SEO

What is SEO

As a Plymouth SEO company, we know exactly what SEO is, but many of our clients are confused about search engine optimisation – what it means, and why it’s so important.

Search engine optimisation involves making a website and the content it contains more relevant, more visible, and more appealing to search engine algorithms. When every aspect of a website is fully optimised, it’s possible to secure a higher ranking, increased website traffic, and more organic results. While paid search options form a key component of most digital marketing campaigns, it’s an essential first step to ensure that a website operates optimally by itself.

UK SEO companies ensure that the websites they work on have well-produced and relevant content that engages the reader on its webpages. With Google and other search engines increasing the emphasis they put on evaluating user-friendly, high-quality content, it’s never been more important for a site to offer high value and to be well-calibrated for users to access.

In order to secure more organic traffic, an SEO and marketing company will ensure that the websites it works on meet all the requirements set by the top search engines like Google. In practice, that means each site must be bespoke to the brand’s needs, build with no user restrictions, and perfectly designed. More than anything else, it must also have the integrity and values that major search engines wish to align themselves with.

When these crucial components are combined together, the result is a well-honed website that boosts the brand’s rankings on all search engine results pages. Our team of Plymouth SEO services experts will work closely with you and give you the expert guidance you need to ensure your site works optimally and delivers to your target market while avoiding potential algorithm penalties which may devalue your website and cause it to drop down the rankings.

What is Onsite Optimisation

If you’ve been searching for an SEO service near me, you already realise that optimising your company website forms the backbone of a successful digital marketing strategy. Onsite optimisation is one aspect of SEO that must not be overlooked.

Sometimes called on-page SEO, onsite SEO refers to optimising the elements contained on the site itself so that the website will rank more highly and drive up more qualified traffic from the search engines. Onsite optimisation means optimising both the HMTL source code and content of the page.

Not only does onsite SEO help the search engines to properly interpret the content of a webpage, but it also helps users to clearly and rapidly understand what the page is all about and if it can address their query. Essentially, onsite SEO’s ultimate goal is to make it simple for users and search engines alike to understand the subject matter of a webpage, whether the page is relevant to search queries for specific keywords, and whether it is worth of a high ranking in the SERPs.

Keywords form a vital component of onsite SEO, although these days search engines are increasingly sophisticated so relevance of content is becoming even more essential. The search engines today are seeking in-depth content that is user-friendly, easily navigable, unique, trustworthy and authoritative, and aligned with the user’s search intent.

Beyond content, there are other elements involved in onsite optimisation too. Internal and external links, page loading speed, URL structure, page metadata, mobile friendliness, and the use of markups are also vital for creating the best possible user experience.

Essentially, the easier it is to use a page, both technically and non-technically, the better its onsite optimisation is. To fully optimise a website, both HTML and text-based changes must be made, and our team of experts are on hand to assist.

What is Offsite Optimisation

While many people may have heard of SEO, they often think only of onsite search engine optimisation. Yet, there is a whole other aspect to SEO that can easily be overlooked. Offsite SEO or off-page SEO refers to any actions that are taken outside a website that impact its ranking in the SERPs. Offsite elements must be optimised alongside onsite elements so that your website can rank as highly as possible.

To optimise a website for offsite factors, it’s essential to improve both the user and the search engine’s perception of the site’s relevance, popularity, authority, and trustworthiness. This can be accomplished by ensuring that other reputable online places such as people, sites, and pages, link to or promote the website to effectively vouch for its content’s quality.

Although the search engines are constantly updating their ranking factors and algorithms, there is one thing that never changes –the trustworthiness, authority, and relevance that high-quality off-page SEO brings a site will always have a vital role to play when it comes to helping a page to rank highly. In fact, it’s likely that offsite SEO factors carry over half of the weight when it comes to ranking factors. Therefore, it couldn’t be more important to get a team of talented SEO experts on board to ensure this aspect of your digital marketing strategy has been properly covered.

The central focus of off-page SEO is building backlinks. These are used by search engines as an indication of the quality of the content that is being linked-to, and therefore a site that has a lot of high-value backlinks usually ranks more highly than a site that would otherwise be equal but that has fewer backlinks.

Three main link types exist – manually-built, self-created, and natural links:

• A natural link is given editorially with no action needing to be taken by the page owner.

• A manually-built link is acquired via a deliberate link-building activity such as asking an influencer to share the content or asking clients to link to the website.

• A self-created link is achieved by adding backlinks in forums, online directors, press releases, or blog comment signatures. Some of these tactics are frowned on by the search engines, therefore it’s vital to be careful if following this course of action.

However a link is obtained, it will contribute more to the site’s SEO effort if the linking site is popular and trustworthy, if its topic is strongly related to the website, if the link is fresh, and if the most appropriate anchor text has been used.

Yet, offsite SEO isn’t just about links. There are other activities that take place off the website that help to boost search engine rankings including guest blogging, influencer marketing, unlinked and linked brand mentions and social media marketing.

Essentially, to improve a website’s off-page SEO, the user and search engine’s perceptions of the site’s quality must be maximised. That happens if links can be obtained from other trustworthy and reputable websites alongside content shares, brand mentions, and other confidence votes that come from sources external to the website itself.