How The SEO Process Works

Most people have many different ideas when it comes to SEO and how it works. So it’s important that we establish the facts before any SEO is carried out so you are fully aware of how the process works, what you are paying for and what to expect.
Before we discuss them, let’s just outline the 3 main areas of SEO.

1) Keyword Research (finding quality keywords)
2) On page optimisation (putting them in the right places)
3) Off page optimisation (building high quality backlinks)

Below are some ideas that people have to do with SEO.

Idea:
SEO seems easy. Can’t I just do it myself?

Fact:
SEO is not easy. It is very technical & time intensive. But you are welcome to try and do it yourself.

There are many books available on the topic of SEO which are written by SEO experts for IT experts. If you already have a very sound IT background and are familiar with HTML & configuring servers and lots of free time available, then you may want to look into doing SEO yourself.

However, if you are a small business owner who needs to run a business & serve customers, or are starting out and want it SEO done properly, we sincerely advise that you outsource it to SEO experts who do it for a living, allowing you to focus on what you do for a living instead.

Idea:
I’ve already made my own list of words (keywords) that I want to use to be found for in the search engines.

Fact:
This is the biggest reason people struggle to succeed online. Before a keyword should be used on your website it needs to match the following 4 criteria:

1) It needs to be relevant to your business
2) It needs to have a good level of traffic
3) It needs to be not too competitive
4) It needs to have commercial value

If one of the above criteria is missing, your efforts will be wasted and you will likely be throwing away your money.

The only way to ensure a keyword matches all 4 criteria is through a process known as keyword research. This is a very technical and labour intensive process whereby the aim is to find 5 highly valuable keywords that are to be used on a client’s website.

Keyword research is the vital foundation of SEO. If it’s skipped, it would be like trying to build a house without assessing the foundation first.

Idea:
Why just 5 keywords? I want to use lots of different keywords.

Fact:
The more keywords you try to rank for at the same time, the longer it will take to rank for any of them. Therefore our aim is to get your website to rank for the 5 keywords you have targeted which takes time, and start getting traffic and sales, before we begin to target another set of keywords.
5 is a reasonable number of keywords to manage. If you try to target 10, 20 or more, you will be spreading your efforts too thin and it will take you far longer to see results and cost you far too much money.

Idea:
I’m going to take content off other websites and use it on my own site.

Fact:
Search engines will know when you have taken content off other web pages and will penalize you for this by preventing your website to rank well in the search engine results. Sometimes it will even ban your website altogether from the search engines.
Because of this we highly advise our clients to use only original content on their websites or they will only be hindering themselves.

Idea:
I only want a small website with a handful of pages, but I still want to be found on the first page of the search engines.

Fact:
New websites with few pages often struggle to rank, because search engines put the websites with the most web pages at the top.

For example, if you have only 5 pages and your competitors websites all have a lot more pages, then most often your competitor’s websites will rank higher than yours, meaning they will dominate the first page of Google and your website will struggle to get onto the first page and get almost no traffic.

So because of this when we build websites for our clients, we start off with a minimum of 10 pages to give it a fair chance of being found in the search engines. After which we highly recommend that more pages are added to move the web pages further up the search engine results.

Idea:
I want to optimise my website myself to save some money.

Fact:
SEO is very strategic, and unless you have been properly trained on how to do it, you are likely going to make mistakes. If you over optimise your website by putting your keywords in the wrong places or use them too often, search engines will see it as spamming and can penalize you or even ban your website from being found altogether.

It’s just not worth the risk.

After all this is your business and livelihood. Please don’t leave it to chance. If you wanted a beautiful house, would you try to build it yourself to save some money if you didn’t have the expertise to do it?

Idea:
I want to get results fast so I can start making money fast.

Fact:
SEO is a long term marketing strategy and can often take up to 6 months before results are seen. However the benefits can be well worth it as once your website ranks it can often get a continuous stream of free traffic with very little maintenance on your part.

If this is too much commitment, then SEO might not be for you and you may want to consider paid traffic solutions instead such as Google Adwords (where you pay for every click you receive on your advert).

Idea:
What are backlinks & why do I need them?

Fact:
Backlinks are links that are on other websites that point at your website. The search engines consider the quality & quantity of backlinks that point at your website when deciding where you rank in their search engine results.

Therfore the aim is to get as many quality backlinks as possible until you get your web pages to rank where you want them to. And we specialise in this process.

Idea:
I want guaranteed results!

Fact:
No SEO company in the world can guarantee you results when it comes to SEO. Here’s why. SEO depends on various factors.

1) The company performing SEO for you
2) The websites you are competing against
3) The search engines you are competing in e.g. Google.

We cannot guarantee what your competitors will do in the future, neither what changes the search engines will make in the future. However we can assure you that we perform only the highest quality SEO work for all out clients and so far have always got results for our clients.

Idea:
I don’t really have a monthly budget, can I still do SEO?

Fact:
As we perform SEO on a pay as you go basis, we can start out by conducting keyword research for you so you have your list of keywords. Then when you are ready and can afford to move on, we will begin to optimise your website.
Finally you can hire us to build quality backlinks to start pushing your website up the search results.

Idea:
I’m looking for the cheapest quote.

Fact:
We specialise in SEO and have successfully performed SEO for many small businesses as well as some of UK & Europe’s leading brands. As SEO is a very technical, labour & time intensive process, and we use only the best tools & expertise we charge accordingly.

If you are looking for the cheapest quote, then we probably aren’t for you. However, if you are looking for results and a quality service, please get in touch using our contact us page. We look forward to hearing from you!