Search Engine Optimisation

SEO Explained

Why Do I Need SEO?

If your customers use search engines to find businesses like you then there are only two options to be visible when they are. There is Pay Per Click which costs money every single time someone hits your ad and there is SEO where the clicks are free. SEO takes up 70% of the search engine results page and has 2 departments that will be relevant to your customers. SEO is a necessity for your business because your customers are 9 x more likely to hit an SEO result than a PPC result.   

Increase Sales

Higher CTR%

No Cost Per Click

Better Website

Increased ROI

Access Early Funnel

More Real Estate on SERP

Brand Srength

Omni Channel Focus

1 %
of all searches on Google are for a local business or local service
1 %
Of people who search online visit a shop on the same day
1 %
of all daily searches on mobile are location related
1 %
1st organic listing on mobile receives 27.7% of clicks, versus 4.8% for PPC

How Does SEO Work?

Every time a searcher types in a keyword or key phrase into the search engines online, it is the responsibility of the engines like Google to satisfy the searcher by delivering the best results. By scanning through the trillions of websites that exist online, they must present them back in order of who they believe to be the most relevant and trustworthy result

There are over 300 factors that the algorithm considers about every website when it is deciding its results and each of those factors will have a different level of importance depending on who the searcher is and what they are looking for. It is the job of an SEO team to understand what those factors are and to ensure that your website presents to Google the best version of itself that it can. 

If your website has appeared to Google as the best version of all the sites that have been considered then it will appear in the first spot on Google.  

What Is Involved In an SEO Campaign?

This depends on the goals of the campaign and the websites that are being worked on. A campaign focusing on Local SEO would look very different from one that is targeting a national audience and both of these will look different again to an E-commerce website SEO campaign.
You can find very different looking campaigns from website that are in the same industry doing the same style of SEO. If the two websites have very different issues to resolve at the start or their competition are at different levels. Broadly speaking, all of the tasks that will need to be implemented in any SEO campaign will fall under the categories of On-Page SEO or Off-Page SEO which we will come to shortly.

At the start of a campaign, the focus is to identify what is needed to succeed and that takes place via an audit. This will shape the start of the campaign but should not be used to determine the entirety of it. Campaigns that follow a linear, fixed path that is determined on day 1 and is never altered will always fail.

The first stage of any SEO campaign begins by identifying the keywords that you want to target and analyzing the websites who rank 1-3 for those keywords as they are your competition.

How Do I Know What Keywords To Choose?

We need to determine what are the most important phrases or keywords that your customers use when looking online for the things that you offer. This sounds like a very simple and obvious task but it is incredibly important to do correctly as the whole campaign is based on this data. There are often many keywords that one would imagine are important but actually do not deliver as expected and others that you hadn’t considered important that on reflection yield far more. 

Keyword research is not solely focused on finding the highest search volume, as these will often be more competitive which will affect the time to see success. There may be keywords with slightly less volume but far less competition and so is a better candidate earlier in the campaign. If you would like to work with us then we will guide you through this process at the beginning of the campaign. 

Thankfully there are tools available that we use to identify the best balance in your keyword research. 

Baseline vs Benchmark Audit

The first step once your keyword research is decided, is to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of both your website and those of the competition who rank above you. This is known as the Baseline : Benchmark Analysis. Here is a quick video of a dental SEO audit that demonstrates a quick version of this. 

You now have an understanding of the size of the gap between where you are, and where you want to be. You know what needs to be fixed and what needs to be improved. You can then begin the process of repairing or resolving issues hurting your site as well as developing strategies that improve the perceived value, relevance and trust of the information on it.

Every month should be a review period where you re-run the audits and re-establish the new gap. Hopefully it is slightly smaller than the last time. This feedback loop continues throughout the campaign and is necessary as there will be continuous changes to the objectives along the way that you must identify and adjust your On-Page and Off-Page strategies accordingly.

Compare

We start every campaign with full competitive analysis and deliver a baseline benchmark report that determines what we need to do to compete.

Repair

Then we look to resolve the issues that are causing you the issues that holdl you back. The gaps can be both on page and off page.

Improve

Through our continuous feedback loops we drive ongoing growth in authority and ranking by delivering better content and gaining more links.

Review

Once the improvements are taking shape we can't rest on our laurels. The new baseline has been set and we must begin the cycle again.

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is the practice of focusing on your website and actively optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized. You can learn more about the importance of this category if you view the On-Page SEO page. Some of the major areas of consideration and are as follows:

Content Optimization

Ensuring all content is fully optimized with relevant keyword density for content length, title, descriptions and header tags and removing any duplicates.

Page Speed Insights

Experience matters with SEO. Site load time can be the difference between success or failure. We deliver supersonic site speed strategies

Internal Linking

An essential part of any successful SEO strategy, let’s build your internal link profile to add significance to your page keywords listed within search engines.

Image Optimization

Images that are not optimized can cripple website speeds, dilute user experience and sabotage an otherwise healthy SEO campaign. Overlook and miss out!

Schema Markup

Make your content easily accessible to search engines. Our team is ready to implement solutions to boost your rankings and improve your performance.

Outbound Linking

An often overlooked yet crucial area of SEO is outbound linking. You must link to other sites that offer relevant and high quality information. Juice flows both ways.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off page SEO is focused on ensuring that the signals that are pointing to and from your website are as powerful and authoritative as can be and that deliver a different side of relevance to Googles opinion of you. Any website that is linking to you or capable of linking to you would be considered part pf the Off-Page SEO factors. 

Reputation Builder

Like it or not, your past efforts are more influential and impactful than ever on your future opportunities. Embrace peoples opinions of you and seek to improve every day.

Blogger Outreach

Still the most important differentiator in SEO. Associations from high authority sites to your own is Googles best method of understanding your relevance.

Directory Citations

For local SEO, you need to ensure that your business is listed on all relevant local directories with accurate and consistent information.

We Have Great Answers

More SEO FAQ's

You should invest in SEO because it forces you to take your digital presence with the seriousness that it deserves. Done well it will deliver more than any other channel, it also supports all other channels, it grows your brand, it increases your conversion likelihood and it will bring you the greatest joy that you can have in marketing because it is earned value not bought. 

In an ideal world you should choose PPC and SEO because the synergies that occur from running both campaigns concurrently far outweigh the benefits of either choice as a single strategy. If budgets don’t allow for that level of activity then the answer will depend on your circumstances. The best reason for PPC is it will offer opportunities immediately unlike SEO which takes time. The best reason for SEO is that it doesn’t cost as much and when it works it will deliver far more than PPC ever could on a value scale.

SEO service costs will vary dependent on a nuber of factors: The agency you choose, the goals of the campaign, the type of SEO that is being implemented, the structure of the content etc. There are countless SEO agencies that charge less than $200 per month (and countless clients willing to pay for it) and there are agencies that charge $10’000+ month for what appears to be the same type of business. Our campaigns start at $900 per month which is above average. I wouldn’t base your decision on cost alone as whilst not always true, generally speaking, you get what you pay for. 

At SearchButlers, our SEO experts and consultants provide both Local SEO and national SEO services to our clients. All of our campaigns are entirely customised based on your specific needs of search engine optimisation services with a focus on content optimisation, technical improvements and link outreach. As a leading Newcastle SEO company, we are home to a team of experts who will work closely with you to help grow your online presence and improve lead generation through our solutions. We use ethical methods to drive long term results that will have a positive impact on your business.SearchBu

Yes of course, as SEO experts, we understand that small to medium businesses have different requirements, structures, budgets and goals. Perhaps 20% of the clients that we work with already have internal web dev personnel who are on a full time salary and there would be double spending unnecessarily.  Our consultancy solutions can include anything and everything from targeting local campaigns to help improve overall business visibility, to solutions on a national scale, helping large firms to grow and stay competitive.SE

This is one of those “it depends” moments. Every SEO campaign has its own course to sail and the time to see results will vary based on hundreds of variables. The competition, the baseline value of your site, the keywords, even seasonality can play a role n delaying or expediting success. In our experience though, its apparent that results from SEO won’t be seen overnight, however you should see an uplift in rankings, traffic or revenue from your SEO strategy within three months-5 months.  The quicker suggestions from the strategy can be implemented, the quicker results will be seen.

This is one of those “it depends” moments. Every SEO campaign has its own course to sail and the time to see results will vary based on hundreds of variables. The competition, the baseline value of your site, the keywords, even seasonality can play a role n delaying or expediting success. In our experience though, its apparent that results from SEO won’t be seen overnight, however you should see an uplift in rankings, traffic or revenue from your SEO strategy within three months-5 months.  The quicker suggestions from the strategy can be implemented, the quicker results will be seen.

Sorry, but as confident as we are in our abilities, we would be lying if we said we could guarantee the performance. We can only control the input factors into a campaign and the output is out of hands. If you are looking for an agency that will provide those reassurances, then you will only find agencies that will push the boundaries too far in order to ensure that they meet the performance criteria as soon as possible. I would steer very clear of those types of players.  

Typically we report on progress and performance in a documented fashion once a month. We also offer the chance to have a zoom review meeting monthly. Beyond that though we like the personal touch so there is never a concern with any ad hoc reach outs to our team whenever you need anything or have questions to ask. 

If a penalty was to occur, then your ranking would drop immediately and depending on the type of penalty the time spent at the lower ranking spots would be determined by how long it took to identify the reason, to resolve the issue and to earn Google’s trust back. That can take anywhere from a few months to years. It’s not something that you want and rest assured there is nothing in our body of work that would ever expose you to a penalty. For what it’s worth there is a very small outside chance that your competition could try to ruin your SEO with black hat tactics but that is so rare it’s not a concern generally and the only other realistic penalty scenario (albeit unlikely) is if your site was to get hacked and then corrupted internally. To avoid that you just need to make sure you have the necessary security protocols in place and that you keep your sites plugins updated.

You certainly shouldn’t just blindly trust me on what I’m saying, you should seek reassurance from my testimonials and case studies that demonstrate our track record. Hopefully you can take some further peace of mind in knowing that we have a 99.1% retention ratio which is insanely high and we have a perfect 5.0 in our Google Reviews. We also dont ask you for contracts. So you can walk away at any time.

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