Search Engine Optimisation – getting it wrong vs. getting it right

If you’ve ever paid for search engine optimisation (SEO) or are wondering if it will help your website, you need to read this.

SEO is certainly a buzz word at the moment but where do you get all the facts – how much should it cost? What results should I expect? How do I tell if it’s working? Am I being ripped off?

This article will show you how SEO done well will give you great long-term results and how SEO done badly can ruin your website rankings.

So, what is search engine optimisation?

SEO is simply the process communicating with Google and the other main search engines to make sure they have a clear understanding of how important your website is, where your target customers are, and what your products & services are.

Once this is done properly, you’ll appear in search results when your target customers search for the products and services you provide… or at least that’s the theory!

So, why is this not simple?

It’s not possible to get an accurate number of how many websites there are currently available but the last estimate put this approaching three quarters of a billion (750,000,000) with the majority of these in English.

Every one of these sites wants relevant visitors and the search engine’s job is therefore to fetch the appropriate results for you when you do a search based on factors such as where you are, what language you speak, and what you’re looking for.

The problem is that if Google can’t understand the purpose of your site or doesn’t get a true representation of how important your site is, you won’t appear in the right results.

So, what is the wrong type of SEO?

Google is a piece of software, it visits sites using what is known as its ‘Googlebot’ and the measure it uses to evaluate sites is called its algorithm.

Poor quality SEO companies will tell you that Google assesses a website is by looking at how many other sites link to the website in question– in other words, lots of links to your site = important website – but this only has a very small element of truth in it.

The reality is that Google is not stupid. Back in the old days of the internet you could get away doing SEO like that but Google continues to become smarter and its algorithm continues to update.

In fact, you probably heard of the recent infamous Panda and Penguin algorithm updates where sites that had focussed on inbound linking to increase their position in the search engines suddenly dropped out of the rankings overnight – and there were some very high-profile casualties of this!

So, what is the right type of SEO?

Getting your SEO right is not rocket science, it just takes a bit more care and attention. Selling someone SEO and then simply creating links to their site is either lazy or unethical (or both!). It may work for a while, however, as soon as you stop paying for this, the results will disappear again… and this is your best case scenario!!! Google is now also penalising sites that use poor quality links so, if your site is important to your business, you’re really taking a huge gamble!

This graph shows the difference between focussing your SEO on inbound links vs. focussing on good quality content and on-page SEO

This graph shows the difference between focussing your SEO on inbound links vs. focussing on good quality content and on-page SEO

I did say, however, that there was an element of truth in using link building as part of your SEO strategy, and there is. Link-building should form at least part of your SEO strategy, but you have to be very careful to make sure that the links pointing to your site are from good quality and relevant websites. Get this right and you’re on your way. Get it wrong and it can be disastrous!

The best way, however, to do your SEO properly is to do what we here at Seven Creative have always done – focus on high quality content. You’ll see not only an instant boost and an increase in rankings whilst your SEO campaign is in progress, you’ll also see a long-term boost way beyond this. This way, link-building is not something that has to be pro-actively conducted, rather it becomes something that happens organically.

We (here at Seven Creative) have always said that good quality SEO should primarily focus on ‘quality content’ & ‘on-page SEO’ – and it’s what we’ve always done. Don’t get ripped off, get it done properly.

Call Seven Creative today on 0114 383 0711 or get in touch through the contact page to see how SEO done properly can benefit your business.