Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your website to ensure that when a member of the public enters a search item into Google, your website is the first result to show. A SEO Southampton expert tells us that the idea is to optimise your site efficiently and correctly to ensure that Search Engines choose your site to show first to the searcher. Search engines will only do this if your site has the most relevant content to that search and providers the user with the best experience. The groundwork for increasing your ranking online starts with ensuring your website is optimised from Landing Page, Content, Links and the list goes on and on.
Search Engine Optimisation DIY or Professional
Basic DIY tutorials for SEO can be found on YouTube or online, but should you use them? Or do you go for the qualified professional recommended by the Search Engine, and spend the “all” the marketing budget? Doing it yourself can be a short term cost saver, with quick tips online helping your website increase its ranking somewhat. Possibly you could go on a course to actually become an SEO professional, using some of that marketing budget on upskilling yourself and gain a company asset?
But depending on your time constraints and targets, and correctly implementing the vast amount of factors that Google or Yahoo takes into account or to just get a quicker result, SEO is best done by using a professional. A professional can provide consistent and up to date optimisation changes that DIY could never hope to achieve.
Common And Not so Common SEO Fixes
So many factors play into how a search engine ranks your site, a definite list is just not available. Search engines like Google help people with invaluable web analytic tools to track your ranking and see how your optimisations are improving your traffic.
Common changes to your site include ensuring your content is relevant, URLs are not random numbers and are actually reader friendly, duplicate content is removed, 301 redirects are in place.
An uncommon fix is finding you are being hosted in the wrong neighbourhood, possibly with known scammer sites, if this is not corrected in time your site could never rank. Having to shut down your site, purchase a new domain and try to get your new site to rank is not a pleasant task, especially if you are offering a popular product such as Aristocrat pokies online.
Planning your SEO strategy
Whether you hire a professional or do it yourself, implementing an SEO strategy should be done for every site, whether news, sport, travel or any other topic-related. Ensuring you consistently upgrade and apply relevant SEO changes to your website will make your ranking online increase instead of stagnate or decrease.
Also hiring yourself a professional SEO specialist does not have to be the ruination of your marketing budget. A SEO specialist could do a once off review of your website and supply a report with recommendations on how to improve your ranking. By ensuring these recommendations are in line with your own business and goals, and then implementing these recommendations your ranking with search engines are basically guaranteed to improve.
Keep it Going…Forever
When do you stop optimising your website, never! Do not stop, keep working on your site, and make sure it is relevant to the market, to the updated technology available, to the current needs of the consumer. Budget for an annual Search Engine Optimisation review, and implement the recommendations religiously.
Make changes, monitor those changes, see what works for your site, grow and never get complacent with your current rankings.