Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine Marketing has become the holy grail of acquiring customers in the marketing discipline in recent years according to Chaffey and Smith (2017). The idea behind Search Engine marketing is to generate good quality traffic as opposed to a large volume of traffic. Good quality traffic is defined as when “Site visitors are within the target Audience for the website and if they respond in line with communications objectives.” (Smith and Chaffey, 2017)

Auditing Search Engine Optimisation

Pay Per Click and Paid Search will not be covered in this paper.

It is important to understand how search engines produce results (SERPs). Assuming the SEO manager is aware that search engines like Google use about 200 aspects in its search algorithm it is important to then present the website in a manner that will make it friendly for the search engine to rank it high.

The following four factors influence search engine ranking

• On-Page Optimisation – The number of iterations the keyphrase appears the page is not the main deciding factor that search engines use to rank a page. Alternative image text, Document Meta data, blended search are all important. Images need to link to other pages of the website.
• External Linking – Quality links to other sites add to the relevance of a page to search engines. So having Social Sharing buttons on a page is useful.
• Internal link Structures – It is important for SEO managers to have a webbed internal build structure of interlinks of anchor text connected to a hyperlink text of keyphrases.
• User Behaviour Signals – An analysis of how users interact with the content on a page must be done on a regular basis to increase or preserve the quality of search results and page rankings within search engines. If a user clicks on a search result and lands on a page then immediately presses the “Back” button to go back to the search results to type a different search parameter, then the Search engine downgrades the page if it happens often. It means that users are not getting quality results from the site. If users bookmark a page by adding it to favourites, then it can be used to increase page ranking. Social sharing also helps increase a page’s ranking in search engines. Sites need to have a metric to quantify social sharing, bounce rate and bookmarking.

Content: Regularly updating content like body copy helps to optimise a site as it is evaluated by search engines.

Using graphics like images and videos that are tagged with alternative text and links to other pages

 Keyphrase Analysis

Keyword phrase or keyphrase analysis is when SEO managers research words and phrases that users usually use to get relevant results in search engines. Online Services like Google AdWords® can give an idea of what phrases are most popular.

Demand Analysis

“Identifying the popularity of each search term, its relevance to the product or service, qualified by the `intent of the searcher` indicated by the keyphrase, and the competition on it.” Using online tools like Google Keyword Planner® and Google Trends® help SEO managers to approximate the popularity of various keywords and phrases. Tools Like Ubersuggest.com and KeywordTool.io do related query analysis by country which helps SEO managers to tweak the website according to region. Having identified the keyphrases to use for maximum conversion the next phase is Performance Analysis.

Performance Analysis

Once the Keyphrase analysis has been completed the SEO manager’s next task is to evaluate how the company is performing with the keyphrases in place. Observing the websites position in the rankings using tagging and tracking tools like Google Search Console Analytics® helps evaluate performance. This tool gives click volume, conversion rates, bounce rates, sales and registrations. This is then compared to the site’s previous performance to gauge improvement.

The three performance indicators of an effective Search Engine Optimisation program are:

• Rankings – Has the popularity improved on the rankings page after the SEO program has been implemented. Metrics for this must be clearly defined.
• Traffic – has volume to the site improved? A comparison between pre-SEO and Post SEO must be completed.
• Conversions – Sales or registrations improved? This should be measured as a percentage of pre-SEO statistics.

Brand Hijacking

In today’s digital world it is not enough to just optimise your site for effective search; a website administrator also needs to watch out for brand hijacking. Brand hijacking occurs when affiliates and or competitors use a company brand’s name to gain more clicks to their sites thus lowering your brand’s traffic and potential sales. See example below of search term Go Compare. In the Organic search results the first result is an affiliate of the company Gocompare.com but the second result is that of a competitor, MoneySupermaket.com using “Go Compare” as a keyphrase. This would be brand hijacking if “Go Compare” was a registered trademark.

Organic Google results for Search Term “Go Compare”

References

Barker, D. (2010). Using Google Analytics to Audit and Improve SEO | Smart Insights. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/seo-analytics/seo-gap-analysis-google-analytics/ [Accessed 23 Nov. 2017].

McSweeney, D. (2015). How To Do An SEO Audit In 15 Minutes Or Less [AMT-02 by David McSweeney]. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/JlXoMbBJF9s [Accessed 24 Nov. 2017].

Moz (2017). Google Algorithm Change History – Moz. [online] Moz.com. Available at: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change [Accessed 23 Nov. 2017].

Smith, P. and Chaffey, D. (2017). Digital Marketing Excellence. 5th ed. Oxford: Routledge, pp.368 – 383.

Soulo, T. (2017). Keywords Explorer Overview: a powerful keyword research tool by Ahrefs. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/EBgguPTAPkc [Accessed 20 Nov. 2017].

Uber Suggest (n.d.). ubersuggest.com. [online] Ubersuggest.com. Available at: http://ubersuggest.com/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].

Zahringer, D. (2015). How to Perform Your First #SEO Audit. [online] Searchenginejournal.com. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/perform-first-seo-audit/130723/ [Accessed 26 Nov. 2017].