Search Engine Optimisation in Sussex
By Clear Sky Web Design Ltd
Putting Your Website In Front Of The Right Local Audience
Local Search Engine Optimisation is the ultimate form of target marketing, placing your website in front of exactly the right people, knowing that those people have an interest in what you offer, are likely to have already made the decision to purchase and are now looking for the best option.
We all do it, every day, for whatever we need, wherever we are, any product, service or information –
we Google it! (other Search Engines also available!)
The results you see are not there by chance, they are there by design. The Search Engines main priority is to provide their visitors (searchers) with what they believe to be the most relevant results for the search term you input.
This gives business owners a great opportunity to turn their website into an excellent marketing tool. A well-optimised website will rank much higher in the search results (SERPS) putting it in front of potential customers looking for the product or service you offer!
The results you see are not there by chance, they are there by design. The Search Engines main priority is to provide their visitors (searchers) with what they believe to be the most relevant results for the search term you input.
This gives business owners a great opportunity to turn their website into an excellent marketing tool. A well-optimised website will rank much higher in the search results (SERPS) putting it in front of potential customers looking for the product or service you offer!
Why Is It Important To Rank Well In The Search Engines?
Search Engine Optimisatio (SEO) Is The Purest Form Of Target Marketing
- You will make your business visible to people searching online for the product or service you offer!
- Many of those potential customers have already made the decision to purchase and searching for their best option!
- Most people searching online would choose to click on a business website over a directory listing!
- Many of these potential customers will visit your website and gain a better understanding of your business!
- With a well designed website you have a good chance to convert those visitors into customers!
- You will gain an advantage over all your immediate competitors who haven’t optimised their website!
What Is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation is effectively giving the Search Engines accurate information about your business and your products or services so they gain a full and proper understanding of your business offering and as a result the relevance your website has on particular search terms.
A WELL OPTIMISED WEBSITE WILL RANK WELL FOR THE RELEVANT SEARCH TERMS,
PUTTING YOUR BUSINESS IN FRONT OF YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE!
Driving Visitors To Your Website & Increasing Sales
There are two types of Search Engine Optimisation, On-Page Optimisation and Off-Page Optimisation. On-Page Optimisation is important to achieve high rankings in the SERPS. Off-Page Optimisation strengthens your business on-line presence.
On-Page Optimisation
On-Page Optimisation is the process of engineering key factors and code within your website so that it can be properly read by the Search Engines. Many aspects of the website including content, images, external links and internal linking structure will be structured in such a way that the Search Engine spiders fully understand the website and your business.
On-Page Optimisation is site-wide and will incorporate all the pages and posts on your website. With the correct structure, this will strengthen the general optimisation of the website as well as optimising specific products or services with your website, this means it is possible to optimise your website for multiple search terms, all relevant to your business.
On-Page Optimisation should be incorporated into the website build for the best results. If your website wasn’t optimised upon build it can be added after the build but this will require changes to the website content such as text, images and possibly the link structure.
Further optimisation can be added in order to strengthen your ranking in the SERPS, this may be required if the competition is high. Adding new content ie. posts is an ideal way to continue to optimise your website as long as the content is optimised correctly and within the website structure.
Off-Page Optimisation
Off-Page Optimisation is essentially concentrating on your business’ presence elsewhere online. Once again, this is about providing the Search Engines with an opportunity to verify your business and what you offer. They do this by essentially matching other places online where your business is mentioned or featured ie. directories, Social Media Profiles, editorials, publications and advertising.
These placements elsewhere online help provide backlinks to your website, these links provide what is known as ‘juice’ and the strength or value of this juice depends upon where the link is coming from.
The Search Engines give websites authority rankings, which they use to determine a trust factor. High authority sites such as Social Media Platforms, major publications and directories will provide more juice than a local business website but all relevant links are valuable and worthwhile.
Ensuring continuity across the internet is very important also, this includes your Social Media profiles. These should be set up in the correct manner and utilised in the best possible way. These can actually be optimised themselves and doing so strengthens your business’ online presence.
Local Search Engine Optimisation
Local Search Engine Optimisation takes all the principles of SEO and applies them specifically to the geographic region in which your business operates thereby ensuring that your business is listed within the Search Engines for the relevant Search Terms in the relevant geographical location.
Local Search Results have 3 main areas:-
Organic Listings
This is where a well optimised website will appear in the SERPS and it’s the place you want to be as people trust the organic listings much more than the paid listings, in fact 80% of clicks in SERPS are on the organic listings.
Business Listings
Placing your business in the Local Business Listings in SERPS in part of our Off-Page SEO strategy. This will place your business in the local business listings, link your business into Maps, Reviews & Images and reinforce your On-Page SEO.
Paid Listings
The paid listings in SERPS do serve a purpose for some online business’ but for the majority of local business’ with a well optimised website there would be no need for them to budget for paid advertising in the SERPS.
The History of Search Engine Optimisation
Why They Have Developed To Reward Websites Which Help Them Achieve Their Goals
Some may remember the early days when the search results were a little bit hit and miss when it came to providing the most relevant results for what you were hoping to find. Fortunately, those days are long in the past, meaning searchers see relevant and useful results for the search terms they are using and in turn business’ have a great opportunity to ensure their website is placed in front of those looking for what they offer.
The main reason the search results were not as reliable as they are today is due to the fact some individuals found a way to manipulate the search results in order for websites to rank highly in the search results for high traffic search terms which would have little or nothing to do with the actual website ranking. Searchers would only realise the website was useless to them upon visiting the website and promptly leave but the high number of visitors served its purpose, usually to sell advertising space due to visitor numbers.
Remember, the primary purpose of the Search Engines is to provide searches with the most relevant search results for the search terms being input. Something had to be done to provide a much more accurate user experience.
Modern day Search Engine Optimisation was born out of a desire to work with the Search Engines to prevent manipulation of the search results and provide accurate and useful organic search results. Naturally, with billions of websites live online, the Search Engines can only make automated assumptions about a website. They do this using algorithms with automated bots (spiders) which crawl websites and the web looking for indicators about the business, products and services on offer.
These results are determined by many factors, some are kept a closely guarded secret but most are actively encouraged and approved by the Search Engines as an optimised website helps the Search Engines understand more about your business, what you offer and where. In turn a well optimised website will have a greater chance of ranking well in the search results for the search terms which are relevant to your business.
These days the Search Engines are a much better place and provide a great opportunity for local business’ to be found online by members of the public who other wise may never have heard of them. This is the result of years of hard work from the Search Engines and those who work to promote websites organically within those Search Engines within the acceptable parameters.
Essentially, the Search Engines are rewarding those who have made the effort to provide as much information as possible, in a manner the Search Engines can understand by placing them favourably in the organic search results.
The local search results have 3 main areas; Google Business Listings, Paid Listings and Organic Listings.
Search Engine Optimisation focuses on the organic listings area of the search results.
The Paid Listings are exactly what it says, listings which are essentially paid adverts.
The Google Business Listings are used in local search results using you Google business listing which incorporates Google Maps and Reviews amongst other details. We optimise your Google Business Listing & Google Maps as part of our off-page optimisation.
SERP’s are the pages that show the results from your searches in search engines like Google. Because it has been proven that 90% of Internet users use search engines to find websites, these are the most important pages on the internet. These pages are made up of 2 different types of listings, natural or organic listings and paid advertisements. Paid listings are usually obtained through ‘pay per click’ (PPC) on Google for example they would be bought through Google Adwords. Around 80% of Google clicks are within the organic results, not the PPC and the vast majority of these are within the first 3 pages so it is important to rank well organically to reach your audience.
We offer a free, no-obligation consultation during which we will assess your existing online presence, understand your requirements, explain our offering and provide you with a written report and proposal.
It’s Easy To Get In Touch!
You can chat with us on messenger or Whatsapp, send us an email or fill out our contact form anytime you like. If we’re not online, we’ll get back to you as soon as we are!
We offer a free, no-obligation consultation during which we will assess your existing online presence, understand your requirements, explain our offering and provide you with a written report and proposal.
It’s Easy To Get In Touch!
You can chat with us on messenger or Whatsapp, send us an email or fill out our contact form anytime you like. If we’re not online, we’ll get back to you as soon as we are!