Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

As search engines evolve they are returning more than web pages in the results. Depending on what you search for you will not only be presented with relevant web pages but you may also be shown images, news, videos, blogs, maps, shopping results, local businesses, Tweets, comments, cinema listings and even the weather forecast. This collection of different results is known as universal search. First page real estate is very precious and it is important your SEO agency knows how to exploit universal search to gain you as much search engine exposure as possible.

How Does Search Engine Optimisation Work?

Search engines crawl the web and index the data they find by using software known as spiders or robots. The robots will visit indexed pages to check for changes. They move from page to page following links. They record the URL of the page and index it in the search engine to revisit again at a later date. This is one of the reasons why links are an important part of SEO.

The indexed results enable a search engine to quickly find the most relevant results when a user searches. The search engines store the data and use a large number of signals to determine the relevancy of the page. The exact formula of these signals is unknown and is referred to as the search engine algorithm. We do know the algorithm looks at the content of the page, the title, meta tags, Page Rank, credibility, authority, spam rating, location, domain name, site age, semantic mark up, keyword frequency, density and position as well as occurrence in the link anchor text.

Google has revealed there are 200 factors it uses in the search engine algorithm. This includes a number of positive ranking factors that will boost your website but negative ones that will drop your site. For this reason it is important your SEO agency knows the factors that will have a bad impact on your SEO.

SEO is made up of on page optimisation, which is making the website as search engine friendly as possible, and off site optimisation which includes creating backlinks and building credibility and authority.

Global and Local SEO

The World Wide Web allows for business to open up their market globally and provide to a multi-national market. This has implications on SEO. For example local sites will appear higher in the SERPs than a company that does the same thing but is based in a different country to where the search is based. There are specific techniques an SEO agency will use in order to signal to the search engines which territories you operate your business in. Whether this be locally, say a 30 mile radius or globally.

Advantages of SEO

There are many benefits to using SEO these are:

• You receive highly targeted visitors to your site that are looking for your product or service
• The cost of each visitor is lower than others forms of internet advertising as you do not have to pay for each click
• The web is dynamic and you can present the most up to date offers and information to your site visitors

Things to Be Aware Of

Search engines can be unpredictable there are no guarantees as the algorithm can change causing your rankings to slip. However, if your SEO agency only uses ethical methods you will have nothing to worry about. Be very wary of an SEO agency that promises you guaranteed positions.

SEO does take time and therefore needs to be a long term internet advertising strategy it takes time to implement an SEO strategy if you want immediate results you will need to run a PPC campaign. SEO is a complex and delicate discipline you need to keep up to date with the latest algorithm changes and be committed to providing regular relevant and up to date content.

At BDR London we make it our business to know what will improve your search engine visibility and implement this into your search engine strategy.