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SEO Explained for Humans

SEO SYDNEYHi there, I am here to give you a human version of what this whole SEO thing is about. How does it work? Why would you do it? At the bottom of this article is a simple model created in human terms to illustrate the benefits! 

There are two types of SEO that we need to cover here, Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO. But first, before we dive into that, let’s get a bit of history on Google as the most powerful search engine in the world today.

Where did the need for SEO come from?

Google began as a research project in 1996 and was founded in 1998 by its creators, both PhD students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
It was originally named BackRub due to the fact that it checked backlinks to a website to estimate the importance of a website to the rest of the online community. You can learn more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google 

So as Google grew into the monster of today, it required more and more financials to support its ever increasing amount of technology which is needed to run its website indexing and information recording system.

So came the birth of Adwords. Adwords was a successful (or even over-successful) attempt of monetizing Google’s search engine department in order to fund the ongoing operating costs of the company.

Adwords allows a business to pay money for the top position in the search engine when an internet user does a web search relating to their product, service or industry. Adwords bills its advertising clients money every time their advert is clicked on by an internet user. Clicks commonly cost between $0.20 cents all the way up to $100 per click at this point of time.

The reason Adwords is so popular amongst business people is that it delivers top results at a high short term price, it allows them instant exposure to those who have the budget to pay for those results. There are rumours that only 30% – 40% of users will click on ads in Adwords now due to the perception that they will end up paying for that click in the end if they deal with that company, so those users will avoid clicking. That doesn’t take away much success for Adwords advertisers though!

The problem arose that as the bidding war on keywords grew there were many people who just couldn’t afford Adwords anymore, yet there were those who seemed to rank in the organic listings anyway. They noted how much their website was benefiting their business and suggested that it was mostly due to their internet presence being where it sat in the Google System.

SEO is the practice of ensuring your website conforms to Google’s search engine ranking rules and engineering your website for rankings in order to arrive at the coveted top 5 organic (non-paid) listings for your search phrase.

What is ‘ONSITE’ SEO?

Onsite SEO is the practice of ensuring your website ticks all of Google’s boxes.

Your site must be built on quality code foundations, be mobile friendly and load at a good speed. It also needs to tick the box on some other rules which are common sense really. Ensuring the exact phrase you wish to rank for is used in the text on your website is one of those rules. Ensuring the URLs and headings conform is also important. If you have a website selling cars the last thing you would want to do is talk about children’s toys all over the website, otherwise Google will slip you into the children’s toys folder of its database, which means you will end up with the wrong kind of visitors on your website.

In short, Onsite SEO is akin to your physical appearance when going to a business meeting with a potential customer. If you look and smell bad from the start nothing will get you that new deal closed! 

What is ‘OFFSITE’ SEO?

If onsite is all about impressing Google with your websites appearance, Offsite is all about leveraging the authority obtained by other websites to boost your own!

Offsite SEO is the practice of obtaining links from other websites on the internet who have pre-existing authority in your area of business. If the site you are getting a link from already has high authority in your industry this will in turn increase your own website’s authority. 

That’s Offsite SEO.

We can also create little mini websites out there in the internet, build them up with continuously growing high quality articles relating to your industry and then give a link back to the right pages on your website in order to create an impression for Google, an impression that makes Google want to give you a chance at the coveted first page ranking. 

This is a surface level understanding of SEO, it goes deeper into tactics of how to create new sites which have authority and then get links from them yourself!

A Human Understanding

Pretend for a moment you are in the personal success business.

seo sydney

Lets just say you were going to a business networking dinner for people in aligned industries who could very easily become your clients in the future.

You would wear something very nice, something compatible with the people at the event. You would ensure you showered, smelled nice and your hair was tidy. This is like Onsite SEO. Without this no-one would take you seriously, especially not the search engines.

Now when you arrived at the event, walked in and started telling everyone you met that you are the best personal success coach in the city. They would have a name for you in that case, one which would not be at all flattering. You would end up sitting by yourself for most of the night and it would not be a very successful night.

Now, imagine for a minute that you hired 5 professional actors to go to the event before you go there, each one was to play the role of a very successful executive who has won the game of life. When they arrived, each knowing who the rest were, they went to different areas of the room and joined conversations, became a part of the crowd and conversed about the things the others were conversing on.

And then it happens, you arrive.

The door opens and in you walk dressed to the nines, smiling and confident. You check your name off the door list and start on your way down the stairs toward the rest of the guests of the event.

As you walk down the stairs there is a quiet mutter going on in the room: it’s your 5 actors filling in their new peer groups about who you are.

They say, “Oh wow! There is the person who made it all possible, he/she is the one who coached me through the glass ceiling that was holding me back. They helped me attain next level of success!”. As the surprised event attendees listen to your planted actors, their first impression of you is vastly different than the one they would have formed had you not employed the acting personnel.

That’s Offsite SEO, we create little mini websites out there in the internet, build them up with high quality content relating to your industry and then give a link back to the right pages on your website in order to create an impression for Google, an impression that makes Google want to give you a chance at the coveted First Page Ranking.

So What Happens Next?

Once you secure a position  on Google’s front page, their complex Artificial Intelligence machine will watch what their search engine users do when they land on your site. If most people land on your website but hit the back button in 10 seconds or less, this will count against you. Google will assume you are either not relevant to the search term they were using, or your site was not pleasing to the eye or intellect. Either way – you won’t keep your winning search engine position for long.

This is why it’s very wise to plan carefully. Ensure you know who you are writing your content for and what they want, then match their needs and ask them to contact you via your forms or phone number.

A Warning

There are many people in the SEO industry who will tell you they are the best SEO genius around and have a special secret way of getting results faster than anyone else, these are usually dodgy operators who will either cause you to lose your listing with Google altogether or they will charge you for work that you never know isn’t actually being done!

The Steps Are Simple.

  1. Research your industry keyword phrases and record the data.

  2. Plan your next 12 months of content releases, keywords for each article and dates to release them.

  3. Write quality content in advance, ensuring your desired ranking phrases are strategically used.

  4. Add the content to the website, ensuring the onsite SEO is done with the right search terms in mind.

  5. Expose your website by choosing the right backlinking partner to send regular backlinks to your articles in order to ensure after 12 months you have varied backlinks going to varied pages on your site. It needs to look to the Google programs and algorithms as naturally occurring as you can make it.

If you would like to talk further about your SEO contact us today! 

Scott Nailon

Scott Nailon

Hi, I'm Scott Nailon. I built my first website using notepad on my buggy Osbourne Pentium 133 (Windows 98) computer back in 1998. I have been running my own business since 2006 with a specialty in web since 2008. Most of these blogs are my own, if they are written by someone else I will have attributed that person at the end of the article. Thanks for reading!

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