make sure that you’re serving images which are scaled correctly.The second half is ensuring that images have appropriate file names and alt text. For example, an image with a file name of ‘IMAGE1.PNG’ and an alt text of ‘IMAGE1’ isn’t useful for search engines, nor people using accessibility software. The filename and alt text should accurately describe the contents of the image – for example, ‘red-car.png’ and ‘red car on a road’.

Do landing pages help with SEO?

They can be, but only when optimised correctly. The potential issue with landing pages is that they tend to be very similar, and very thin on content, so not providing the greatest experience in the sense of a query search. It can be tricky to get landing pages right for SEO, but when they are right, they’re no less useful than a normal page on the website.

How do I become an SEO professional?

Practice. Practice. Practice. Not one SEO in the world knows everything, and if they claim they do then block their email address/phone number immediately. The industry is constantly changing which makes things difficult and Google constantly tweaking their algorithm is another factor to consider. To get to ‘the top of the game’, constant practice and research is needed. Testing things is also vital – it’s not uncommon that a great SEO devises a new campaign they’re over the moon with, and it falls flat on its face. Being wrong is not a mistake, being wrong and then employing the same tactic again is when it becomes truly wrong. Everyone will get something wrong (or ‘break’ a website for example). Just make sure you learn from it.

How many keywords should I use?

The days of Manchester SEO companies (and agencies from other locations) offering services that includes a set number of keywords are over. Whilst it is OK to have some phrases you want to rank for, you should instead be focusing on writing excellent content, and increasing overall visibility.

What are the best practises for on-page SEO?

Here are my top 3 tips for on-page SEO: 1. Don’t spam it. Make sure your content reads naturally. Don’t mention the keyword/phrase you are targeting fifty times in a 300-word paragraph. Google knows what you’re trying to do here. 2. Title Tags. Keep title tags simple. I’d always recommend following the following format: ‘Product/Service | Brand Name’ 3. Naturalness I could write a hundred different tips here, but to sum it up in one, it would be: Build your site, and produce content so that reads naturally. If Google can see you’re trying to incorrectly manipulate the rankings, it may work in the short-term but don’t expect this to last very long.

What should I do to get traffic on my site?

Employ the best specialist SEO agency in Manchester (hint!) and save yourself the headache! If you did want to do this yourself, the best way to get traffic to your site is to ensure that you’re adding value with your site. Look at it like this, if you were a user looking to buy a product/service or gather information about a specific topic, would you be happy with your experience on your own site? If not, then make the necessary changes. If you are, Google will have no hesitation in sending your site traffic. Obviously, obtaining backlinks and other factors contribute to the levels of traffic your site will receive, but as a general rule of thumb, this is a good one.

How do I improve the page load speed of my website?

Without getting too ‘techy’, run all your images through an image file optimiser and then re-upload them. Probably the number one reason that sites load slowly is because of the huge images people have used on a page. Oftentimes an image used on a website is many times bigger than it is displayed as, meaning extra time is needed to load the image. As well as using correctly sized and optimised images, minifying files such as CSS files and JavaScript files can speed the loading of a page, as can remove unnecessarily bloated HTML code. Choice of server also can have a lot to do with how fast your pages load, and how this will affect how Google may rank a page. These are not all items, by all means, but are probably the first steps to reduce file sizes and improve page load speed.

What is the best tool to check a website rank?

SEMrush – it can tell us not only where a site is ranking, but the changes in rank over certain periods of time, search volume, visibility and estimated traffic. But what is it that makes SEMrush the ‘best tool’ to track website rankings? Because it’s an ‘all in one’ platform. SEMrush has it all in one place, so any SEO or marketer can check everything, anytime, in the same place. From website audits to keyword suggestions, SEMrush can do it.

What is Google Analytics in SEO?

SEMrush – it can tell us not only where a site is ranking, but the changes in rank over certain periods of time, search volume, visibility and estimated traffic. But what is it that makes SEMrush the ‘best tool’ to track website rankings? Because it’s an ‘all in one’ platform. SEMrush has it all in one place, so any SEO or marketer can check everything, anytime, in the same place. From website audits to keyword suggestions, SEMrush can do it.

Does Adwords affect SEO?

This is a tricky one. Google’s answer would be a categorical, ‘No!’ However, several studies have shown a correlation between budget spent on paid ads within the SERPs and organic ranking improvements. Some argue the more you spend with Google on their Adwords platform, the higher you rank organically – as a sort of ‘reward’ from Google. Personally, I disagree with this thought. I think it’s simply a case of that if a business is spending a large amount on a PPC campaign, they probably also have the budget to have employed good quality SEO services, too.

What is W3C validation in SEO?

Google understands correct W3C validation as promoting a good user experience, and from various tests that we have done and seen, we think that it is a ranking factor in its algorithms. Google specifically states that broken HTML could result in drops in a website’s crawl rate.

How to write SEO content for a website?

The first step is to stop writing content for search engines and start writing content that your target audience is going to engage well with. Look into the successful competition – how have they structured their content? Be sure to include mentions of key subject matters, as well as semantic phrases which are associated with the subject. For example, if you were writing about servicing a car, you should look to include words including engine, oil, checks etc.

How does Google’s mobile-first index change SEO?

Google used to crawl the desktop versions of websites, and from that rank them on mobile device searches, whereas now they’ve switched it around and they crawl the mobile version and rank the desktop from what they find. The main way it has changed SEO is that now you need to provide a great experience to mobile users, especially when it comes to speed, design and user engagement.

Can you explain PPC vs SEO?

The main difference between SEO and PPC is that traffic coming from search engine optimisation work – and therefore appearing ‘organically’ in Google rankings – is free, with traffic coming from pay per click (PPC) being paid for. Adwords (the ‘PPC’ advertisements listed Google search pages) are almost certainly always going to be shown before organic listings in search engine results pages (SERPs), because paid search ads are how Google makes much of its revenue. Improving search engine optimisation features on your site can result in search traffic that costs nothing to receive, so if you have no budget for paid search, than SEO is perhaps the main way you will receive web visitors. If you use PPC, put simply, you effectively bid against other advertisers to appear in various positions – and in various frequencies – above organic Google listings when users type in searches and receive results pages.

How does social media help SEO?

Social Media can help SEO, but probably only indirectly. A page on your website which performs well on social media is more likely to gain organic backlinks too, which in turn could result in higher rankings for that page. One often forgotten factor is also engagement. If social traffic to a particular page is well engaged, again this could have a positive effect on your rankings as Google will interpret that page as being valuable to users.

What is the best tool to check a website rank?

SEMrush – it can tell us not only where a site is ranking, but the changes in rank over certain periods of time, search volume, visibility and estimated traffic. But what is it that makes SEMrush the ‘best tool’ to track website rankings? Because it’s an ‘all in one’ platform. SEMrush has it all in one place, so any SEO or marketer can check everything, anytime, in the same place. From website audits to keyword suggestions, SEMrush can do it.

Add your Website to Google Search Console

When trying to connect your business website to Google Search Console (GSC) if you have built your site on WordPress I find the easiest way is to add the Yoast plugin to your site.

Google Search Console is a must-have tool for all site owners as it gives you an incredible amount of information about how your site is doing in search. We strongly advise you to connect your website to GSC to fully benefit from all the insights.

What is Search Console and why should you add it?

Google’s free tool Search Console gives site owners loads of tools to check how their site performs. Not only does it show how your site is doing under the hood, but also how searchers see your site in the search results. You’ll get information on keywords and queries that bring traffic, find out which rich search results your content has earned and discover how your mobile site is doing. Also, you can check if Google can access your content. In short, use it! Here’s our beginners guide to Google Search Console to get you started.

How to connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO

It is straightforward to add your website to Google Search Console — it just takes a couple of steps. Here, we’ll guide you through the process. First, you need to have a Google Search Console account. Don’t have an account? Sign up now for Google Search Console. Once you’ve done that, you can follow the steps below:

1. Go to Google Search Console.
Login or click ‘Start Now’, if needed.

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2. Click ‘Add a property’ under the search drop-down.
You can add up to 1000 properties to your Google Search Console account.

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3. Enter your website URL in the box and click ‘Continue’.
Please make sure you enter your complete URL. For example, if your site is https://yourdomain.com/ it needs to be that exact URL. Don’t forget the / at the end of the URL. If your site uses WWW or is using HTTP you need to add properties for those as well. Google provides multiple ways of getting your site verified and they even suggest adding multiple ways because of security. If you are not sure what your site has, please speak with your host provider.

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4. Click the arrow next to ‘HTML tag’ to expand the option.
There are several ways to verify your site, but we’ve made it easy for you. We only need to get the authorization code so we can paste it in Yoast SEO.

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5. Copy the meta tag.
Highlight the entire meta tag code. Right click on the highlighted tag and click on ‘Copy’ or use the copy shortcuts ctrl-c on Windows or cmd-c on Mac.

6. Log in to your WordPress website.
When you’re logged in, you will be in your ‘Dashboard’.

If you haven’t already got the Yoast Plugin, go to the Plugins page and click “Add New” search for Yoast and select the free Yoast version. Then click on Activate.

7. Click on ‘SEO’.
On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on ‘SEO’.

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8. Click on ‘General’.
The ‘SEO’ settings will expand providing you with additional options. Click on ‘General’.

9. Click on the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab.
This page has all the fields to past the verification codes for the various webmaster tools.

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10. Paste the code in the Google field and click “Save Changes”.

11. Go back to Google Search Console and click ‘Verify’.
Congratulations! You’ve connected your website to Google Search Console! Now that you’ve verified and linked your site, you can submit your sitemap. Not to mention all the other cool stuff that’s Search Console capable of!

It’s easy to connect your website to Google Search Console

We’ve made it very easy to connect your site to Search Console, and we strongly recommend you to do so. Search Console gives you a wealth of information on the performance of your site. Not only does it show you what goes right, but, more importantly, what goes wrong. The advice you get is very actionable, and most things are easy to follow up on.

PS: How to check your verification tag

If you need to check your verification, you can do so easily by following the steps below:

1. Go to the top-left and select your domain

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2. Select Settings in the menu bar

3. Click on Ownership Verification

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4. Click on HTML Tag and see if verification tag matches.

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Once you’ve got this all figured out, your Google Search Console should be primed and ready to go!