What is SEO ?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or in Dutch, search engine optimization.
Simply put, this ensures that your website will be easily taken up by search engines and hopefully land on the first page. This in turn ensures that you attract new visitors who hopefully convert to customers.
“It’s about being found online.”
It consists of 2 major parts : OFFsite and ONsite.
Search engines look for their information to display on your website itself (Onsite SEO) or on other pages on the Internet (Offsite SEO).
They use “secret” formulas to analyze massive amounts of data across all the different web pages online and they organize this data so that you, the visitor, get the most appropriate information to your entered search term on Google.
We look at your target audience and the competition out there. We take the opposite approach and change your website to what the search engines want to see. We also make sure that on your website everything falls nicely into place so that they prefer your page over the competition’s.
How does SEO work?
Because search engines make frequent updates and are in a constant state of change, it is important to always stay on top of the latest developments.
But we are sure that 2 things will always matter.
- Onsite – your content and website infrastructure
By this we mean :
- Using the right keywords (long and short tail)
- Matching the right content to your specific target audience with keyword clusters
- Create new content regularly to keep your website relevant
- Using the best website infrastructure and architecture
- Offsite – how your Web site is referenced by other online sources
By this we mean :
- Designing a profile that is viewed as valuable and interesting using quality inbound links
- Ensuring a relevant and active social media presence
- Making sure there are several references running to your site
- Accepting that part is out of your hands and that you cannot change everything
… All the rest consists of strategy, technique, tactics and finesse.
Search engines look at more than 200 different “signals” when they examine Web sites. Several criteria are added each year. Therefore, the most important thing about this job is to give your website a lasting edge.
Onsite:
Keyword research
Keywords are words or phrases that your visitors specifically type into a search engine.
For example:
Suppose I am looking for a flower store in Antwerp.
Then I could type “flower store Antwerp” into Google.
Those are the words I would want to rank on as a flower store owner. (if the competition is not too high)
Because there are so many different ways to look something up, we work with keyword clusters. These are groups of keywords formed around one keyword that has high search volume.
For this, there are several free and paid tools that can help you. So you can easily look at search volume, competition, negative keywords, advertising cost… This is where we come in again because we ensure the perfect combination that provides the highest ROI (Return On Investment) possible.
Linking existing and new content together
We match at least one keyword from each cluster to one page on your website. Usually a page that provides conversion from visitor to customer or to the home page. Your homepage usually focuses on a TOP keyword for which you want to rank.
To return to our example of the flower store in Antwerp. Then your homepage will focus on the word “flowers” or possibly a specific type of flowers. If you are known for your beautiful roses it will be the word “roses.”
The navigation pages found on your home page will focus on the keywords that are the second/third most important.
The underlying code
Not all websites are created the same. Some sites are super and perfectly SEO-friendly formatted. But many we see are not. An important part of our role is to assist in optimizing your website itself.
Things like load time, security risks and problems in the code itself can cause Google to slightly penalize your website. But these are usually things that are easy and quick to fix.
If you want to know how many pages Google indexed you should type in :
Site:www.jouweigenwebsite.be
But the design and the feeling you get from a website are also very important in motivating your visitors to purchase something. You have to lead them to purchase.
Offsite link profile
To put it simply, you can say that Google counts every link directed from another website to your website as one vote. The more votes you get the more important and relevant your website becomes.
If you get a lot of “votes,” there must be something good on your website that attracts visitors and makes them happy. That’s how search engines reason anyway. Search engines want their visitors to be satisfied and therefore are going to rank you higher.
But not every link you get is the same. Quality is more important than quantity.
Some factors to consider :
- Trust flow
- Citation flow
- Authority of your website
- Authority of the page per se
- Anchor text used to list your website
You can check these on websites such as MOZ or Majestic SEO.
If you get a hundred links from newly established websites without any authority this is not going to do much for your link profile. If you get one link from an authority in your field of expertise it will count for much more.
Social Profile :
More and more consideration is being given to social signals around your website. This then involves signals from Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google + …
Therefore, make sure you can be found on every major medium. But this is not enough; you must also actively manage it. The more people start commenting, liking and sharing the more important you become.
You can facilitate this using online tools like Hootsuite. Or you hire someone for this like our agency.
Now you have a basic idea of what SEO is and what it entails. But as we have already said, it is also about strategy, technique, tactics and finesse.
We have now talked about SEO but what about SEA?
SEA or Search Engine Advertising is about ads targeting keywords of your choice. One of the best-known examples is Google’ s own Adwords program.
What does this cost on average?
An Adwords campaign consists of elements such as keyword, ad text, landing page, CPC, quality score … these elements determine what your ad will cost you per click. This is because there is a complicated mechanism behind it that makes the price depend on how much the competition is paying for a particular keyword.
You can perfectly combine SEO and SEA using programs such as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. These are free and provide perfect insight into your campaigns. That way you also experience what is going well and where things could be better.
SEO and SEA complement each other and lower your cost per click when combined properly.
If you could use help with setting up your (first) campaign you may always contact us with no obligation, we will be happy to help you.
