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What Is search Engine Optimisation And What Should I look For In An SEO Agency?

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

You may have heard about search engine optimisation, or SEO, but are unsure as to what it is. SEO is an effective web marketing technique which aims to boost your rankings on search engines for certain keywords concerning your business. By carefully constructing link-building articles, press releases and your website’s content around these key terms or phrases, search engine optimisation should move your website higher up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), giving your business greater prominence online.

The keywords which are targeted in search engine optimisation will be carefully considered by your SEO agency using a number of technical tools. These keywords can be single words or medium or long-tail keywords – phrases a few words long. If you own a travel business specialising in Egyptian holidays, for example, you may want to target words such as "Egypt holidays", “holidays in Egypt", "Cheap Egypt holidays" or "luxury Egyptian holidays", depending on your business, the volume of searches and the competition to appear in those SERPs.

It is possible to research what visitors to your website have searched for, and which search phrases are leading to 'conversions' on your website (i.e. how many of the people who click on your website end up buying something, contacting you, etc). These are just some of the factors taken into account when choosing your keywords. Good search engine optimisation companies will then write original quality content which is tailored to these words and distribute it across the internet. On-page work will also be carried out, ensuring your website is full of relevant, well written content.

Search engine optimisation is a key online marketing technique. Everything from small local businesses to international corporations are utilising search engine optimisation agencies to boost their business and profile online.

Hiring an SEO agency

If you have decided to begin search engine optimisation to boost your website it is important to hire a company which specialises in SEO. Your website design agency may offer SEO services but they often do not have the skills, or provide adequate levels of research, to carry out thorough and successful optimisation.

Ensure that you will be hiring a reputable SEO company. Do not trust salespeople who offer you guaranteed page rankings for a certain term if you pay a specified amount of money. This is often unfeasible as you never know what the competition are planning.

And finally, do not employ a company which uses ‘black hat’ search engine optimisation techniques. These are disreputable and/or dishonest tactics designed to “trick” search engines, e.g.:

- Creating hidden content on your website to boost your keywords without affecting content. Google and other search engines can recognise websites with too many keywords.

- Keyword stuffing; creating poor content with too many keywords in it. Search engines are now wise enough to recognise poor content.

- Link farming; there are websites dedicated to publishing links to your website, and many other peoples’ websites, which are completely unrelated. These are again viewed unfavourably by Google and other search engines, and your business may be banned for participating.

If your search engine optimisation agency offers you suspicious search engine techniques such as these try somewhere else. A reliable SEO company will use ethical ‘white hat’ techniques and will not promise instant results, but long-term sustainable success.