A Guide To Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Here’s a post that I completed for a client as part of an abandoned project due to a change in direction. In true SEO fashion I can now write more about SEO and start ranking even higher for it - good, right? You also get an insight into the style of articles that I produce.

Show me an article and I can tell you about the background of a copywriter.

I come from a marketing background as opposed to a ‘white-paper’ journalistic background. I tend to say a lot in as fewer words as possible when I write - and for lengthy format this can be difficult.

This goes back to assessing the needs of your business when choosing a copywriter. I can do lengthy format articles and blog posts, especially for certain industries.

Working to analyse your needs and SEO or Website copywriting requirements is at the forefront of my services, but the truth is that I’m not the guy for every client out there.

There are also times when I’m approached by businesses for help but the topic/industry/tone just isn’t my forte and I pass this on to specific copywriters who I’ve worked with before.

Our basic guide to SEO and how it relates to website development

Contents 

1. What is SEO

2. On page SEO

3. Off page SEO

4. Application development SEO and ASO

5. How we can help with your website development

6. Summary - what’s the bottom line?

 
When it comes to website and mobile app development, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be vital to gaining more customers and achieving your business objectives.

SEO covers a number of facets and can be a black hole of information that has a direct impact on your mobile applications and e-commerce websites, now more than ever. 

At our core we develop mobile applications, and also create complex websites with incredible user-experience in mind, especially when it comes to e-commerce.  

We don't just serve Northern Ireland and Dublin; we have clients from across the globe that trust us with their digital projects where we offer the foundation of solid search engine optimisation.  

 
This guide is going to scratch the surface and give you a general understanding of how SEO relates to your website and mobile app development as business owners.  

 
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website or web page in search engine results pages (SERPs).  

 According to a study (here) carried out by Poll The People:

1. The #1 result in Google gets 34% of the organic traffic. 

2. Improving from #2 to #1 will double your organic traffic. 

3. The #1 position is worth #2, #3, #4 and #5 combined. 

4. Just #1 by itself is more than #5-#20 put together. 

5. But the biggest jump (143%) is from #11 to #10. 

Yes, you read correctly, you'll get 143 percent more traffic if you're on page one, compared to page 2. 
 

On-page and off-page SEO for website development

On-page SEO relates to the development of your website or mobile application development and making sure it is optimised for good visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It revolves around all of the content that is on your web pages. 

Off-page SEO relates to the linking of your website and improving your domain ranking for better visibility in SERPs. This includes things like backlinking your website from other sites with solid domain authority (this is a score given to a website that describes its relevance for a specific subject area of industry). 

On-page SEO for website development 

For now we’ll just talk about websites and e-commerce stores. 

To explain, here’s an example: 

You own a company that produces bespoke women’s running trainers for customers in Northern Ireland. Customers order a fitting, and a person comes to their door to take a mould of their foot, delivering custom trainers shortly afterwards. They’re solely for ladies’ and your branding is solid.  

You do the following on-page SEO when developing your website: 

• Ensure that your website development gives you the best loading speed possible 

• Include keywords in your headers and main body of the website such as ‘ladies running trainers Northern Ireland’ and ‘training footwear Northern Ireland for women’ 

• Make sure that any internal links aren’t broken 

• Help Google to crawl your website by submitting a sitemap 

• Write relevant copy on your pages that include specific keywords 

• Use keyword relevant URLs for each webpage 

• Improve your user experience 

• Ensure that your website scales properly for mobile, tablet and desktop browsers. 

Off-page SEO for website development 

Off-page SEO can be a slower process to establish and your ladies running trainer company might not see results instantly. It is how your website is viewed in the larger online website community 

When developing your brand and website, here’s a few things that will help your search engine results: 

• Guest blog posts on higher-authority domains that link back to your website (backlinks) 

• Mentions on other websites that are high in authority 

• Your own posts or mentions that you purposely place on other websites 

• Social media links and traffic (to a lesser extent). 

From off-page SEO optimisation, Google views you as trustworthy, relevant, and of a certain authority.  

You can’t just write a large volume of blog posts on your website and hope that it ranks. Not only will higher quality backlinks improve your relevance, but Google wants to see regular content that proves that your website doesn’t lie dormant and is still very much an active part of the online community.  

Application Development

There is a slight overlap between SEO for websites and SEO for app development. If you have a mobile app, you probably have an online presence. You potentially include links to send website visitors or e-commerce customers to the app store to directly download your app.  

If your website receives more visitors thanks to improved SEO, you might be able to convert these into customers for your mobile application.  

According to a study carried out by Google, the search engine is still one of the most important sources of app discoverability.  

App Store Optimisation (ASO) is the backbone of ranking your app within the store, so that more customers discover (and download) your application

Google research shows that 40% of user search and downloads of mobile applications comes from browsing within the app store itself.  

Here’s a key checklist for app development when launching your mobile application on the available stores: 

1. Make your descriptions accurate and relevant.  

If the app store sees that your application is being downloaded then deleted, it won’t push you up the search results. This might simply happen because you haven’t targeted your market properly within the description.  

2. Give your application a unique name. 

Crucial during the app development phase, this will help you stand out from the crowd and ensure that people know that they are in the right place. This relates back to the key elements at point 1. 

3. Categorise your application properly.  

Again, we want solid user intent. If people think they’re downloading a game instead of a concert guide, then they’ll quickly move on, and the App Store and Google Play will start to push you down the rankings.  

4. Provide good quality screenshots or videos of your app that give the user a solid understanding of what it does.  

If a mobile app doesn’t have screenshots, are you going to trust what it does? Probably not. Videos are great, but screenshots are fine and can show off the brilliant design and user experience of your application to lead to more downloads.  

5. Add relevant keywords to your mobile app.  

This is vital during the development phase to make sure that the application is properly optimised for each store. If you have a fitness application, you want to make sure that users searching for ‘health and fitness exercise‘ in the app store come across your specific offering. Keyword research is a field of its own, but for now, your app development should focus on the right keywords without using them too much (known as keyword stuffing), as stores penalise the over-use of keywords due to lowering the user experience.  

It's about ensuring that your mobile application is accurately described, updated and maintained on the app stores, so that each store categorises it properly and you get the right person downloading and using it. 

Another performance factor for your website is bounce rate. 

 
The importance of bounce rate to your website or ecommerce store

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who leave the site after viewing only one page.  

A high bounce rate may indicate that your website or application is not optimised for good visibility in SERPs, or that your content is not relevant to what people are looking for.  

Improving your on-page and off-page SEO can help to reduce your bounce rate and improve your visibility and ranking in SERPs. 

How we can help with your website and app development

This is where we take a complicated problem (SEO development of your website or mobile app) and solve it with three of the main things that we're experienced in: 

• Design 

• User Experience (UX) 

• Technical website and mobile app development 

Design 

That dream £1,000,000 home on Propertypal (Northern Ireland's house sale database) looks nice doesn't it!  

But why?  

Because it's designed well.  

The architect and interior designer have designed a stunning building based on years of design experience. You want to visit the house, live in it, and let your kids play in the garden because it looks stunning!  

 
That website, e-commerce store, or mobile application that we've developed...looks great.  

You're happy to stay on it (lowering the bounce rate). You're happy to wander around this website with its lovely colours, shapes, and lines.  

You don't know why, but it just looks and feels nice....so you stay on it longer...if it's a mobile app then guess what...you might review it with 5 stars....so the iOS Store or Google Play now ranks this app higher than its competitors.  

Google sees you spending more time on that website and boosts it on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  

Customers will also be more likely to buy from a well-designed ecommerce store than a poorly designed one – directly impacting your business objectives.  

 
This is how great design boosts your SEO for both websites and mobile applications.  

 
User Experience

We all know what design and app development is, but user experience is an important subject that we have decades of experience in. 

According to NNGroup.com, user Experience (UX) is defined as: 

Encompassing all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services and its products.  

We love to travel and work with global brands. One of our favourite places to visit for both work and pleasure is Philadelphia.  

You land at the airport and getting to your hotel is a dream. No queues. No hanging around for luggage. Public transport has the efficiency of a German car manufacturer, combined with the sleekness of a luxury tour across the Maldives. It just works.  

Compare that to Belfast and it’s not quite the same.  

You get off the plane at Belfast International airport straight into a huge queue for passport control. Your luggage takes at least 20 minutes to get thrown around and battered. There isn't even a train that leaves Belfast airport so it's a cramped minibus to a train station that might just get you into the Harp Bar in time for a well-deserved Guinness. 

 
Based solely on our description above, where would you rather be – Philadelphia or Belfast?  

This is called User Experience (UX).  

Giving your audience/customers/viewers a great user experience can drastically reduce your bounce rate. It helps people get the most out of your website or mobile application to the point where Google recognises this and rewards you by ranking you higher in the search results.  

Technical website and mobile app development

A website and mobile app is essentially a series of lines of code. These lines are interpreted by your device to give you the User Experience we've talked about above.  

Technical SEO is a huge subject on its own, but let's look at the basics:  

• Site loading speed 

• Image compression 

• Indexing by search engines 

Site loading speed 

This is a vital ranking factor for both websites and mobile apps. If your website or app takes too long to load, people will just give up and leave. They'll go back to Google and try one of your competitors.  

We make sure that our development team builds fast loading websites by using the latest techniques such as server-side rendering and code splitting.  

Google knows that people don't like to wait around for a website or app to load, so they will rank you higher if your site is fast.  

 
Image compression

Images are a vital part of any website or mobile app. They help to break up the text, add colour, and make your content more engaging.  

However, images can also be huge files that take forever to load. This is where image compression comes in.  

We use cutting edge image compression techniques that reduce the file size of your images without losing any quality. This means that your website or app will load faster, and search engines will rank you higher. 

Indexing by search engines

If you want people to find your website or mobile app, then you need to make sure it's indexed by Google and other search engines.  

Our development team builds websites and apps that are easily found by search engines. We do this by using the latest techniques such as schema mark-up and sitemaps.  

You might have whole entire product lines of your ecommerce store not indexed properly by search engines - and this can hide potential profit from your customers who find you using search (or not, as the case may be).  

Summary - What's the bottom line?  

Websites and mobile applications that are designed well, with a great user experience, and built using the latest development techniques will be rewarded by Google and iOS with a higher ranking.  
This means more traffic to your site, and more customers for your business.  

Businesses need to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO in order to improve their visibility and ranking in SERPs. 

There’s no point having strong backlinks if your user experience, design and technical website or mobile app development doesn’t give you the best chance to climb the rankings of search engines.  

When you’re developing your application, website, or E-commerce store, it’s best to factor in best SEO practises from the outset to give your new platform the best possible chance to be seen.   

This can be a daunting task, but luckily there are a number of development agencies in Northern Ireland that can help! 
 

This is the dark art of SEO explained in a nutshell.  
 

Personally, we find that a lot of businesses in Northern Ireland are either ready to launch into the digital space, or are ready to take their existing mobile app or ecommerce website to the next level, and get to page one of google.  

I’ve written more about Search Engine Optimisation here, giving examples of how I rank for certain keywords.

Want to save yourself a headache and hire a Belfast Copywriter with proven results? Just claim your free discovery session here and let’s get to the bottom of how I can help your business to grow.

Keep hustling,

Keep copywriting!

Thanks for reading,

Adam White, Copywriter