— search engine optimisation
SEO. Three little letters, one big difference.
SEO (search engine optimization) can often be the difference between a good website and a great website – when search engines show your website in search results to users, they drive traffic towards your website. An increase in web traffic will hopefully then turn your visitors into performing whatever objective you would hope them to, whether that’s supporters that are more engaged with your cause, or website visitors that became customers.
The process of search engine optimisation isn’t simply a one off task, but rather it’s the cumulative effort of lots of ongoing tasks, all being undertaken to help increase the likelihood of search engines ranking your website in the various forms of listings that they show when a user undertakes a search query in a search engine.
SEO is one of the most important aspects of any website that is looking to be found by an increasing number of visitors, but it can also be one of the most misunderstood aspects of modern day website management.
One of the most important things to understand about search engines, is that they can’t be cheated – good results in search engines take time, continued ongoing effort and a lot of patience. You’ll perhaps hear people promise that they can get you to the top of search engines – if you do – you should run! Search engines are focused on offering the best results and user experience they possibly can, so they value good, honest and authentic results – trying to undertake shoddy practices when it comes to SEO will likely result in having your website blacklisted.
At Tentmaker, we only take on a limited amount of SEO work for clients that we work with on a regular basis – this allows us to show exactly what it is we’re trying to achieve along with how we’re undertaking that effort. We’re also able to show the results of other clients that we’ve worked alongside to help boost their websites in search results, because seeing is believing!
We’re working on a more in depth guide to understanding SEO, and we’d be happy to share it with you when it’s completed – in the meantime if you have questions, we’ll be happy to help – please get in touch using the form below.
Some of the key essentials you should know about search engine optimisation
It takes time
Optimising the various elements of your website takes time, as does having those changes reflect in the results pages of different search engines.
There isn’t an exact timescale with SEO, but you should normally be able to see results of some kind shortly after you implement changes. Search engines want to deliver good content and great websites to their searchers, so they are usually happy to give pointers as to what you can do to improve your websites.
it's really worth investing in
Being found in search engines should result in increased traffic to your website, and increased contact form submissions, messages and transactions.
Whatever your specific requests are with optimising your website for search engines, having your website optimised for search engines is a great investment for all websites that are looking to increase traffic.
you need to be consider different search engines
Everybody knows about Google, but there are other search engines out there!
It’s worth thinking about who your intended audience are, and thinking about focusing on the search engine they are most likely to use.
While that is most likely to be Google, there are still large volumes of traffic to search engines such as Bing, or focusing on some overseas search queries if your intended audience is based overseas.
you need to consider different search results
Search engines change and update their algorithms repeatedly, and will often introduce new features.
Where some search results might be diffucult to rank for, it may be worth thinking about different search results – such as ecommerce listings or image results. Different kinds of search results can be useful for different kinds of businesses and it may allow you to rank more easily.
seo requires a combination of efforts
SEO requires a combination of efforts both on page and off page. Ongoing web optimisation, speed improvements, tech updates and content creation all play a part in improving and maintaining your search engine rankings.
Ongoing SEO should be at the forefront of all website owners that want to increase traffic to their websites.