If you have a website, you’ll have heard of the term ‘SEO’ or ‘search engine optimisation’. However, before you can even begin to understand the intricacies of how this process works, it’s imperative that you understand how the search engines themselves access and analyse your website. Here are the facts that you need to know.
What is a search engine?
A search engine is created to help internet users find exactly what they are looking for online. They do this by accessing, analysing, and organising the numerous content and websites on the internet in order to provide the most relevant results as quickly as possible to each internet user. Examples of search engines include Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
In order to deliver fast and accurate results based on an internet user’s inputted keywords, search engines must complete three steps.
First, they must crawl the various websites on the internet. This involves exploring all of the existing content and organising that content based on various parameters.
Next, they must index the content discovered and analysed during the crawling stage. This essentially means saving the content so that it can be displayed in relevant search results.
Finally, the search engines must rank the content. This involves organising the various URLs according to relevance and specific ranking factors, such as page speed, mobile-friendliness, domain age and authority, optimised content, linking, etc.
What is SEO?
Ultimately, SEO is the act of tweaking all content and technical factors based on the various parameters that search engines like Google use to rank websites.
“By learning what the search engines deem as ‘best practice’ and implementing this across your website, the chances of your site appearing higher in search results and generating increased traffic are greatly improved,” says Christopher Watkins, HashTag Marketing’s Director and CEO.
A strong and adaptable SEO strategy promises long-term benefits and can help to reduce the amount of marketing budget that you’ll have to spend on paid marketing, such as Google Ads.
SEO packages
Here at HashTag Marketing, we offer flexible pricing packages for SEO ideal for businesses of all types and sizes. For example, for just R3250 per month (no long-term contracts), you’ll get a 5-keyword strategy, a 10 month focus plan, 5 hours per month for page maintenance and updates, and a monthly report.
We also offer SEO consulting if you’d prefer to learn and implement the art of SEO yourself and just need a bit of guidance to get started. We conduct our 2-hour SEO consulting session via Zoom and it costs just R1500. Included in the price is a recording of the session and access to a WhatsApp group for 2 weeks following the consultation should you have any queries or require further tips or advice.
Get in touch now via admin@hashtagmarketing.co.za or (076) 221 6828 for details.
Article by, Bianca Marie Golz (Content Writer) – HashTag Marketing
