Search Engine Optimisation.
Take control of your online presence and dominate the search results with Sood's expert SEO strategies
Why is SEO important for your business?
All businesses, large and small, can benefit from a well-implemented SEO campaign. If you want your business to reach a wider audience and generate more traffic, SEO is the most effective way to achieve this.
Your business has value to offer its customers, and SEO makes it easier for your audience to find you. It also improves the user experience, so when users discover your website, it’s easier for them to find the information and services they seek.
By extension, this also improves the conversion rate of your website, meaning users are more likely to sign up to your newsletter, purchase products, book appointments, enquire about services, and become long-term customers.
SEO is a long-term strategy that requires patience and attention-to-detail but is ultimately more rewarding than the short-term benefits of paid ads.
67.60%
The first five organic results account for 67.60% of all clicks
0.78%
Only 0.78% of people click on results from page two of Google’s search results
91%
91% of all pages never get any organic traffic from Google (mostly because they don’t have backlinks)
70%
70% of marketers consider SEO more effective than PPC
Building a digital future with a personal touch.
How Does SEO Work?
There are four main elements of SEO that help to boost your website's reach:
Organic traffic is the lifeblood of your website and the foundation upon which SEO is built. People who discover your website organically are more likely to engage with your products and services as they belong to your relevant target audience. SEO places your business in the eyes of these users who are primed to become long-term customers.
SEO primarily boosts organic traffic through smart and subtle implementation of relevant keywords throughout your website. You’ll begin to climb the rankings after search engines identify relevant, well-written content on your site.
You can also direct organic traffic to your website through social media. By pairing engaging content with targeted hashtags, your content will organically reach a wider audience who possess an inherent interest in what your business has to offer.
Boosting organic traffic through SEO takes more time and effort than paid ads, but the results are far more rewarding. In time, you can look forward to a consistent stream of long-term customers. Paid ads may attract short-term attention, but SEO cultivates long-term community.
Generating leads is arguably the most important factor in digital marketing and SEO. Attracting visitors to your site is a good first step, but turning them into customers is the main goal.
We’ve established that SEO can place your business in the eyes of your target audience, but how do we encourage them to engage with your content? Since they are likely to have a pre-existing interest in what you have to offer, you need only create informative and engaging content to retain their interest and convert them into customers.
Once visitors have reached your website, you’ll want to ensure they have an easy time navigating it. When developing your SEO, we constantly keep user experience (UX) in mind to ensure your visitors find your website useful and effortless.
Content is the bread and butter of SEO. Google’s algorithm primarily judges websites based on the quality of their content, hence why it’s our priority to create and optimise original, relevant content that serves the user’s needs.
Optimisation is important, but even the most well-optimised content will struggle to rank on search engines if it is poorly written. We first prioritise writing clear and engaging content with the intent of serving your users and their queries. Once the content is complete – i.e. clear, user-friendly, and in accordance with your brand’s voice – we begin the optimisation process.
Our SEO process
While SEO is largely technical, we strive to work closely with you, keeping you in the loop every step of the way. With your input, we decide the type of optimisation to perform and establish the right tone of voice for the content we write. Don’t worry, we’ll break everything down clearly so you understand the full impact of our work.
Research & Planning
Before any work begins, we engage in open discussions with you to construct a focused and cohesive plan of action tailored to your business.
Depending on the needs of your business, we can carry out a number of SEO services to boost your organic growth. We don’t want to waste your time with unnecessary work, so we rely on your input to determine the most suitable services that will benefit you.
Action
Our SEO team begins turning the plan of action into reality. The length of time this work takes depends on the services your business requires. At Sood, the following SEO services are available to you:
Link Building: AKA Backlinking, this involves creating genuine and trustworthy links to your website from other reliable sources. We are careful with building only the highest quality and relevant links to your website.
Blog Posts: Our team can provide you with a steady stream of high-quality, SEO-optimised blog and news content. This fresh and relevant content provides new opportunities for implementing keywords to boost your page ranking.
On-page SEO: Correctly optimising your on-page content is essential to maximise your search engine rankings. We can ensure your site is fully-optimised for SEO, including keyword research and content production.
Technical SEO: This includes ‘below the hood’ metrics such as page speed, mobile & tablet responsiveness, and SSL (security protocol) – each of which boosts your search engine rankings and improves the overall user experience.
Social Media SEO: Our in house social media team is experienced in producing a range of quality content across all platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. After determining the platforms that would benefit your business most, we’ll get to work creating quality, engaging content.
Competitor Analysis: Our SEO team will perform detailed research and analysis on your competitors’ websites to determine exactly what makes them rank well. We will then take the most suitable factors and apply them to your website to improve its ranking.
Case Study: RJ Woodworking
We were tasked with implementing SEO on the website we developed for RJ Woodworking Machinery. Through open dialogues with founder Richard, we decided on the precise nature of the SEO work we should carry out to effectively boost their rankings:
- Full optimisation of every page & product
- SEO damage mitigation during migration when the site was ready to go live
- Complete rework of product descriptions from scratch to avoid SEO penalties for plagiarism or duplicate content
- Incorporation of product titles as keywords in the descriptions and meta descriptions
- Creation of inbound & outbound links for each product on both the suppliers’ websites and RJ brand pages
- Preservation of original URLs to sustain rankings from the original site
- Addition of titles and alt-tags to images
- Optimisation of product categories through 300-500-word descriptions with keywords
Upon migration, there was a brief drop in rankings and traffic forecasts, but thanks to our URL preservation efforts, they promptly recovered after a day or two. These have continued to consistently improve since the new site launched.
The success of our SEO efforts has led to a positive working relationship with RJ, and we are pleased to continue working with them long into the future.
Do you want to reap the benefits of Search Engine Optimisation? Contact us for a consultation.
“Since working with Sood, we’ve seen an increase in website traffic and a significant increase in sales resulting from it. Our social media presence is much better – we’re gaining followers all the time. Nothing’s too much trouble and we’re very pleased with everything they’ve done for us.”
Richard Haydock
SEO Frequently asked questions.
What is SEO?
SEO is what many marketers call the practice of enhancing a website so that it ranks higher on Google’s search engine.
Since Google aims to provide the most helpful answers for their users, they focus on ensuring the most relevant websites appear first when a query is made. With billions of searches made each day, the process of judging the quality of websites is entrusted to an algorithm.
Google’s algorithm examines a wide variety of ranking factors in a website, from title tags and page speed to keywords, links, and more. Search Engine Optimisation involves perfecting these ranking factors, and in doing so, increasing the likelihood of Google’s algorithm judging your website as trusted and worthy of ranking high.
What are the main ranking factors?
Google’s algorithm is shrouded in mystery and only Google truly understands it. Although they’ve confirmed a variety of ranking factors, there are many they have never acknowledged. Additionally, some factors have changed over time and Google has given several conflicting answers, so the inner workings of the algorithm are largely hidden from the public.
However, there are several known ranking factors we consider in our Search Engine Optimisation process:
- Keywords
- Page Speed
- Title Tags
- Domain Name
- Backlinks
- Site Security (SSL)
Do I Need a New Site For SEO?
You don’t need an entirely new website to do SEO, we are more than capable of optimising an existing website.
If your website is well designed, you’re likely better off optimising your current one.
If your current website is a little outdated, it might be worth getting a new, modernised one.
Is SEO worth it?
When it comes to marketing your website on Google’s results page, you have two options: SEO or Google Ads. Both offer a different type of promotion and each has its pros and cons.
SEO is an effective long-term solution to making your website rank high. It’s typically much more cost-effective than paying for ads and generally attracts more traffic. This traffic is organic and therefore leads to a more consistent stream of long-term customers. The main downside is that SEO takes time to implement and ranking is never a guarantee.
Paid ads offer immediate benefits and better targeting of traffic. However, it’s a costly process that requires more expertise than is typically expected. The biggest downside to paid ads is their volatility – once you stop investing money into your campaign, you lose your position at the top and your traffic takes a huge hit.
What are keywords?
Keywords are a select set of words and phrases to be used throughout your website to help it rank. These words reflect what your business is about and encompass search terms your audience would use to find you.
For example, a mechanic based in St Helens would want to use keywords such as ‘car repairs in St Helens’ or ‘mechanics in St Helens’ as most of his potential customers will be searching for those terms.
Keywords come in a few different varieties. Long-tail keywords are more detailed search terms (e.g. ‘ NHS Healthcare recruitment agency in St Helens’) and short-tail keywords are more brief and straightforward (e.g. ‘Healthcare Recruitment St Helens’). This is commonly referred to as Local SEO.
The type of keywords chosen for your site will be based on factors such as search volume, difficulty, demographics, and more.
How long does it take for SEO to work?
Search Engine Optimisation is a complex and long-term process.
The strategies and process change for every single website, so pinpointing exactly how long SEO takes is impossible.
We prefer to work with a minimum of 12 months of SEO, to give the team a chance to research and understand the website, optimise the site and give it time to rank effectively.
You may start seeing results in 2 months, or it could take up to a year to start to see the movement – but once SEO gets going, value skyrockets
