Is SEO Fact or Fiction? It’s a question we’re regularly asked when we tell somebody we can improve their site’s rankings in Google. It’s a fair question, and a simple one too.
It’s ‘how do you do it?’
The answer can be as straightforward or as complicated as we want to make it, but what it boils down to is this: it’s by making their website as attractive and relevant as possible, to Google as well as to the typical user.
In years of doing that for websites of all types, for businesses of all sectors, we’ve learned to separate some SEO facts from SEO fiction – and it’s the lessons learned there that allow us to deliver such good results too. Read on for some examples:
SEO Fact or Fiction? Content is king.
Fact. Your content is crawled by Google as well as read by users, so it must be relevant, engaging, and informative. High-quality content also leads to lower bounce rates and longer average time spent per visit, which are both important SEO factors too.
SEO Fact or Fiction? You should pack your content with keywords.
Fiction. There was a time it was fact, but that time is gone. Consider the following example, for somebody selling shoes in Waterford:
‘If you want to buy shoes in Waterford, come to our shoe shop in Waterford, because we’ve got the best selection of shoes in Waterford. We’ve got men’s shoes in Waterford, women’s shoes in Waterford, and children’s shoes in Waterford, all at the best prices for shoes in Waterford. Look no futher if you want to buy shoes in Waterford!’
No user will stick around to read text like that – and Google will quickly see through your ploy as well. Yes, you do need keywords, but they should be used only naturally and appropriately. And that’s the way we create your content.
SEO Fact or Fiction? The more backlinks you have, the better.
Fiction. Again, it was once fact, but that just led to ‘black hat’ SEO techniques such as buying links in bulk from worthless sites. It’s true that quality links will boost your site’s standing – for instance, consider that shoe shop in Waterford again. If they’re official agents for Jimmy Choo and there’s a link to them from the main Jimmy Choo website, it will benefit them. But links from ‘link farm’ sites will damage them. Any backlinks to sites we build or maintain come only from beneficial sources.
SEO Fact or Fiction? There are plug-ins and other tools to make SEO easy.
A bit of both fact and fiction. The online world is full of ‘handy’ tools that promise to help make a website soar in the rankings. But they can’t do it all, as a large part of SEO consists of real ‘hands on’ work too. For effective results, you need a quality combination of automatic tools and the personal touch. That’s what we’ve honed, and that’s what we deliver.
Rebuilding is often the best bet
The bottom line is that SEO, by nature, is not easy. And if the foundations of your website are not correct, then it will never rank as highly as you would like, for the keywords you would like it to rank for.
Call on our expertise to help get your site to rank better. We’ll perform a full audit of your existing site, carry out extensive keyword research and market research, and we’ll check out your competitors too, to see what we need to do to get your site ahead of theirs.
Contact Us for an in-depth and no-obligation consultation on what exactly we can do for you in Website Design, SEO Services, and Digital Marketing campaigns.
