Stockport SEO Campaigns That Increase your Sales & Enquiries

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• What is SEO and how does it work?

  What is SEO and how does it work? SEO refers to the process of employing a selection of tactics and approaches to help a piece of content or a website to achieve a more prominent ranking position in search engine results pages (SERPS).
  
  SEO differs from paid search advertising and remains solely focussed on organic rankings. Organic search results sit below paid adverts in SERPs and cannot be bought. To secure a strong organic ranking, businesses must leverage the power of a carefully considered selection of tactics designed to help them stay one step ahead of their closest competitors.
  
  Search engines want to ensure that they consistently deliver the most relevant and high-quality results for every query. To achieve this objective and serve the information that satisfies a user’s requirements, complex algorithms look for a range of signals to determine which results will occupy the top-ranking positions.
  
  Let's say a searcher has entered "vegan mac and cheese". What information can we immediately infer from this search? They’re probably looking for a recipe and instruction on how they can make vegan mac and cheese at home. And if your website houses a vegan mac and cheese recipe, a deft application of appropriate SEO techniques will help you ensure your content ranks above other websites that have also shared a similar vegan mac and cheese recipe.

• But why is SEO so important?

  Well, most online searches start with a search engine. So, achieving prominent rankings for relevant search terms to your products or services will help you drive additional traffic to your site and boost your brand awareness among your target audience, resulting in an increased number of sales and enquiries.
  
  There are two major components to SEO: off-page SEO and on-page SEO. The most powerful and well-rounded SEO strategies deftly incorporate both elements.
  
  Off-page SEO focuses on all optimisation tactics that happen outside of your site. Off-page SEO includes link building, which involves earning links from high-quality, highly relevant sites that can essentially give your online presence a vote of confidence.
  
  Conversely, on-page SEO is centred around creating and optimising content that will live on your website. There are many aspects to comprehensive on-page optimisation, including ensuring titles and meta tags are engaging and keyword-rich.
  
  Importantly, SEO should be viewed as a long-term strategy that will continue to drive success long into the future. To ensure the longevity of your investment, it is imperative to avoid black-hat SEO techniques that utilise underhand actions to make fast, short-lived gains. Search engines will always eventually identify the use of such approaches and penalise a site accordingly. So, to stay in the good books of search engines, leveraging white-hat SEO is critical.

• What is the most important part of SEO?

  What is the most important part of SEO? SEO is incredibly complex, and success relies on an ability to shape a strategy designed to support the core goals of your business. Here are some of the essential aspects to give you an idea of what you can expect from your SEO.
  
  1. Centralising your audience: Your audience should always sit at the heart of your SEO strategy. You need to know how your audience wants to be engaged and do everything possible to meet those needs, wants and desires. In addition to considering your industry, you must also think about what your competitor brands are doing and how you can go above and beyond to deliver something even more impressive.
  
  2. Keyword research: You're going to find it impossible to connect with your ideal audience if you don't have a solid understanding of the queries they are entering into search engines when looking for your solutions to their problems. Keyword research will also help you better understand the intent behind the searches your ideal audience is making.
  
  3. Analytics
  4. Crawling: Search engines use spiders to crawl every website and understand its content and context. Ensuring that your website has solid architecture ensures you utilise your crawl budget most effectively. 5. Technical SEO: If the technical elements of your website aren't working efficiently, it can mean that your website will suffer in SERPs. This aspect of SEO covers everything from identifying broken pages within your site to page speed optimisation to schema markup. As websites grow, it is vital to ensure that they are technically sound to avoid making mistakes that will eventually have a knock-on effect elsewhere.
  
  6. Content: There are many different types of content, and each one has its own set of benefits that businesses need to utilise. The internet is awash with poor-quality content. You need to ensure that you are doing everything possible to continue publishing valuable, well-researched, and authoritative content that your audience actively wants to engage with. This means giving appropriate levels of attention towards everything from sentence structure to potential for virality i.e. is this something that is likely to be shared widely across social media?
  
  This clearly isn't an exhaustive or even particularly comprehensive list, but we hope it has given you a good overview of what SEO entails and how it can help your business to succeed.

• When should I invest in SEO?

  When should I invest in SEO? The simple answer to this question is you should invest in SEO now.
  
  As the online world becomes even more competitive, investing in SEO has become an essential tactic for businesses wanting to stand out from the crowd, grow their business and increase their sales. Although you can attempt to run a business without leveraging a strong SEO strategy, there will be limits to the level of success you can ultimately drive.
  
  But you don't just need to take our word for it. Research illustrates that more than 50% of online marketers recognise SEO as the most effective digital marketing channel. This is largely because more than 60% of consumers will conduct at least some online research as part of their purchasing decisions, and this rises to more than 80% of consumers looking to make a large purchase. These stats, combined with the fact that approximately three-quarters of searchers never make it past the first page of Google and the other major search engines, it becomes clear that SEO could mark the difference between success and failure.
  
  But what about when you've invested in an SEO strategy that has driven good outcomes? Can you stop your optimisation investment when your site has started to attract traffic? The short answer is no. This is because SEO is an ongoing task, and strategies require nurturing in order to continue driving the best possible outcomes.

• Who is the best company for SEO?

  There are many SEO agencies and individuals out there offering SEO services, but how do you know who will help you maximise your return and continue to deliver strong results over the long term?
  
  Many SEO services are offered as a package that will run for a set period of time. We don't believe that this offering is the most effective option for most businesses, so we have opted to do things a bit differently. So, instead, we offer our services on a rolling 30-day contract, which can be terminated with just 30 days' notice. In addition to giving you a much more flexible option, you can also be fully assured that we will be working hard for your business every single day. After all, we want you to continue choosing us to support you to drive even more meaningful success and consistently out-performing your leading competitors online.
  
  Additionally, as we know just how integral SEO is to success, this approach to contracting makes it much more affordable for businesses regardless of their size. We are a highly motivated team that has worked hard to establish a proven track record for delivering outcomes that allow our clients to meet and even surpass their goals.

• How much does it cost to hire an SEO expert?

  Pricing structures is another thing that many SEO agencies and individuals aren't particularly forthcoming about. Again, this is something we want to change because it isn't easy to approach a business for services if you have no idea whether they will be within your budget.
  
  Our affordable SEO campaigns start from as little as £400 per month plus VAT. This fee includes the creation and implementation of a bespoke SEO strategy that will be designed to help your business reach your unique business goals. At the start of our working relationship, we will work closely with you to understand what you want to achieve and set out a series of deliverables that you can expect from your investment. This will be created using the comprehensive analysis and insights-driven from your existing site following our comprehensive auditing process.
  
  Also included is a personalised proposal, which will be properly costed so you can see at a glance where your investment is being channelled. This is often particularly useful for small businesses for whom digital investment is somewhat intimidating. But we will ensure you are confident that our approach will help you connect and engage with your ideal audience as and when they are searching for your solution to their problems, 24 hours a day, all year round.