The 4 Types of SEO – And What You May Not Know About Them

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When you hear the term “SEO”, what comes to mind? For many, it’s bamboozlement. It’s often misunderstood, and often pitched to business in an unethical way. That’s where this article comes in, looking at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) from the point of a client and removing the jargon. Whether you’re a local florist or an international company, you should be able to understand this approach when dealing with an seo agency.

“I thought my site had SEO! Why can’t I see it on page one of Google?”

When a website designer uses SEO as part of their service offering, it should be termed as “SEO-friendly”. This means Google is able to find all of the pages on your site.  Unfortunately, there are likely many other services in the area with this same situation. When a small business hears the term SEO, they often make the mistake of thinking they’ll be able to find themselves on the first results page when they type “business service + city name”. When they don’t, they then claim that the company has not “done SEO”. 

Do you see how the SEO industry has earned its bad reputation? When could this work? 

For a retailer with a basic brand site, who goes on to build out a large site (over 5000 products), they will have ranking power that the smaller business will never have. This takes some thought put into site structures, categories and product descriptions. The domain will also have age and more trust than a newer domain name.

“Here’s why you’re not ranking”.

In Technical SEO, the agency will do an audit of a website and make recommendations based on this. Many agencies provide these as a way of showcasing their initial value as a B2B service. Technical SEO types love this because it provides proof as to why your website isn’t ranking. Never mind the actual fact: there is no written guide from Google that tells you everything you need to do. In this case, 1+1 does not equal 2. Hard and fast laws (like gravity) don’t exist to set the rules. A technical audit may be of value if you’ve got a specific problem. If nothing else, it is a fantastic starting point. Many SEO blog posts take this approach but it’s not so simple. Even if we would all like it to be.

Pages like a spider web

Content SEO has many benefits. The theory is this: the more high-quality topic pages, the higher your rankings. Because you have more pages, like a spider web you will catch more of the traffic. In this sense, the larger, more established and older sites have an advantage. From an agency’s point of view, it is easy to show that you’re providing value when tangible pages are being produced. This also came from blogging, when commenting on a blog created changing content. This would bring Google back to the site again, boosting its results. 

Now, most blogs are hosted by services that use a small piece of JavaScript. The blog post doesn’t update, but the hosted service does. There is no change to the page content that Google can read. Many agencies take this path of having a tangible final product, which is easier to sell to the client. This crosses over to the last and most powerful SEO method.

The most powerful SEO method – link based SEO

This method is all about the power of links as votes for the site. It is the most powerful method and the most labor intensive, and so many agencies will avoid it. 

The previous content method was an internal linking method. External link creation, on the other side, takes a lot of work and effort – much of it wasted. This is similar to other methods of marketing like cold calling.

Conclusion: SEO results aren’t a black and white game. You can’t connect certain activities and miraculously see results exactly as you expect. In some cases I have seen companies build software to turn SEO into a “science” but science has rules – and there’s no rule book for SEO.

[Bio]: Paul Easton is an Account Manager with Vine Digital – a digital marketing agency with offices in Sydney, New Zealand and Ireland. Vine Digital is focused on the growth of ambitious companies to achieve online growth. Find out more here from the New Zealand office: https://www.vinedigital.co.nz/.

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