Search Engine Optimization

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Search Engine Optimization

Imagine you decided to open a store to sell your products. Where would you want that store to be located…on High Street with constant footfall & traffic where its always visible OR in some back alley of a remote location where its seldom noticed? …High Street, right!

In the world of Online Marketing, ranking high on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) is akin to being visible on High Street. And the process, techniques employed to improve your website’s natural ranking on SERPs is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The higher your visibility, the more will be the visits to your site and more will be the sales leads for your business. After all what good is a website, if it doesn’t get visitors and viewership. SEO helps you address just that.

SEO is one component of Search Marketing that’s practiced to naturally climb high on Search listing, the other way to dominate Search is through paid listings.

Search Engine Optimization, then and now

Back in the early days of SEO, ranking a site on top of SERPs could be done with various tactics some of which were often unscrupulous. Keyword stuffing, paid backlinks from link farms, cloaking and other black hat techniques could be used to game the system and actually push a site’s ranking higher. However, with leading search engines like Google tightening their ranking algorithms, low quality websites with shallow content that enjoyed high rankings were penalised for using black hat SEO methods. This saw many of such sites being weeded out from the search engine index.

Some notable algorithm changes implemented by Google were the Panda Update in 2011 and the Penguin update in 2012. Smaller version updates for these changes are still being released for further tweaking. In 2013 Google released the Hummingbird update which helps the search engine judge the context of the user’s search query and serve results accordingly.

These algorithm updates over the years aim to reward websites with original, quality content and which are liked and linked to by other respectable sites. Besides these factors Search Engines also look for the relevant technical pointers such as title tags, URLs and meta information of the web pages to understand what information the site is trying to convey. Today, frequent algorithmic changes are a norm and as such the science of SEO keeps evolving.

What do SEO Services encompass

While the Google ranking algorithm consists of over 200 factors which are not openly shared with SEO practitioners, there’s a widely accepted consensus on basic concepts and best practices that should be followed for doing SEO, the right way. These White Hat Techniques are broadly categorised into

On Page Optimization :- SEO factors such as keyword targeting, content, website structure, tags, meta info, etc which can all be controlled by you on your website
Off Page Optimization :- SEO factors beyond your website such as earning backlinks from other sites, promoting and sharing content on Social Media and so on

There are many other aspects that can be capitalized upon such as Location based SEO, or targeting Long Tail Keywords for search. These help in promoting your website higher on SERPs for search queries that are more specific than general and also less competitive to rank for.

All in all SEO is both art and science, a practice that evolves frequently in order to serve the most relevant results to the end user. As such SEO services cover a gamut of techniques and tactics. SEO practitioners are in high demand, especially in Singapore where the internet penetration is amongst the highest in the world and where people usually search for a product or service through their hand phones, tablets and computers on search engines like Google.

Comparing SEO with PPC

While SEO is one way to gain visibility in Search, another way is through Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Both SEO and PPC are two disciplines of Search Engine Marketing. Here’s how they are differentiated –

SEO

1. Brings Free traffic

2. Natural Ranking on SERPs, determined by complex Search Engine algorithms

3. Slow and long drawn process to rank on SERPs

4. Ranking remains long term but has to be earned and kept with on-going efforts

5. Displays Page Title, URL and Meta description

6. Ideal as a long term strategy

7. Visibility is only limited to SERPs

8. Pay for efforts (in house resources or outsource to agency)

PPC

1. Brings Paid traffic, using Pay Per Click model

2. Ranking through paid Ads on SERPs, determined by the price bid and Ad quality

3. Quick and easy way to rank on SERPs

4. Ranking duration is dependent on the advertising budget

5. Can display Text Ads, Ad extensions and Images

6. Ideal for quick visibility (business or product) and promotion advertising

7. Ads can be served on SERPs and also on Partner websites

8. Pay for Search Engine Ads and for managing the campaign (if outsourced)

Our 5-step approach for Search Engine Optimization

At WebSell, we follow a five step process to rank high on Search Engines, this typically consists of –

Keyword Identification :- Determining the Search Queries to target and identify the Keywords to compete using Keyword Planner tools and Competitor Analysis
Optimize Website : – Implement best practices for On-Page optimization for the targeted Keywords and the relevant context
Content Strategy :- Plan, develop and implement an on-going Content strategy
Promote Content, Acquire Quality Links :- Execute Off-Page optimization tasks of earning quality links, content promotion, etc
Analyse and Fine-tune :- Leverage Analytics and statistics from Webmaster tools and Google Analytics to gain actionable insights

WebSell Value Proposition for SEO Services

Visibility on search is a key component of an Online Marketing strategy. We optimize websites only using ethical, proven and well-researched techniques. As SEO is not a one off attempt but an on-going journey, we walk through with our clients to ensure they maintain and improve their presence on Search Engines. This helps make your website standout amongst the millions of others on the internet bringing you daily leads and enquiries.

Besides building new SEO-enabled websites, we offer SEO consultation and implementation services on ad-hoc basis. We also undertake maintenance & support for customer websites which can be bundled along with on-going SEO work. This gives our clients the added advantage of website upkeep and promoting their business in one single package.

Request a Case Study

Would you like to know how WebSell helped to improve sales by 150% for a Home Improvement Company by bringing visibility to their business on Google? Request this Case Study that we’ll be happy to send it across.