Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a technique used to increase the position of a website or web page in the search engines via the natural search results listings for a selection of key words and phrases. As a digital marketing method, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Another great SEO tactic is to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, to your website.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, or video search. SEO gives a website visibility and resonance on the web.

In general, the closer to the top of the search results pages, and the more frequently a website appears in the search results listings, the more visits it will receive. It has been proven that search engine visitors are more likely to click on a site at the top of the rankings than one much lower down. So, alongside brand visibility, that is the value of SEO.

Without a ranking for key phrases related to your products or services in the search results your company is invisible online, and with more than 1 billion online searches made per month back in 2009 (according to comScore), companies today find investment in SEO a necessity.
 

•    Increase traffic. SEO will increase visits to your website from a range of targeted online searches from all major search engines.
•    Targeted. SEO will connect you with people who are already looking for what you offer.
•    Online brand visibility. Achieving a high search position is a well respected achievement, and being seen on page 1 of the search results will place you as an industry leader.
•    Relatively inexpensive. There is no cost per click.
•    Long term benefits. Whenever you add new content, from news stories to new products or services, those pages can be found quickly by the search engines and gain new entries in the listings at no cost.
•    Measurable. Visits from search engines and the search terms visitors used to arrive at your site can be tracked and analysed.
 

Successful SEO work starts with keyword auditing. We will identify all of the different keywords that your potential visitors are likely to use when searching for products, services or information related to your brand. We need to find tangible search terms that do not necessarily contain the brand name because these terms will be how prospective visitors will try to find you. Once we have a broad range of keywords and phrases identified, we will analyse the actual search volumes (number of people searching for each phrase and similar phrases). This process will result in a much larger list of keywords and phrases, filtered by relevance and volumes, which we can review at a meeting to agree on the optimal keywords.

Once the refined list of relevant search terms is approved, we will work this into a logical tree / map structure which will become your keyword-rich sitemap, tailored to search-engine performance. From there we will use the master list of keywords and strive towards making these words as visible as possible to the search engines.
 

As an initial target for our research, we will be looking for where we should act to make the most impact in the shortest time. To do this we need to understand how much competition there is online for specific keywords. For example, a general search term that has a very high volume of searches every month might be expected to return a large volume of very well optimised pages. Attaining a high ranking for such a keyword would be difficult, and should be considered a long-term goal.

However, a relatively specific keyphrase that has particular relevance to your company might have a fairly low level of searches carried out each month but equally little in the way of sophisticated competition. These keywords are known as the ‘long tail’ and often present an opportunity to pull in highly qualified visitors.

By this point we will have a good foundation for making qualified recommendations on specific changes to structure, content and functionality. We will also know exactly what metrics we need to pay attention to on an ongoing basis in order to measure the effectiveness of any marketing and SEO efforts in the future.

Many of our recommendations will be limited to structure and content, which can be carried out easily via the Content Management System (CMS). However, functionality changes may require further studio time in order to execute.
 

SEO can be used as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site and site content, Graphic Alliance incorporates SEO tactics into every website we develop and design. However, we can also provide SEO audits for existing sites.