You might think that online businesses are the future. It may be that way, but the steps to get the best results with online sales have a lot in common with old-fashioned farming. Like the farmer, an SEO consultant works to make your crops as large as possible. The future is very likely based on online shopping, but strictly speaking, us keyboard jockeys are not much more than glorified digital farmers. You may have heard that “SEO is a method to have the most visibility online”, but it’s actually not that simple. SEO is not a single method. It is a barn full of different tools that together make your website sprout and grow. SEO has become such a big subject today that no one becomes an expert in the entire field. Just as farming is divided into agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry, SEO agencies often divide the tasks into “on-page SEO”, “off-page SEO” and “technical SEO”. There are thus three categories, and each of these includes hundreds of ranking techniques. An SEO consultant uses these techniques when helping you implement good digital marketing strategies.
But what is SEO really?
SEO is an acronym for the phrase «Search Engine Optimization». In short, SEO is a set of techniques for ranking websites in search engines in relation to the keywords potential customers use in their searches. A good ranking increases traffic to the site. More traffic gives more chances to create sales and increase sales. What makes SEO challenging is that the guidelines for good search engine optimization are constantly changing. The reason for this is that search engines – like Google, Bing and Yahoo! – tries to find a perfect formula for their SERP (search engine results pages), or what we like to refer to as a search in a search engine. The goal is for users to find what they are looking for, and for the content they find to be the best available on the internet. SEO ensures that the growth conditions are best for your digital farm. Not all farmers are equally moral. Like farmers deforesting the Amazon rainforest to get more arable land, people have been using SEO for as long as the Internet has existed. Sneaky salespeople always try to cheat themselves into the top of Google search by manipulating search engine ranking algorithms. This is something an experienced SEO consultant knows how to steer his clients away from as dishonest tactics are cracked down on by search engines like Google. Utilizing SEO has resulted in Google and other players keeping their ranking rules secret while looking for the perfect algorithm to determine the value of websites. Until anyone invents a set of rules that can not be manipulated and gives users top quality every time they do a web search, good SEO will depend on always keeping up to date on the latest changes in search engine policies. This is a key part of an SEO consultant’s job.
SEO’s three pillars
Like previously stated, search engine optimization has become a massive subject. It takes so much work to become an SEO expert that very few online businesses have the resources required. An SEO consultant, on the other hand, has made the SEO field their livelihood. They live to stay up to date on the latest developments in the market. This is how they can help websites sow their seeds for digital marketing and reap the greatest possible harvest in their industry. Initially it was mentioned that search engine optimization is divided into three categories to make the subject more manageable. Simply put, “on-page SEO” is about the part of the site that is visible to readers. “Off-page SEO” is about everything that happens outside your website, such as promotion on social media, guest blogging or working with backlinks. “Technical SEO” are invisible improvements to the website. This can be things like making the loading time faster, makeing the website more mobile-friendly or making sure that coding on the website is easy to understand for search engines. In other words, search engine optimization is too comprehensive to learn in addition to running an online business. A certain overview is of course desirable, but even SEO agencies divide their teams with specialists in each SEO category. A good SEO consultant will tell you what you should focus on and take care of the rest for you. For new web starters this will in many cases mean creating good routines for on-page SEO.
The basis of on-page SEO
Digital marketing is all about creating growth on the internet. In order for websites to grow and generate good sales, you need to nurture your content the way a farmer nurtures their crops. Growth is inhibited if they forget to fertilize the field. Your content is just as vulnerable, and risks fading away if you do not keep it maintained with regular fertilization.
Very few farmers engage in all forms of agriculture however. Those who know everything are either large farmers, advisers or teachers at the agricultural college. An SEO consultant is a teacher in search engine optimization. The first thing they look at when your online business knocks on their door is how good your chances of success are. That is, they carefully go through your website to look at opportunities for improvement and market potential. This is called an “SEO audit”.
Such an analysis of your company’s website facilitates the shaping of a good marketing strategy. Once the strategy begins to take shape, content must be adjusted and produced for search engine optimization. An SEO consultant can either produce the content for you, or train you in appropriate content production that takes into account search engine optimization. This phase is therefore about on-page SEO. The following four points are some of the most important in this category of search engine optimization:
1. Create quality!
What an SEO consultant knows for sure is that Google controls the internet market. Google says it more often with each passing year: “Quality is the most important factor for ranking.” Google is looking to promote the best texts, movies, images and podcasts available on the internet on all topics. It is your job to make sure that the quality of your content is the best available in your industry. Find out what’s useful to your readers, what’s valuable to your audience, and how to create content that holds a higher standard than your competitors! How to build a digital farm with values that can prove to be profitable for many years to come.
Read Google’s own manual, Page Quality Rating Guidelines to find out what they define as quality!
2: Be user-friendly!
Building a website that is not very user-friendly is a pitfall for beginners, but also a very specific task to tackle for an SEO consultant. A user-friendly website is clear, easy to navigate, mobile-friendly and produces content that is easy to read and easy to read for information. The key is to eliminate every conceivable annoyance. The website must work on all kinds of platforms and devices; It must be understandable to everyone, and it should allow for easy and direct communication between the site and users.
If you fail at one or more of these points, your readers will spend less time on the page. Google interprets this as a sign that your web pages should rank lower.
In the same way, the fertile soil becomes poor and the grain quality is lower if the farmer never harrows the soil. Few people are more fond of bread than Norwegians, and we place great demands on quality. No baker takes shortcuts and buys cheap grain for their baking. On the internet, readers are just as skeptical. A site that is “hard to digest” will send packing faster than you realize.
3: Use keywords!
Google has long tried to downplay the importance of keywords, but any SEO consultant knows that this still has a lot to say for ranking. Keywords, or key phrases, are key words in texts that tell search engines what the content is about. This is important to be aware of because the keywords determine which competitors the texts should be ranked in relation to.
The theory is quite simple, but the method can present challenges. An experienced SEO consultant working with on-page SEO will start by identifying your target audience and your fiercest competitors. Then they will find key keywords for both of these groups and create a battle plan. This is how they write texts aimed at specific readers with specific needs. In addition, the texts are shaped so that they have the best chance to rank higher than competing content on the internet.
Look at the SEO consultant as your digital agronomist. They assess your prerequisites, the level of competition and the customer potential. This is how they identify your most promising investment areas and find out which key values you should hone in order to win over other digital farmers in the same specialist field as yourself.
4: Remember the value of links!
An SEO consultant never completely stops thinking about links to internet pages they are trying to rank in the search engines. For the sake of simplicity, we should just mention that there is a difference between links that go around your own website, links that go out to other sites, and links that come from other sites to you. Of these three types, links coming in from other sites have the greatest value for your ranking.
A link to your site from another site is the same as a sign that someone likes your site. This is something an SEO consultant might work actively to provide. This is because websites that are respected in their own industry quickly catches the eye of Google.
This means that it has a lot to say who the link comes from. If you get a link from grandpa’s blog, Google will not be very impressed. If, on the other hand, you get a link from Wikipedia, Google will immediately take a closer look at your site. As a result, your company will most likely rise a few levels on the internet respect-scale, often called building authority.
Bonus: Authority
If we were to include a fifth item on this list, it would be appropriate to explain more about authority. However, this is a big topic that our colleagues in the SEO blog have written a good explanatory blog post about. We therefore refer to their posts, and also to their blog in general which is full of good SEO tips.
Conclusion
This has been a superficial and basic introduction to search engine optimization and the most important tasks of an on-page SEO consultant. You now have an overview of how SEO is used to strengthen online businesses, and a list of the most important requirements for websites when it comes to on-page SEO:
Five on-page SEO requirements that make your website competitive!
✔ Quality makes you valuable
✔ Good customer experience makes you stand out
✔ Keywords make you available
✔ Links give you a good reputation
✔ Authority gives you respect
Sources
Ahrefs: SEO Basics
Search Engine Land: What is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
Moz: On-page SEO