What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a technique that seeks to improve the ranking of online material on search engines such as Google or Bing. If
you have ever searched for something on Google, you’ve likely noticed that even the simplest search can yield millions of results. Yet, you
probably rarely go past the first few suggestions, let alone the next page.

In such a highly crowded space, digital marketers use SEO marketing to ensure that potential customers actually find their products or services online. Generally, SEO marketing targets organic search terms, meaning marketers create content that naturally aligns with and ranks for top search terms related to their product.

Some common ways to go about SEO include: 

• Creating quality content that meets searcher intent
• Using keywords to help search engines identify relevant material
• Using long-tail keywords (specific phrases that searchers use) to help content reach its target audience
• Ensuring that content loads quickly and is compatible with mobile devices.

If you take a moment to look at the search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google - has it occured to you why one website is showing above another? Why are certain businesses listed on the first page, whereas others are showing up on the second and third pages? This is all due to SEO. Search engines use crawlers, bots and algorithms that determine your website's worth and then position (or rank) it accordingly on their results pages.

Although the Google search page appears as a standard website, much more lies behind it. There are numerous bots that crawl your site, which scope out the meaning and value behind your website’s content and then indexes them. Consider indexing like adding a new book into a library’s database. If your website page, isn’t indexed, your target market won’t be able to find you and for the bots to properly index your pages, you need to implement the right SEO practices - because of algorithms.

While the bots build databases of web pages for search engines, search engines look at your site and use algorithms—a combination of rules and signals —to rank it.

Here are a just few ranking factors

• Keywords/search intent: Are you targeting your audience’s needs and questions?
• Content: Are you communicating valuable information to your audience?
• User engagement: Does your site encourage people to stay and explore your business, or are they just leaving for your competitor’s site?
• Page speed: Does your site load quickly, or does it take a few seconds?
• Backlinks: Are there other authoritative/credible sites that link to your site?
• Domain authority (DA): How relevant is your site for a specific topic or industry?

The greater online visibility and rankings you have over your competitors, the more likely you will win more customers, improving your bottom line..By incorporating good SEO practices, you will win the trust of users and search engines, snag a VIP spot on the results pages, and most importantly, get found by the right people.

• The single most important thing you can do to increase your local SEO ranking is to claim and optimise your Google Business Profile. Several ranking signals are related to not just having a GBP listing, but optimising it by choosing the correct categories, adding pictures, getting reviews, responding to reviews, and so forth.
• The second most important thing you can do for local SEO is to focus on a holistic SEO strategy for your website. Build a solid link profile, create useful content with both local and key terms, and make sure your meta descriptions are optimised.

The first important step web-aviso would underdake for you would be a local SEO audit which would help identify any issues, areas for improvement, or quick fixes.

PRO-TIP : We recommend Google's reference pages How Search Works which are frequently updated - and help put the complexities of the 'why' of SEO into context.