The city of London is the largest city in England as well as the United Kingdom and it is the capital of England. It is one of the world’s most influential cities and it is quite important as well as powerful and by far the largest metropolis in all of the United Kingdom.
London is known for so many things. It is the most visited city, most desirable, most investment-friendly, and the most expensive in Europe. It is also a famous financial center in the world. London hosts several companies as well as the London Stock Exchange and is a leading investment destination.
When it comes to transportation, London has one of the best systems with its trains and buses as well as its popular and busy airports. It ranks high in education hosting several universities and colleges.
As a famous tourist destination, London attracts people from all over the world serenading them with its charm, beauty, arts, as well as fashion trends. In the media, it is one of the leading cities hosting many media outlets both print and electronic.
London is the third most populous city in Europe with a population of around 9 million people. It is also a city of diversity in people and culture. You will find people from virtually every race and walks of life there with over 300 languages.
Asides from being a financial center, it is also a huge trade and commercial center with many businesses that serve its teeming population and the millions of tourists who visit the city. For this reason, businesses and companies in London need to find a way of attracting these potential customers. This can either be achieved through traditional ways of marketing or by implementing search engine optimization or combining both. You can read all about this city here.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Nowadays, most transactions are done online. Even if a customer would visit a physical store, it is most likely that they have searched and checked out different online stores and websites that offer the kind of products or services that they desire.
This means that every serious business should have a presence online via means like websites, blogs, vlogs, and social media interactions.
It is not enough to have a presence online; a lot of companies and businesses do. To over and above the competition, you need to take steps that will make your online presence felt in such a way that you are easily found when your kind of business is needed. This is what SEO is about.
SEO is the set of activities and tools that are used in optimizing a website so that it can rank high and be found easily during web searches. It uses different strategies, processes and tools such as backlinks, web contents, keywords, metatags, images, descriptions, and so on to make a website relevant and easily accessible.
Factors like the design of the website, use of tools such as HTML and CSS, user-friendliness and responsiveness and speed of loading also contribute to how effective a website will be.
SEO can include both on-site and off-site activities. On-site activities are those activities done on the website to make it attractive and easy to locate while off-site activities are those that help primarily to promote the website such as inbound links, social media engagements, ads placement, etc.
How SEO Works
When a potential client or customer needs a service or product especially when they do not know where to get this, the first point of call is picking up their device; phone, pad, or computer and searching for what they need.
They go to a search engine site such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and the likes and input keywords that lead to websites that offer such services. The engine crawls all over the web searching for websites that offer such services or sell such products using the keyword imputed as well as links contained on different websites.
In a few seconds, there is a list of leading sites offering what the customer needs and each is ranked according to how relevant they are by the search engine. The criteria used in determining this includes the relevant keyword, website speed, inbound links, images, traffic to the website, etc. The search results are arranged from top to bottom and also spill over to several other pages.
This is where it gets interesting. Over 90% of users do not check out website links that are not on the first page and even for the first page, most will generally check the first three links and may not check others. A higher percentage will check only the first link. The moment they find whatever they are looking for, they do not bother checking other websites.
Research has shown that about 33% of users click on the first link, 18% may check out the second while around 11% gives the third link a quick look and this of course reduces down the pecking order.
For your website to get noticed, it has to first of all be on the first page then rank as high as possible in the results and that is what implementing SEO helps to achieve.
Benefits of SEO
There are several benefits to properly implementing SEO on a website. Ultimately, all these result into greater traffic to your site which in turn translates to better rankings, a higher conversion rate and greater profits. More benefits of SEO include the following:
Better User Experience
By ensuring your website is improved, user-friendly and contains relevant information, visitors will spend more time and will often return.
It helps in Brand Awareness and Credibility
Search engine optimization brings awareness to your business and brand. More potential clients become familiar with what you do and this is one important step in promoting your product or service.
A high ranking gives potential customers the sense that your business is credible and that you are one of the top players. It leads them to believe you are popular and that a lot of people have researched and patronized you.
It Brings Higher Close Rate
The beauty of SEO is that it is the customer that is looking for you and not the other way round. By being visible enough, you can get higher conversion rates.
It Helps to Gain a Share of the Market
Getting ranked high means there is a propensity to be found by users which in turn becomes leads and eventually customers. As these are converted to customers, they also tell their friends as well as acquaintances and you will begin to gain a share of the market.
Implementing SEO with the Help of a London Agency.
For all its benefits and all that it has to offer, SEO takes a lot of dedication, knowledge and expertise to implement. As a business in London, you may feel that you can handle it by yourself but this may not be the best route to follow. This is because it takes a lot of resources and time to execute and when it is not done right, you will not achieve the intended results. This will also result in a waste of time, resources as well as money as you will need to start afresh.
To ensure maximum and efficient results, it is recommended that your business engage the services of a London SEO agency. SEO agencies are businesses that are knowledgeable in the best practices of SEO and through their years of experience and expertise, help other businesses and companies improve their online visibility.
They strive to understand the marketing goals as well as objectives of their clients and guide them on strategies that will help optimize their website and ultimately their business. They also help to diagnose and perform a comprehensive audit of their client’s website and tweak or redesign as necessary resolving any technical issues found.
Even when all is done, they continue to keep tabs with the client by constantly researching new keywords and practices that will help in continuous improvement. They take data and metrics from their client’s website and see how that can be put into better use. You can visit https://seolondonagency.co.uk/ to learn more about this.
How to Choose an Agency
When hiring a London SEO agency, there are some things to look out for. The tips below would come in handy:-
- Visit their website and find out if it is optimized for SEO.
- Check out how experienced and knowledgeable they are by asking for references and looking at their past work including previous and current clients.
- Enquire about the strategies they hope to use to implement SEO on your site and how soon you should expect results.
Conclusion
For an upwardly mobile, diverse, and bustling city such as London, businesses and organizations located here have to creatively find ways of reaching clients and one of the most potent and proven ways to do so is through implementing SEO.
The goal of any business is to improve profits and for that to happen, you need customers who constantly patronize you. The only way they will do so is first of all knowing that the business exists and offer the kind of services they want.
SEO agencies bring their knowledge and expertise to bear in helping you attract more of these customers so that you can focus on achieving your business objectives.
