What is SEO? Why does it matter so much?
Search Engine Optimisation is just a fancy way of saying "getting your website noticed on search engines like Google." It’s all about helping people find your business when they search online.
What is ‘good SEO’? It comes down to unique, regularly updated content that’s helpful, relevant and aligns with what people are looking for from your business. But there is ‘great SEO’ too!
Think SEO is just for your website? Think again!
We’re now seeing public Instagram and Facebook posts showing up in search results too. That means having an optimised profile, writing captions with those key phrases in mind, encouraging engagement, adding alt text to your images and even tagging your location are more important than ever to boost your visibility. What this means for you is that it's more important than ever to ensure your social media content is regular, intentional and SEO-friendly, helping you reach audiences beyond just the channel itself but into organic search results too.
Technically speaking…
The technical side of SEO helps search engines (like Google, Bing etc) understand and look around your website better. Several factors come into play here such as having meta data, clean URL structures, submitting an XML sitemap to the likes of Google Search Console, making sure your site is responsive (mobile-friendly) and loads quickly.
What is meta data?
Simple meta data consists of meta titles and meta descriptions. Meta titles and meta descriptions should be found on every page of your website, including your blog posts. Titles provide search engines with a short title including keywords that tell what the article is about. Descriptions provide a slightly longer piece of text, again including keywords, carefully crafted to explain to the search engine what the page is about.
What’s a clean URL structure?
A clean URL structure means URLs that are as short as they can be whilst still making sense, are descriptive and easy to read. An sitemap is like a layout plan for search engines, it helps them find all the important pages on your site that you want to be listed for public consumption.
What does Responsive design or Mobile-friendly mean?
When a site is mobile-friendly, it means it can be viewed successfully on smaller screens such as mobile phones. Responsiveness across different screen sizes is absolutely critical since more users are searching on their phones than ever before, and a site that isn’t optimised for mobile will be penalised in rankings. Even if the majority of your site traffic is via desktop, you should still be optimising for mobile sizes.
Does website page speed matter?
Page speed is another crucial element in ranking; search engines want sites that load quickly and they prioritise these in their results pages (SERPs). What this means is optimising your image sizes, reducing server response times and ensuring that the site's code is as efficient as can be. Using schema markup (structured data) is another key technical aspect, allowing search engines to understand your site content better and enabling rich snippets that can boost click-through rates.
What is website SSL?
It’s also important to secure your website with HTTPS. Google considers secure sites more trustworthy, and having an SSL certificate not only boosts your SEO but also ensures that user data is protected. Internal linking helps distribute link equity throughout your site and improves crawlability, making it easier for search engines to discover more of your content. All these tweaks may sound complex, but they can make a huge difference when it comes to how search engines digest your website content and rank your pages.
Playing the SEO game takes a long time
SEO isn’t like a scratch card; there’s no instant win. You won’t launch your website and magically hit the number top spot overnight. It takes time—and frustratingly there’s no knowing how long it’ll take. Google decides when and where you show up based on a mix of factors, including your content, relevance and how much authority your site has gained.
How do I tell Google about my new website?
You can tell Google you exist by submitting your sitemap through Google Search Console, which helps speed up the process of getting your site indexed (listed on SERPs), but getting onto the first few pages can take anywhere from days to months.
Building authority involves gaining backlinks from other credible websites, producing consistent quality content and ensuring people engage with your site. The journey from a newly launched site to a high-ranking one requires patience and continuous effort, but the long-term payoff is worth it. And that number one spot? It’s a whole other challenge, especially with so many other factors competing for attention.
Does Ranking Number 1 on Google Really Matter?
Well, things are changing (as they always do with SEO). AI often takes the very first spot on search engines, then you’ve got local listings, sponsored ads and then finally the organic results. So, do people scroll that far? It’s debatable. While the number one organic spot is still valuable, it's no longer the guaranteed way to grab the attention of your intended audience. Instead, ranking organically now needs to be paired with other strategies, like optimising for AI results, local SEO, social media presence and paid ads.
Conclusion
Simply put, you need to ensure you have a diverse approach to be visible across different channels and mediums. Showing up in local listings, having Google reviews, making sure your social content is optimised and engaging with audiences in different spaces all help build an online presence that’s hard to compete with.
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