SEO Belfast - What are your SEO goals

Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most in-demand services in the field of digital marketing. Since you’re searching for ‘SEO Derry’, you presumably know that having a website and doing social media marketing isn’t enough for a business in today’s digital world. Instead, businesses need to find the right audience, drive them to the company website and have a way to not just engage but convert too. SEO is a powerful digital marketing channel because on search engines, users come to search for something they’re already interested in, you don’t need to create the interest. You also don’t interrupt their ‘scrolling’ with ads. So, it comes more naturally that paid and organic SEO have a higher conversion rate.

Are You Looking for ‘SEO Derry?

ProfileTree – Expert SEO Specialists with a Local Flavour Serving Businesses in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland

We are a self-made, family run agency based in Belfast and Monaghan. We’ve established ourselves in the Northern Irish market since 2010. We’ve grown the team, collected awards, and helped local and international businesses with their SEO performance. We’ve also helped hundreds of small and medium sized businesses with free SEO training through programmes funded by Northern Ireland’s Councils over the course of three years. Investing in SEO for your business in Derry means making sure your new SEO partnership is built on proven methods. We’re SEO specialists AND a leading content marketing agency, meaning we can help that you’re not just seen but that the right traffic for you works hard for your business.

SEO Derry Explained

But how do we describe SEO? According to Moz, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Think of it this way: in the physical world, your company needs to be in the right location, to attract people into your shop and then make a sale. Digital marketing, including search engine optimising, in Derry or further afield is no different! You may ask yourself, “What do I need to know about SEO?”. That’s why we’ve created part two of this glossary of SEO terms for you. If you want to go through part one first, you’ll find it here.

SEO Derry: Your SEO Glossary

SEO Derry Glossary #1: Branded Keywords

Branded keywords are the words and phrases that are associated with your brand, products, or services. So, if your business name is ‘XYZ and Co, any keyword that has ‘XYZ and Co’ is a branded keyword. Now, branded keywords are important because they are an indicator of your brand awareness. You can measure your share of voice against competitors through finding the number of searches that those keywords get each month within the target location. Branded keywords can be tricky though, because if you’re only ranking for branded keywords then, you’re only ranking for those who already know you. Your target is always to grow your brand awareness among untapped audiences.

SEO Derry Glossary #2: Content hub

A content hub is a curated collection of branded content on a specific topic or subject interlinked together. It houses articles, videos, infographics, etc. that let users take a deep dive into a specific area in which the brand is an authority or expert. Although content hubs are neither a means to sell your products or services nor part of your sales funnel, however, when done correctly, they’re a powerful way to establish your brand’s authority, grow its presence, and increase your overall sales or conversion rate. Through an internal linking strategy, search engines realise that all these articles are connected – and they’re about the same topic. That’s how you build authority on a specific topic.

SEO Derry Glossary #3: Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone content is the collection of articles on your website that you most want to rank for in search engines. It is the core of your website. It consists of the best, most important articles on your site; the pages or posts you want to rank highest in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually relatively long, informative articles, combining insights from different blog posts and covering everything that’s important about a certain topic.

SEO Derry: How to Create Cornerstone Content

Choose your cornerstones carefully. Think of the four or five pages you would like someone to read when they first visit your website. These articles should be the cornerstones of your site. Which articles are most important to you? Which are the most complete and authoritative? Do these target the keywords you most want to rank for? The focus of cornerstone content is to provide the best and most complete information on a particular topic, rather than to sell products. Still, they should reflect your business or communicate your mission perfectly. You should make sure that cornerstone content is very well written, update them often, and aim to get them to rank for your most competitive keywords.

SEO Derry Glossary #4: Backlinks (Inbound Links)

Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. Search engines analyse the quality of a backlink to estimate how important a page is. One can safely say that backlinks are the heartbeat of SEO because it determines your domain authority for Google. Domain authority is the relative strength of a website’s credibility and trust based on its backlink profile. Google always want to recommend secure, trustworthy, and authoritative websites where the information is more likely to be true and relevant. If many websites link to a page as a source of information, it is a good sign to Google.

SEO Derry: All Sites Are Not Equal

A website linking to your page is good, but an authoritative website linking to your page is great. Think of it as word of mouth. You’re probably more likely to trust a business that several of your trusted friends have recommended to you. That’s because some websites have more authority than others. For instance, governmental (.gov) and educational (.Edu) websites are naturally more authoritative. A website with higher traffic and higher domain authority is better than a brand-new website with no traceability. You can have tons of backlinks from spammy, low-quality websites. But they probably won’t be as impactful as a few backlinks from authoritative sites that are relevant to your business.

SEO Derry Glossary #5: Internal and External Links

Internal links are hyperlinks that point to different pages on the same website. These differ from external links, which link to pages on other websites. External links are hyperlinks that connect to any domain other than your own domain. So, if you link out to Facebook, that’s an external link to Facebook. But if you link out to one of your blogs on your page, that’s an internal link. Meanwhile, if Facebook links out to your website – this an external link to your website.

SEO Derry: The Importance of Internal Links

When Google follows a backlink to a new page, it crawls the page to discover all the links on it. So, you should use an internal linking strategy. Meaning pages on your own site link to each other. This means Google can follow a backlink to your site and continue to follow internal links to new pages once it gets to your site. This is key to Google understand your site’s structure. Google crawls your site, then indexes those pages. Which makes your pages more likely to appear in search results.

SEO Derry: The Importance of External Links

External links have a greater impact on search engine rankings than internal links because they are valued by search engines as external votes of confidence/popularity in a web page. The volume and quality of external Links to a website is an important source of ranking power.

How to Use a Strong Internal Linking Strategy?

Internal linking should be done with a strategy in mind. For instance, if you’re trying to create a content hub or cornerstone content, ideally, someone should be able to click straight from your homepage to your cornerstone articles. Also, all your other posts about similar topics should link back to their corresponding cornerstone article, so its importance is clear from your site structure. As your site develops, you will write tons of new blog posts approaching that topic from other angles, each one linking back to your cornerstone article. This internal linking structure will increase the chance of your cornerstone content pages ranking in Google searches.

SEO Derry Glossary #6: Email outreach

Email outreach is the process of getting in touch with other people via email. In an SEO context, the goal is typically to promote a piece of content, to request a backlink, or to attempt to form a partnership/collaboration with an influencer. In other words, it is the process of putting your product or content in front of relevant people by sending them personalised emails. Your spam folder is probably full of them.

Does Email Outreach Actually Work?

In fact, all the bad outreach emails that you get probably make you wonder: “Does email outreach actually work?”. The stats show that yes, email outreach can still work. 22% of marketers report email click-through-rates over 20% as opposed to industry average of 10.69%. To get people to reply to your outreach, you need to send the right types of outreach emails. Specifically: emails that don’t make you look like a spammer, that actually provide value to the people you’re emailing, and get the results you want. Think of quality and value over quantity.

SEO Derry: How to Get Inbound Backlinks to Your Website?

So, you may be wondering how to get backlinks to your site. When you’ve established your website, it’d be easier to get organic backlinks. However, if you’re still starting out, it is much harder. As a local business in Derry, running partnerships with other local businesses is crucial to support each other through exchanging backlinks. Additionally, getting featured on local websites, especially governmental ones, will improve your local SEO. But the main strategy should be using email outreach to relevant websites to backlink to your website. This can be done through exchanging backlinks with relevant businesses or guest posts. 

Using Email Outreach to Get Backlinks

  • Email outreach is still one of the best ways to build links. In fact, most link-building methods require you to send outreach emails.
  • Email outreach helps you build relationships with other folks in your industry. These relationships can lead to partnerships, interviews, guest blogging opportunities and more.
  • Outreach can also lead to press coverage. Especially when you send highly targeted emails to journalists that cover your space.

SEO Derry: How to Choose the Right SEO Agency for Your Business

For SEO in Derry, our local know-how and results-focus means a great combination for local companies. We aren’t just search engine optimisation specialists, but also use years of content marketing expertise to not just make sure your business can be found but will engage your audience too. Find out why we’re the trusted name for SEO and discover our free tips below on how to choose the right agency for your local business in Derry.

SEO Derry: Ask Yourself ‘Why’

Companies who offer a ‘quick fix’ standalone service will often refer to standalone results like more website views. But will the visitors be searching for your company using keywords that convert? Are they being driven to a page where they can easily take a step closer to becoming a customer? Your first choice should be a search engine optimising agency who’ll take this broader view.

SEO Derry: Form a Partnership

If you see SEO as a ‘fix and forget’ service you’ll buy from an agency or consultant, you could be missing out on a world of SEO. Instead, that first choice agency will take time to understand your company, including your marketing and business goals, and grow alongside you by adapting your online world to vital digital changes before they happen.

SEO Derry: Look for a Team

ProfileTree boasts a team of specialists across SEO, content, social media marketing, web design, web development, digital training and more. But we’re still small enough to offer the service you’d expect from an outstanding local company. An agency with a broad range of expertise to hand means a much broader view of your business, of digital marketing methods and of the routes to online success.

SEO Derry: Think Goals

‘We want more visitors to our website’ is similar to saying you want more people walking past your shop – always very welcome but won’t pay the bills! We’ll help you find and meet the goal your business really needs, which could be more sales, more enquiries, or a range of engagements from your audience. Thinking smarter and thinking better is a route to SEO return on investment (ROI). We’ll show you how!

SEO Derry: Think Strategic SEO

You might be thinking ‘I want more traffic to my website’. Always a good idea. But what will the visitor have searched for? What will they be expecting when they click through? What would make them convert or begin a journey to become a customer? Keep prompting your objectives with ‘why. Want more traffic? Great. Traffic for which keywords? Will the audience they drive to your site convert? What content should drive the traffic to your site? How will you engage this audience and how will they start their journey to converting into a sale? We’ll help you by taking a step back to consider how your potential buyers are reacting, when and why.

SEO Derry: Think Again

Few businesses would approach a project without a basic ‘analyse, deliver, assess’ process, but often push the last task aside when it comes to digital marketing. ProfileTree can continually hone your search engine optimisation to find what works and develop this even further. A professional SEO plan will always consider the need to review, adapt and improve your search engine optimisation. ProfileTree can help make sure a review process works hard for your business.

SEO Derry: Think Ahead

The best time to review your online presence? When it is working! For your competitors, a good approach to SEO, social media and more means finding something that works. We’ll help you find what works and be ready for the changes online that will leave your competitors playing catch-up. Using a specialist local agency, with day-to-day advanced working knowledge, will help no just keep ahead of change but leverage the latest developments.

SEO Derry: How Much Is SEO Services

Working with so many different businesses over the years taught us to work with different budgets and requirements. We tailor all our packages according to your needs and it doesn’t matter whether the budget you have is big or small – we work with KPIs. In other words, you set the budget, we tailor a package optimised for your requirements and within the limits of your spending. We have packages starting from 500£ per month covering SEO audit, content writing, imagery, keyword analysis, and reporting. For technical SEO and website optimisation, please contact us for an accurate budget as it varies from one website to the other.

SEO Derry: Ready to Book a Free SEO Audit?

Fill the form and send us your questions, we will be happy to answer all of them. Please do let us know if your business is registered in Derry. Alternatively, you can book a chat with one of our team members to audit your SEO performance and find out how we can help you grow your website traffic organically in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

More services: Social Media Marketing Derry, Web Design Derry, Digital Training Derry