How to do SEO
When Google serves a user search results, it selects the most expert, authoritative and trustworthy sites from its index, and presents them to the user in order of relevance.
How this relevance is determined is based on over 200 signals, but generally this is broken down into on page (or on-site) factors and off page factors (in short – links). On page can also be broken down further into content and technical SEO.
This site aims to give you a baseline understanding of SEO and how to implement best practice in a safe and sustainable way. Many agencies are taken on by clients in the hope that they can get high rankings quickly, which is generally due to pressure from the client or agency account managers.
Quick results are rarely sustainable
Unfortunately, most ways that get you high rankings quickly tend to be spammy or black hat, which means that Google will penalise your site once it catches on to the fact that you are trying to manipulate its search results. This could be in 6 months or this could be in 2 years. However, in the long run, it’s not worth it, and the work to remove the bad links in order to get the penalty lifted can be very laborious. Trust me, I’ve had that job once or twice with clients who had been penalised after dealing with more unscrupulous agencies.
Like a lot of endeavours in life, you have to be willing put the work in over time to see results. This can be painful to hear, especially for in-house SEOs who get pressured by their higher-ups to give an estimate when their site will be on page 1 for the big terms in their industry. It won’t be soon, and there’s also a chance it won’t ever happen, because the people who are on page 1 are likely not there by chance. They are probably working hard at maintaining their rankings, so you have your work cut out for you.
When will I be on Page 1?
When asked this question, the best thing to do is use a tool that can show you competitor websites’ search engine traffic, like SEM Rush and see how long it took them. The answer is, in most cases, years.
Therefore, SEO needs to be embraced holistically within your organisation as one of the acceptance criteria when creating new content instead of as an afterthought. Don’t just reach out to your agency or in-house SEO once you’ve got the copy and creative for your new campaign ready. This is far, far too late.
Instead, involve them at the beginning of the content creation to see what type of search demand this content has and understand the various topics and questions that are of relevance to your target audience. Maybe the audience for search isn’t that big. That can be OK, especially in b2b, where e-mail marketing or LinkedIn can be more effective in driving quality traffic than search.
Where to go from here
In the three sections I’ve named Link Building, Content and Technical, I’ll cover most of what you need to know to do SEO for your site well. There will of course be more to do and more ways for you to market your business online, such as PPC and social media, which will be added to the site in future.