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What is SEO in Simple Words?

What is SEO?
What is SEO?

What is SEO in Layman’s Terms?

SEO in layman’s terms is about getting a website to the top of search engines like Google so that it gets more visitors and may make more money.

SEO (search engine optimisation) in simple terms is the science of adjusting, developing and tuning the content and code of a website and promoting that website on other sites throughout the web in ways that increase the chances of one or more of the pages of the website appearing in the search engine results pages (SERPS) in response to a user typing words known as “keywords” into the search box of their search engine (e.g. Google, Bing or Yahoo). The term SEO is usually used when referring to organic SEO but is sometimes also used in a broader sense to encompass PPC services for which different optimisation techniques are required.

What Is a Keyword?

The expressions “keyword”, “key phrase”, “search term” and “search query” all refer to the particular words that might be entered by a user (surfer) into their search engine. A relatively small change in the keyword entered can sometimes lead to a completely different set of websites appearing.

The Value of a Top Position in Google

Surfers land on the first page of the SERPS and will tend to see and visit the websites that appear at the top of the list for a number of reasons. This may be partly because they will usually see these results first but there is often also an assumption made by surfers that the sites at the top of the list are more likely to be the best ones to visit because Google must have worked that out somehow.

The Financial Incentive for SEO

The top positions in Google for the most valuable keywords can result in huge financial gains for the business owning the website at the top and therefore the top positions are fiercely contested. The adoption of search engine optimisation and the growth in the number of SEO service providers has been fuelled by these financial rewards.

Google’s Ranking Algorithm

For any particular query or keyword, Google has to work out which websites to show in its results and its aim is to provide the most relevant and useful results to the surfer as quickly as possible. Google has openly stated that it uses more than 200 ‘signals’ or factors about each web page to determine whether or not to show it in its results, which place to show it and what to show for it. One important factor in determining whether a website should appear is known to be relevance which is a calculation of how relevant a page is to the query entered. One example of relevance is how closely the content (words) on a website page matches the words entered by the surfer. Another important factor is the authority of the web page. Having selected which sites are relevant to the query, Google then has to determine which order they are shown in or in what order they should be ranked. Google’s program for selecting and ranking the websites that appear in its results is commonly referred to as Google’s ranking algorithm or “algo”.

Choosing Keyword Targets

Since the top positions for the most valuable keywords are so fiercely contested, not every website has a realistic chance of appearing on page 1 for those keywords, let alone number 1, so an important part of the job of an SEO specialist is identifying the precise keywords for which a business might be able to compete for a top ranking. SEO specialists are able to turn their understanding of the search engine algorithms to the advantage of their clients.

On-Site SEO

The hundreds of factors that Google takes into account when deciding whether and where to rank a web page are often broadly divided into two categories. The first category is often referred to as “on-site SEO” and the second is “off-site SEO”. On-site SEO is concerned with the characteristics of your own website like the wording on its pages, the background HTML code, the domain it is hosted on etc. On-site SEO also includes matters like ensuring that your website has been found by the search engines in the first place and that your website’s content has been included in their records (their index). In order for your site to appear in the search results at all several things need to happen.

Spidering and Indexing

The search engines need to be aware of the existence of your site. Your website files will be hosted on a server somewhere and in the case of a new site, something needs to alert Google to the fact that your site even exists. Once the search engine is aware, it will execute a program known as a ‘spider’ or ‘robot’ to read your website’s files. Google’s spider is called googlebot and each search engine has its own spider. Once your files have been read, the content in them will be assessed for inclusion in Google’s index. Some content may be excluded. This might be because it is not considered suitable or it may be because googlebot can not read it. Sometimes obstacles in the website code can prevent googlebot from being able to follow and interpret the code and these obstacles or blocks can therefore hinder the indexation of your site. Making sure your site is structured and coded in a way that the search engines can read is vital.

Search Engine Submission

Search engines provide a facility for you to submit your site for consideration of being including in their index (records) and in the past, SEO service providers offered search engine submission services to submit your site to large numbers of search engines. The more common way to get a new website indexed nowadays is to link to it from another established site. When the search engine spider next visits the established website it will follow the new link on it through to your website. Search engine submission services are still offered but are no longer a valuable service.

Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO includes factors about other websites that link to yours. Off-site SEO is largely concerned with back links or inbound links. Back links are hyperlinks on other websites which, when clicked on by the surfer, transfer the surfer to your website.

How Do Back Links Work?

If another website links to your website, Google’s algo interprets this as a ‘vote’ for your site. The logic is that if lots of other sites link to yours, then these links must be signs that your site is considered, by the other site owners, as useful to their visitors (because they are effectively directing their visitors to your site). The more back links or votes you have, the higher the status your own website will achieve and the better it will rank. That is actually a vast over-simplification but hopefully it gets over the point about links acting as votes.

Some Back Links Are More Equal Than Others

All back links are not equal. Or, to plagiarise George Orwell (from Animal Farm), “all back links are equal but some are more equal than others”! Back links have different characteristics for example whether they are on a high authority site, whether they are on a site or page that is about the same topic as your site and also what “anchor text” the back link contains.

What is Back Link Anchor Text?

Simply put, the anchor text is the text that you see in a hyperlink. For example, a hyperlink to the home page of this website might appear like this www.adjuice.co.uk, like this AdJuice or like this SEO Companies Surrey. The anchor text in the last example is “SEO Companies Surrey”. Of these 3 links, the last one is most likely to help the home page (the target page) rank better for the keywords in the anchor text. Another over-simplification but this tends to be the case as a general rule.

Back Link Relevance And Back Link Authority

Back links work a bit like references. If you were applying for a job and needed to supply references, your chances of coming first out of all the candidates is increased if you have the best references. If you were applying for a job as a local councillor and supplied a reference from a previous employer in the construction industry that might be useful. If you were able to supply a reference from a local government office, that would put you on an even better standing. That’s like a relevant back link because the reference is from a source that is on the same topic. But if you were able to supply a personal reference from the Prime Minister, now you have the best reference possible because it is both relevant and high authority. The best back links are from high authority sites that are about the same subject as your site and contain your target keywords in their anchor text.

Do I Need Off-Site SEO?

To be most effective in search marketing terms, a website should have both its on-site SEO factors and its off-site SEO factors optimised. In a not very competitive online niche market, on-site factors alone may be sufficient to rank well but usually it is not possible to rank number 1 for a highly competitive keyword without very good off-site SEO factors also present.

Link Builders

The importance of back links to ranking well is so well established that it has resulted in a whole industry emerging to supply the needs of link builders. The industry includes armies of link sellers, link exchange schemes and link farms created to manipulate rankings or ‘game the algo’.

Back Link Quality Versus Quantity

High quality links are not easy to acquire so some SEO companies and webmasters go after quantity rather than quality and it is not uncommon to see websites with tens of thousands of low quality back links in the quest to gain the number 1 position in Google. Many of the largest SEO companies in the UK are involved in large scale link spam schemes (“spamdexing”) of one form or another in order to acquire tens of thousands of links for their clients.

Google Ranking Penalties

As much as SEO companies try to game the system, Google tries to detect and clamp down on manipulation of the results in order to preserve the integrity of those results for the benefit of its users. If blatant manipulation is detected, Google has been known to administer severe penalties that can sink a website without a trace in a matter of minutes. Success that depends on breaking search engine rules is more risky and is not therefore a sound or robust long term business strategy.

Merit Based Back Links

The back links that are most likely to stand the test of time and therefore provide the most stable long term rankings are those links that are merit based i.e. they have been genuinely earned by virtue of the usefulness of the website to its visitors. In other words, if your site provides something that your visitors find useful they may wish to refer to it again and are more likely to link to it. They can do this in any number of ways such as linking to your website in their own website, their blog, online articles, press releases or social media sites.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

SEO services may also encompass CRO (conversion rate optimisation) which addresses the problem of how to maximise the chances of a surfer, after arriving on your website, of carrying out the actions that meet your goals. A conversion may be a sale or, for sites that don’t sell online, it may be some other identifiable action that you wish your visitor to take such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a file or contacting you.

SEO in a Nutshell

What SEO boils down to is the employment of all these SEO techniques to maximise the number of qualified i.e. relevant visitors. The correct choice of keywords and an effective SEO campaign can help to ensure that your site ranks highly for the keywords that will attract the right visitors to the pages within your website that are most relevant to their search query. The wrong choice of keywords may result in no rankings or possibly good rankings but which attract the wrong kind of visitors.

The Four Cornerstones of SEO

Effective SEO should be underpinned by:
1. Website content that is useful to your target market or audience .
2. Website structure that allows your content to be found easily by surfers and robots.
3. Website promotion that maximises visibility of your content.
4. Measurement and management to enable continuous improvement.

Each one of these four cornerstones may be the subject of a separate strategy. Dealing with website content is not as simple as creating it, publishing it on your website and inserting keywords throughout the site. It is a specific website page that appears, or ranks, in the search engine results for any given term, not a website. How you organise the content of your website into different pages and how the navigational hierarchy of the site is decided may make or break its effectiveness from a search marketing perspective. Internal linking structure between the pages within a site can also make a big difference to rankings and help your visitors find the content that is most useful to them.

SEO encompasses many aspects of site design and that is why the worst mistake to make is to wait until your website has been finalised before you contact an SEO company.

Beginners’ Guides to SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide – google.com

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO – moz.com

SEO for Beginners: an Introduction to SEO Basics – searchenginejournal.com

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Google Rating
5.0
Based on 26 reviews
AdJuice SEO Services Ltd
AdJuice SEO Services Ltd
5.0
Mark at SkateStation
Mark at SkateStation
08:12 20 Jul 20
We found Ewan after looking at various businesses in the Surrey area to set up and run our Google Shopping Ads/PPC account. Ewan is both passionate and extremely thorough in making sure we get an increasing ROI. The frequent reporting and advice on what we can do our end is on a personal level that I would imagine many other companies can’t match. We’re seeing our online sales revenue grow monthly and we’ll certainly continue to invest more through Ewan.
Des Earthcare
Des Earthcare
22:19 10 Mar 20
We very rarely write reviews or recommend other companies, but we felt we just had to give AdJuice a 5 star review, at the very least... We thoroughly recommend AdJuice and Ewan to any business looking for a professional, top quality SEO company.Our garden design and landscaping business, EarthCare Gardens Ltd is based on the borders of South London and Surrey, so we need a constant pipeline of decent projects and quality leads within a hyper local area. We tried several so called SEO experts over the years... Only to be disappointed time and time again, throwing good money after bad and getting nothing but rubbish services in return.Then, luckily, we found AdJuice... Ewan is a real pleasure to work with, super efficient, methodical and actually dedicated to the Art and Science of online marketing and Search Engine Optimization... And the icing on the cake: Ewan delivers really great results and outstanding value for money.If you've searched in vain for SEO experts, then search no more... You will see a superb Return on Investment and get plenty of good quality, online leads for your business too, but only if you work with Ewan and AdJuice SEO Services Ltd.
James Johnstone
James Johnstone
08:27 07 Jun 18
I've been working with Ewan for over 5 years and there's no one else I'd recommend for SEO and AdWords. This is simply because Ewan get's results and he gets the best results of the myriad of 'SEO experts' we've gone through (and there have been a lot of 'duds'). As well as the good and quantifiable RoI he achieves, it's his business acumen and diligence that differentiates him with other providers.
Sally Powell
Sally Powell
15:24 17 May 18
If you're looking for local seo in Surrey I can't recommend adjuice enough. Ewan was extremeley knowledgeable and was able to help my business re seo where others had failed.
Helen Atkinson
Helen Atkinson
16:11 02 May 18
I had recently set up an Adwords (PPC) account for our business but was unsure if it was set up correctly and so was looking for someone to review it. I really wanted to work with a local company and found Surrey based Adjuice. What I particularly appreciated about my initial call with Ewan was that there was no pressure selling. Ewan provided a fantastic review of my Adwords account with clear steps on how I can make improvements, which included bonus information on improving our website for local SEO. I would highly recommend Ewan, he is clearly very knowledgeable and I look forward to working with him in the future.
Cotton and Olive
Cotton and Olive
17:45 30 Mar 18
As an e-commerce retail shop owner based in Surrey, I asked Ewan to do SEO review of my e-commerce site to identify and address suspected problems. He turned up with an expert diagnosis of the existing problems and full recommendations to fix these serious issues causing a loss of traffic. He took his time and forwarded a full report with evidences and screenshots. Hence, it was easy for me to follow his diagnostic report which enabled me to act quicker to fix these problems. I will certainly recommend him if you are looking for Surrey based SEO service.
Ruth Roy
Ruth Roy
09:45 25 Oct 17
We commissioned Ewan to undertake some SEO research and produce a report with recommendations for one of our clients. Ewan produced a detailed report with many valuable insights into our client’s on-site SEO. We would use Ewan and AdJuice for future projects.
Nick Jones
Nick Jones
14:01 31 Aug 17
Adjuice have great knowledge of SEO and have provided us with great insight on growing our online presence.
James Titler
James Titler
13:10 25 Aug 17
It's been a pleasure working with Ewan and his knowledge of SEO has helped us grow our online presence - not just on Google My Business but his advice and help with meeting broader SEO objectives.
Pixies Nursery School
Pixies Nursery School
11:49 18 Aug 17
In 2015 we asked Ewan for SEO advice on our last website, prior to embarking on a mobile-friendly website upgrade project in 2016. Ewan advised on our existing situation, especially in connection with our visibility in Google’s local business search results. There were technical problems with our Google My Business listing and our listing on Google Maps which needed Ewan to speak directly with a member of Google’s staff to get them fixed. Ewan also advised on the SEO aspects of our new website at the design stage. Ewan’s work has helped us appear number 1 in Google’s local business results for some important search terms. Ewan was generous with his time and a pleasure to work with.
Donald Minchin
Donald Minchin
13:18 17 Aug 17
One of the best decisions that I made when I was recommended to Adjuice.My business has gone from strength to strength under the watchful eye of Adjuice looking after my online activity. I no longer have to worry about where my business ranks in google and it allows me to concentrate on increasing my companies business.Thanks for all your help.
Warren Ransome
Warren Ransome
08:26 17 Aug 17
Ewan knows SEO extremely well. I would recommend Adjuice without hesitation. We are still on page 1 for most of the keyword work Ewan did over 5 years ago. His work is money very well spent!!
Qdos Computer Consultants
Qdos Computer Consultants
08:24 17 Aug 17
AdJuice provides a valuable SEO service to Qdos and several of our clients. Ewan has an excellent technical knowledge of SEO and PPC, providing detailed monthly progress reports full of recommendations, and always giving thorough and well thought out responses to our questions.
Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith
09:00 11 Aug 17
Great report from Ewan to help us review, plan and invigorate our efforts on the web.
Olivia Shaw
Olivia Shaw
08:20 26 Jul 17
I have been working for 6 months with Ewan at Adjuice on a PPC (pay per click) campaign on Google adwords. Ewan's advice and expertise has been excellent and he is always extremely prompt and responsive to my questions and queries. His knowledge and understanding of how Adwords operates seems to be extensive and, as a result, the campaign has been extremely successful thanks to Ewan.
Shaun Perfect
Shaun Perfect
19:24 07 Oct 16
I've used Adjuice for a few years now with great results.
Martin Brown
Martin Brown
15:35 11 Sep 16
We've worked with AdJuice for over two years and it has made a major difference to where our company appears in search results. Ewan is always helpful, explains things clearly and prompt to respond.
Synergy Physio
Synergy Physio
06:57 20 May 16
Ewan at Adjuice has been helping me with our company's SEO since 2015 when I switched over to working with him. From the start he did a complete audit of my site and we came up with a plan of how we would build our presence and rankings. He has offered me some great advice and has been able to isolate the key areas where we can make large improvements. Each month I get a report with suggested improvements which are quick and easy for me to implement. Since bringing Ewan onboard our traffic has improved markedly and I know it will continue to do so.
Anna Haynes
Anna Haynes
16:06 09 Nov 15
We have worked with Ewan at AdJuice over several years and his SEO knowledge, practical approach and advice have led to significant improvement in our Google rankings across a number of key words. His contribution to our e-commerce business growth has been invaluable to us.
Michael Swinn
Michael Swinn
11:38 02 Feb 15
Adjuice have been very helpful in sorting out our SEO problems and our google rankings have gone from somewhere around page 15 to page 1. The ongoing monthly support and input from Adjuice is money well spent.
Stretch Ceilings
Stretch Ceilings
12:52 26 Nov 14
Adjuice has really helped us to understand the ways in which our website can benefit our business. We now have more structure to our Adwords campaign and have therefore seen a great improvement in our search results.
Ben Stanbrook
Ben Stanbrook
12:11 06 Oct 14
Ewan has been extremely supportive and insightful with regards to improving and optimising our website. He is always on hand to provide a thorough analysis of all of the work which he delivers, and has helped us to gain a much better understanding of SEO and what we can do to continue developing our website.Stanbrook & Nicholson
Joe Banner
Joe Banner
16:18 22 Nov 13
Having worked with Ewan Kennedy and Adjuice several times over the years, I have found his SEO expertise invaluable.He is always polite, attentive to my (and my client's) needs and makes a point of keeping himself informed of the latest and best techniques in order to offer the best possible service.I'm happy to recommend him to small and medium sized businesses that are looking for better representation in search engine results.
John Lennie
John Lennie
23:56 30 Oct 13
Ewan and his team have been instrumental in the success of my business. His genuine interest in its growth from the beginning has enabled me to achieve the results I've wanted in a relatively short period of time. His extensive knowledge on all things Seo and experience with Adwords has been crucial to the set up of my business. Without his help and guidance I would not be where I am today.
Elspeth Evans
Elspeth Evans
21:41 27 Oct 13
Ewan at Adjuice helped me with our company's SEO, offering advice which was practical and relevant to the nature and size of our business. Ewan understood our business needs and advice was provided in a language that I was able to understand and implement. Our website ranking benefited from his advice.
Dominic Tantram
Dominic Tantram
15:07 09 Oct 13
Adjuice has provided a first class bespoke SEO service, helping to cut through the SEO jungle and improve rankings. Having been disappointed by our previous supplier, Ewan Kennedy from Adjuice has become a trusted supplier to our business, providing strategic, tactical and practical support as and when needed, all backed up with excellent communication.
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AdJuice SEO Services Ltd
7 Devonshire Drive
Camberley
Surrey
GU15 3UB
United Kingdom

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