As companies look to increase traffic to their website in ever competitive search engines, many companies have conducted in SEO in order to drive large numbers of relevant traffic to their site. Many modern digital marketers have their own opinions on what help increase a sites rank within the secrete search engine algorithms. Through research of many of these opinions, a range of good and bad SEO practices emerge, some of which I will try to convey to you.

“Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of a website or particular web page in a search engine’s results.” (Crowley, 2014)

As mentioned SEO is a process and is constantly evolving, therefore it requires a site owner to constantly change and develop a sites optimisation. As mentioned before, search algorithms are estimated to take 1000s of ranking factors, and often change factor weightings daily (Dean, 2017). While more of the heavily weighted factors now are to do with customer engagement through social media or blogs, the weighting may well change back over the next few years. It is therefore vital for a site to approach SEO as a long term strategy, not just a quick boost to web traffic.

A very popular tool used for measuring your sites current SEO is to perform a crawl analysis. Many businesses offer web crawl services, some paid for some free, with most generally identifying broken links, duplicate content, indexation issues etc. From there site owners can identify the strengths and weaknesses and make changes accordingly. There are many SEO improvement techniques, some of which I will mention, but a crawl analysis or some equivalent should initially be used to identify what things actually need to be improved on the site.

While traditional aspects like keywords are becoming increasingly less valued in search algorithms, ignoring the basics of SEO can still dramatically reduce the ranking of a site, especially for new sites or new pages within a site (Tiemann, 2013). Ensuring each webpage has one primary topic or message it is looking to convey to incoming users, then using this as the “keyword”, ensure you place it within the URL, site title, page description, page titles and more all where possible will help search engines find users the site wants to visit them, and pages the user wants to visit. Other traditional techniques include ensuring that your main page contains links to all important aspects to your site, which then in itself link to each other.

Sites should also be increasingly concerned about the page loading times, now more than ever. Multiple pieces of research (Butkiewicz, Madhyastha and Sekar, 2014; Nah, 2004; Kiss Metrics, n.d.) show how slower websites, even by one second can dramatically increase the number of users who abandon the site, and will often never come back. Monitoring page loading time is relatively easy (2) with tools like google analytics. As well as this page loading times are now predicted to be analysed in search algorithms (3), including mobile loading speeds. Companies must therefore consider which plugins to use and techniques like Gzip compression and image optimisation. Sites should change the website design to consider speed not just design and functionality.

It is important to remember the amount of traffic which you can attract from organic searches as apposed to sponsored links will vary depending on the industry the site operates in. Retail for example has far more organic searches than paid-for (Baye, De los Santos, Wildenbeest, 2015). Therefore, before fully committing to a strong SEO approach, it would be wise to consider whether paid search would be an easier, less risky, and possibly cheaper approach depending which industry the website is about.

Having good user engagement can also help ensure your site does not have static content. Websites like Wikipedia and blogs are often rated so highly, as users create new content for the site without them having to do anything (Labrador, n.d.). Many retail companies like Tesco have added blog infrastructure for this reason, hoping to create an active community who will in turn help improve the sites SEO. While much of this stratergy will depend on the sites purpose, but simple comment sections, blog areas, or links to social media comments can improve page rankings.

While previously sites could “trick” algorithms using black hat SEO, with techniques like keyword stuffing and cloaking, most search engines have chosen to permanently penalise websites caught doing so (Perzyńska, 2016). This can effect a sites ranking even if they remove the black hat techniques, creating lasting damage. There have also been examples of SEO companies using these techniques, meaning outsourcing is generally considered very risky. Many in the field suggest hiring in house to maintain more control and avoid being contracted into a dodgy agreement with an SEO agency (Dod, 2018).

The risk to conducting SEO is that you lose site of the design, functionality and purpose of your website (Gabe, 2012). While conduting SEO is vital to bring traffic to your site, especially for new businesses, if you lose focus of what your website is meant to do, the sites page rank will improve to a lesser extent and users will stay for less time and not return. The change to your site must also be gradual, as quick change to the website often hinders a sites ranking rather than helping it.

While it may seem a lot to digest, SEO is a multi-faceted aspect to digital marketing, and conducting any of the techniques mentioned or found from professionals can help boost traffic going to a site significantly. In a time where competition is even more global, with the internet putting thousands more businesses competing against each other, any ability to increase potential customers to see what you can offer is vital.

References

 

Baye, M., De los Santos, B. and Wildenbeest, M. (2015). Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 25(1), pp.6-31.

Butkiewicz, M., Madhyastha, H. and Sekar, V. (2014). Characterizing Web Page Complexity and Its Impact. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 22(3), pp.943-956.

Crowley, M. (2014). Take the Guesswork Out of Your Marketing Strategy. Journal of Financial Planning, 27(1), pp.16-17.

Dean, B. (2017). Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List. [online] Backlinko. Available at: https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Dod, R. (2018). 5 SEO Risks Worth Taking (Plus 3 You Must Avoid). [online] Search Engine Journal. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-risks/229909/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Gabe, G. (2012). How To Avoid SEO Disaster During a Website Redesign – Top Marketer Concerns. [online] Search Engine Journal. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-avoid-seo-disaster-during-a-website-redesign/42824/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Kiss Metrics. (n.d.). How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line. [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Labrador, E. (n.d.). How User Generated Content can impact your SEO?. [online] OnCrawl. Available at: https://www.oncrawl.com/oncrawl-seo-thoughts/user-generated-content-impact-seo/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Nah, F. (2004). A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait?. Behaviour & Information Technology, 23(3), pp.153-163.

Perzyńska, K. (2016). 8 Risky Black Hat SEO Techniques Used Today. [online] Unamo. Available at: https://unamo.com/blog/seo/8-risky-black-hat-seo-techniques-used-today [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Tiemann, K. (2013). The Importance of Keywords in SEO Marketing. [online] Volume seo. Available at: http://volumeseo.com/the-importance-of-keywords-in-seo-marketing/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].