Understanding SEO

Search engines need to help users find what they’re looking for. To make sure they list the best results first, they look for signals of:

•  Popularity
•  Authority
•  Relevance
•  Trust
•  Importance

SEO, also called organic or natural optimisation, involves optimising websites to achieve high rankings on search engines for certain selected key phrases.

Generally, techniques used for optimising on one search engine will also help efforts across others.

How search engines work, according to Google:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’.”


SEO can be divided into two main strategies:

1.  On-page optimisation is achieved by making changes to the HTML code, content and structure of a website, making it more accessible for search engines, and by extension, easier for users to find.
2.  Off-page optimisationis generally focused on building links to the website, and covers activities like social media and digital PR.

SEO is an extremely effective way of generating new business to a site. It is a continuous process and a way of thinking about how search engines see your website, and how users use search engines to find your website. It’s search psychology.

Search engine optimisation is a fairly technical practice but it can easily be broken down into five main areas:

•  A search engine friendly website structure
•  A well-researched list of key phrases
•  Content optimised to target those key phrases
•  Link popularity
•  User insights