The Fundamentals of SEO

A Beginner’s Guide

Whether you’re new to the fundamentals of SEO or are looking to refine your strategy, our blog series is here to give you actionable insights, tips, and expert advice to help you navigate the world of SEO. In this guide, we’ll give you a basic overview of Search Engine Optimisation, but in upcoming blogs we will go into more detail, helping you enhance your SEO strategy.

Here at Blumilk, we have a dedicated team ready to enhance your SEO strategy and improve your website’s performance. Get in touch to find out how we can help. 

So, what is SEO and why does it matter for businesses?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps your business to rank higher in search results. Ultimately, if your business doesn’t appear on the first page of Google when a user searches for a relevant term, it might as well be invisible. By ensuring your content and website are optimised, potential customers will find it easier to discover your products and services. Whilst ranking highly in search is important, it’s also vital to consider attracting quality traffic as different businesses have varying needs. 

How do search engines work?  

Search engines, like Google, are designed to help users find relevant information online. With millions of websites competing for attention, optimising your content helps your site be visible. The goal is to provide appropriate, authoritative, and useful information while naturally incorporating key SEO elements. Search engines also consider user engagement metrics (like click-through rates and bounce rates) when determining rankings.  

What are the key elements of SEO?

There are three key components of SEO, all of which play critical roles. Here’s a basic overview: 

On-Page SEO

• Keyword research is the foundation of SEO copywriting. Understanding what terms your audience is searching for enables you to craft content around those keywords. Natural keyword placement is best, search engines penalise keyword stuffing. 
• Internal links help users and search engines navigate your website, improving the SEO value of individual pages.

Off-Page SEO (also known as off-site SEO) 

• Linking to authoritative external sources can signal to search engines that your content is well-researched and trustworthy. These links are referred to as backlinks in SEO terms. Not all backlinks are equally valuable, the quality and relevance of backlinks matter more than quantity. Spammy or irrelevant links can harm SEO. 
• Social media doesn’t directly impact search results but is pivotal in driving traffic to your website.
• Similarly, influencer marketing – working with bloggers and content creators – is an excellent way to tap into new audiences.
• Local SEO is the task of optimising your content to appear in local searches. Claiming and managing your Google Business Profile is a key element of this. Local citations and reviews also enhance your local search presence.

Technical SEO

• An important consideration is how easily search engines can crawl and index your website.  Search engines love well-organised content. 
• Using header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) helps structure your content that’s easy for users and search engines to read. 
• Site speed and secure connections are also important. 
• Over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices, so your content must be mobile-friendly. Ensuring readability with shorter sentences, paragraphs, and bullet points can keep readers engaged.

What are the benefits of SEO?

• Increased Website Traffic

Ranking higher in search results leads to increased organic traffic. Providing valuable content ensures this traffic is targeted to your business offering. 

• Build Credibility and Trust

By ranking higher in search results, you can be perceived as more trustworthy. Optimising content helps your business to establish authority in your industry by providing valuable insights and a great user experience. 

• Cost-Effective Marketing

SEO can be more cost-effective than other forms of advertising, it does however take time and effort with results taking months to show. The investment is worth it and will give your business a competitive advantage. 

• Better User Experience

It’s important to recognise that SEO isn’t just about search engines, it enhances the overall experience. From loading times to mobile-friendly navigation, SEO improves the experience for all visitors, leading to more conversions.  

• Local Visibility

If your business operates locally, it must appear high up in search results. Optimising for local search ensures your business reaches nearby customers ready to purchase. 

Common SEO Myths Debunked

“SEO is a one-off effort with immediate results”

SEO is an ongoing process in a constantly evolving landscape. Staying up-to-date with developments will set you ahead of competitors. 

“Keyword stuffing improves rankings”

This can be harmful to your rankings. Remember, your content needs to be relevant, valuable, and make sense.

Ready to boost your search rankings or want to learn more about the fundamentals of SEO?

Get in touch today to discuss how we can tailor an SEO plan to meet your specific needs to reach your business goals and drive measurable results.

Ellingham Hall: How Changing the Structure of a Website Can Improve Its User Experience

Ellingham Hall is a luxury wedding venue and its business has expanded hugely over the past few years. As is expected, to accommodate this growth their site has been added to and altered at various stages over this period. When the time came for us here at Blumilk to reorganise and redesign parts of their site, we recognised it as an opportunity to improve their user experience (UX).

Here’s why it’s important to provide a positive user experience and how we applied this understanding to Ellingham Hall’s website redesign!

Providing a Positive User Experience: The Supermarket Analogy

For most businesses, customer satisfaction is an absolute top priority as this factor often determines the likelihood of a person making a purchase, inquiry, referral, or return. Due to the many digital developments over recent decades, this requirement to satisfy customers’ needs and intentions has slowly but surely crept into online – as well as physical – spaces.

Supermarkets are often used as an analogy for search engine optimisation, website redesigns, and UX. Whilst we might not think about it when we go, supermarkets are very carefully planned in various ways. For example:

• Isles are laid out specifically to influence the route made by shoppers e.g. having checkoutsspanning the width of the storeto make it as easy as possible to pay
• Isles are clearly labelled and follow an intuitive order/hierarchy
• Products are labelled andplaced in specific ways to encourage greater attention to certain products e.g. ‘grabbable’ items are placed at the entrance and by checkouts to encourage impulse purchases
• The warehouse section is always out of site of users, similar to the ‘back-end’ or ‘off-page’ elements of a website
• Cold/freezer sections are often grouped together for greater efficiency, just as navigation bars use groupings

Websites can be considered as much a ‘space’ as anything else in the physical world because they also require planning, navigation, and maintenance. Over time, pages will be added and removed, links will be changed, content will be altered, images will be uploaded and deleted, links will be added, and so on. If this isn’t regularly reviewed, this can start to damage what’s termed the UX.

The Ellingham Hall Site: What Was Needed?

When Ellingham Hall approached us to redesign their website we were excited at the opportunity and challenge ahead, recognising it as a great opportunity to improve their UX.

Getting started, we devised some specific objectives to help us accomplish this aim, which were to:

• Make it easier for Ellingham Hall to update and upload changes to the site
• Make their navigation function more consistent across the site’s pages
• Alter the templates used on some pages to make the site more mobile friendly
• Make Ellingham Hall’s popular gallery page more search friendly
• Create and implement consistent call to action buttons on necessary pages

In theory, these changes would improve the site’s UX by reintroducing consistency to the site and making it more seamless and intuitive to use. These changes would also give Ellingham Hall more influence over the user journey, allowing them to encourage users along predetermined or favourable routes.

The Ellingham Hall Site: What Did We Do?

This was a particularly interesting project as it was very varied, involving multiple specific parts of the site.

We started by reviewing the current sitemap and proposing a more effective version which used our custom templates in a more consistent way across the site’s various pages. We then changed the layout of these pages to incorporate more content and to showcase the amazing photography of the venue, which is a key driving point for the site.

Once this was done, our talented developer created a bespoke search and filter system for their gallery page. This means that people can easily search for their wedding photos within the large gallery without wasting time.

Then we turned to the buying journey and thought about how we could use buttons to streamline the buying journey. We added a consistent ‘Book a Private Viewing’ button to the top right of the screen so that users can get to this crucial step regardless of where they are on the site. We also included an expandable ‘Contact Us’ and ‘Private Viewing’ button for both desktop and mobile versions of the site.

These changes may seem subtle but in unison they contribute to a seamless, improved UX. Importantly, Ellingham Hall will reap the benefits of this redesign for years to come as the results will be cumulative over time.

Here at Blumilk, we’re always looking to tackle problems preemptively and for ways to exceed our clients’ expectations. Regardless of the size or type of business or project, we will always find effective business solutions to help propel your business operations. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, from graphic design to digital marketing and from brand development to advertising campaigns!