How can you tell if SEO is being used to promote a business effectively?

According to Chaffey (2011), there are six key digital marketing channels for which a business can use to promote their online presence. The first of which was search marketing (SEM).

SEM is the means by which an organisation promotes itself through search engines (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2016).

There are two key communication techniques which make up SEM:

  • Search engine optimisation (SEO)
  • Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

 

The aim of this blog is to investigate the importance of SEO and to determine if a business is using it effectively.


What is SEO?

SEO is the approach to achieving as high a possible ranking on a search-engines results page (SERP) (Gudivada, Rao and Paris, 2015). In turn, this helps generate more traffic to your website. An example of a SERP can be seen below:

In order to help businesses improve their SERP ranking, Google have provided a SEO starter guide which outlines how best to go about making it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand content. This can be found at the below link:

SEO Starter guide: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf


What is the importance of SEO?

The importance of SEO is now greater than ever. With the increasing number of people now using the internet, the significance of having an online presence is huge. As can be seen in the below figure, the number of households in Great Britain, with internet access, has been growing significantly year on year most recently reaching 89% (Office for National Statistics, 2016).

Arguably, the most important feature of SEO is generating more traffic for your website. Evidently, the traffic is there to be had. Therefore, if utilised correctly, this increased traffic generally has a positive effect on revenue.


How to decide whether SEO is being used effectively?

In order to determine if  SEO is being used effectively, without the use of an audit tool, I have narrowed it down to several core elements that can be measured:

1: Traffic

Whether  SEO is successful or not, can be determined by a number of factors. As stated above the primary function of SEO is to direct more traffic in the websites direction. Therefore, as a starting point, I would recommend to check the current percentage of traffic generated from a search. This can be done using tools such as Alexa. An example showing traffic from sites in the UK, can be found below:

Alexa – Top Sites in UK

It is important to keep track of this traffic as any sudden changes could be a result of the ranking either increasing or decreasing.

2: Keyword Rankings

When determining which sites and pages to bring up when performing a search, a search engines algorithm primarily focuses on keywords. ‘These keywords (which are most often phrases) should match both the information on your page and what terms people actually use to search for that type of service or product’ (Schultz, 2017). In order to track the success of  SEO, you can measure how many times you are referred to a site based on specific search terms.

A good example of how to tell if a website has chosen appropriate keywords, can be seen in the below video:

With the significant influence keywords have on rankings, some websites tend to try repeat popular keywords without adding any value to its content. This is in order to trick the search-engine into increasing this ranking (Wilson and Pettijohn, 2008). However, search engines have now caught on to this and now penalise such websites.

‘Keyword stuffing’ can be a sign of SEO not being used well by a website (Zuze and Weideman, 2013).Reasoning for this is because it compromises the search-engines trust. According to Adams (2017) there is no component of SEO more important than gaining the search engines trust. Gaining this trust tends to result in a high ranking on a SERP. On the other hand, without it, you can be at great risk of having a very low ranking. The below link provides more details into what influences this trust:

How to gain trust: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2016/11/29/seo-2017-8-crucial-rules-for-dominating-googles-search-results/#5c8730657415

3: Content

Search engines tend to favour websites that whose content is both valuable and regular. In 1996, Bill Gates stated that ‘Content is King’. This is particularly true in this instance. Reason for this is that, the more a business publishes valuable content, search engine crawlers will identify this and thus publish more indexed pages on a SERP. Therefore, analysing a websites content regularity and value is a good determinant of effective or ineffective SEO (Gordon, 2017).


If you have any questions about this, or would like to add any further tips, then please leave a comment below.


References

Adams, R. (2016). SEO 2017: 8 Crucial Rules For Dominating Google’s Search Results. [Blog] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2016/11/29/seo-2017-8-crucial-rules-for-dominating-googles-search-results/#5f0703ee7415 [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2016). Digital marketing. 6th ed. Harlow: Pearson.

Chaffey, D. (2011). Digital marketing channels. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/reach/attachment/digital-marketing-channels/ [Accessed 17 Nov. 2017].

Gordon, P. (2017). What Is SEO & How It All Works. [online] 720digital.co.uk. Available at: https://www.720digital.co.uk/what-is-seo-how-it-all-works/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2017].

Gudivada, V., Rao, D. and Paris, J. (2015). Understanding Search-Engine Optimization. Computer, 48(10), pp.43-52.

Office for National Statistics. (2017). Internet access – households and individuals – Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/internetaccesshouseholdsandindividuals/2016 [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

Schultz, A. (2017). How to Know If SEO Is Working: 5 Metrics You Need to Know. [Blog] Intuitive Digital. Available at: https://intuitivedigital.com/2017/03/how-to-know-if-seo-is-working/ [Accessed 23 Nov. 2017].

Wilson, R. and Pettijohn, J. (2008). Search engine optimisation: A primer on outsourcing key tasks. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 10(2), pp.133-149.

Zuze, H. and Weideman, M. (2013). Keyword stuffing and the big three search engines. Online Information Review, 37(2), pp.268-286.

One thought on “How can you tell if SEO is being used to promote a business effectively?

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