Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
We like to lump all “online marketing” under the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Strictly speaking, that’s not what it should be called. Some more “with-it” SEO companies call it SEM, or “Search Engine Marketing”. (Still, they tend to call themselves SEO companies. – Confused?)
Search engine marketing is the art to convince search engines to categorise your web pages as high up in search results as possible for the search terms that matter. That’s usually what we start with – to find out what your best clients, those that you want to impress with your website, would be searching for. These “keywords” or “key phrases” then form the basis of many components of the SEO for your website.
There two broad SEO categories; On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
On-page SEO
Much of page SEO involves a lot of technical things that is done on the website, usually just before or when the website is launched. Some of those tasks are one-off tasks, so the website developer often takes care of that. It does involve some technical know-how, and if your web designer is purely design orientated, then it’s likely that some of the critical components will be neglected. We find that websites that run on online CMS platforms can have weak technical SEO.
Another part of the On-Page SEO is content. Creating content is an on-going task and one that Hello SEO frequently gets involved in.
Off-page SEO
Anything that is done outside of the website framework in order to drive traffic to it, is called off-page SEO and there are many working parts. In essence, Off-Page SEO> includes any activity that advertises the website outside of the website itself. That includes
- Link Building
- Posting on Social Media
- Commenting on Blogs
- Distributing your Articles and Blogs
- PR that links back to your website
- Guest posting
- and more.
Search engines reward good content, but also recognise that if that content is not distributed, then it is pointless. A large part of Off-page SEO is the activity of distributing your content and ensuring that it is seen by your target audience.