3 Key Principles for Success in SEO

‘Search Engine Optimisation’ or SEO, is one of the most important concepts for digital businesses to understand. It is also one of the most frequently misunderstood because of its allure. 

Many business leaders and entrepreneurs believe that by performing SEO magic, a website will instantly rise to the top of Google and fame and fortune will await. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. The reality is that SEO is more than simply a few tips and tricks. We cover this by introducing three core principles.

A website’s build sets the scene for how a search engine crawler can evaluate its value. There are many important aspects for marketers to consider.

Here we cover the most prominent. A point of note, there will naturally be trade-offs between them.

a) Website speed

If a website takes a long time to load, then Google is less likely to rank it above another that loads faster, all else being equal. One way to improve this is by switching to a faster server. This may not be necessary, so long as the site performs sufficiently well in all other respects.

b) Page size

The size of a page affects also its load speed. This makes it essential to reduce images to as small a file size as possible and control how many images are on a page.

c) Page title

The page title and description is also a key feature as a reader sees it in Search Engine Results.

d) URL

Furthermore, The URL is also an influential factor on how Search Engines evaluate the page as well as readers. This includes the name as well as how the page is arranged within the site. For example, if it is a blog page or sits within a folder.

e) Keywords

Google also categorises a website based on the most significant keywords within it. The degree to which these should be added is often the subject of much debate. We won’t cover that debate here; suffice to say that the keywords should be chosen carefully, depending on their level of competition and the desired goal.

f) Internal links

A search engine also evaluates a website based on the links within it. Readability can also affect its SEO, with anchor links often being added to improve the navigation of longer pieces.

g) Alt tags

Adding tags to photos and images helps Google to understand how to interpret images.

If a website is properly set up, then it can help to amplify its traffic. However, this will have little or no impact if there isn’t any content available for Google to rank. This is why there are marketers and most often specialist teams in every industry whose sole responsibility is to write and optimise SEO content.

a) Content quality

The content created must be of at least equal quality if not higher than that of the competition, especially if the website has little or no brand authority as we’ll cover later. For this reason, any marketer or entrepreneur should consider the level of competition for a particular topic before they invest major time and effort in trying to compete against it.

A simple rule-of-thumb is that it should have a key point of difference when compared against high-ranking articles. This could result from concisely conveying information, bringing together valuable sources, or presenting a new perspective.

• Content frequency

Great content alone is not enough, however. It must also be created with a regularity that appeals to readers. This can become a burden for some businesses, while for others it can be an opportunity to demonstrate market leadership.

The frequency required depends on the topic’s popularity and the level of competition. It’s easy to forget that SEO is not a new discipline and that search competition is fierce for most well-known topics and keywords.

This final principle further shatters the illusion that SEO is easy. Google places greater emphasis on sites that are driving traffic already over those that begin from a standing start. 

As a result, a website may be perfectly built and have great content, yet still drive little or no traffic because it doesn’t have enough authority to feature in search engines. The way that Google makes this judgement is ever-changing. However, some core principles apply.

a) Number of backlinks

If two websites are competing to rank on Google, then all else being equal, the one that has the most sites linking to it will be ranked highest. These backlinks take considerable time and effort to generate, which has turned link building into a dedicated discipline.

b) Backlink quality

Google also judges the authority of each link. This can be improved by using Public Relations to generate media coverage in media outlets with higher domain authority. However, this also requires additional work and specialist skills.

c) Direct website traffic

The quality of a website’s existing direct traffic, can be another signal to Google that the site is worth ranking highly or not.

Maintaining commercial appeal

By following these three simple principles, marketers can dramatically improve the effectiveness of their SEO strategies. However, for most businesses, engagement alone is not enough. Instead, marketers need to create content to generate commercial interest, which means adding sales information can hinder its placement.

Overall, we hope you can see that there is a clear SEO process that all successful businesses follow. This is not difficult to understand, but it takes considerable time and skill to achieve great results.

We hope you enjoyed reading. You may like to discover more principles for marketing success. Alternatively, if you have any further questions, please do get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.