Greenmedia have been doing search engine optimisation (SEO) for a long time. Long enough to know what works, what doesn’t and what’s happening in the industry as it develops day by day. SEO can be tricky. It’s an unfortunate fact that the market is full of people who claim they can work wonders for your company on search engines, when in reality they don’t have any authentic SEO specialism whatsoever. At Greenmedia, we’re not into smoke-and-mirror SEO. Just tangible, results-driven search engine performance that creates a positive return on investment.

In short, if your SEO isn’t generating traffic and paying for itself over time, then it isn’t working. After all, SEO is simply another form of marketing and it should be judged on the same merits as your other promotional work, ie; ROI.

SEO misconceptions and the real world

Contrary to what has become popular belief, SEO isn’t just about appearing in a respectable position on Google and the other major search engines. Yes it is great to be top or on the 1^st page for a search, but you’re achieving very little if the keyword is so obscure that no-one ever actually enters it into Google. There’s no skill in getting ranked on these types of terms, and there’s certainly no business benefit. If you’re ranking top for “dogsshoes”, well done, but you’ve got a select audience of none – and you’ve paid for the privilege. The genuine benefit of SEO in the real world – something that our clients can vouch for – is getting high rankings on the keywords that people are actually searching for.

When you start getting results on these types of searches SEO becomes less of a vanity project and more of an accountable marketing technique with astonishing potential.

Check out a few of our recent client SEO results – all on popular keyterms – to see what we mean, or get in touch to find out what we can do for your business search engine performance.

Audi – “audi north east” : 2.5m competing pages

G2IS – “cashless payment” : 1.45m competing pages

Protocol Education – “supply teaching Newcastle” :1m competing pages

Peugeot – “peugeot 107 sunderland” :15,500 competing pages

Direct Ford – “direct ford” : 7.24m competing pages

Green Consumer Guide – “environmental news” : 248m competing pages
Technorati Profile

While we at Greenmedia are fully paid-up devotees of the ‘content is king’ school of SEO, we know that content makes up just part of a websites overall search rankings. One of the other big themes that we advocate, and really gets results, is link building. Link building should form a significant part of your SEO programme, and if you’re ignoring it then your search results will most likely be suffering – or at least not working to their fullest potential. So, what is link building? Link building – the process of getting your web address on other people’s websites – is roughly made up of four different approaches;

• Buying links on directories – These can be as little as £30 per year, and many offer the chance to create a ‘profile’ style link containing your key USPs.
• Reciprocal links – Swapping links with like-minded people in your industry is a good way of getting your link out there. Be careful to avoid spammers offering these exchanges.
• Forums and blogs – Find an industry forum for your company and post a link. This can also stimulate debate on your products or services.
• Automated requests – Put a page on your site with instructions on how best to link to it.

These four techniques are all as important as each other, and should be factored into your strategy ongoing. Once you’ve got a good level of links, keep going! The more the better, and the process becomes quicker and easier over time.

Why is link building important?

Two reasons; firstly, the more links you have out there, the more chance people have to end up on your website – meaning more visitors. Secondly, and most importantly, major search engines clock the amount of incoming links your website has, and if these links are relevant it means that your site has a good level of credibility in its field and must be worth looking at. Just the same way as good, relevant content creates the all-important good user experience, lots of relevant links suggest there’s something of value on your site with the same end-result.