Gaz Hall

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation (or Search Engine Optimization) and is the process of improving your website so that it ranks highly on Google search. It involves many different attributes including user behaviour, site structure, links from other sites and content. At a high level, I would say there are four main factors that ensure SEO works correctly:

Most SEO strategies devised by an experienced SEO consultant are based on these four elements.

Technical SEO

The site needs to be technically correct with an appropriate url structure, correct HTML, Javascript, CSS, tags, meta data and schema. It needs to pass the core web vitals test, have no broken links or 404 errors, run on the https protocol, have a correct sitemap as well as a robots.txt file optimised for your crawl budget.

If the website owners property isn't technically correct it may be deemed as irrelevant by Google and won't show up in the search results. Therefore a focus on the technical aspects of SEO marketing is the first step for a technical SEO consultant in optimising your website.

Keyword Research

Keyword analysis by a trusted SEO consultant provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. When you establish the most relevant keywords for the content that you publish, the higher your site will rank in the search engine result pages. The further up your site is on Google, the more traffic you will bring to your website.

Picking the correct keywords is the foundation of your comprehensive SEO strategy and ties in with competitor research. When you know which search terms your ideal customer is using to find your products or services, you can optimise your content accordingly.

Content Creation

Creating authentic, valuable content is critical for search engine visibility. As is the search engine optimisation of this content. When you optimise the content on your web pages, you're making your website more visible to people who are using search engines (like Google) to find your product or service.

Quality content is how you engage, inform, support and delight your audiences however your content must be informed through your keyword research process. There is no point creating content for the sake of it. As any freelance SEO consultant will tell you, it has to answer the needs of the searcher.

Backlinks

A backlink is a link to your site from another site on the internet. Backlinks are also called inbound links or incoming links. When a site links to your site, it provides a positive signal, or a vote of confidence, to the search engines that your site is important for the topic being discussed.

Backlinks are the foundation of Google’s original PageRank algorithm and, as any SEO expert will tell you, remain an important ranking factor. Using the link building services of a freelance SEO consultant to earn backlinks from authoratitive, relevant domains can have a positive effect on a site's organic rankings and search visibility.