SEO FAQ

What is on-page optimization

On-Page SEO are techniques focused on optimizing your website and its individual web pages. This includes optimizing your websites build, which keywords are used in the title tags, meta descriptions and image alt tags. Also included is improving your website loading speed, quality of your website content and so much more.

How long must I wait before I see results?

Web design changes are seen instantly, nice for the impatient person. SEO on the other hand is an investment and a long term solution. Normally, it will be about 2 to 3 months of continuous work to see results. There are many different processes working together on this.

Some of these include the amount of site traffic, domain age, the quality of the website design, content and keywords as well as the competition for those keywords.

Which keywords should I use?

For the best results, the best keywords to use are medium to high competition, long-tail keywords that describe your business and services you provide. Put yourself in your customer’s position and think of keywords that they would use to look for the services that you provide.

Take us for example, we offer web design services and some of the keywords that we rank for are:

Medium to High Competition Keywords: web design albertonweb design vereeniging etc.
High Competition Keywords: web design gautengweb design sandton etc.
Very High Competition Keywords: web designweb design companies, etc.

As you can see, the more specific your search criteria is and the smaller the region, the less competition there is for that keyword.

When will I be #1 in Google search?

Almost every single client today wants to know when they will have the coveted 1st place spot on a Google search and the answer is unfortunately, no one knows…

With ranking being of such importance it is fundamental to understand that it takes time and dedication. With all of the options available to website owners today, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay-Per-Click advertising(PPC), they find themselves dreaming of how to get to that 1st place and acquire the most traffic.

Unfortunately no one can tell you exactly how this all works, not even the people working at Google. But wait, there’s more…

Its quality, not quantity

If your website isn’t seen as an authority and you don’t update it very often with fresh content, ranking up will take a while furthermore, if your website has obtained a penalty, you have to get the issues fixed. After the issue has been repaired, you need to submit a reconsideration request before Google considers your site for their search engine again.

Who wants to wait in this day and age?

It is understandable that you want to see instant ROI, but that doesn’t happen with SEO. It takes know how of the search engines and to do this, you need to show Google that you are the main peanut in the packet and that you should be put at #1 in their search results for all of your keywords related to your website. Visitors need to know that you are the best deal around, have the best content, services and products at the best price.

This **** takes forever

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is long term. Ranking and branding that is an ongoing process. It is all about your audience and doing the following:

  • learn what they are looking for
  • engages with them
  • nurtures that relationship

As a result you will be rewarded!! By understanding this, you’ll realize that it doesn’t matter how long it takes to get to the first page of a certain ranking, because you will know that just getting ranked isn’t the only thing but rather the amount of loyal customers that you have.

Google likes to update

Google updates their search algorithm all the time. They also have 2 types of crawlers; a fresh crawler and a deep crawler. The fresh crawler sends “the new stuff” back to their home base and the deep crawler, is the main crawler that sends back larger amounts of information back to the search engine. Then there is the calculation and valuation time to inspect every link, every page, and every website and then rank those against billions of search queries.

In short, no one (not even Google employees) know the exact formula that helps websites rank in the top of the search engines.

Competition

Improving your own ranking with a strategic plan will undoubtedly cause other sites to slip in their own rankings as yours climbs. This is excellent news although, your competitors aren’t going to take this lying down.

Assume your competitors have already been doing SEO and marketing, you will now need the right amount of effort and work to equal them and then some more to surpass them. If your competitor has a few years head start on you it will take a longer time for you to catch up. More often than not it just takes the slow, persistent, and aggregated authority built over time to rise in the search rankings.

The long and short of it

With all of my yabbering above, here are some guestimate figures for you.

Make it and let it stand – With a good On-Page SEO and no other major website issues, you can expect that in 3-6 months you’ll be in the top 10 search result for your keywords. As stated before though, this also depends on your competition who isn’t going to just sit and watch themselves slide.

Constant Work – Because you aren’t the only one selling your product or service, a highly difficult niche can take at least a year to see page one results. No one wants to hear that, but it is what it is. You can speed up this time frame by using PPC (paid advertising) to get to the top.

Keep on going on – It is quite possible that you will never see that coveted #1 spot on the first page of Google. Even more it could be out of reach for some small businesses due to the cost of doing the SEO, or outsourcing it is too expensive. For a larger company in an extremely difficult niche, it could take several people working together in a team to achieve top rankings.

My 2 cents worth

If you achieve the #1 easily and without effort, it’s probably because that keyword isn’t used by your competition. If you’re getting the wrong traffic from the wrong audience, it counts for naught and if you are getting the right traffic from the right audience, but no actionable results or sales then it doesn’t matter either!

Rather think about giving your audience something that they find interesting and can utilise. Make content engaging and makes the reader want to read another page. Ensure that for a service, your copy is engaging and makes the potential client want to sign up. Products need to be priced competitively to ensure sales

Be the quickest to respond, no one enjoys inquiring about a product and then never getting a response. Be informative when talking to prospective clients via email or inside your support system. If potential customers are serviced quickly they will relate that to the product and lead time and will be willing to pay a bit more for the service. Preemptively answer all follow up questions that you know they are going to ask and respond quickly, within 30 minutes, and your sales will increase.