All posts by : Amanda Walls

So you’re pulling together an SEO strategy, either for a client or for your own website, and you’re not quite sure where to start? With SEO being an ever-evolving field there are so many different elements that go into a successful strategy and it’s important to remember that not one size fits all. When it comes to SEO you really need to tailor a strategy that matches the needs and goals of the website and the framework in which it exists. Even more than this, SEO is a team effort, and while having a good SEO agency plays a key role, the in-house team, customer services and even external reviews go a long way in ensuring that you hit those all-important quality rater guidelines. 

Google has a Page Quality Rater Guidelines to give guidance around what Google’s quality raters are looking for when evaluating a website. Although Google never tells us the factors they most value when ranking a website, this is definitely a great place to start. The guidelines can help to identify ways to improve and strengthen how your website is seen, as well as the user experience it provides. When taking this into account alongside guidance from recent algorithm updates, we can create a solid strategy which keeps the concept of quality content, great user experience and purpose, and a strong website reputation at the core. 

So, if you are looking to pull together an SEO strategy with all of this in mind, here are the top 5 elements that you should look to include, to ensure that your SEO strategy has the best possible chance of performing: 

1. Relevancy

Relevancy is key and perhaps one of the most important elements across both your on-site and off-site SEO strategy. Relevancy comes in a number of different formats, from ensuring that your on-site content matches user intent and purpose, to ensuring that any quality links you’re building back into the website are relevant to your brand. These links will, after all, add a lot more value and have the added bonus of potentially bringing in relevant referral traffic at the same time. 

Relevancy plays an important role in both on-site and off-site SEO. From an on-site perspective, it helps to ensure that your content is right for the user. This means that it answers their intent and purpose and gives them the right type of information they need to make an informed decision about your product and service. From an off-site perspective, building high quality relevant links into your website helps Google to understand that you are an expert in that particular space.

There has been a lot of discussion around how important relevancy is to links. As we push more towards semantic search, it’s not enough to just have great quality links, they have to be relevant to your brand, product or service i.e. they need to belong there. This should form the foundation of any solid SEO or Digital PR strategy. 

2. Reputation

The reputation of your website and the creator of the content on your website are two of Google’s most important factors for page quality rating. This is especially true of building a reputation externally where other websites are saying good things about you, hosting your expertise or linking back to your website in an authoritative manner.

I recently spoke at Brighton SEO about how to do a quick reputation check. Two of the simplest ways to do this are quick Google searches removing your own website to understand how other websites are talking about and linking to your brand online:

By undertaking these quick searches you can get a really clear understanding of any potential concerns around your reputation. It also gives you a good idea of any external websites where you might want to look to improve your reputation, including third party review sites, social platforms, or industry leading blogs/publications within your niche. 

Reputation is built on-site and off-site. From an on-site perspective, building out author profiles and justifying your content and the expertise of your authors, with a mixture of authoritative external and internal links, is very important. As too is any information around what makes them an expert.

From an off-site perspective, a strong Digital PR campaign can play a crucial role in helping to build your expertise in the wider market. A nice mixture of thought leadership, expertise-driven newsjacking and data-led campaigns can really help to push key E-A-T signals across your website. This will highlight your reputation and expertise to your audience and to Google. 

A lot of brands focus heavily on their on-site reputation rather than considering off-site reputation and how Google (and other brands) might see it. By keeping an eye on how your reputation is viewed externally you can be more aware of any external review sites or news publications that might be speaking about you. In addition, you’ll gain an understanding of how your audience may see your brand when they encounter it for the first time.

3. Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust

Over the last few months I’ve spoken at length at a number of conferences about the concept of E-E-A-T and how important it is with regards to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. We can see this expressed within the guidelines in section 3.4, which discusses E-E-A-T specifically:

Source: Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines

Although the concept of E-E-A-T isn’t anything new for SEO agencies, the way that it is understood and adapted into use has changed over the last few years as we have come to better understand the depth of E-E-A-T signals and how these can be implemented across a website. The aim now is to ensure we provide a great user experience and really focus on not only answering the user’s purpose and intent, but also demonstrating that our websites are trustworthy and authoritative enough to be experts on the subject matter.

E-E-A-T isn’t just about on-site content or building high quality authoritative links, it’s about drawing it all together to ensure that the website as a whole is seen to carry this level of expertise, authority and trust. Internal linking and building semantic themes, creating high quality, relevant external links, creating strong on-site content and ensuring the website is easily accessed and crawled, all play their own role in supporting E-E-A-T. It’s important to get each piece of the puzzle working correctly to give that great overall experience. 

In the last few months we’ve had more Google algorithm updates than I can remember, but there has been one consistent theme throughout them. Whether it’s aiming to drive more “Helpful Content” or looking to improve “Product Reviews” we can see that each of these updates is tied together by this underlying theme of ensuring a website has strong E-E-A-T signals; the algorithms are just set up to test it in different ways.

So if you haven’t got to grips with the concept of E-E-A-T, or perhaps you’re missing a few pieces of the puzzle, now is a great time to pull all of this together. If, in particular, external linking is one area you want to improve you can read here more about the value of external link building in E-E-A-T

4. Crawl, Indexation & Internal Linking

In SEO we often get caught up talking about links of the external variety but frequently forget or overlook links of the internal variety. In the majority of new clients we take on, the one thing I find above all else that needs improvement is the internal linking across the website. 

Internal linking isn’t just about connecting your content together and building semantic themes (although it does a great job of this) – it’s mainly about using it to signpost to Google which of the pages on your website are most valuable, almost like drawing a map.

Google’s John Mueller reaffirmed in a recent Google Hangout that internal linking can be one of the most important aspects of SEO as it helps to signal the importance of your pages to both Google and the user. It should be used in a strategic way to think about what is most important to you and how you can signal that through effective internal linking. It’s also a great way to really build pillars around your key pages and highlight your expertise by linking related articles, key blog posts and data pieces. These can all back-up and reassure your audience of your expertise, authority and trust in these sectors.

However, we don’t just use internal linking to help signpost Google and pull together our content in pillars and semantic themes, it also plays an important role in ensuring that Google can effectively crawl and index your website. Internal links are one of the main ways that the Googlebot moves through your website, so giving it a clean and sure path through, especially to all of your key pages, plays an important role in SEO success. 

Strong internal linking also helps Google to effectively index your website. If your website isn’t within Google’s index then chances are it won’t rank for anything; it needs to be in the index in the first place to be able to rank! You may have come across errors in Google Search Console where Google has crawled but not indexed your pages yet, and often through choice. This can be incredibly frustrating for webmasters as often there is not the easiest of fixes available. Having strong internal linking can help signpost to Google how valuable new and existing pages are. Additionally, it points Google in the direction of any new pages to ensure that these are quickly and effectively indexed, giving them the best possible chance to perform.

5. Great Content

Save the best until last? Solid content is a very important part of your SEO strategy and it’s important that any content you create is aimed first and foremost at your user – answer their questions, meet their purpose, deliver their expectations. By adhering to each of these elements you are able to ensure that you are delivering great content that satisfies the user’s query.

It’s important to add that great content doesn’t equal lots of content or content that gets added to a website everyday. Rather, it looks at the query contextually; is there enough content to answer the user’s question and does it do this effectively (i.e. does it get straight to the point)?  Is the content laid out in such a way that the user can easily understand what is going on and does it help to make it digestible? Are you addressing your content in a conversational manner with questions and answers? 

It’s also important to evaluate whether your main pages need supporting content; so looking at how you semantically link content together on the page to ensure that the user can be fully informed. If you have blog articles or news articles that relate to your main content pages, ensure that you link them closely or pop a related articles section at the end of your page. This helps you to “pillar” your content and create effective content cluster groups, showcasing your knowledge, expertise, data and analysis around a given topic and adding value to that topic’s main page.

Google is a search engine. By nature its purpose is to answer a user’s question or query. So, implementing different styles of content, such as lists or FAQs, can really help Google to understand that you have content which addresses these queries. You can enhance your content further by the implementation of Schema mark-up, which is designed through code to highlight key features of the content, this in turn can also help you to exhibit SERP features when presenting on Google. 

There’s definitely a lot more to a traditional SEO strategy than just technical, content and links. If you’re looking to put more depth into your strategy, or perhaps your website is in a YMYL industry where you need to place additional focus on your key E-E-A-T signals, find out more about our SEO service today!

So, you’ve landed your first role specialising in search engine optimisation (SEO), or you want to further develop your business’ digital marketing efforts by targeting organic search, and have spent some time learning the basics of SEO. Once you’ve formalised your grip on the basics, it’s important to understand how to get ahead and keep up with this ever-changing but exciting marketing channel. 

To help with that journey, we’ve compiled our top pieces of advice on getting the most out of your strategies and how you can keep up with this ever-evolving sector. 

These tips are based on my own experience as an SEO professional and the things I found most useful when entering the industry as a beginner.

1. Optimise content for the user first 

One of the most important things to consider when making content optimisations or reviewing a site is the overall usability and user experience.

Google is constantly evolving and adapting to make search engine result pages (SERPs) the best possible by including quality content that real-life users actually want to view. For example, Google recently announced the Helpful Content Update which will target sites that have content ‘made for search engines.’ It is thought that sites with poor quality content or overly optimised copy will be penalised and could lose their rankings in the SERPs. This highlights the importance of creating readable content designed for a user rather than creating copy to try and ‘trick’ a search engine into ranking your site highly. 

Old-school tactics (or, simply, bad SEO!) were more focused on trying to ‘trick’ search engines into ranking their landing pages higher. Tactics, such as keyword stuffing, and having thin content creates a poor user experience and it is, as you can imagine, not something that search engines are fond of either. It is of course important to include the keywords that you want to rank for, however, these should only be used in a natural way where it makes sense within the context.

2. Create Quality Content

Essentially, to create quality content, you have to know what the user is searching for and which information they will value most. This means relevant and factually correct content that isn’t a carbon copy of another website or one that is noticeably optimised for search engines. This type of SEO focuses on the concept of expertise, authority and trust, or E-A-T. You can help users to trust your sites by displaying your expertise in your industry, and providing accurate and original information that answers a searcher’s query fully. 

A great piece of written content will answer the user-query and beyond; not only will this prevent the user from clicking off the page to find any additional information, but if they find all of the information they need they may click on your site first in the future.

3. Build relevant links

Link building is an important factor in increasing your site’s authority and improving your domain ratings. The more relevant the links are to your site, the better signals it sends to search engines. 

Backlinks, or links pointing from an external website to your site, can send great signals to a search engine depending on the quantity of quality links from relevant external sources. Relevancy is very important here. When an external source links to your site, the source should be a publication or brand that aligns well with your industry or speciality and is of a similar nature. Not only will this send quality customers or leads to your website, but these relevant links showcase what your site is about and help to display your expertise within a certain sector. 

Would you rather have 1,000 poor quality, irrelevant sites linking to your pages or 10 relevant sites with a high domain rating? 

10 relevant sites with a high domain rating linking to your website would be a strong indicator to Google, or any search engine, that you could be considered an industry leader and that your expertise is valued. Combined with a strong SEO strategy, this puts you in a good position to rank higher, receive more quality traffic and achieve more conversions or goals. 

This also goes for internal linking on your website. When linking internally, only provide links to relevant pages. For example, if a page on a Veterinary website focuses on dog breeds, they could include internal links to another page on their site about the diets of certain dog breeds. 

4. Keep up to date with the latest SEO news

One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I started in the industry was to set up a dedicated Twitter account and follow a variety of thought leaders within the SEO-world. From the likes of SEO-expert Dr. Marie Haynes to Google’s Danny Sullivan, the digital marketing communities on Twitter can be an insightful and easy way of keeping up to date with the latest tactics or changes, including Google algorithm updates.

As well as Twitter, there are heaps of informative podcasts and subscription newsletters with discussions on the future of digital marketing and analysing best practices. There are also amazing learning resources on YouTube, including video series from Google Search Central, which help to gain a wider understanding of what search engines are looking for when it comes to organic search.

By consistently updating yourself on the newest tactics or the latest news, you’re developing a well-rounded knowledge base of SEO and its workings. This puts you in a great position to discuss changes with clients if you work for an agency or to explain strategy decisions to board members. 

5. Always measure your results

Without measuring your results, it can be difficult to know which of your optimisations are succeeding and which ones just aren’t working (it happens and that’s okay). Identifying any drops in performance after a recent optimisation can signal that a search engine bot has reassessed the page or site and believes that the page is no longer valuable for a specific query. If you’re able to monitor and identify these issues early, you have a better chance of trialling a different approach to regain rankings or lost traffic. 

I would recommend tracking your targeted keywords in a dedicated tool such as AHRefs, SEMrush or SEO monitor to identify any increases or declines over time. This can also help you to identify any potential ranking fluctuations that could be due to a Google algorithm update. If you then spot any patterns or losses in the position of your keywords, you can likely locate the cause and take action.

6. Keep Learning

Outside of best practices when doing actual optimisations and audits, it’s important to be aware of the wider SEO world to best understand it. This marketing channel is constantly evolving with new algorithm updates and changes happening all the time. It’s therefore crucial that you stay ahead, or alongside, the curve to really make the most of your optimisation efforts. The above tips are definitely a great way to monitor this!

Browse our SEO services if you’re looking for more advice and direction for your SEO strategy or check out more from our Manchester-based SEO services.

Having worked in the medical negligence industry where CPCs can be as high as £40 or £50, I’m very familiar with how valuable utilising competition graphs to find those lower volume cheaper – but equally as effective – CPCs can be. When we’re talking CPCs as high as the ones I’ve just mentioned it’s easy to burn through budget, even with a great Conversion Rate, so finding those gems within the lower volumes becomes even more critical, especially when it comes to building out campaigns or trying to find more areas to cover.

It’s not just PPC where competition graphs can be a valuable addition & today I want to look at how we can utilise these very popular Excel graphs within SEO strategy, to understand where the opportunities lie to drive growth/visibility across both SEO & Digital PR.

Fortunately, there are a number of different ways that you can work with Excel & data from some of our favourite digital marketing tools to really understand what’s available in the market & where the opportunities might lie.

Let’s take an example…

A few months back I was drafted in to pull together a proposal for a promotional products company. This company specialised in a wide range of different promotional products, & one of the tasks I undertook as part of the proposal process was to identify key areas of opportunity so we could see where the value lay for our clients. This would form the foundation of not only our SEO strategy but also guide our Digital PR strategy when it came to link acquisition & where we wanted to focus our efforts.

I reference the Excel spreadsheet below – pulled together with data just from AHRefs & plotted on a three axis graph, by overlaying CPC data with Search Volume & Difficulty.

Now this graph can be utilised for both SEO & PPC – for SEO it’s even more useful as you can use AHRefs “competition metric,” which for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, judges how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword given the number of higher Domain Rank websites that currently rank above that term. Essentially, it gives an overview of the volumes of specific keywords mapped against keyword difficulty to give you an idea of how achievable it might be to rank for that given keyword.

From the data above we can quite clearly see a number of significant trends. Initially, we can see that the market place has high search volume for branded pens, but also that this has super high competition & trying to rank on this term might be quite difficult. By contrast, if we look at other branded products such as lanyards, umbrellas or notebooks we can see a similar search volume level but a much lower level of keyword difficulty – an area of opportunity.

From utilising a simple graph above (and there’s many more products that we can populate in there) we are able to draw deductions around how to create an effective SEO/Digital PR strategy to maximise opportunity for the client, while still keeping in mind commercial intent & ensuring we are also applying adequate focus to commercially important terms.

Now we’ve seen this work for branded promotional products, how does it work for higher CPC terms like “medical negligence?”

In this example we can see a far more pronounced difference for the high volume terms – but again we have some great areas of opportunity. We can see from this data that the popular “medical compensation” term is, in fact, low search volume for very high competition, compared to something we perhaps wouldn’t target, such as “medical negligence nhs” or even “medical negligence lawyer” which despite still having reasonable keyword difficulty has a much more established search volume (or reward!) to match.

All in all the graphs above are very simple to produce & incredibly easy to pull together utilising the following steps:

1. Login to your AHREfs account
2. Navigate to the “Keywords Explorer” tab & input your list of targeted keywords
3. Download the Spreadsheet
4. Remove all columns except “Keyword” “KD” & “Search Volume” & pull these into Excel using a multi-touchpoint graph

And there you go… a quick & easy way to pull together an effective graph which allows you to easily identify areas of opportunity, quick wins or perhaps more long-term gains for your clients which ties in with real-word metrics (search volume) to see achievable gains.