Did you know our Director, Chris Nyland takes part in regular Digital Marketing podcast?
Himself and Ian Hooper from HitPublish come together to interview leaders in their fields, discovering more about their skills and experience in Digital Marketing.
This week they met up with Alan Ible of Dig-itel, Gloucester to dive into the deep world of Search Engine Optimisation – Answering: what SEO actually is.
This is a Q&A style blog, taken directly from the HitPublish podcast. To listen to the full episode, click: digital marketing podcast.
What Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) actually is.
Ian | HitPublish
Okay, let’s, let’s get on with it. Well, straightaway – for those who don’t know all about the wonderful world of Search Engine Optimsation – can you explain to us and what SEO actually is?
Yeah. So I think the first thing to do when you explain something that doesn’t know is don’t call it search engine optimisation, because then you get even more questions and people are really perplexed. Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation is about being found online. Main search engines like Google, and predominantly underneath the paid adverts. So search engine optimisation, is about climbing to the top of sites like Google. That’s what I would say.
Alan | Digitel
Chris | Nettl
Yeah, the art of getting your site further up in Google, absolutely. And I also explain it as well, that the techniques fall into two main categories;
The first element is to do with Relevance of the website itself, the content. Is it useful to the user? Is it useful to Google?
And then secondly, Authority. How does Google then view your site compared to others out there, your competition.
When you’re reviewing sites and their competition, you there are several metrics either that people refer to. One of them is trust flow. The best way to consider your digital trust flow would be like the expression “you are who you hang with”.
So if you’re in a room with really credible people, and they’re all vouching for you, that’s kind of like an association, that counts well for you really. So if you’ve got lots of really strong, credible websites out there all vouch for you, i.e. link to you, your online presence becomes a lot stronger by default in effect. And like Chris said about the onpage aspects. If your website is well optimised, providing a good experience, they’re the main factors. Although Google does update them, I think user experience is probably key right now.
Alan | Digitel
Ian | HitPublish
OK, great. That brings me on nicely, actually – because a question that we all face in this room, without a shadow of a doubt is, when we launch a new website, we push it live, and usually the first question always is… yeah, you know, what’s coming! “Why is my website not on the top of page one on Google and Bing and the other search engines?”
Why can’t I be seen? Alan can you tell us why that is?
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, if we’re talking in regards to a brand new website, and a brand new domain, they’ve never existed before they haven’t started to scan of the site. They don’t exist today. So with Google being a credible search engine, or any other ones like Bing, why would they take a punt on a website that’s never existed before?
Alan | Digitel
Ian | HitPublish
I always push back when I’m asked a question, in the nicest possible way of course, and say, Well, I think the question we should ask is, why should you be on page one of Google?
You would struggle to get any website to the top of Google relatively quickly. If it’s a new brand. I mean, the only way that it might get there is if the competition is really thin. Or you go for what we call a long-tail keyword. So if I was looking for, I don’t know, a pair of shoes. If I was to write “size 12, black brogues, with a sketched spider on the front” or something, I think you’d have a chance to find your desired site, but if you just wrote “shoes”, and why on earth would Google put a brand new kid on the block above all the other existing sites etc.
Alan | Digitel
Chris | Nettl
I’m gonna throw in a top-tip at this point. You can tell me whether you think this is a good idea or not! But what we often say to our clients when we’re building a website is, because we all know what web projects are like – they can go on and on and you can take months sort of put in putting a website together and getting it launched.
To start that clock ticking of getting found in Google, it’s a good idea to get something up even if it’s a holding page or something there live on the domain name to start that sort of domain authority clock ticking, helping your trust score when you go fully live.
This is why I said you don’t just dabble Chris because it’s a good bit of advice, thank you very much! So if you put a holding page up, you’ve got a domain name then. So as you’re doing the build, you can start directing traffic to it. So often you find website under maintenance new site coming soon, if Google can start to see these things go on the background before it even goes live, or before you fully get it up and running, you’ve already brought the process forward. So a decent wireframe would always help with that, which is again something you’re very good at.
Alan | Digitel
Chris | Nettl
Nice, nice.
So you just mentioned domain authority there Alan, can you tell us a little bit more about that what that is and what that means?
Ian | HitPublish
Alan | Digitel
Of course. Domain authority is not as complex as it would be made out to be. So if you go online to any independent tool, like Moz or any of the other ones, it breaks it down simply into three categories.
1. How old is a website?
2. How big is a website? and
3. How popular it a website?
When you look at the size of a website, obviously, the deeper the pages, the more relevant the better, they should convert and satisfy users Google sends there..
Popularity that’s all about when people land on the site. How do they engage with it? What sessions do they have? How long do they engage with individual pages etc. But the other angle of popularity, which often gets neglected, is actually the links that come in. So again, when you’re talking about a credible relationship, your popularity again is based on like the playground group at school. If you hang around with all the bad kids, the teacher is going to look at you a bit more warily
The other one that no one can control is the age. So we haven’t got a Tardis. Although we’re techy, we haven’t created a time machine just yet. So the only thing that you can’t do with that one is obviously enhance its age. However, what some people do out there, sometimes they’ll actually buy old domain names that have been around forever in a day that have expired, and they’ll actually buy those from, you know, bidding auction sites, so they’ve already got some age behind them.
Would that be considered a bit blackhat?
Ian | HitPublish
Alan | Digitel
It wouldn’t be considered blackhat. But to be honest, it’s probably a bit old school. So I think nowadays, you know, the whole buy domain with the, you know, the exact term within it or anything that is probably a bit old school. Yeah, it goes back to user grants again. Hence why popularity is key age incise.
I think that rings true across the board with SEO is that ultimately playing by the rules and delivering to the user as opposed to delivering just to achieve results within search is going to do you better long term anyway?
You know, can I Chuck a little top tip in?
Ian | HitPublish
Chris | Nettl
Yes, totally. We’re on some kind of tip off today
Everybody always goes, Google changes the rules. Everybody does. They don’t they never have. Google has never once changed any key rule at all. The core algorithms that they’ve got just get more intelligent. So if you gain the system and you try these black hat techniques, or as they refer to, you try and cheat it, you’re gonna get caught out eventually. Yeah. So ultimately, just do it right from the beginning. If it looks too good to be true, it’s too good. You’re going to get hit, you’re going to get taken down, yeah. Just create a brand that represents who you are, and do it properly.
Alan | Digitel
Chris | Nettl
Ian, scrub that question, you’re going to ask about Google keep changing his algorithms. I think, I think They do obviously release lots of updates. Google does its various animal named updates. But I think as you said, it’s almost just getting a bit clever each time. And they’re kind of finding ways to keep you. Yeah. to suss out more of these dodgy around the edge techniques.
Yeah, I mean, they, they say that they’ve got these core algorithmic updates that go on, you know, talk about penguin or Pandora pigeon, or there’s a cuddly fluffy animals. But they don’t just do that they update almost daily, as well as hundreds or thousands of minor updates. But there are only a few key ones. And, you know, you just got to keep within them and ultimately stick to the rules stick to the rules.
Alan | Digitel
This article is an extract from the hitpublish podcast where Ian (Nous) and Chris (Nettl) discussed all things SEO together with Alan from Digi-tel. You can read other extracts from the hitpublish digital marketing podcast on SEO in these two articles, SEO v PPC v Social – what’s best? and Do Google keep moving the SEO Goalposts?
