what is seo

What Is SEO ?

In the dictionary SEO which is short for search engine optimization or search engine optimisation suggests “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”

What Is SEO – Answered

SEO is making changes to a website in order to help search engines like Google understand the content on the website pages which will result in getting more visiting traffic to the website.

SEO Made Clearer

If we try to understand the importance of SEO we can use images as a simple way to explain this. Matt Cutts from Google discusses the alt attribute which is used by SEO companies to help Google understand images.

Matt Cutts discusses the alt attribute

In this example, the SEO process explains how helped the search engine understand the images on the page will really help.

SEO Changes

Google makes improvements to its search algorithm very frequently and this means a good SEO Company like Chameleon will be monitoring the changes and understand what Google is now looking for. There are 70% of the basics of SEO that do not change. But areas of SEO will need to be improved or changed to keep a website up to date with the latest Google algorithm.

How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm

What Is SEO ?

So to answer the question What Is SEO ? it is a simple question to answer when you understand the why. An SEO Company takes will understand what a business does, the services they provide, the products they sell and then understand the keywords searched and the search volumes. Then check if the client’s website appears in Google today for these keywords.
If the client’s website can be shown to people using search engines to find the services and products that client offers then this can result is a sales lead or enquiry which should result in a return on investment.

The SEO company or agency will then make changes to the website to ensure Google understands the content and as a result, the website will appear in the search results.

An SEO Company will be needed to make many of the changes to ensure top positions in search results, but remember only one company can be number 1 in a search result organically which makes finding the best SEO agency that has a proven track record due to the fact that SEO results change and one SEO company might be doing things right today but what about the coming Google algorithm changes?

If you need your website to be in Google today, you can use Google Adwords to rank within search results, paying to appear for chosen keywords.

How To Get Top Of Google

Search Statistics and Bing Ads

We often get asked questions about  Bing ads being worth testing, and if to use Bing at all.

We thought we would take a random SEO client and look at the statistics. It is clear that Google dominates in this instance with:-

search statistics 2017

With the data we have it is clear that Googles organic traffic is over 50% of all traffic in this short period. Also Google PPC, with a small budget, is approximately 20% making Google the reason that 70% of this clients visitors land on the website.

Interestingly, Facebook is also key here with Mobile Facebook making up nearly 4% and Desktop Facebook 0.5%, which is more than double that of Bing traffic.

This example shows a client who ranks high in Google, and also high in Bing, making this a like for like comparison. However the client doesn’t use Bing ads.

According to NetMarketShare.com the desktop search engine market share is as follows:-

search engine market share statistics 2017

According to NetMarketShare.com the mobile search engine market share is as follows:-

search engine mobile market share statistics 2017

With search engine market share you have to also consider the browser because this will have an impact. If many new PC’s for example are coming out of the box with Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer and then Bing.browser statistics 2007 to 2017

browser statistics IE 2007 to 2017

Should You Use Bing Ads

In the example here the client does not use Bing Ads and this is means there is a potential that extra traffic can be achieved if they were to use the Bing ads service:-should we use bing ads

With Bing Ads a lot companies are using them and it is very similar to how Google used to be many years ago with adverts positioned above the organic listing and to the right hand side of the listing.

A Bing search for “Birmingham SEO Services”:-

bing ads

Another example a Bing search for “Birmingham SEO Company”:-

Birmingham SEO Company

This is what Google also did for example in 2013:-

Now Google do not have ads on the right hand side and this has been a change they made and have stayed with for a number of years now.

google search

With any form of online advertising, using a professional company to carry out the process will save money for example:-

As a marketing agency, we have to use both Google AdWords and Bing Ads for our clients, as required. Costs with Bing Ads are a lot less due to less high level competition it seems and from our own findings the behaviour of Bing users is also different to that of the Google users which suggests a couple of things:-

  • Bing users are using the search engine due to a new PC or device and do not know how to change to Google – if this is the case the chances are very high that this type of user will also click on the top listed advert unaware and this will also have a potential that this type of user will be easy to convert.
  • Bing users are using the search engine due to a new PC or device and do not care about Google – if this is the case the chances are very high again that this type of user will also click on the top listed advert unaware and this will also have a potential that this type of user will be easy to convert.
  • Bing users are using the search engine due to not being a fan of Google.

This means that despite having a very small search engine market share compared to that of Google, it is worth testing what Bing Ads can achieve.

It is worth noting that you can import from Google Adwords into Bing:-

bing ads import

If you want to test Bing Ads and would like Chameleon to help call 0121 663 0456.

Breslins Group Thanks Chameleon on Twitter

One of clients Breslins Group the Business & Tax Advisers, Chartered Accountants in Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull has seen great business growth since working with us and have used Twitter to thank us for our services.

Breslins business tax advisers

The tweet comes following the success we have achieved for the company:-

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understand more about SEO

What is SEO and how it works

What is SEO and how it works

If you find yourself asking this question then you have probably had your head in sand for the last five years. As a business owner it is vital to understand what the competition are using to grow their business which means asking what is SEO and how it works at this point in time means you have missed a large amount of business already.

With the digital age’s rapid growth over the last five years and SEO being in the news with all the Google changes named after animals affecting SEO such as Panda, Penguin, Pigeon, etc it has been hard not to notice things. If you have missed it then finding this article today is vital to move your business forward. How do you think you found this article in the first place? – as a result of SEO.

Understanding what is SEO and how it works is something that is going to change your business and lets start by looking why the Internet is important to a business. In 2008 we spend 0.3 hours a day on a mobile device using the Internet digital media in someway and this has grown in 2015 to be 2.8 hours a day. In 2016 this growth continued and this year (2017) will see an even larger growth.

mobile usage statistics 2008 to 2015

The information above from KPCB shows an 11% growth and this is going to continue growing in popularity as we see the use of Smart TV’s and Smart Watches providing us with even more ways to connect to customers.

Our world is changing to be a constantly connected digital world with consumers using the Internet for decisions and becoming reliant on smartphones more than ever for shopping or looking for products and services.

We trust Google and over the last five years Google has grown even further providing more products and services used in daily life. Google carried out a study with Nielsen in 2013 to understand consumers’ mobile habits in the shopping process. This research over three years ago now showed how consumers use mobiles to research a product to the actual purchase of the product.

google mobile usage study 2013

Download the survey here.

This survey uncovered five key important findings, consumers are spending time researching on their smartphones which showed a usage of 15+ hours a week and remember this was report was in 2013.

The research showed that consumers start the buying process for products or services with a search engine over an app. With the most used search engine being Google this means if you are not using the power of the Internet via SEO for your business your business is not going to be included in the consumer decision path for products or services.

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO plays a vital part of this process, getting everything right on your website in-order to make Google able to find the content and understand it, then to trust it as an authority to add value to the user experience of Google search results.

An SEO company also has the tools to help to understand what keywords to target for organic search listing within Google search results that people are using and identify keywords that convert highly.

The survey also showed that the proximity is important with 69% of people expecting businesses to be within a five mile radius of their physical location. It is clear that immediacy is key and more than half want to purchase a product or service within the hour. In 2016 more and more changes took place in the way that delivery takes place with companies offering same day delivery and a huge growth of click and collect services. It was stated that 95% of online shoppers will now use a click and collect service for their Christmas shopping and the likes of Argos rated as the retailer offering the best click and collect user experience has stated that in 2014, 31% of it total online sales used click and collect. This has since grown further and also the huge growth of the popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday means that retailers had to change processes with some retailers like NEXT having issues and even large corporate business’s website’s going down due to too many visitors.

Argos click and collect

Argos has been one of the companies to follow when it comes to the Click and Collect service and they have seen a continued growth over 2015 and when the Internet Retailing Report created “Winning the Retail Battle in 2015” it was stated that around 60% of the retailers canvassed offered the service with many others planning to launch a click and collect service in 2016.

To add to this new change in shopping you will have seen over the last few years drive-through pick-up sites appearing and locker sites in carefully selected locations, all developed due to the inconvenience of home delivery and the growth of the Internet meaning we are not physically there when making a large amount of the purchases in our life.

Offices and workplaces have also become popular delivery locations with this change in consumer behaviour and all this change is due to the Internet success. Going back to the Google study, Mobile influences purchase decisions with around 93% going on to buy.

google mobile usage study

It is clear that in 2017 the Internet is vital for every business and this means that SEO is now even more important than ever before.

SEO Google

If you want to appear in Google search results then SEO plays a vital part of this process. To fully understand this you need to understand “How does Google Search work?“.

How does Google Search work?

Matt Cutts from Google explains the process Google follows and this shows the complex task that Google use. Another video from Matt explains “How Search Works” and this is vital to understand:-

If you watched the videos and understand how Google gets your website data and what to do with it you will start to better understand the role of SEO. An SEO consultant we look at what SEO Google needs to find and this changes as Google improves the algorithm.

An SEO Consultant will ensure that whatever the product or service is that your business is involved with, Google will find the exact information you need them to find so that they can index this data to be part of the search engine results pages. The more relevant and the more trusted the higher the position in the search results which means that to achieve number one you have to do a lot things perfect and do it better than your competition.

SEO Company

Chameleon Web Services is an SEO company with consultants that have been working with Internet marketing since 2001 and we have seen so many changes. We have grown with these changes and developed with them improving and becoming stronger year on year.

Take our own Industry sector which should be the toughest really being as we are trying to beat SEO professionals for a handle full of keywords, an SEO company should be able to appear on page one if they are any good. And importantly you need to take notice of the paid Google adverts. If an SEO company is paying on average £15 to £30 per click to Google for Adwords to be on page one of search results you would think that they should be trying to achieve an organic listing to be listed for FREE. If they cannot do this how are they going to achieve success for your business!…

birmingham seo services

This was a screen shot taken today (14/01/2017. Google it for yourself to check the results and you will see we have two listings in search results for “Birmingham SEO Services” which means we have over achieved here in one of the most difficult sectors.

how to get your business in google search results