Cardiff Web Designers - The Web Designer Group Cardiff

There is good news if your website is currently ranked low in search engine results! You will be able to increase your ranking by implementing a new SEO approach. The most important thing in SEO is knowing search engines' ranking factors - such as keywords & content, engagement & traffic, or domain-level brand metrics - to make sure your website is seen as relevant and popular by search engines. Here are the basics that you need to know to understand how SEO works.

Auditing Your Website
The first steps in auditing a website for SEO is to learn your current rank, review your website's analytics, and determine the keywords that will set you apart.

Crawling and Indexing
Search Engines have automated robots called crawlers that use links to scour the Internet, find web pages, and decipher page data that are indexed to be included in search engine results.

Ranking Factors
Each search engine has different ranking factors, but they all have a few factors in common: keywords, content, social counters and backlinks. Have you ever heard of the saying “Content Is King?”; Keywords and content are arguably two of the most important factors that search engines look for when ranking pages. Because of this, it is imperative that you know what keywords are in highest demand within your market and incorporate those keywords into the content on your website. All of your website's content will naturally create a collection of internal links; search engines use link analysis algorithms that look at the sources, number, and anchor texts of links to help determine their relevance in search queries.

Accelerated Mobile Performance and Mobile Optimisation
Having a mobile optimized website will help improve your search engine ranking because search engines are starting to develop mobile crawlers that will create mobile-only indexes. Accelerated Mobile Performance (AMP) allows for faster rendering of web pages on mobile devices and is recommended by Google. It has three components: AMP HTML is a simple redesign of HTML with specific AMP commands, AMP JS is JavaScript for mobile that ensures quick page rendering, AMP Content Delivery Network will cache your AMP content for fast delivery. In Google searches on a
mobile device, there is now a carousel of search results that only includes webpages that have implemented AMP. While AMP is not yet a ranking factor, it does drive more traffic and visitors, especially from mobile devices where your website is more likely to be a top result in Google's
carousel.

On-Site SEO & Off-Site SEO - SEO is made up of 2 main parts; On-Site SEO & Off-Site SEO.

On-Site SEO - is anything to do with your website. On-Site SEO strategies are used to ensure your website is Search Engine Friendly – (Google Friendly). On-Site SEO can also be used to stabilise your rankings.

Off-Site SEO - is anything pointing back to your website. Off-Site SEO strategies are used to build ethos and authority back to your website domain. Off-Site SEO can also be used to add weight and help you rank for competitive keywords.

Internal Links
Internal Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) the same domain as the domain that the link exists on (source). In layman's terms, an internal link is one that points to another page on the same website. Internal links are most useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link equity.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. When you enter a query into a search engine you receive a page with results, and this is called a SERP.

Domain Authority, Page Authority & SEO Moz
Domain metrics have a big impact on how well your domain will start ranking and also hold it’s ranking. Domain metrics are made up of 3 areas: DA, PA & SEO Moz.

Domain Authority – DA
Domain Authority score is not a new phrase in the world of SEO, but there are many SEO Specialists who are unaware of domain authority and its significance. Domain authority is a metric which was created by Moz (SaaS company), for the purpose of rating a website on a scale of 1-100, (100 being the best and 1 being the worst). So, the higher the domain authority of a website, the higher its ranking in search engines. Instead of thinking of domain authority as a measure of your SEO effort, think of it as a competitive metric against other sites. So, if you compare your website’s DA score with that of your competitor’s site, the site with the higher DA score is likely to rank higher in search engine searches! DA consists of over 40 different ranking signals.

SEO Moz / Trust Flow - TF
Trust Flow is a metric trademarked by Majestic that analyses how trustworthy a site is by measuring its quality. Quality is the essential data of this metric. If a link pointing to your website is authoritative and qualitative, then your trust flow willincrease. Google rewards qualitative backlinks. As a matter of fact, you will be ranked higher.

Page Authority – PA
Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz (SaaS company), that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. Page Authority is based on data from Moz web index and takes into account dozens of factors. Like Domain Authority, it uses a machine learning model to identify the algorithm that best correlates with rankings across the thousands of SERPs that we predict against, then produces Page Authority scores using that specific calculation. Page Authority is scored on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Thus, it's significantly easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it is to grow from 70 to 80. These algorithms are constantly updated and used to calculate Page Authority, so you may see your score fluctuate from time to time.

SEO Reach
With SEO you have the capability to effectively reach whatever audience you want. No other advertising mediums offer the same combination of affordable, effective options than SEO does.

SEO Targeted Traffic
The beautiful thing about SEO, as opposed to other more traditional forms of marketing, is that you are able to generate highly targeted traffic. Having the ability to show up high on the results page for a specific service you offer is gold. A user has actually gone online, typed in something related to your business and then clicked on your listing. At this point they are much more targeted than if you were to do TV ads or a direct mail campaign, because they are actively searching for a solution. That’s powerful!

Google Searches Are Increasing
According to data provided by Business 2 Community, businesses are predicted to spend around $79 Billion on SEO by the year 2020. In addition, the number of pure “Google” searches has continued to increase.

Organic Clicks Compared to Paid Ads
85% of all clicks happen on organic SEO listings. Paid Search only makes up 15% of the total Clickshare for a keyword.

How People Do Research
According to Internet Live Stats, Google processes over 40,000 searches per second, which equates to roughly 3.5 billion searches per day. Within those searches are your customers! They are using Google to do research and purchase what you have to offer.

Highly Measurable
SEO is highly measurable. Using Google Analytics, you can see traffic amounts and how that correlates to goals specifically with organic search. In addition, you are able to leverage Google Search Console to see the exact keywords are driving traffic.

Your Product / Service Is Open for Business 24/7
The great thing about SEO is that when you are ranking, you’re constantly visible to potential customers, able to receive traffic day and night, which turns into leads/sales. A well-run SEO campaign can become be your lead/sale generating force at all times.

Competitors Are Doing SEO
If your industry has products/services that are searched for online, then you have competitors that are already doing SEO. If you want to grow your business and be where users are searching, then you too must invest in SEO services. That’s the only way to compete long term unless for
some reason people stop using the internet to search, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.