Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimising your website in order to achieve a high ranking in search results for certain targeted search terms or keywords that are related to your business, with the end goal of increasing your visibility to potential customers when they search for products or services that you offer.

For example if you run a law firm in Richmond then it's likely you'll want to rank highly when someone searches in Google, Bing or Yahoo for "lawyers richmond" as well as other search terms related to the legal practice areas that you specialise in.

The SEO Wild West days are over

Up until a few years ago the web development industry was full of SEO cowboys that were using a variety of ways to trick Google and the other SERPs into boosting the rank of websites that didn't provide much value and really had no place in the top of the search results, unfortunately for these cowboys Google got a lot smarter and has neutralised the effect of these tricks or "black hat" SEO techniques, if you try to use them now not only they won't work but your site could be penalised or completely removed from search results so it's best to stay well away from them.

There are still quite a few cowboys out there trying to sell their SEO magic elixirs with promises of your website ranking number one in Google instantly for any search term you want. Beware of anybody trying to sell you guarantees of instant SEO success because it simply isn't possible, SEO takes time and effort to get right, as the old saying goes, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is".

SEO is about Good Content, Quality Backlinks and Code Structure

SEO done right is looking more and more like traditional marketing everyday, it's about writing relevant content that provides value to your audience, if you do this then your audience will share your content on social media and other websites which creates backlinks to your site and tells Google that the content is valuable.

Code structure is about how your content is structured in terms of interlinking and which HTML tags are used to best describe your content to search engines, if this sounds a bit technical don't worry, in a website that is built correctly this happens automatically and you never have to see an HTML tag or even know what it is. The bottom line with SEO is that content is king.

SEO at RVA Web Development

At RVA Web Development we build websites from the ground up with SEO in mind, our custom built CMS takes care of correctly structuring HTML tags and automatically interlinking all relevant content throughout your website so it's easy for both search engines and (more importantly) people to navigate and understand.

We've been developing search engine optimised sites in Richmond and elsewhere for many years and have created several sites that rank highly in Google and other search engines for very competitive search terms and keywords.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Google AdWords & Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

SEM refers to the paid ads that appear at the top and right of search results in Google, the service these ads fall under is called Google AdWords and the way it works is that you pay each time someone clicks on your ad and is taken to your website, also known as Pay Per Click advertising.

For SEM services in Richmond we are partnered with award winning industry experts that are leaders in the field of SEM, Google AdWords and PPC advertising, our partners have over 15 years experience managing the online marketing campaigns and strategies for businesses of all sizes throughout Richmond and anywhere our expert services may be needed.