There’s a huge amount of search engine optimisation advice available on the web. Any business owner who has tried to teach themselves will quickly have found how overwhelming it can be. Almost every source seems to say something different. Information can be out of date, contradictory or simply wrong.

SEO is really about making sure that your site features the things that Google wants to see. Google wants to send its users to the best possible destinations, and it uses a lot of complex criteria to work out what the best places are (hint: it’s not about keywords!)

SEO campaigns are usually ongoing, and the tasks break down roughly as follows:

  • Technical work (5%)
    Making sure that your site can be crawled by Google and has the tags and technical features it needs to see. This work is mostly under the hood, and invisible to ordinary visitors.
  • On site work (45%)
    Creating a constant stream of good quality content for Google (and your visitors) to get its teeth stuck into. Great content will also make link building easier, as people are more likely to be impressed with your site.
  • Link building (50%)
    Getting other site owners to link to you – social engineering, in other words! This is by far the toughest part of the job.

Of course, on top of this, there are the usual housekeeping things, such as collecting metrics, measuring results, working on strategy and generating regular reports.