Our SEO Process
Explained
Our SEO process involves 5 phases through which we take our clients. It means they know exactly what we’re doing, why and how, so it all integrates with the rest of their business. We do the technical work in the background while our clients stay engaged and monitor progress.
Our Five SEO Phases
We involve our clients during each phase, so they have confidence in the outcomes and see how their SEO is created and put into practice.
01
Learning
The Learning Phase kicks off the relationship: onboarding and fact-finding. Most importantly, this is where we get to know more about you and your business.
02
Planning
Based on our findings we create a measurable plan that focuses on pinpointing keywords, mapping on-page improvements and digital marketing support.
03
Building
Armed with all the data and knowledge gleaned in the earlier two phases, we now put all our energy into optimising your website for your target audience.
04
Promoting
Once we’re happy that the website and its SEO are in a good place, we undertake several off-page promotional activities to help raise the authority profile of the website.
05
Evaluating
Once we’ve got your SEO where it needs to be, we evaluate it. Monitoring and evaluating is an ongoing activity which we constantly undertake with our clients.
01
The Learning Phase
The Learning Phase kicks off the relationship: onboarding and fact-finding. Most importantly, this is where we get to know more about you and your business.
Onboarding & fact-finding
From people to technology, we establish effective lines of communication between us: team introductions and responsibilities, portals, online tools and platforms, approval and reporting procedures.
We kick off with your marketing plan – what do you need to achieve? Are you breaking into new markets? Are you launching a new product or developing a service? Do you need to educate people? Who’s your primary audience (who don’t you want)? What are your competitors up to? Essentially, this is building the SEO brief.
Auditing & data analysis
Audits feature throughout our work, but we typically start with our Analytics Audit. This is where we take a look at what Google Analytics and Google Search Console tell us and ensure that you have the correct conversion tracking in place. Following this, we run our Website Quality Audit where we gather data to understand how your website is performing in terms of content, keywords and user experience.
Finally, we run a local SEO audit to gauge your local presence, for example, that your Google Business Profile (GBP) is set up correctly.
From all this analysis, we can draw our conclusions and then recommend a course of action.
02
The Planning Phase
Based on our findings from The Learning Phase, we create a measurable plan that focuses on:
Pinpointing your keywords
You must understand the keywords that people use to find your products and services online. These will be the search terms that matter most to you. We help our clients do this in two ways:
- Establishing the keywords for which your website already ranks: your ‘low-hanging fruit’ keywords
- Finding the keywords that bring high-quality traffic to the website of your competitors: your new opportunity keywords
Mapping out on-page improvements
Making your website 100% relevant to your prospects and customers is the priority for SEO: getting the right traffic and then encouraging it to conversion. This starts with looking at your existing content and seeing where on-page improvements can be made to maximise its performance. This typically involves a mixture of the following:
- Correctly using keywords across your target pages
- Maximising featured snippet opportunities
- Improvements to content and user experience
03
The Building Phase
Armed with all the data and knowledge gleaned in the earlier two phases, we now put all our energy into optimising your website for your target audience, which involves:
Implementing on-page improvements
Implementing the on-page improvements to your target pages, which typically includes: improving meta tags, headings, body content, image alt tags, internal links, schema markup, etc.
Creating SEO-led content
We will help you create hard-working content, so your website not only attracts visitors, but it also encourages them to get in touch.
We start by developing a content strategy that covers all bases: product and service pages, people and resource pages, blogs and articles. This includes words, images, videos and diagrams.
Next, we’ll create and upload this content for you, and monitor its SEO performance. In the case of blog writing, we’ll be following a schedule we’ve created to help us attract and engage your target audience with topics of specific interest to them.
04
The Promoting Phase
Once we’re happy that the website and its SEO are in a good place, we undertake several off-page promotional activities, including:
Local SEO
Digital PR
Digital PR can help drive targeted traffic in several ways: building relationships with journalists, and influencers, securing editorial placements, engaging on social media and generally maintaining a positive brand image.
05
The Evaluating Phase
Once we’ve got your SEO where it needs to be, we evaluate it. In reality, monitoring and evaluating is an ongoing activity which we constantly undertake with our clients. The onboarding phase will have established how this works best for our client but, briefly, this is what we evaluate:
- Visitor profile: is this aligned with your target audience?
- Visitor tracking: where are they coming from (organic, paid, direct, referrals, social, etc)?
- Popular pages: are these the right target pages?
- Keyword rankings: where are adjustments needed?
- Conversion rates: is the SEO service providing a positive return on your investment?
We create assessable monthly SEO reports that are custom-built to your brand and goals. These reports take you through our progress and highlight where further adjustments and improvements can be made.
Book Your 30-Minute Free SEO Consultation
This is a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your online business goals and determine if we are a good fit to work together towards achieving those goals.
Frequently
Asked
Questions
What does the SEO process include?
The SEO process includes several key steps aimed at optimising a website for search engines and improving its visibility and ranking in search results. These steps typically involve keyword research, on-page optimisation, technical optimisation, content creation, link building and ongoing monitoring and refinement.
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO and involves identifying the most relevant and valuable keywords for a website’s target audience. On-page optimisation focuses on optimising individual web pages to improve their relevance to specific keywords and overall user experience. Technical optimisation involves ensuring that the website meets search engine requirements for crawling and indexing, such as site speed, mobile-friendliness and structured data.
Content creation is essential for providing valuable information to users and demonstrating expertise in a particular industry or niche. Link building aims to increase the authority and credibility of a website by acquiring high-quality backlinks from other reputable sites. Ongoing monitoring allows for evaluating the effectiveness of SEO efforts through metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings and conversion rates, all leading to continuous improvement of the site security and optimisation strategy.
What are the 3 core must-haves of SEO?
The three core must-haves of SEO are high-quality content, relevant keywords and authoritative backlinks.
- High-quality content is crucial for engaging and informing visitors, as well as demonstrating expertise to search engines.
- Relevant keywords help connect the content to the users searching for it, making it essential to include them naturally throughout the website.
- Authoritative backlinks, from reputable websites, signal to search engines that the site is trustworthy and worthy of higher rankings.
These three elements form the foundation of a successful SEO campaign, working together to improve a website’s visibility and relevance in search engine results.
How long does the SEO process take?
The timeline for witnessing substantial outcomes from SEO initiatives is subject to a large number of variables, encompassing the competitiveness of the industry, the starting point of the website, and the efficacy of implemented SEO strategies.
Typically, a period of four to six months is necessary before substantial enhancements in search engine rankings and organic traffic start to appear. However, it’s essential to acknowledge that securing and sustaining top positions requires continuous refinement and optimisation efforts.
It’s imperative to understand that SEO operates as an ongoing strategy that matures gradually over time rather than yielding instantaneous results. Embracing this reality enables businesses to navigate their SEO journey with patience and persistence.
This ongoing process allows search engines ample time to recognise and reward quality content and authentic engagement, ultimately leading to heightened visibility and credibility within target audiences. The enduring impact and sustainable growth, enabled by SEO practices, position them as a key investment for maintaining strong online visibility.
What are the most common SEO mistakes?
One of the most common SEO mistakes is failing to optimise for mobile devices. With an increasing number of users accessing websites on their smartphones, this oversight can lead to a significant loss in traffic and rankings, especially since search engines like Google now work off a mobile-first index.
Ignoring user experience is another critical error, as search engines prioritise websites that provide a seamless, user-friendly experience. Additionally, keyword stuffing – overloading content with keywords for search engine ranking purposes – can result in penalties from search engines, ultimately harming a website’s visibility on search engines.
Poor quality content also hinders SEO process efforts; irrelevant or low-value content fails to engage users and will likely be demoted in organic search results. Neglecting local search optimisation can limit the visibility of local businesses when targeting specific geographic locations, missing out on potential customers.
Failing to build quality backlinks, not utilising analytics to track performance, and lacking a comprehensive SEO strategy are also common pitfalls.
Finally, overlooking technical SEO issues such as broken external and inbound links and slow web page speed not only frustrates users but can also hinder a website’s performance in search engine results.
Addressing these common SEO process mistakes is crucial for maximising online visibility and driving organic traffic effectively.
Why is SEO so difficult?
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a complex and ever-changing process. Search engines constantly update their algorithms, making it challenging to keep up with the latest best practices. The competitive nature of online businesses adds further complexity to search engine optimisation too, as does the evolving behaviour of internet users.
Technical SEO optimisation also presents its own set of challenges, requiring a deep understanding of website structure, code optimisation, search engine optimisation and other technical aspects. Achieving sustainable SEO results is not a one-time effort but rather an ongoing process that demands strategic planning and continuous improvement.
One of the key factors in achieving success in SEO is content quality. Creating valuable, relevant and engaging content is essential for driving organic search traffic and improving your organic and search engine top results and rankings. Additionally, building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites plays a crucial role in establishing authority and credibility with search engines.
In summary, our successful SEO involves staying informed and up to date about algorithm development, adapting to evolving user behaviours, addressing technical optimisation challenges, and consistently producing high-quality content enabling us to build authoritative backlinks.