1. Blog

What is SEO and how does it work?

SEO: You're possibly here because you're thinking of asking Disquiet Dog to conduct audit work for you, but you want to double check why audits are important.

Here we explain the interrelationship between the content you put on your website, in your blogs, in your videos, on your social media; and the way that your potential market is looking for this information.

Join up the two, and you're laughing. Our audits are the glue.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation refers to different techniques used by digital marketing professionals to help your website to appear in search engine results pages. We're mainly talking about Google these days, though other fine search engine alternatives exist (we love Ecosia, for example).

How does SEO work?

In it's finest form, SEO simply connects you and your organisation to your natural online market.

To do this you need a very good awareness of keywords, because, as you probably know from your own behaviour, when you want something these days, there is a very good chance you'll Google it. Whatever you type into Google, or use as a voice search, those are the keywords right there. You might be pretty good at finding what you want. That can lead you to assumptions about what keywords your target audience is using when they search for what you have to offer in your organisation. We prefer to know for sure.

Search engine optimisation is the task of improving your content in such a way that it aligns beautifully with the keyword searches you know your target market is using when they are looking for the kinds of thing you have to offer. And that starts by auditing your search landscape, to really find out how most people out there are searching.

What role do audits play in SEO?

The only way you can correctly optimise your content and position more highly on Google is if you have a good understanding of

  1. All of the keywords that are important to your industry your programs and your location
  2. The number of people who use each different search term when searching for your kind of product or service
  3. Your current ranking for each of the thousands of keywords

Our first audit, the SEO, Keyword and Competitor Audit is the one that will provide you with this information.

How do we optimise for search engines?

Once you know how many people are using which search terms to look for your services, and you know where you are positioning online for each of those terms, you are able to develop an SEO strategy.

In short this will be a list of the different keyword categories you need to focus on. The task of optimisation will then depend on your range of online assets. Often you'll want to start by insuring the content on your website aligns with your target keywords, but it could equally be a focus on blog articles or new videos or podcasts or the content you put out on social media.

Isn't SEO a bit dodgy or outdated?

Search engine optimisation has been around pretty much as long as Google, because as soon as this amazing library of information sprang to life there were naturally people and companies who wanted to get to the top of the list.

SEO used to be a dirty word, as it referred to spammy approaches that overwhelmed mainly websites with keyword-heavy text in order to get that top spot on Google search engine results. Nowadays as Google's algorithm has become ever more sophisticated, search engine optimisation (at least to us) is about truly aligning your content to your natural target market and then trusting Google to do the honourable thing, and promote the truly best content.

Disquiet Dog can support your organisation through all stages of your SEO strategy, and in a number of ways: