Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) refers to various techniques used for improving a website’s ranking in the major search engines, especially Google and Bing.

If SEO is done well, it can be a serious game changer. You can quite literally see your sales and/or sale leads rise by an order of magnitude or more! With a good placement in the search engine results, you can easily go from five new newsletter subscribers a week to five new newsletters subscribers per hour — or even more!

On the other hand, if your SEO is poorly executed, you can end up spending money with little to no return on your investment. Even worse, some so called SEO experts actually use techniques that are considered spam by Google. If these techniques are used in association with your website, they can actually get your website severely demoted in the search engine results or even banned. If this happens, it can be very difficult to fix. Even in very capable hands, the restoration process can take many months or even years so you want to be sure to avoid this.

For the reasons above, one of the most important business decisions you will make is which SEO consultant you decide to work with. To give you insight that will help you make this decision more wisely, we describe below the three basic types of SEO consultant:

1. Gorilla SEO

The gorilla is the king of the internet jungle! He is super smart, has the upmost integrity, and is extremely powerful! He uses all of the most powerful SEO techniques available and never — NOT EVER — stoops to using any technique that could even remotely be considered spamming by Google, Bing, or other search engines.

The gorilla has a great deal of stamina and longevity. He works tirelessly to keep your wesbite on top in the search engine results no matter how much effort that takes. He never loses focus on the end goal of achieving the best possible search engine results for your website.

The gorilla is extremely adaptable to the ever changing internet environment. He constantly monitors your stats and responds to any changes he sees. He updates and tweaks your website as much as needed to keep your website on top in the search engine results.

The gorilla is innovative. He keeps abreast of all the latest updates by Google and employs new techniques when and where appropriate.

The gorilla understands the value of teamwork. He takes the time to get to know you personally so he can better understand your needs. He also learns everything he can about your business so he can tailor your SEO campaign because he truly cares about getting you the best results possible.

2. Monkey SEO

The monkey’s intellectual capabilities can’t match the gorilla. Even if he tries really hard to learn the most powerful SEO techniques, he never really masters all the nuances of these techniques. Often times, he can’t see the forest for the trees. In other words, he gets so hung up on one or a few specific details, he never quite gets the big picture. He also sometimes has trouble distinguishing between legitimate SEO and spam.

The monkey may not mean you any harm but may nevertheless end up hurting your search engine rankings due to incompetence. He’ll squeal with joy after he takes your money but you’ll get little to no return at best, and at worst, you’ll see your search engine results go down the toilet.

The monkey is often chasing the latest “gray hat” trend, i.e. spammy technique, he’s read about on some SEO forum. In fact, every time you try to talk with him, he probably spends more time chattering away about this than getting to know your business better and mapping out an intelligent SEO strategy that will work for you long-term. This is because he doesn’t fully comprehend the concept of evergreen SEO that will keep your website ranking well for years to come.

The monkey just isn’t savvy enough to keep up with the latest trends, especially considering how fast things can change on the internet. These rapid changes become so overwhelming for him, he finds it difficult just to break even on SEO performance.

Overall, the monkey is a poor bet for SEO and no match for the gorilla. Even if the monkey costs less than the gorilla, it truly isn’t worth the money you would spend on the monkey because you’ll get little to nothing in return. Your search engine rankings may even get dinged by accident due to the monkey’s incompetence.

3. Snake SEO

The snake falls among the worst of the worst SEO consultants! You should think of him in the same category as a really dishonest used car salesman — he’s a flim flam artist! He may be smart but he uses his intelligence to deceive and cheat people rather than truly helping them.

The snake doesn’t care about real results. He figures he can take your money and it will be in his bank account before you catch on that he’s tricked you. His goal is usually to reel you in by big promises at an extremely low price.

The snake is always into one scam or another. He’ll have plenty of tricks up his sleeve too. For example, he may show you a screenshot of a supposed top ten ranking he achieved for a website but fails to mention that top ten ranking only lasted two weeks until Google penalized the long-standing site 100 places due to spam (which essentially means zero traffic)! This is the same as a used car salesman putting sawdust in the gears so the car runs smooth for a short while and then burns out!

The snake may also use his equally snake-like friends as references to get you to trust him. He may even maintain a few legitimate clients to use for this purpose while he rips off everyone else.

The snake may use whatever black hat technique that seems to be working that week (snakes tend to share these spammy techniques with each other) to temporarily give you a rise in the search engine rankings. He doesn’t care that this spammy technique will get you flagged by Google as a site that spams, and may even get your domain banned for life!

Overall, the snake is essentially the opposite from a gorilla and you need to stay away! If you do hire a snake, it will be an utter waste of money, and worse, you will likely see negative results for doing so, including negative results that will be very difficult to recover from.

How Search Engine Optimisation Works

Generally speaking, SEO is split into two main categories:

A. On Page SEO

On page SEO are changes we make in the coding of your website to improve your search engine rankings. A simple example would be to change the title and/or headers on your page(s) to better target your primary keywords. Another simple example would be adding alternative text tags to your images to include more pertinent keywords. A more complicated example would be to change the internal linking structure of your website. These are links on one page of your website that link to other pages within your website, i.e. internal links. Changing the directory structure and changing the underlying hierarchy of your code are two more examples of advanced on page SEO. The latter relates to what a search engine spider sees when it indexes your website, not what a human sees when they land on your page. Adding rich well-written content (and new pages) to your website can also be a very effective form of on page SEO.

B. Off Page SEO

Off page SEO are techniques that we use to improve your search engine rankings but they can’t be applied directly to your website. For example, we may work on establishing more links to your website, preferably from highly ranked complementary websites, and always from “good neighborhoods.” Don’t worry, unlike the monkeys and snakes you’ll read about below, we gorillas NEVER place links to our client’s websites in “poor neighborhoods,” i.e. on websites that Google would consider spammy or to have only thin content.

Another example of off page SEO would be to increase your social media presence and get your blog posts to go viral on social media. We also employ several other innovative off page SEO techniques depending on the type of business you have.

We would be happy to discuss the techniques above and other SEO techniques we use with you in more detail if you call us. We can also review your current website if you have one for its SEO potential, make modifications to your website to improve your SEO, or build you a brand new site from the ground up that will be entirely search engine optimised.

Final Words Of Wisdom

Watch out for snakes and monkeys who dress up like gorillas at a masquerade party! Always interview fully any potential SEO consultant before you hire them and give them control over your website. If they brush you off when you want to interview them, move on! If they can’t answer tough questions, move on! If they take no effort to get to know you and your business, move on! If they even hint at using any technique that sounds like spam, run away as fast as you can!

The Glasgow Gorilla is always ready and willing to talk with you about your business and answer any questions you may have. We offer a free initial consultation because we want to establish long-term relationships with our clients. We consider your online success our online success and we take great pride in the SEO work we provide to our clients. Go ahead and give us a call today to set up a free initial consultation.

The Glasgow Gorilla is more than happy to pound his chest as we watch your sales skyrocket and your search engine results rise dramatically and then stay on top!