Great understanding of SEO

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Agenda

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What does SEO mean?

• SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’

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• This means that everything we do is to help websites rank well in the search engine results pages, also known as the SERPs.

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• The higher your website ranks in the SERPs, the more traffic you will get to site.

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• For example, position 1 has a 39.8% click through rate (CTR), compared to position 4 with a 7.4% CTR.

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• Therefore, SEO is very important because you want to ensure your website is in the top 1 – 3 positions in order to increase users.

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SERPs: Search engine results pages

There a 3 pillars of SEO

• Ensures your site health is in a good enough condition to be understood by Google.

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• This allows Google to rank your website highly in the search results.

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• Also linked with user experience, for example, improving page speed.

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• Content is a great way to build your subject expertise.

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• It also allows you to connect with your audience by creating content based on their interests.

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• Content has evolved beyond written words and can include videos, images, infographics and more.

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• Google uses content to rank your site.

• Closely related to PR, the aim is to build authority in your category.

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• Link building (gaining links to your site from external sites) is the best way to build authority.

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• These external links signal to Google that your site is useful and trustworthy enough for other websites to want to hyperlink to you.

Technical

Content

Building Authority

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The value of SEO

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Main Driver of Traffic

Widens Reach

Increases Revenue

Cost Effective

Drives Conversions

Builds Trust

1 Billion Google users &

2 Billion YouTube users

40% of revenue on average comes from organic traffic

65% of people see online search as the most trusted source of information

61% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than other channels

SEO can reduce the cost of customer acquisition by 87.41% on average

53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search.

SEO vs. Organic Search – what’s the difference?

SEO only refers to one area within Organic search it doesn’t consider the entire offering. There are several different ways that users search. You must ensure that your brand is visible across all these platforms for your audience to find you.

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Search Engines

Social Channels

New ways of searching

How Gen Z search

Guide to the SERPs

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2. Featured Snippets

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• Featured snippets are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google's search results in order to quickly answer a searcher's query.

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• Therefore, creating content that clearly answers users’ questions can increase your chances of appearing in the featured snippets.

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• This is a great way of ranking highly in the SERPs – making your brand the very first thing users see.

3. Knowledge Panel

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• Knowledge panels are information boxes that appear on the right-hand side of Google’s search results.

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• They typically appear when you search for people, places, organisations or well-known things.

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• They provide users with all the information they need without clicking onto your website.

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• Therefore, it is important that all the information featured in this box is correct, which you can edit by claiming the business.

4. People always ask

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• Google’s ‘People always ask’ feature provides users with additional questions and answers related to their original search query.

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• Directly answering these questions is a great way for your website to rank on the first results page.

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• It also encourages users to click through to your site to read more which could increase traffic.

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• They also give you an indication in the types of things your audience wants to know.

5. Business Listings

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• Google’s ‘People always ask’ feature provides users with additional questions and answers related to their original search query.

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• Directly answering these questions is a great way for your website to rank on the first results page.

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• It also encourages users to click through to your site to read more which could increase traffic.

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• They also give you an indication in the types of things your audience wants to know.

Intro to keywords

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What are keywords and why are they important?

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• Keywords are words or phrases that people search in Google’s search bar

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• These searches can help users to find your content if their keywords match the keywords on your site.

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• There are around 173,000,000 pages returned in the UK for the keyword ‘Youth Clubs in London’, showing how competitive search is.

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• Therefore, you need to pick the right keywords to target in order for your website to appear on the first page.

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Types of keywords

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Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for

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High intent search has an

huge opportunity

for marketers.

70%

of searches

are 3 words or more

High intent

queries convert

2.5x

more than short

keyword phrases

Long-tail keywords

“Things for teenagers to do in London”

Mid-tail

Keywords

“Youth Clubs in London”

Short-tail

Keywords

“Youth Club”

High Volume

High Competition

Low Volume

Low Competition

Hard to Rank

Hard to Convert

Easy to Rank

Easy to Convert

SEO Content

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What is SEO content?

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• SEO content is what search engines use to rank your site in the SERPs.

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• Google scans the content on your site in order to determine if it’s relevant to a user’s search query.

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• Your content needs to be clear and concise for Google to understand, as well as feature target, in order to rank highly.

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• You also need to keep your users in mind and write unique, engaging and high-quality content that will create a positive user experience.

Create content that targets a search term to rank on the first page of Google

How to write effective SEO content

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1. Title needs to have target keyword

3. Must feature relatable visuals

2. Needs to grab the user’s attention

4. Needs to be well structured

5. Add internal and external links

7. Break up long chunks of text

6. Write with your audience in mind

8. Keep between 600 – 1200 words

Example SEO content:

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Include keyword in the title. Must have a H1 tag so Google knows it’s the title.

Add internal links to other pages onsite to encourage users to browse around.

Add keyword to sub-headings (H2 tags)

Structure points by numbers to make content clear and concise.

Break up long pieces of content with bullet points to improve readability

Add relatable image

Other types of SEO content

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Interactive content

Video

Blogs / Articles

User Generated Content

Images / Infographics

Testimonials

66% of people use video content to learn more about a brand.

Content must be unique & high quality to succeed

70% of people trust recommendations and reviews from strangers

94% more views on articles with relevant images.

75% of marketers believe user-generated content feels more authentic

Quizzes, polls and content experiences boosts user engagement

Meta data best practice

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Meta title should be 40 – 60 characters or 590 pixels

Make meta description copy engaging 

Title and description should include target keyword e.g. ‘breaking news’.

Add call to action to encourage users to click

Meta description should be 130 – 155 characters or 920 pixels

Make sure it is relevant to page contents

Technical SEO

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What is technical SEO?

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Technical SEO refers to the optimisation of a website's technical aspects such as URL structure, XML sitemap, Robots.txt file, website loading time, responsive design, Canonicalization, etc. to improve its search engine visibility and performance.

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How does it impact performance?

Technical SEO plays a critical role in overall SEO success. Without proper technical optimisation, even the best content may not be indexed correctly, resulting in poor rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

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Example SEO Tech Audit

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What is a tech audit?

A detailed analysis of web page including keywords in URL, header tags, metadata, schema markup, keyword density, etc.

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What it delivers:

It provides the list of technical issues impacts the technical performance, highlighted with type of issues and priority

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Tools: We use Screaming Frog tools to conduct the tech audit

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• Measurable SEO performance metrics that give you a sense of how people experience your website

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• It provides specific, measurable data points to improve the overall user experience on the  website. When users have a better experience, they're more likely to return to the website

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• Reduce PPC cost by improving quality score of the website

Improving core web vitals and site speed is the key to a good website. 

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Page speed audit highlights the issues that make a site slow

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Ref: https://pagespeed.web.dev/

The unused JavaScript, render-blocking resources, 3rd party code, and unoptimized images cause the 49/100-page performance score.

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A clear navigation structure makes the site easier for both users and search engines to understand

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Bad

Good

Next step to improve your technical SEO

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1. Audit your website by using Screaming Frog

3. Add canonical tags

2. Needs to set up robots.txt file 

4. Improve page loading time

5. Build the XML sitemap and add it into the robots.txt file

8. Submit XML sitemap from Google search console

7. Create Google search console account

6. Add on-page SEO elements

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Automated reports help you to understand site performance in real time

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Dashboards pull in data from different tools including Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Google ads:

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They provide a real-time overview of organic search performance, keyword progression and website crawl data.

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They also highlight any issues with performance such as a decrease in users. This can help you to know what areas need improving.

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Building Authority

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What do we mean by ‘authority’?

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• Authority is the value a search engine assigns to a web page.

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• The higher the value, the more likely the search engine will rank the site highly in the SERPs.

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• Topic authority is also becoming increasingly important with brands needing to demonstrate knowledge of their industry.

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• Google’s also takes the ‘experience’ of the author into consideration when ranking content to determine if they have the authority to speak on their subject matter.

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How do the measure authority?

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https://feathers.charity/

https://avenues.org.uk/

https://www.standrewsclub.com/

• Websites are given a domain rating (DR) to indicate their authority.

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• DR above 40 is considered average.

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• Websites with more referring domains often have a greater domain rating.

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• Referring domains are links from different websites.

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• Backlinks are any external link, meaning one website can provide several backlinks.

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Backlinks are where website A has a link through to website B. Any link on a website where you leave the domain/brand site you’re on is counted as a backlink.  

Backlinks are like votes of confidence for the content on your website and Google uses this as a quality metric to understand if users find your website useful. 

What are backlinks?

How can you build authority?

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1. Create linkable content

3. Promote content on social media

2. Write guest posts on your subject

4. Become a thought leader

5. Improve site speed

7. Optimise on page content

6. Remove low quality links

8. Improve internal link structure

Why is authority important?

Google wants to display the best sites to its users.

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High domain authority and links from external websites shows that your site is trustworthy enough to show to users.

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It also shows that your site is knowledgeable on your subject. Therefore, users should be able to find the answers to their queries on your site.

You can also look at the authority of your competitors to understand your positioning.

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If your competitor is gaining a good amount of PR from articles, panels, videos or social media, then they could rank above you.

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Therefore, you also need to build a good reputation to maintain visibility in the SERPs.

SEO authority is closely related to PR.

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Growing your reputation in your industry and showing you are trustworthy and knowledgeable will help you to grow brand awareness.

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This will put your brand front of mind when users are searching generic queries like ‘youth clubs near me’.

Improve Ranking Position

Analyse Competitors

Grows brand awareness

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SEO & UX

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'UX' is core element in SEO

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UX stands for user experience and is the practice of putting the user first, understanding their needs, goals, motivations, limitations and friction points to then apply solutions to these findings and put forward an improved UX for a product, site, or service.

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SEO

Optimised metadata

Backlinks

Optimise robots.txt, XML sitemap, and other methods for indexation

Keyword targeted

UX

Mobile-friendly

Clear CTAs in �logical and natural positions on site

Logical and well-designed �navigations

Fast site speed

Pages internally link to relevant pages

Forms are quick and easy to use

UX has always been core to Google search algorithms

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6 tips for designing a website with good UX

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Clear and direct communication

Consistency in brand and ToV

Efficiency in design delivery and functionality

Diversity acceptance for all perspectives, identities, social norms and cultures.

Relatable

Multidevice compatible

Introducing UX into your SEO strategy: Example 1

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UX requires you to have a hypothesis which you can aim towards improving with a measurable figure (i.e., no. of conversions, average time on page). Otherwise, you could get lost in what you're trying to achieve as UX is so broad.

Example goal 1: Increase conversions for monthly donation signups

Overview of achieving example goal 1:

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1. Understand if there are limitations to the form template design.
2. Design a usability study to find friction points – relevant research participants, research goals, research study's KPIs, methodology of conducting study, research tasks and questions.
3. Conduct study for 5-6 users and analyse and compile workable insights from findings.
4. Propose a redesign of the form based on user feedback.
5. Implement the design on the site.
6. Monitor performance.
7. Repeat as needed!

Introducing UX into your SEO strategy: Example 2

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Example goal 2: Design a blog section that promotes for more time on the blog section.

Overview of achieving example goal 2:

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1. Understand limitations of CMS.
2. Create personas and run empathy mapping workshops to find wants, needs and pain points.
3. Propose an initial blog wireframe design.
4. Design usability studies - relevant research participants, research goals, research study's KPIs, methodology of conducting study, research tasks and questions.
5. Conduct usability studies on blog design for 5-6 users.
6. Create insights from user feedback.
7. Implement changes to relevant wireframes or prototypes.
8. Roll out onto site.
9. Repeat tailored studies as needed!

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Collaboration with biddable and behave

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Collaborating SEO with biddable

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We have built an organic dashboard to review how SEO supports the biddable team on keywords cannibalization, improving landing page quality, clicks, and impressions share and identifying the opportunity to improve the conversions. It is in the testing stage at this moment.

Collaborating with Behave

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Behave and SEO go hand in hand as they are both focused on user behaviour. We want to ensure the user has the best experience on site to encourage them to continue through the user journey and complete an action like signing up to a newsletter or buying a product. Therefore, we need to understand how a user thinks, feels and acts to design a website in a way that’s easiest for them to navigate.  Some of the ways we do this is by:

Keyword Research

UX Copywriting

Site Navigation

Understanding how users search reveals the type of things the target audience wants to know which informs content.

We can write copy in a way that’s easy for users to understand to encourage them to complete an action e.g. using clear call to actions.

We can structure a website in a clear and concise way to make it easier for users to navigate so they stay on the website longer.

Ways of working

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Level of service is flexible to meet your needs

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Build, Operate, Transfer

Streamline the business and improve site health

Handover model once it is

successful

Consulting &�Training

Responding to requirements, alongside training

Practical training to share across teams and markets

Fully Managed

From research to execution

and reporting

Full-service agency

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How long until we see the results

It always depends…. 

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Some changes to content can see almost immediate impacts if there are quick wins, for example adding a core keyword in a page title and heading tag may help that page to start appearing. 

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Typically, SEO efforts can take 3-6 months to really reap the benefits but once performing competitively unless hit by a bad algorithmic update can be hugely sustainable and rewarding. 

Thank you!

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