SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a practice which focuses on improving a website’s ranking in organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in order to increase the quantity and quality of traffic. A website’s position in SERPs massively impacts the volume of traffic which visits so you could be missing out on a lot of potential traffic. The first page of Google, for instance, receives almost 69% of search traffic, dropping to just 13% on the second and a minuscule proportion from thereon. Ultimately, the further up the SERPs you are, the more clicks, leads and sales you are likely to receive. While you may be more enticed by PPC or other digital marketing methods that have an immediate impact, the core benefit with SEO is the long-term results which eventuate to a much better ROI.

What underpins SEO is the fact that search engines aim to provide the most relevant results to search queries, so, in order to rank on the first page of Google organically, you need to prove how relevant and valuable your site is. Several elements go into optimising your website for search engines to recognise, which you will most commonly hear split between two core categories; on-page and off-page optimisation. The position of your site on a search is determined not only by your own site and SEO practices you adopt but also those of your competitors, as you will be contending for the better ranks.

The unfortunate truth is that quality SEO takes time. While some companies may offer you quick results, we suggest proceeding with caution as poor quality SEO work can have negative long-term implications on your site performance and rankings. SEO is an ongoing process, and results vary enormously between businesses. While some may begin seeing results a few weeks in, for others it might take 6+months. There is such a significant deviation because it’s entirely dependent on the complexity, popularity, and competitiveness of targeted keywords/phrases. As you can imagine, it would be a lot easier to improve your rank on the term “Maori Tattoo Studio in North Bondi” than it would be to rank on “Tattoo Sydney”.

As SEO involves changes on-site and creating links to your business to boost your credibility, poor quality SEO can lead to your site appearing as spammy and inferior. Given the entire methodology of SEO is to communicate relevance, value and trustworthiness to Search Engines in order to rank better; you might see fast improvements in the short-term but will likely be punished at some point, influencing the ease and ability to rank in the long-term. As you are competing for these top-tier positions in SERP’s, quality SEO is the only way to ensure a lasting impact.

SEO best practices are continually re-adapting to suit dynamic search engine algorithms; this makes it hard to simply follow a guide yourself, given by the time you’ve taught yourself how to do something, it’s no longer valid. It’s a tedious process of trial and error which requires intricate technical capabilities. Given poor quality SEO can have a severe negative impact on the performance of your site in the long term, outsourcing to an experienced team provides you with peace of mind that common errors will be avoided. While you might think you can manage this yourself, search engine’s consider an elaborate list of factors, some of which you may have never heard of before without experience in the industry.

Ultimately, it varies from business to business depending on the industry, business model, competition and targeting. As a general guide, we recommend SEO is better in the long-term given it doesn’t require the constant re-investment that PPC does. While a PPC campaign will stop giving you results the moment you stop paying, you could be reaping the rewards of strong SEO work well into the future, resulting in a better ROI in the long-term. Often, we suggest supplementing your SEO with a PPC campaign initially, in order to generate traffic to your site straight away while your organic presence improves and can produce a large enough audience on its own.

On average, a business spends around $1000 per month on professional SEO consultancy. However, this cost can vary depending on what kind of results you are seeking and how competitive your industry is. A crowded industry will be harder to reach page #1 of Google than one with fewer competitors, so cost of SEO will be greater to reflect this.

Keywords are the most important search terms (what people type in the search bar) that are used to discover your business. For example, if you own a pet store then “dog food” or “cat toys” are examples of your keywords, so when someone searches for “dog food” your store’s website shows up. Your competitors will share the same keywords as you, which is why you need to use SEO to get ahead of them.

As many as you want, it all depends on your budget and goals. Since most businesses don’t have unlimited capital to invest in all possible keywords that might be relevant to their business, there is usually a strategic targeting of the most valuable keywords. It is not uncommon for the average business to have around 10 or 20 keywords active at one time – it all depends on you.

Domain authority is a SEO term that describes the credibility of a domain on the internet. The longer a domain has existed, and the more links there are pointing to it, the more authority it will have. Domain authority rewards websites that have remained active and relevant online, because they are considered trustworthy by users. Having a higher domain authority means that your website will appear higher in Google results.

SEM (search engine marketing) is the umbrella term for all of the marketing activities that take place with regards to Google. SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click advertising) are both sub-disciplines of SEM.

On-page optimization is when things visible to users on your website (product descriptions, headings, subtitles) are improved for the purposes of SEO. This includes adding your keywords in titles and other areas of text so that you entire website is collectively more relevant to those search terms.

Off-page optimisation is when things that are invisible to users on your website (loading speed, image alt text, backlinks) are improved for the purposes of SEO. This includes making the website load faster by removing cumbersome graphics and images, ensuring that keywords appear in the descriptions of images, and publishing content that links back to your website across other high authority websites.

Backlinks are when a URL pointing to your domain is hosted on another domain. If you get your websites linked on a high authority domain, then some of their authority will rub off on you. The more authoritative websites you have hosting a link to your website, the most trustworthy and credible you are in the eyes of Google – which leads to you achieving a higher ranking.