Introduction

Most businesses would benefit from being ranked on the first page of Google. So, whether you run a solicitor’s practice, or you own a wedding cake business, most businesses now are investing in seo.

Yet some businesses may not have heard of this form of marketing before now, so let us explain what seo is, and also how it may help your business.

Seo stands for search engine optimisation. This process normally entails paying a marketing company like ours to implement work, however some companies also implement their own seo by employing their own seo employees.

There are many ways to optimise a website. Yet, to give you an idea of how this marketing process works we will explain some of basic principles that the seo process involves.

 

Crawling and Indexing

The first part of the seo process is to make sure that Google, or to be more exact, “Googlebot” can crawl your website.

Now, if your wondering what “crawling and indexing” actually means, well it’s simply it means whether or not Google can read your website. This is so Google can update what it refers to as its “index”.

Sometimes some websites simply cannot be crawled, this may be due to something as simple as the “no-index” tab being clicked by mistake. This can mean that the business would never get ranked on the first page of Google, that’s unless the problem is fixed.

So, the very first thing your seo agency should do, is to make sure that Google has a sitemap of your website.

This is a map of your entire website, this is so Google can crawl the whole website easily.

Google will do this automatically, yet sometimes some seo agencies also use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure that Google can crawl the website.

Also, from time to time your seo company, or website designer may well make some big changes to your website, this is sometimes when the marketing company will request that the website is recrawled.

For example, you may well run an e-commerce business selling shoes, so when you update your website with a brand-new range of shoes, you may ask Google to recrawl the website.

(request a recrawl)

Google’s algorithm

Now, have you ever wondered who decides which companies get placed on the first page of Google?

Well, its not a person, it’s in matter of fact an algorithm that decides. Google’s algorithm is also no simple mathematical formula, one which can be understood in a matter of minutes.

Nope, its far more complex than that, it has some of the best seo agencies, including ours constantly trying to figure out how it exactly works.

And there’s a very good reason for that, Google’s algorithm works very well, yet it constantly being improved. In matter of fact Google themselves state that in 2016 alone, they launched more than 1600 improvements to the algorithm.

So sure, you could do your seo yourself, but most businesses understand that if you really want quality work, well often you have to partner with a white hat agency like ours.

In a nutshell, Google therefore has in its index a good idea of each businesses seo strength.

The websites that have the strongest ranking signals and are the most relevant for the question will get served at the top of Google.

Google hates spam

If you’ve read this article and are now thinking that seo sounds like hard work, well you would be right.

Yet, there’s always going to be those businesses that try and cheat the system, and try an cut corners.

With that said, Google is very good at detecting spam. So, if your website invests in low quality seo, well its likely to receive a penalty.

Even if your paying an online marketing company to implement your seo, we think business owners should still know what constitutes as low quality seo. As otherwise, how will you be able to tell if your seo agency is doing a good job?

A good place to start learning about how Google fights spam is here:

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