THE FOUR TYPES OF SEO
and what they cover
Do you ever find SEO overwhelming? Keyword research, page speed, back links, responsiveness – the list seems never ending.
However every SEO task falls into four distinct categories.
This post will explain what they are, what the key tasks are for each one and how you can use them to improve your SEO.
TECHNICAL SEO
This is the foundation of your SEO strategy. There’s no point working on any other aspect of SEO if search engines can’t access your site, can’t read your site or can’t index it!
We’ve seen many sites designed by professional website designers who have used HUGE images, bad code and even restricted access to key site pages so they can’t be indexed – so much for being professional!
The key tasks to cover here are:
That your site has a security certificate
Google has actually confirmed that the security of a website is a ranking signal. In addition to this would you want to enter your credit card details on a website that’s not secure? All websites should now have a security certificate (which will show as https in a browser windon)
That your site is mobile friendly
Web searches on mobile devices overtook the ones on desktop in May 2015 and shows no signs of slowing down. If your site doesn’t look good or work well on a mobile device you’ll loose visitors.
That your site loads quickly
Again Google confirmed the speed of a site affects its ranking. You’ll want to make sure all of your website pages load quickly.
submit a sitemap
A sitemap is a list of all the pages, images and other content on your site. Instead of waiting around for search engines to find it and index it if you submit a sitemap you’re telling them everything that’s on your site and how it’s linked.
ON PAGE SEO
This is what most people class as SEO. It’s essentially making changes to whats on each page of your website to make it rank better for particular search terms.
There are several places on a web page that Google looks at to ensure the page is actually about what someone is searching for – these are things like URL, page title, headings, page copy and lots more.
Key tasks for On page SEO are:
keyword research
Do in depth keyword research to identify the best possible keyword that you want each of your web pages to rank for (top tip – they all need to be different!)
Keyword placement
Ensure that your focus keyword appears consistently in the page meta data – things like page title, page headings and meta description
Keyword stuffing
This is something you absolutely have to ensure you don’t do!! Keyword stuffing is the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of content (not as natural prose).
image optimisation
Put your keyword in the image alt tag
OFF PAGE SEO
This is probably the trickiest area of SEO to work on – it’s all about improving your sites popularity, relevance, trustworthiness and authority.
It’s achieved by working on getting other places on the web (other websites, social media and blogs etc) linking to your website – essentially “vouching” for your site and its content.
It takes time to work on but it really is worth it to build up your sites authority!
obtain backlinks
A backlink is when another site links to your site – and when it does a little bit of their site authority passes to yours. You need to ensure the sites linking to you are relevant though!
social media
Links to your site on social media don’t count as backlinks BUT people clicking through to your site from someone posts will up your sites authority – and that’s a good thing.
get reviews
Not only does great reviews show to potential customers that you are a great company to do business with, it also shows search engines and builds your sites trust and authority.
LOCAL SEO
You only need to work on local SEO if your potential customers are in one specific location (eg Bristol, London, Barcelona, Paris).
This part of SEO is to ensure your site appears in results for searches like ‘hairdresser near me’, ‘locksmith in Bristol’ and similar.
What you need to cover is:
target area
Make sure your target location appears in your primary keyword and your on page content.
set nap details
NAP stands for name, address and phone number. Standardise it and make sure it appears exactly the same everywhere.
local business schema
Schema markup is a form of microdata that you add to a web page and once added it shows an enhanced description of the page that Search Engines display in more creative ways. You want to add the local business schema to every page of your website.
Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, concentrate on one category and get that nailed before moving onto another.
We recommend working on them in order but if you’ve used a great website designer (we can recommend a few if you need one!) then the technical SEO should all be in order, so move onto the On Page.
Do you have any questions about the types of SEO? Get in touch via our Contact page or leave us a comment below.