Frequently asked questions about search engine optimisation (SEO)

What is SEO optimisation and why is it important?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO for short, is the practice of making a website rank better in search engines. Some common search engines are Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. If you want to increase the number of people finding your website through search engines, SEO might be something for you to start with.

There are several marketing channels that drive traffic to your website. But on average, there is no digital marketing channel that delivers lower cost per lead than SEO.

Is WordPress good for SEO?

With the right setup, integrations and configurations, WordPress is an excellent CMS.

As you already know, we are experts in building high-quality WordPress websites, and know the tricks of the trade. This enables us to build WordPress websites that rank high within Google search results, and provide lots of traffic.

Plugins like Yoast or Rankmath help you with the initial set-up of SEO, although this is only the foundation of a website that ranks well.

If we can help you with additional SEO services, please let us know.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to optimisations that can be performed on other websites to help improve another website. This includes things like social media references and links from other websites.

What Is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to optimisations that a website has control over. This includes things like optimising title tags, meta descriptions, header tags and internal links.

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to optimisations that help crawlers crawl and index web pages more efficiently. This includes things like page speed, XML sitemaps and canonicalisation.

What is the difference between traditional and local SEO?

Local SEO refers to optimisations that help a website gain visibility in local search results. This includes things like adding a Google Business Profile and creating content relevant to a specific location.

Local search engine optimisation is great if you run a local business and provide products or services to a local audience. For example, if you run an ice cream shop, you would want to focus on local SEO. Of course, you would want to do this to drive local traffic to your shop. You could still benefit from traditional SEO, but local would probably be the best route to take.

If you run a recruitment agency offering recruitment or headhunting services for companies in Flanders, local SEO would not necessarily suit you better. Traditional search engine optimisation would probably be the best route. But some local SEO certainly can't hurt.

The tactics and benefits are not identical between local and traditional search engine optimisation, although there is overlap.

What is Domain Authority?

Every website has a domain authority (DA) score ranging from 1 to 100, which is calculated and managed by a company called Moz. There are a number of factors that affect your DA score. One important factor is the number and the quality of other websites linking to your website, we call this a backlink. Backlinks are an excellent metric to use if you want to compare how well your website might perform in Google, as opposed to your competing websites.

We regularly look at our website's DA score, as well as that of our competitors. This helps us determine how effectively our marketing efforts are helping us on Google, relative to our competition. And while you can go to Moz to check your DA score, we recommend using another tool from WebsiteSEOChecker to use. Moz is much more limited in how often you can look up a DA score per month with a free account.

So what is Page Authority?

Every website page has a page authority (PA) score. This works the same way domain authority scores work, and they range from 1 to 100. This calculation is done by the same company called Moz, the score is largely influenced by the quality and quantity of websites linking to your webpage.

The better the quality of the links, the more your PA score will improve. The reverse is also true. If there are many poor-quality links linking to your website, it can hurt your overall PA score. If you haven't looked at the previous search engine optimisation FAQ, which talks about domain authority, you might want to check it out.

What are (bad) backlinks and how are they removed?

You used to see SEO benefits from any website linking to you, regardless of the quality of the linking website. As a result, business owners and marketers bought huge amounts of backlinks from all over the internet. There were incredibly large pages on low-quality websites that consisted only of backlinks. Although these could easily be added, and literally bought in bulk, the links actually served no purpose other than manipulating search engine rankings. Moreover, the websites offering these links offered no real value.

In 2012, Google released an algorithm update that affected the entire world. Suddenly, the quality of the backlink pointing to a website became a ranking factor. Tons of websites that were at the top of Google were significantly downgraded, or even blacklisted by Google, because of the huge number of low-quality backlinks pointing to them.

A Google search on "backlink audit tool" gives you a list of resources you can use to identify backlinks to your website that look questionable and should be investigated and possibly removed. The tool we use is SEMRush. Once you have identified the backlinks worth removing, you can literally ask the owners of the websites to stop linking to you. If that doesn't work, you can upload a list of the backlinks you don't want associated with your website. You can then enter this list through Google Search Console.

What are keywords?

A "keyword" is the individual word, or phrase, that someone gives when using a search engine to find a product, service or information.

For example, if you are looking for a roofing company in your area, you might type in "roof". That's an example of a keyword. Or you might type "roofing companies near me". That is also considered a keyword; although technically, it would be better to call that a "keyword phrase".

When it comes to keywords for search engine optimisation, you ultimately want to identify the most important keywords your target audience uses, and then make sure you appear on Google [and other search engines] for those keywords.

What black-hat SEO tactics should I avoid?

Keyword stuffing
This happens when you try to rank for a specific keyword and you overuse that one keyword in your content. For this FAQ blog post, we will focus on the keyword "search engine optimisation". But we won't put the words "search engine optimisation" in every headline and sentence. We vary it with "SEO" or talk about something completely different, like how to get indexed by Google.

Getting bad backlinks
Many new website owners hear they need backlinks and will get a lot of low-quality backlinks, thinking it will help. In reality, you don't want low-quality backlinks. They can hurt you. Go for high-quality links.

Ratios of bad content to links
Sometimes a website owner will create a page full of links to various resources or sponsors, or something else along those lines. However, there won't be much text to interrupt the links. That looks very suspicious to search engines and is not considered a best practice. Look at this FAQ as an example. We have a lot of backlinks to other blog posts or related sources. But we dilute the backlinks with descriptive text. This is good. If we took out all these paragraphs and just listed links, which some website owners do, it could be harmful.

How to get started with SEO optimisation?

There are many facets to search engine optimisation. But, if you are just starting out, there are a few key points to consider.

First, make sure you optimise your website for the keyword phrases your target audience searches for. For example, if you help people in Ghent with coaching, don't target "coach gent" - which you think your audience uses. Rather, target "business coaching sessions in gent", "coaching for entrepreneurs in gent" or something along those lines. Don't assume you know what they are looking for in your area. Rather, make sure you measure it!

Once you have identified what your audience is looking for, focus on creating relevant and highly valuable content on your website. The content should answer every question your target audience is asking and should be asking. Next, make sure you develop good relationships with other websites and that those websites create links to your website.

When someone links to you, it is called a backlink. You want as many high-quality backlinks as possible. Also, before you start SEO, make sure you inform yourself about black hat SEO tactics you want to avoid.

How long does it take to see the results of SEO adjustments?

The amount of time it takes to score well for one sector versus another can vary greatly. But the general rule of thumb is that after about three to six months can expect good results.

If you are a lawyer, it can take much longer than six months to rank well in search engines. However, if you sell LP records, it may take much less than three months to rank well.

Also consider your effort and budget. If you spend significantly more/less than what most companies spend, that can also affect the amount of time it takes to rank well on Google. Some clients get amazingly good results within a month. Other clients in competitive industries focus on a small and steady rise, and spend years building up their SEO. How much time it takes you depends on your unique and specific situation. But, as a general rule, expect to start seeing good results in about three to six months, assuming your situation is "normal".

What Is UX Design?

User Experience Design relates less to SEO, but rather to improving the way users interact with and navigate a website, taking into account what they want to achieve and ensuring that the processes to reach their goals are as simple as possible. This includes things like testing "customer journeys" to ensure that the path to conversion does not contain unnecessary steps and can take place directly.

Conclusion

This FAQ was fuelled by questions we get about search engine optimisation. We value questions and make every effort to answer them as thoroughly and accurately as possible. If you have any questions not answered above, please let us know.

If you need help with your own search engine optimisation, we'd love to help. We can help you with your SEO strategy, or handle entire SEO marketing initiative for you. Here are some of the ways we might be able to help:

SEO Audit
We can identify factors limiting your SEO effectiveness and can make recommendations on how to solve the problems.

Keyword research
We can identify the keywords worth targeting in an effort to help you get the best possible SEO results.

Creating content
We can write content for your website, be it service pages, blog posts or anything else.

Off-page SEO
We can work on getting quality backlinks generated for your website to improve your overall ranking with Google.

On-page SEO
We can help with the content and technical aspects of your website that affect your search engine performance. Content creation is part of this, but other aspects and configurations are also covered.

If you want help with your search engine optimisation, please let us know. Otherwise, we hope you can use this FAQ as a guide to drive a large amount of traffic to your website, and pick up quality leads and business as a result.