SEO Cork – What is SEO and Why is it so Important?
Only three little letters, SEO, but professional SEO services are so vitally important to your overall Digital Marketing success in Cork and Ireland.
In a nutshell, Search Engine Optimisation, which is a part of Search Engine Marketing refers to the multitude of processes that website designers follow to ensure your prospective clients find and visit your website before that of your competitors when they are performing searches online.
We are primarily concerned in Cork Ireland with ensuring effective SEO services for the Google search engine, Google currently processes well over 90% of online searches carried out in Ireland.
Google uses pieces of software called bots that crawl the internet following links from page to page searching for websites and new pages of content. Google will then “read” the pages and place them in its index.
Google’s algorithms will then decide how and where these pages should be served up to users in search results, Google will monitor the user’s interaction with these pages and amend the search rankings accordingly.
We are a professional SEO Company in Cork with over 15 years of experience helping companies of all sizes and all over Ireland achieve their SEO goals, we can do the same for you – Contact Us for your SEO Requirements.
Search Engine Optimisation can be divided into three parts.
Search engine optimisation can be split into 3 distinct categories, only one of which, On Page, can be performed to some degree by a non-professional. Not only do Technical SEO and Off Page SEO require the services of an expert, but performing effective “On-Page SEO” well will also require specialised knowledge and experience. Below we give a quick breakdown of the three categories of SEO.
1: Technical SEO
These are the things the site visitor does not see, quality of HTML coding, image sizing and compression, choice and quality of hosting, compression, HTML compression, JavaScript compression, lazy loading of images, Caching & Website Speed etc. The vast majority of these functions will require a developer.
2: On-Page SEO Optimisation
These are the things the site visitor sees, the text, choice of words, such as “SEO Cork” or other content, how many words per page, placement of text and headings, URL names, title tags, page descriptions etc. Although this can, to some degree be performed by a non-specialist the results will be better if performed by an SEO expert with access to all the right tools. Looking at the Traffic by Google Ranking graph further down the page we wouldn’t recommend any company leaving any part of SEO to an amateur.
3: Off-Page SEO Optimisation
These are things that the user does not see, quality backlinks form a large part of off-page SEO, these work better if the keyword such as SEO Cork is used in the anchor text, Social Media and Google views any “vote” for a page or website as an indication of quality and tracks Likes and Shares. Social Integration forms an important part of SEO. Good-quality backlinks are earned through producing really good quality content that others are willing to share and link to on their websites, but obtaining high-value backlinks from relevant websites with high Domain Authority will require the services of a professional. Backlinks to your website are consistently rated as one of the top-ranking factors by Google.
Contact Us for your SEO Requirements, we are SEO experts based in Cork
Local SEO Cork
Any business that has a brick-and-mortar store or office in Cork or anywhere else in Ireland will also benefit greatly from effective Local SEO to drive footfall to their store. This involves getting your business listed on Google Maps and ensuring that you get the lion’s share of local-based searches such as “Professional SEO Services in Cork” or “SEO Cork” which would be considered a local keyphrase for us.
What is involved in Professional SEO Services?
Google currently ranks your website according to over 200 different SEO ranking factors and is constantly updating its search engine algorithms to provide its users with better search results. Google’s algorithms are becoming more and more complex in an attempt to become more “intelligent” and “intuitive”.
Gone are the days when SEO involved simply stuffing your website full of specific keywords and getting a high ranking, you will be penalized for “Keyword Stuffing”, Google stresses the importance of good quality content designed for humans and not machines as a major ranking factor.
They reason that if a lot of people are visiting your site, reading multiple pages linking to and spending time on your site then it must be good SEO, search engine optimisation, is NOT a once-off issue but an ongoing process.
- Research – SEO research includes Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis and Content Research.
- Design – Only once we have completed our SEO research would we start to design an SEO and Content plan.
- Develop – Once we have a plan in place we will start to develop the content.
- Publish – The content will be published.
- Monitor – By making use of tools such as Google Console, Google Analytics & SEMRush we will monitor the effectiveness of the SEO, Content and your Competitors.
- Repeat – We will make improvements to the SEO and Content based on the data collected.
Any website that is not monitored and managed on an ongoing basis, including ongoing SEO, will become outdated and drop down the rankings resulting in lost revenue for your business.
Why you should invest in Professional SEO Services in Cork!
The importance of Professional SEO Services cannot be understated for a company that is serious about its website attracting customers. Very few companies are privileged enough to operate in a monopoly, most companies have numerous direct and in-direct competitors all of which are competing online for the attention of your potential customers.
SEO is effectively a race against your competitors to obtain and maintain a dominant position in Google Search Results for the keywords and phrases used by your potential customers. The market share of website visitors increases exponentially as you rise up the Google rankings. It’s not a sprint, SEO marketing is a slow process that requires constant management and investment to stay ahead of the pack. Your competitors are not going to stand still and neither can you.
As a modern business, your website is one of your more important sources of generating revenue, it is the core of your Inbound Marketing Strategy. We are surprised to see how many businesses have very poorly optimised websites, outdated websites or no website at all.
The way that people find products and services has changed dramatically over the last decade, especially with the younger generation and early adopters using smart mobile devices and voice searches.
Gone are the days of using books like the Yellow Pages, if we need to know something now we just take out our smartphone, hop on Google, type in a few words and we have our answer within a second.
If a prospective client is looking for a product or service your company offers, but your company website is not ranking in the top positions on Google search results it’s very unlikely you will get that business.
Research proves the importance of having a high Google ranking for your business. Exact figures vary depending on the industry and the nature of the Google search, but on average position one on Google search results for purely organic rankings gets 34.2% of the traffic which is double that of position 2 which gets 17.1% and 3 times that of position three which gets 11.4%, four gets 8.1% and five gets 7.4%.
The top three positions get 63% and the top five positions get around 80% of the Google traffic which leaves mere scraps for everyone below these rankings.
96% of the organic clicks are on page one with only 4% of searches continuing past page one, so if your company isn’t on the first page of Google Search Results for the keywords your potential customers use to find your products or services you are just about invisible.
The drop off in traffic depending on the ranking is even more noticeable on mobile devices which offer very small screen sizes with only the top few results visible without having to scroll down to see more results.
The importance of using the services of a professional Search Engine Optimisation expert in Cork.
We see dozens of Free or cheap web design services and products on the internet offering great DIY web design products and “Search Engine Optimisation” tools. If you are developing a personal, family or small club website that does not require any form of exposure then these sorts of sites are fine.
However, if you are a business that requires a website to generate business and revenue it requires maximum exposure, professional Search Engine Optimisation is your only option. Freebie websites will NOT work for you.
When you consider the facts that:
1: The internet has grown to over 1 Billion websites all competing for that elusive number one Google ranking in their industry for highly competitive keywords.
2: The correlation between your Google Search Ranking and Click Through Rates, discussed in the previous section on this page.
It becomes evident why as a serious business you need a website that has not only been professionally designed but is professionally managed and optimised on an ongoing basis.
The internet is a living changing environment, Google will make changes to their algorithms that will affect your rankings, your competitors are constantly trying to rank their websites above yours, and people’s search habits and methods change over time as technologies improve.
If you are not keeping your website up to date with all these changes you will drop in Google rankings and lose business.
Contact Us for your SEO in Cork
