PPC & Local SEO Services Agency in Southampton, Hampshire
Are you looking to grow your Southampton business with SEO & PPC? We can help you to achieve your end goals and enhance your online presence.
As the leading SEO agency in Southampton it’s no surprise that we know a thing or two about a successful SEO campaign. Now, we’re not going to give away all of our precious SEO & PPC secrets but understanding what these services can do for your business is kind of important.
Now SEO & PPC aren’t just the latest buzzwords on the scene, they stand for Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click. If you’re completely new to the world of search engines, algorithms and optimisation - don’t panic, all will be revealed.
With many years of hard earned SEO knowledge under our belts, we have had the opportunity to apply our clever techniques on hundreds of local businesses in the Southampton area. Can you tell we’re the leading experts on SEO in Southampton yet?
Let’s start with SEO, not to brag but we’re specialists in this subject. We were involved in search engine optimisation before it was cool - and now you know why we we’re called Geek Unique.
What is SEO?
At a glance search engine optimisation is a method of enhancing the quantity and quality of website traffic to your website via optimising where you appear on search engines. Too technical?
Ok, we can improve your website to the extent that it will rank higher when potential customers search for keywords relevant to your business - meaning they are more likely to find you over your competitors.
Search engines such as Google have evolved rapidly and as such have become incredibly intelligent, they can now discern between which websites will be most relevant to their users.
In a nutshell, boosting traffic to your website means more leads and potential sales for your local business. Like the sound of that? Keep reading it gets better.
But how does SEO work?
We’re glad you asked because we love explaining it. There’s much more to SEO than a blog post crammed with keywords - filling your blog with a plethora of keywords won’t do you any favours. Google can rank you lower for it. Think of it as a digital naughty step and no business wants to be there, it’s a dark place reserved for businesses like Blockbuster. To really optimise your website to its fullest potential there are some key factors you need to consider:
Keywords
First and foremost you need to identify the keywords relevant to your business. Analysing these keywords and building your content strategy around them is the pinnacle of any successful SEO campaign. Keyword research is an important component in this process, identifying which keywords your local business should be ranking for and their search volumes is crucial.
We won’t waste your time or ours by including keywords which aren’t searched for enough to warrant an increase in traffic to your website. We use cutting edge tools to search for the keywords which will be most beneficial to your business. As soon as these keywords are given the green light - we can really get to work on developing your website further.
Social Media & Reviews
Your social media presence is important too. Social media channels will provide you with more pages which will really impress Google, ok it won’t impress them but it’ll recognise that you’re more digitally established than someone that has no social business pages. Customer reviews are a great way of signalling to Google that you are a credible business - encouraging your clients to provide you with reviews will really help your SEO campaign as search engines often use reviews as a basis for directing traffic to you.
Website Audit For SEO
Initially we will start your SEO journey by performing a deep dive into your website, from this we can assess its current performance and initiate a plan to enhance your website content to ensure it’s fully optimised for search engines. Being fully optimised requires your website to be enabled for search engines to crawl and index it in their search results - which we’re aware sounds somewhat unsettling, don’t worry it isn’t. This is actually the more technical side of website development which includes checking things like page speed, navigation, hidden pages, caching and much more. We promise it’s more exciting than it sounds.
We will take into consideration the URL structure of your website, keywords, existing content, meta titles and descriptions - to make sure we cover all bases and implement the right strategy for your local business. It’s vital that your website can communicate with search engines correctly, otherwise they won’t be sending traffic to you because as far as they’re concerned you don’t exist.
Having an outside perspective on your website is also really helpful in as much as it gives you a better understanding of how your website performs and the experience your visitors will have, when we use something daily we often overlook flaws and complications that might make a customers journey tedious. We can fix this.
Ultimate SEO Copywriting
Copywriting with SEO in mind is a mixture of two key elements, writing in a manner and tone that is both the right fit for your audience and for search engines. This can be achieved by ensuring clever keyword distribution, improved website copy, and focusing on the right keywords for your target audience. Most importantly, it must be relevant to your business and helpful to your potential customers. You should aim to engage your audience with interesting insights, facts and case studies. Blogging and creating engaging content is the ultimate tool for enhancing your website traffic, if you’re extremely knowledgeable in your field but not so great at writing - we can help with our content and copywriting services.
Building Backlinks - What Are They?
Now in order to get your blog some serious traction, you will need to create backlinks. Building Backlinks is known as Link building. Ultimately this process is designed to improve the overall authority of your domain by having other websites link to yours via a hyperlink.
You can build backlinks via several means, online local directories like Yell, guest blogs, content marketing and press releases are all clever ways of improving your domain authority. But the backlinks must be high quality to enhance your domain authority and website ranking position. Bad quality backlinks will decrease your website ranking - a bad quality link can be identified as a link that comes from an untrusted website and there are plenty of companies out there offering backlinks which unfortunately stem from untrustworthy websites. 10/10 would not recommend.
Backlinks can be generated by creating blogs with interesting and engaging content. People will share and link to your content from their own websites, which subsequently will increase traffic to your website! Clever right? We really should stop giving away our SEO secrets.
Focusing On Your Local Area
Optimising for your location is a clever way of improving your ranking further. Local SEO is a brilliant means of harnessing leads from potential local customers. As a local SEO agency in Southampton, we understand the importance of establishing your location online. As a local business you want to be ranking in the top 3 search results for your local area - this is Google’s way of showing that you are the most relevant business for the search terms used and the location. We can optimise this for you in the blink of an eye.
Consider how many local businesses aren’t aware of SEO, there are countless local firms missing out on capturing swarms of fresh leads - simply because they don’t know about Search Engine Optimisation. Luckily we do, and we want to assist you with pushing your website to reach its full potential.
Our Southampton based SEO agency is well known, partly due to the number of Southampton based businesses we’ve worked with and because of our SEO knowledge and expertise. We provide a broad spectrum of SEO services at Geek Unique, such as content and copywriting, website development, marketing, reporting and much more.
Understanding Your Competitors
There’s nothing we love more than a bit of reconnaissance work, the digital kind of course - we aren’t going to stalk your local competitors - that’s extra! Understanding your competition is key to defeating them and if you’re not aiming to be quite as aggressive - it’s also key to a strong SEO campaign. What type of content are they putting out? Which keywords are they focusing on? Are they listed on specialist directories that could benefit your local business? All of these little details will help you build and develop your own strategy. The next step - world domination, well, local domination really.
Analysing Your Target Audience
The main focus of any SEO project should be the target audience. Understanding their needs, wants and questions - these will help you decide on the right SEO strategy for you. If you aren’t sure on these metrics, we can look into that for you and blow you away with our impressive powers of divination, or as we refer to it ‘Research’.
What sets us apart from the competition?
Tenacity, expertise and an arsenal of well versed tricks and techniques to ensure you succeed. We’ve already mentioned that SEO takes time, all great things do - climbing Mount Everest wouldn’t be such a feat if it only took 12 minutes.
What is the Geek Unique SEO process?
Our SEO process is fairly straightforward. Firstly, we will analyse your website - nothing too serious, just a little peek to see if there is scope for us to work together. We will then arrange a consultation which can either be over the phone, online or if you’re based in Southampton we can book a face-to-face meeting. In this meeting we can do a walk-through of your website and address any of the issues we’ve found and how we can fix them for you. We can discuss your end-goals and the budget you have in mind and come to an arrangement that is suitable for you. It’s important to us that you get a feel for who we are and how we work. We like to think of ourselves as a forward thinking agency without all of the beanbags and buzzwords.
Can I do SEO myself?
Sure, but do you have the spare time to research your keywords, build a strategy, formulate captivating content and forge your backlinks? We’re almost positive that you probably have enough going on already, which is why to achieve the best results - it’s better to leave it to the experts. Pssst we’re the experts.
Do I have to pay for SEO?
You don’t become the leading SEO agency in Southampton by working for free, come to think of it we’ve already given away a lot of our SEO secrets on this page alone. This process takes a lot of time and effort, it’s an ongoing exercise and things won’t change overnight. Thankfully we have an abundance of knowledge when it comes to SEO, so you can rest assured it is the best investment you can make for your local business.
Will SEO work for my business?
Search Engine Optimisation works for every business, whether you’re a local Southampton business like us or a national company. What’s the point in having a website if you don’t have any website visitors? Website traffic creates new leads, and what business doesn’t want more work?
Can you rank me #1 for a keyword?
We’re SEO experts - wizards some might even say, but no agency should be guaranteeing you’ll achieve the number one spot.
Imagine you’re a local telecoms retailer and you want to focus on your local audience, you don’t need to be ranked number one for ‘Iphone’ - Do you really want to compete with Apple? It would be much more beneficial to rank higher for search terms such as ‘local Southampton telecoms business’ and ‘Iphone seller Southampton’.
We would always recommend ranking your website for several keyword topics to ensure you are covering all of the bases and not just relying on one keyword to increase your ranking. Ranking algorithms are constantly evolving, here at Geek Unique we regularly study any changes to the SEO process which could make a difference to our clients search engine optimisation.
How long does it take for SEO to work?
Typically it can take anywhere from 2-6 months to see an improvement in your website ranking. It depends entirely on the volume of search terms, keyword difficulty and competitors that you are competing against. Which is why it’s so important that you work alongside an expert SEO agency to achieve your SEO goals.
It doesn’t happen overnight, you can write 20 blogs in one week but you may not see results for 3 months. You have to trust the process, if you’re unsure - take a look at the successful SEO strategies in our case studies.
Can A Blog Post Benefit My Business?
A great question and one we’re prepared for. We’ve composed an example of how a simple blog post can do wonders for your local business. Let’s say you’re an artisan sock maker in Southampton - niche we know. But you’ll remember it.
After some requests for international shipping from potential customers in Chamonix, France. You now want to attract more clients in that location to make it worth your while with shipping costs.
You should write a blog on “Where To Buy Artisan Socks In Chamonix” - it doesn’t matter that you aren’t physically based in Chamonix because you will be shipping to that area. The target audience searching for this term are more likely to click on your blog post because you’ve made the title the very question they are asking.
You don’t need to cram the blog post with ‘Chamonix’ or ‘Artisan Socks’ over and over again, but it will help to have a good distribution of these keywords.
You would then share your blog post “Where To Buy Artisan Socks In Chamonix” in the ‘Handcrafted Socks Appreciation Group’ on Facebook and this would be classed as a backlink. Your blog post will then be shared by other avid fans of handcrafted socks and you will start to receive more and more organic traffic which will ultimately improve your domain authority. Ta da!
Is SEO just another fad?
SEO & PPC
As the leading SEO agency in Southampton it’s no surprise that we know a thing or two about a successful SEO campaign. Now, we’re not going to give away all of our precious SEO & PPC secrets but understanding what these services can do for your business is key. Now SEO & PPC aren’t just the latest buzzwords on the scene, they stand for Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click. If you’re completely new to the world of online marketing, algorithms and optimisation – don’t panic, all will be revealed.
Let’s start with SEO, we’re specialists on this subject and as such we have used our clever SEO techniques on hundreds of local businesses in the Southampton area.
What is SEO?
At a glance SEO is a means of enhancing the quantity and quality of website traffic to your website via optimising where you appear on search engines. Too technical? Ok, we can improve your website to the extent that it will rank higher when potential customers search for keywords relevant to your business – meaning they are more likely to find you over your competitors. Search engines such as Google have evolved rapidly and as such have become incredibly intelligent, they can now discern between which websites will be most relevant to their users. In a nutshell, boosting traffic to your website = more leads and potential sales. Can you tell we’re the leading experts on SEO in Southampton yet?
How does SEO work?
We’re glad you asked. There’s much more to SEO than a blog post crammed with keywords – filling your blog with a plethora of keywords won’t do you any favours – Google can rank you lower for it, think of it as a digital naughty step. To really optimise your website to its fullest potential there are some key factors you need to consider:
Keywords
First and foremost you need to identify the keywords relevant to your business/ industry, analysing these keywords and building your content strategy around them is the pinnacle of any successful SEO campaign. Keyword research is an important component in this process, identifying which keywords your local business should be ranking for and their search volumes is crucial – we don’t want to waste your time by including keywords which aren’t searched enough to warrant an increase in traffic to your website. We use cutting edge tools to search for the keywords which will be most beneficial to your business. As soon as these keywords are given the green light – we can really get to work on your website.
Social Media & Reviews
Your social media presence is important too, these channels will provide you with more pages which will really impress Google. Lots of customer reviews are a great way of signalling to Google that you are a credible business – encouraging your clients to provide you with reviews will really help your SEO campaign.
Website Audit For SEO
Initially we will start your SEO journey by performing a deep dive into your website, from this we can assess its current performance and initiate a plan to enhance your website content to ensure it’s fully optimised for search engines. Being fully optimised for search engines requires your website to be enabled for search engines to crawl and index it in their search results, this is the more technical side of website development which includes checking things like page speed, navigation, hidden pages, caching and much more. We promise it’s more exciting than it sounds.
We will take into consideration the URL structure of your website, keywords, existing content, meta titles and descriptions – to make sure we cover all bases and implement the right strategy for your local business. It’s vital that your website can communicate with search engines correctly, otherwise they won’t be sending traffic to you. Having an outside perspective on your website is really helpful in as much as it gives you a better understanding of how your website performs and the experience your visitors will have.
The Ultimate SEO Copywriting
Copywriting with SEO in mind is a mixture of two key elements, writing in a manner and tone that is both the right fit for your audience and for search engines. This can be achieved through ensuring clever keyword distribution, improved website copy, and focusing on the right keywords for your target audience. Most importantly, it must be relevant to your business and helpful to your potential customers. You should aim to engage your audience with interesting insights, facts and case studies. Blogging and creating engaging content is the ultimate tool for enhancing your website traffic, if you’re extremely knowledgeable in your field but not so great at writing – we can help with our content and copywriting services.
Building Backlinks – What Are They?
Now in order to get your blog some serious traction, you will need to create backlinks. Building Backlinks is known as Link building, ultimately this process is designed to improve the overall authority of your domain by having other websites link to yours via a hyperlink. You can build backlinks via several means, online local directories like Yell, guest blogs, content marketing and press releases are all clever ways of improving your domain authority. The backlinks must be high quality to enhance your domain authority and website ranking position. Bad quality backlinks will decrease your website ranking – a bad quality link can be identified as a link that comes from an untrusted website.
Backlinks can be generated by creating blogs with interesting and engaging content, people will share and link to your content from their own websites, which subsequently will increase traffic to your website! Clever right? We really should stop giving away our SEO secrets.
Focusing On Your Businesses Local Area
Optimising for your location is a clever way of improving your ranking further. Local SEO is a brilliant means of harnessing leads from potential local customers. As a local SEO agency in Southampton, we understand the importance of establishing your location online. As a local business you want to be ranking in the top 3 search results for your local area – this is Google’s way of showing that you are the most relevant business for the search term used and the location. We can optimise this for you and focus on increasing your ranking too.
Our Southampton based SEO agency is well known, partly due to the number of Southampton based businesses we’ve worked with and because of our SEO knowledge and expertise. We provide a broad spectrum of SEO services at Geek Unique, such as content and copywriting, website development, marketing, reporting and much more.
Understanding Your Competitors
There’s nothing we love more than a bit of reconnaissance work, the digital kind of course – we aren’t going to stalk your local competitors. Understanding your competition is key to defeating them and if you’re not aiming to be as aggressive it’s also key to a strong SEO campaign. What type of content are they putting out? Which keywords are they focusing on? Are they listed on specialist directories that could benefit your local business? All of these little details will help you build and develop your own strategy. The next step – world domination, well, local domination really.
Analysing Your Target Audience
The main focus of any SEO project should be the target audience, understanding their needs, wants and questions – these will help you decide on the right SEO strategy for you. If you aren’t sure on these metrics, we can look into that for you and blow you away with our impressive powers of divination, or as we refer to it ‘Research’.
What is the Geek Unique SEO process?
Our SEO process is fairly straightforward. Firstly, we will analyse your website – nothing too serious, just a little peek to see if there is scope for us to work together. We will then arrange a consultation which can either be via telephone, online or if you’re based in Southampton we can book a face-to-face meeting. In this meeting we can do a walk-through of your website and address any of the issues we’ve found and how we can fix them for you. We can discuss your end-goals and the budget you have in mind and come to an arrangement that is suitable for you.
Do I have to pay for SEO?
You don’t become the leading SEO agency in Southampton by working for free, we’ve already given away a lot of our SEO secrets on this page alone. This process takes a lot of time and effort, it’s an ongoing exercise and things won’t change overnight. Thankfully we have an abundance of knowledge when it comes to SEO, so you can rest assured it is the best investment you can make for your local business.
Will SEO work for my business?
Search Engine Optimisation works for every business, whether you’re a local Southampton business like us or a national business. What’s the point in having a website if you don’t have any website visitors? Website traffic creates new leads, and what business doesn’t want more work?
Can you rank me #1 for a keyword?
We’re SEO experts – wizards some might even say, but no agency should be guaranteeing you’ll achieve the number one spot. Imagine you’re a local telecoms retailer and you want to focus on your local audience, you don’t need to be ranked number one for ‘Iphone’ – Do you really want to compete with Apple? It would be much more beneficial to rank higher for search terms such as ‘local Southampton telecoms business’ and ‘Iphone seller Southampton’. We would always recommend ranking your website for several keyword topics to ensure you are covering all of the bases and not just relying on one keyword to increase your ranking. Ranking algorithms are constantly evolving, here at Geek Unique we regularly study any changes to the SEO process which could make a difference to our clients search engine optimisation.
How long does it take for SEO to work?
Typically it can take anywhere from 2-6 months to see an improvement in your website ranking. It depends entirely on the volume of search terms, keyword difficulty and competitors that you are competing against. Which is why it’s so important that you work alongside an expert SEO agency to achieve your SEO goals. It doesn’t happen overnight, you can write 20 blogs in one week but may not see results for 3 months. You have to trust the process, we can offer you reassurances of our successful SEO strategies which can be found in our case studies.
Can A Blog Post Benefit My Business?
A great question and one we’re prepared for. We’ve composed an example of how a simple blog post can do wonders for your local business. Let’s say you’re an artisan sock maker in Southampton – niche we know.
After some requests for international shipping from potential customers in Chamonix, France. You now want to attract more clients in that location to make it worth your while with shipping costs.
You should write a blog on “Where To Buy Artisan Socks In Chamonix” – it doesn’t matter that you aren’t physically based in Chamonix because you will be shipping to that area. The target audience searching for this term are more likely to click on your blog post because you’ve made the title the very question they are asking.
You don’t need to cram the blog post with ‘Chamonix’ or ‘Artisan Socks’ over and over, but it will help to have a good distribution of these keywords. For instance you could share your blog post on “Where To Buy Artisan Socks In Chamonix” in the ‘Handcrafted Socks Appreciation Group’ on Facebook and this would be classed as a backlink. Your blog post could then be shared by other avid fans of handcrafted socks and you will start to receive more and more organic traffic which will ultimately improve your domain authority. Ta Da!
Ok, we’ve rambled on about SEO for long enough now, let’s take a look at PPC.
PPC – Pay Per Click
Looking to grow your Southampton business quickly? Want results fast? PPC is for you!
At its core SEO is focused on creating organic traffic for your local business which does take time and as such is an ongoing effort. However, PPC is an entirely different kettle of fish, this form of paid advertising focuses on getting you customers quickly. Very quickly.
What is PPC?
You may have noticed a reel of ads when you run a search on Google or Bing – these are pay per click ads. Pay per click is a form of online advertising which can typically be found on platforms such as Google Ads. Everytime someone clicks on these ads you will pay a fee.
PPC is often used by businesses to create more traffic, sales and enquiries from their target audiences. One of the key selling points of PPC is that you can be really specific when it comes to creating your customer demographic, this allows you to utilise your customer knowledge to build the perfect campaign.
Search engines are the most popular format for customers when looking for local businesses online. You already have an active audience waiting for you, PPC allows you to tap into it. Want to target someone in Southampton of a specific age range, looking for the product / service you offer? It’s easy with PPC advertising to achieve this.
How Does PPC Advertising Work?
PPC covers several different ad platforms, notably the most common channels are Google Ads and Bing ads. They offer several different advertising formats: Shopping Ads, Search Ads, Gmail Ads, Display Ads and Video Ads. Google Ads is a great place to begin your PPC journey, mainly due to its accessibility – you’re given access to the biggest audience of potential customers and a number of methods to run your campaigns.
Setting up a PPC account is a relatively straightforward process, however there are key elements to keep in mind and with all the data ranges – it can be overwhelming. So why not let a PPC expert do it for you? If you’re local to Southampton, this is something we can look at for you.
How do PPC ad auctions work?
When you make a search online, an ad auction automatically takes place. Several factors are used to determine this including: the eligibility of the ad to be entered into the auction, the order in which the ads will be shown and how much the ad will cost per click for the advertisers.
The first component here is the maximum CPC, you can assign a maximum CPC (cost per click) when the account is set up, this sets a limit for the amount you are willing to spend for each click made – this isn’t the amount you will pay but the absolute maximum you are willing to pay. Quality Score is another metric that is taken into account during the ad auction, this includes the relevance of the ad in line with the search query, the expected click-through rate of an ad, and the user experience of the page the ad will send the traffic through to.
The placement of an ad on the search results page is decided by its Ad Rank, this is determined by two factors – Quality Score x Maximum Cost per click.
Why Should I Use PPC?
It’s a faster way of pushing more traffic to your website, it allows you to see a return on your investment quite quickly compared to SEO. It’s quite easy to track conversions, and order/ lead values so ultimately you can use these insights to improve the performance and effectiveness of your campaigns to increase your ROI. You have complete control of the ad schedule and the amount you wish to pay, you can even pause advertising if you need to. There aren’t many channels that provide you with this level of flexibility when managing your costs and budget. You can be super specific when it comes to picking your target audience, these helpful insights will reduce potential wastage of your advertising budget on an audience that might not be the right fit for your business. There are a fantastic range of different ad formats you can use when working with PPC, which can be tailored to achieve your advertising goals.
Which is better: PPC or SEO?
Both channels offer excellent results, but they are uniquely different. It’s not a case of which is better, as they are both equal in their own right. These two formats should be used together, SEO for achieving organic traffic and PPC to drive traffic. They are both imperative tools for enhancing your online presence successfully.