Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3)
Unit 02 Understanding search engine optimisation for business (D/507/4156)
In this NCFE unit we will explain search engine optimisation (SEO) and how it can be used to increase online traffic for a business.
1.1 Summarising The Purpose And Function Of SEO
The purpose and function of SEO for a business is to get as many visitors coming to its website as possible, for them to return and the frequency on the website to be as often as possible.
In getting started with SEO we need to understand search engine basics
- How search engines work
- How search engines see the web
- Organic search explained
- Paid search explained
What Is A Search Engine?
A search engine is provided by a search engine business that allows a user to find content on the internet by entering keywords into the search engine. Search engines are google, bing and yandex and are online programs a user visits from a url webpage on the internet.
The following are search engine used on the internet:
- Bing
- DuckDuckGo open-source project
- Yahoo
- Ask
- Baidu
- WolframAlpha
- Boardreader
- StartPage
- Ecosia
- Qwant
- Search Encrypt
- SearX
- Yandex
- Gibiru
- Disconnect Search
- Yippy
- Swisscows
- Lukol
- MetaGer
- Gigablast
- Oscobo
Search engines are web programs tools that allow the user to find information on the world wide wide. In general a query would be entered into a search engine such as bing, aol, ask.com, duck duck go, yandex or google results would then be returned in a list of the most relevant first. A user can conduct a general web, or images, audio, video and news search.
Search engines work by listing the most relevant answer to the users query or question. Search engine result pages or SERP's are listed in order with a page title and brief description on a page. This information is clickable leading to the website the page is from. Other results can be local business listing, items for sale, images and maps.
Search engines see the web in code. They index pages based on the code they find on each website. This code would mostly be HTML and be found by web crawlers, spiders or bots in their attempt to crawl the whole of the web. Massive computer programs catalogue these coded pages apply their indexing, ranking and show the user results of a search query. Duplicate listing are not displayed and the ranking each search engine uses is a secret.
Organic search results are natural results in the eye of the search engine as appose to results by advertising. Organic search is mainly based on key word content, referring links and freshness of the content. The location where a person conducts a search also plays a factor in results. This is also the same for the device used for searching.
To rank the highest organically the following need to be optimised:
- Keywords (content, title and phases)
- User satisfaction (UX, UI, speed of page load etc)
- Backlinks from sites of authority
- Domain authority and correctly tagged images, sound elements
Paid search is adverting that may appear on the top or the side of a SERP's.
What Is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search engine optimisation is about being visible and have pages appear frequently in SERP's there by generating traffic.
To summarise the purpose of SEO is to appear as high up the page results i.e to be first on the SERPs. The SEO function is to drive relevant visitor traffic to the business or organisation website.
The above section 1 is about understanding what search engine optimisation (SEO) is.
Read digital promotion for a business
2.1 Comparing The Results Of Different Online Searches For Business Services And Products
Comparing and contrasting SERPs for the keywords African organic coffee as products and coffee roasting service as services.
| Search Engine | Product SERP | Service SERP |
| Bing |
119,000 resultsDate Language Region Change locationNear City, London · Change
Related Searches for African organic coffee Left handside Iamge and map Address |
17,700,000 results Coffee Roasters | Roasting Coffee Since 2001. | unionroasted.com
Map of Coffee Roasting Services
Ad People also ask
Left handside Related searches
|
48,100,000 (0.58 seconds) See African organic coffee Map of 3 businesses RESULT
Searches related to African organic coffee People also ask United Kingdom location for N1 From your Internet address |
About 482,000,000 results (0.52 seconds) 4 adverts Ad· Ad· Ad· Ad· Map three shops Ozone Coffee Roasters, Leonard Street
Ad· Discover more places Searches related to coffee roasting services United Kingdom location for N1 From your Internet address |
|
| Yandex |
232 thousand results found
|
2 million results found
Search by similar queries
|
| DuckDuckGo |
Shade Grown Arbor Day Coffee - Protects the Rain Forest Advert
Left hand side Organic Coffee at Amazon.co.uk - Low Prices on Organic Coffee Advert |
Map of 3 business Coffee Roasters - Next Day Roasting-Order by 4pm Ad
Shade Grown Arbor Day Coffee - Protects the Rain Forest Ad Left handside Ad |
- Lucy Ethiopian Coffee – Exporter www.lucyethiopiancoffee.com
- Ethiopia organic coffee exporter www.atlcoffeess.com
- Ibrahim Hussien Coffee Exporter - The best organic coffee ... www.ibrahimlimmucoffee.com
- Buy Ethiopian Coffee from Best Exporters - Ethiopia Market https://ethiopiamarket.com/directory/exporters/coffee/
- Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association www.ethiopianchamber.com
- Ethiopian Coffee Exporter | Organic Ethiopian Coffee https://ethiopiancoffeedistributor.com/
Organic search results are the main list of results the search engine displays. They are usually the main focus on the results page. There’s no cost for businesses to appear in the organic results.
SERPs for the keywords "The world worst website" the follow website comes top https://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/
The site https://edit.co.uk/blog/top-10-worst-websites/ also comes up and lists the websites below as bad examples. Comments are after the website.
Uglytub.com unsure what the website is about
Mrbottles.com gimiky
Jamilin.com all over the place with structure and more, shocking
Wholsesalemeatscoventry.com ugly
Gatesnfences.com not interesting
Pennyjuice.com poor use of colour
bolenreport.com boring, plain
007museum.com layout bad, low quality design based around a table, not consistent
Arngren.net lots of mini images in a directory style, very busy, overwhelming
Rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk lots of colours, fonts, sizes all over the place
Read NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3) course units
2.2 How SEO Generates Online Traffic For A Business
Being found is key in answering this question. If a business has a website that has great SEO qualities then target people who it want as its customers who are already looking for the business services or product means the business will be found via a search engine. Search engines allow people to look for the product or service they want, at the precise time they want it and in their location. Search engines can also help businesses to target the customers who are most interested in what they’re offering.
Organic online traffic is generated by SEO when a person who is looking for a product or service enters in keywords into the search box. If the best results is the company business then they may want the business products or services at that precise time. Being found this way is SEO online traffic for a business.
The above section 2 is about understanding what how SEO generates online traffic fora business.
3.1 Examples Of Methods To Increase Online Traffic
Note the question should be answered by a presentation
How to use SEO to increase online traffic for a business
Point out unique aspects of the business i.e the USP
Write a blog to sing the praises of the product or service eg Ethiopian beans
Make sure the business, organisation or shop appears on Google maps
Try to get other people or in an example say coffee-enthusiasts to review a business/website
On a technical level the website must be searchable by web crawlers, spiders or bots.
3.2 Ways To Increase Online Traffic For A Business. An Identification
To make sure as many interested customers as possible are seeing a business’s website displayed in their search results. Pay attention to:
Title tag, key words in the content page text and image file and image alt tags. All these need to be optimised for search engines. For example using the kinds of keywords or phases that interested people might be searching for – such as ‘fair trade’ or ‘east Africa’. These snippets of code are what the crawler find and use to index then rank a page. Meta descriptions are important also.
The title and meta description are used by the search engine to generate the actual search result, so they’d appear in the search results page. Use the phrase ‘coffee and exports’ in both title and meta data description.
A good title shows the company name and highlights what the page would be about, like ‘Black Coffee: Fresh coffee for Export’.
A good meta description is two short sentences that just summarise the page.
Answer question such as how and why. High quality pages, high levels of EAT Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. These are the guide lines from google on their search quality evaluator guidelines.
3.3 A Designed SEO Strategy For A Business
The importance of an SEO plan
For the best search engine results have a plan. The step-by-step process plan for SEO is as below:
The SEO process starts with how to choose keywords
- Keyword research and consider related topics
- Know what people are searching for
- See where site appears in the search results for those keywords
- If there are gaps where keywords aren’t bringing traffic to the site. Plan ways to fix these gaps and improve SEO performance
- Review plan and adjust results
- Consider looking at trends
Setting realistic SEO goals
- Stay up to date with search engine changes
- Reading about the trends in the industry of choice and use them to create content page
- Get inspiration from other websites and don’t forget to get feedback from customers
- Get opinions from customers on what might be missing from the business website
The next thing to do is keyword research. Keyword research is about find the following:
- Frequency of keywords
- Long tail keywords with sites like Bing Keyword Research
- Relevance to a user’s queries i.e their intent
To define success setting realistic goals for organic traffic ie SMART goals like conversations, sign ups, reach or engagement with visitor comments with dates and numbers from organic traffic is the best way to reach broader digital promotional objectives. Select measurements that matter and use webmaster tools like bing or google analytics can be used. Analytics tools are a great way to get information about:
Where website visitors are located
Which website visitors turn into paying customers
What content visitors interact with
To help deliver the best possible search results to the user, search engines look at how popular a site is and then build a domain authority based upon relevant links to and from that site. This demonstrates the site's trust and popularity.
Increasing relevant traffic to the business website is an ideal goal for a SEO plan and with the figures by 10% in 6 month. The more relevant the users are that visit the site, the more chances a business has to convert them into potential customers.
Some SEO goals
Complete a Technical SEO in 14 days which reports on back link numbers from other website/reviews and keywords relevance. The aim is to make web pages search friendly.
Complete a Mobile SEO audit in 14 days as above but for these devices.
Local SEO using local words in the search term.
Search Term Research
Inbound Content Marketing
Link Acquisition, Influencer Outreach and Digital PR
- Encouraging links to the website
- Engaging with the audience through good content
- Promoting the site with social media
Create individual pages for each language that a business wishes to support on its website. this will help ensure that the website is correctly indexed by search engines. Language annotations are useful as they help the search engines serve up the correct content to the correct user in a particular country. Building relationships with other businesses and similar sites means they are more likely to include a link to the business website from theirs. Ensuring that international audiences can see the products in their local currency with the correct delivery options is key to providing good customer service. Cross borders with SEO international search engine optimisation changes to make when the website crosses international borders
- Language
- Localisation
- Country targeting
Finally we need to review by measurements
On-page optimisation can be reviewed when Google Analytics has been set up and the reporting evaluated.
The above section 3 is about knowing how to use SEO to increase online traffic for a business.
References
https://www.noisylittlemonkey.com/
foydigital.westafricacasino.com
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
https://searchengineland.com/google-updates-search-quality-evaluator-guidelines-317189
https://serverguy.com/marketing/google-alternative-search-engines/
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