There is a whole lot more to optimising a website for search than meets the eye. Some websites appear to get it right almost by accident, while other sites have been around for years and simply cannot muster any traffic – they just cannot get it right. There is no single silver bullet or piece of magic that will help you win at SEO, it is rather about getting a whole lot of different elements correct at the same time. But what are those elements and where should you be focussing your efforts? These are the important questions that need to be asked and here are some of the answers that you should probably be privy to if you are hoping to make a play or hold a discussion in the SEO space.
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Quality is more important than quantity
Any company that works in the SEO space will tell you that the result of good optimisation is the generation of quality traffic. Simply growing the numbers is of no use at all if the people who are coming to the site are not part of your target market or audience. In some cases, the locality or type of audience might not matter. For instance, if your goal is simply to monetise your site through advertising then you will win no matter who comes to the site. But if you run a plumbing business in Hobart then there is no point if the bulk of your newly acquired audience resides in Brisbane. That is simply a low quality or irrelevant audience and any Australian SEO company worth its salt will be able to help you grow a relevant audience.
Google is key
It might be called search engine optimisation, but the truth is that it is focussed on Google and getting an audience from Google. Google boasts close to a 90% market share in the search space, and this is despite their often-fractious relationship with the Chinese authorities who are very determined to control what can and cannot be found online. The point is that Google is key, and that done right, it can deliver you significant user numbers. It is also interesting to note that with tools like Google Analytics and Ad Words, the whole ecosystem is very geared towards being able to understand an audience and deliver relevant content and advertisements to it.
Nobody really knows what they are doing
You might feel like a novice in the SEO space, but the truth is that a lot of it is made up by the experts as they go along. Because Google is always tweaking and changing its search algorithms it means that even the experts are always a step or two behind things. Google does make frequent changes and they keep their algorithm a closely guarded secret. This is because they don’t want publishers and agencies to game the system. So as much as there are experts out there, they are always chasing the latest intelligence and insights, trying to keep up with the people at Google. It is not to say that they aren’t good – it just means that they may get it wrong from time-to-time as well.
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