Search Engine Optimisation FAQs

SEO can be essential to success online for many businesses – for many users, a search engine is the first time they will see and consider interacting with your business, and their subsequent interactions with your website can make the difference in how they perceive your business.

The ultimate goal of SEO for business is to generate organic traffic – searchers clicking through to your website from a search engine results page, driving awareness of your brand and prompting users to complete goals on your website.

What is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to increase awareness and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.

Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Algorithms then analyse pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query.

Each search engine results page is a competitive environment, and implementing ongoing optimization can make the difference against your direct and indirect competitors within those spaces.

What are some key ranking factors?

Google and other search engines consider hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of different factors in order to rank pages in search results, in order to deliver the most relevant results for a query. Many of these factors are kept highly secret by search engine companies, but the most common include:

• Links; ensuring that your website is interlinking (that each page is linked to and accessible from other pages), and that there are no isolated sections of your website. This factor can also include links to your website from elsewhere, demonstrating the authority of your website and content.
• Content; ensuring that your written content is appropriate for your users, provides clear and accurate information about products and services, and fulfils users needs (e.g. answering queries) can all make a difference.
• Keywords; keywords are a fundamental part of SEO – having the most relevant terms utilised throughout your website ensures that it will be visible within searches, and that new users will be able to find your business online. Without the use of relevant keywords, search engines are unlikely to consider your website in the search results for a query using those keywords.

Why is content so important?

Written content provides an excellent platform for the inclusion of all-important keywords on your website, as well as giving you the opportunity to develop brand authority and recognition – in turn, providing users with a better experience and improving their likelihood of returning.

Discovering new opportunities to include relevant terms and phrases, as well as ensuring that the content on a website is both appropriate to its audience and constructed using the right tone of voice are key when considering content for SEO – and the best content is

How soon can results be seen?

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process, and involves a mixture of technical, onsite and offsite work to produce a maximal effect – so the time it takes for results to be seen can fluctuate. Some changes, such as improving site speed or implementing SEO fundamentals for the first time, can have a positive impact fairly quickly (even within a month) – whereas researchers such as SEMRush suggest that it can take as long as 6 months, depending on the complexity of the tasks and the history of the website.

Digital marketing can be essential for business success, whether your digital goals involve growth, improved visibility, or driving sales! For the answers to all your questions, digital audits, and SEO expertise, get in touch with the team at Wonderful today!