SEO Marketing – How to Improve Search Rankings?

SEO Marketing is one of the more popular advertising activities opted for by companies with websites looking to attract more customers online. Search engine optimization attracts the interest of both experienced marketers and business owners who know the digital marketing market very well as those who are just taking their first steps in this world. So it’s worth pointing out at the outset that although it’s one of the more popular channels, it will not always work for everyone, or as the first digital marketing channel. When and for whom will SEO Marketing be profitable? What results can you count on? Read all about it in this article!

• SEO Marketing is a process that aims to constantly increase a website’s position in a search engine.
• It’s a good solution for both service websites and online stores. However, the SEO strategy in each of these cases will be different.
• SEO Marketing is, in the long run, the cheapest of the methods to get customers online.

What Is SEO Marketing?

Let’s start by explaining in a few words and in the simplest way possible what exactly SEO Marketing is. Namely, it is a process of planned actions to make a given website more relevant is the eyes of major search engines like Google. As a result of SEO activities, websites become more visible to a search engine crawler. Thus the goal is to achieve better ranks for specific keywords in a search engine.

The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The most common name for these activities is SEO or search engine positioning.

SEO optimization can be divided into two basic areas:

• technical – we may mention code optimization, speed of the website, fixing errors, etc,
• content – here we can distinguish e.g. development of text content, heading optimization, meta description tags, etc.

Positioning of web pages should be an ethical and fair process, both for the competition and for the users of the sites, and thus following the search engine guidelines for webmasters prepared by Google. An example of bad practice is acquiring artificial links and automatic linking, which unnaturally inflates the search engine ranking. Another practice that can be penalised by Google is keyword stuffing, which is considered webspam (web page’s meta tags and content are loaded with keywords).

SEO should instead include link-building activities, aimed at acquiring external links from other websites. Thanks to external links the promoted website is more frequently visited by search engine crawlers and is ranked higher than competing websites.

SEO Marketing is a combination of optimization and linking activities, namely internal linking and external linking. Both these activities should be conducted consistently. When designing a strategy as part of an SEO Marketing service, it’s always advisable to take into account the benefits and needs of the user, business goals as well as search algorithms, and additional search engine guidelines.

SEO Marketing – What Does it Include?

SEO marketing involves a comprehensive approach to a website’s visibility in search engine results. SEO and link building are part of a broad spectrum of activities. Apart from them, the scope of optimization activities also includes monitoring and eliminating potential problems (e.g. broken links) that prevent search engines from indexing the entire site, as well as searching for and implementing beneficial solutions (e.g. improving content marketing strategy).

More than half of the work on the success of most positioned websites is consumed by the analysis, preparation, and implementation of optimization changes on the pages. Linking is a supplement to well thought-out optimization.

On-page vs. Off-page Search Engine Optimization

Example division of work within SEO services in Verseo:

On-page SEO – these are all the activities we conduct within our website, i.e. technical optimization of the page, meta tags, keyword research, relevant content, internal linking.

Off-page SEO include linking from other websites (buffer site, blog post, online forum, sponsored article, domain acquisition).

How to get quality links? Check our article about link building!

SEO Marketing – For Whom?

Benefits from conducting activities within SEO Marketing can be reaped by local or regional businesses that don’t advertise their services using their own site, and for companies, which have an online store. SEO Marketing allows them to gain an advantage over their competition by appearing higher in search engine results. Moreover, it also allows them to gain the trust of their customers and enhance the effectiveness of other search engine marketing efforts, such as Google Ads campaigns, social media ads, other PPC services, and offline marketing.

How can different types of businesses benefit from SEO Marketing?

Service-based businesses that run their businesses locally. Such companies mainly care about search engine positioning for local phrases to gain new clients from their regions, e.g. those entering search queries such as “hairdresser Portland”, “plumber Ottawa”, and “tailor Houston”. For these companies, it will be especially important to get traffic from search queries in the areas where they conduct their business. It means that they need local SEO, which tells search engines that their website is the best answer to the local search queries. 

Online stores that expect long-term effects and want to obtain high positions on search engine results pages, both for branded, non-branded and long-tail phrases. These are companies that cover much larger areas, often operating nationwide. Search engine positioning for local phrases does not work here. Often the keywords here are more precise and unique, as well as more extensive.

How Do You Measure the Effects of SEO Marketing?

The effectiveness of activities carried out as part of SEO Marketing depends on the market environment and changing Google search algorithms, so it’s important that conducting SEO work is a long-term process and monitored on an ongoing basis. Permanent factors, independent of the market conditions and algorithm changes, also work for their effectiveness.

Constant factors influencing the effectiveness of SEO Marketing include:

• Activities related to online content: web texts (e.g. blog post), guides, articles – i.e. content marketing;
• Implementation of new pages, subpages, or products;
• Rebuilding or moving a page;
• Supporting and supplementing advertising activities.

When developing an SEO strategy, plan a method for evaluating the results of work and analyzing periodic control reports based on which you can objectively assess the implemented and supervised activities. The guarantee of effective SEO is continuity of optimization processes and consistent rationalization of all necessary areas related to the website operation.

The effectiveness of SEO Marketing will be determined by predetermined Key Performance Indicators:

• Increase in website traffic in a given period by an assumed number of unique users;
• Increase in the number of brand phrases in TOP100, TOP50, TOP10, and TOP3;
• Increase in the number of non-brand phrases in TOP100, TOP50, TOP10, and TOP3;

Ultimately, an increase in conversions (sales of specific products, inquiries, complex contact forms, downloads of materials, etc.) coming from organic traffic;

Is There a Recipe For SEO Success?

How much time will it take to be on the first page of organic search results? There is no definite answer to the question of when we will see the effects of SEO efforts. Even specialists with in-depth SEO knowledge say that it depends on many factors. However, we can assume that for websites or online stores that have never used any SEO techniques and have not undertaken any optimization, the web page should see increases in the first 6 months. Very often it’s enough to implement the first recommendations from an SEO specialist to see how positively they will influence the perception of the website by users and, consequently, search engine bots.

Starting cooperation in the field of search engine positioning is associated with relatively high initial costs and a lack of return on investment in the short term. However, over the next months the position of the positioned phrases increases, which translates into increased traffic on the website. As a result, the number of customers gained through positioning is higher and higher.

In the case of websites with an established position already positioned and optimized before, the first significant increases can be achieved based on a long-term strategy. As an example, we can take the web page of one of our clients where thanks to the compilation of SEO Marketing activities we increased the website traffic by 394% within 3 years. When evaluating the effectiveness of SEO activities we should also take into account whether the given increases are relatively constant and whether the revenues and other KPIs we achieve are also going up.

What does Cooperation with an Agency in the Scope of SEO Marketing Look Like?

When deciding to entrust SEO Marketing activities to an agency, it’s worth realizing the necessity of implementing all suggestions and changes signaled during search engine positioning. The positioner’s SEO knowledge is supported by extensive experience, and the priority of his work is to propose to the client such changes that will bring measurable, i.e. the best possible results. Cooperation between two entities, whose common interest is the best possible effect of search engine optimization, is only effective when the positioner can count on the client’s trust in the area of website rationalization.

What if the Proposed Changes cannot be implemented?

If in some cases the implementation of changes will be difficult due to e.g. appearing limitations resulting from the insufficient functionality of the website engine, it may be recommended to change the software responsible for the website operation. Each case is considered individually like major changes requiring website preparation and planning as well as search engine optimization.  SEO activities are always discussed with the client.

In the course of SEO cooperation, we constantly work on and implement changes to the website, eliminate further errors and optimize less important elements of the web page. SEO is a continuous process. After the changes are implemented, the actions are analyzed and how they affected the visibility of the website on search engine results pages. Based on the lessons learned, the next optimization steps are implemented.

What is included in the Verseo SEO service? Check here!

Latest Trends in SEO Marketing

SEO itself is a term known for many years and a lot of companies have invested in its activities. However, it’s impossible to notice some trends that have more or less influenced the environment and practice of SEO specialists.

User Experience

In recent years we’ve been talking more and more about users, including their experience on the site (UX – user experience) and how important it’s also in terms of search engine optimization. Why is it so important? Why does SEO Marketing have to take UX into account?

The Role of UX

A website is now a powerful advertising tool on the web. One might say that if your business doesn’t have a website, the search engine literally can’t find you and neither can the clients.  Therefore, let the search engines discover your web page’s content. 

The website is a showcase of the company on the web, presents the offer, and portfoli o, and allows direct contact with your company, so web designs are becoming more and more advanced, allowing you to place high-quality images, fast payment methods, or presentation of thousands of products. In order for all the facilities to serve the users and make the company see better results thanks to them, it’s advisable to tailor them to the needs of potential customers.

SEO Marketing should also consider these guidelines so while determining the SEO strategy for a particular business it’s also worth keeping in mind these aspects:

• visual – related to the ease of reading messages by the user, simplicity of site navigation, and its readability.
• user-friendly – including the page loading speed and its adaptation to different devices (tablet, desktop, and mobile device – websites should be mobile friendly), have a simple purchase and payment process.
• business – the primary goal is to sell/acquire more customers. Web pages should therefore include clear call-to-action (CTA), contact option, customer service chat box, etc.

User’s Search Intent

More and more attention is being paid to aligning SEO efforts with user intent. Google and other search engines understand better and better what the users mean when they enter a given phrase and what search results they expect. If it’s possible to give them a simple solution in the TOP3 or TOP10, then the page will be there. It does not matter how much we saturate our page’s content with relevant keywords.

What matters for the search engine algorithm is whether the page’s content is really valuable from the user’s point of view and whether the user has received an answer to his/her query after visiting our or other websites. Thus, we should always aim for high-quality content.