What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To put this in a slightly simpler way, SEO means taking a piece of content on the internet and optimising it to get it displayed near the top of the page by a search engine such as Google when someone searches for something.

The world of search engine optimisation is complicated and constantly changing, but the basics are easy to grasp, and even a little SEO training and knowledge can go a long way.

Search engine optimisation is the science and process of improving your site so that it is more visible when people are searching for products or services. It is a crucial marketing task that makes a site or a business visible online.

How does SEO work?

Major search engines like Bing use bots to scan pages across the internet, going from one site to another, gathering information on these web pages, and placing it into an index. Think of the index like a giant library, where the librarians can pull out the book (or web page) that helps you find what exactly you are looking for at that moment.

Next, algorithms parse pages within the index, taking into account hundreds of engine rankings factors, or signals, to determine which pages should show up in search results for any given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every book in the library, and she can tell you exactly which book has the answer to your query.

Our SEO success factors could be considered proxies for aspects of user experience. This is how search engines assess how much of a site or webpage is capable of giving searchers what they are looking for.

Unlike paid search ads, you cannot pay search engines to rank highly in organic search, meaning SEO tool experts need to do their job. That is where we come in.

What is Effective Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engines use sophisticated algorithms that have a lot of different requirements in order to rank sites. To have higher rankings, a website must have many things, including:

Good content: This means content needs to be original and must provide value for readers. It should also be updated frequently - search engines penalise online content that has been stagnant for months (and, also, why would people visit your website if there is never anything new on it?). The best SEO companies understand how important content is, and they provide clients with quality content, along with related photos and videos.

The right keywords, as well as the right number of keywords. A common SEO technique in building websites used to be taking as many relevant keywords as possible (and also a few that were not as relevant) and stuffing it as much into the text as you could. Now, search engines punish that kind of "keyword stuffing".

Quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites, which lead back to your company's site. But those backlinks need to be of "quality," otherwise, they are not going to help your SEO rankings at all (or they could even hurt your search rankings in negative ways). This means backlinks should be on sites that are relevant and ranking well on their own, among other things.

These are only some of the things considered in ranking sites. However, the biggest thing that you need to take into consideration when you are building your site is organic SEO. The idea behind it is to build the website to be ranked high due to high quality -- it has to be good, no tricks or tricks some SEO companies may try. The search engine optimisation company that you choose needs to try and provide you with high-quality sites, keeping in mind these algorithms.

Benefits & importance of SEO

People are searching for all sorts of things, whether vaguely related or closely related to your business. These are all opportunities to engage with those people, answer their questions, solve their problems, and be a trusted resource to them.

More website traffic: When your site is optimised for search engines, it gets more traffic which equates to increased brand awareness, as well as…

More customers: To get your website optimised, you need to target keywords - search terms that potential customers/visitors are searching - meaning that you get more relevant traffic.

Better reputation: Ranking high in Google gives your business instant credibility. If Google trusts you, people will trust you.

Higher ROI: You are investing money in your site, as well as in a digital marketing campaign, which leads to pages on your site. A top-performing website enhances the fruits of these campaigns, making the investment worthwhile.

Get Your Free Website Consultation

At Red Kite SEO, we offer a free Website SEO Review, which is a basic website audit that will help take care of your digital business. We will take a look at your digital strategy, as well as any potential website improvements to help with your online presence. Get in touch with us.