Answers to SEO Questions
I’m Frequently Asked

1) What is SEO?

The term SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It refers to techniques that help your website become more visible in organic search results for the people who are looking for your brand, product, or services on search engines like Google and Bing.

2) What’s the difference between organic vs. paid results?

Organic results are the results that naturally appear in search engines, for free, based on that search engine’s algorithm. On the other hand, paid search results appear at the top or side of a page. These are the links that advertisers pay to appear on different search engines.

3) Should I optimise my domain name to include keywords?

Your primary domain should not include a keyword just for the sake of keyword optimisation. Doing that can actually hurt your SEO. If your business name happens to have a keyword, that’s fine, but don’t go buying a domain like marketingsoftwaresocialseoautomation.net. You get the idea!

4) How do I know when I’m using the right number of keywords on a page?

Unfortunately, there is no correct answer for this, mostly because that’s the wrong way to think about keyword optimisation.

There isn’t a predetermined number of keywords that search engines like to see within pieces of content. Saying that, you don’t want to be caught “keyword stuffing” as this can lead to penalties. When you’re creating content you want to keep the reader in mind, and only use relevant keywords when you need to.

5) What’s the difference between internal and outbound links?

Internal links are links on a page within your site that go to another page on your site. Outbound links are external websites that you link to from within your content and should be authoritative as it shows the search engines relevancy to your content. Both are valuable for SEO.

6) How many internal links do I need on each page of content?

Again it’s important to keep the reader in mind so just like you should avoid stuffing too many keywords into your content, you should avoid stuffing too many links into your content. Only include them when it improves the reader experience. Relevancy is key.

7) What is the sitemap.xml file?

This file is an index of all the pages on your site. It’s a quick reference for search engines of content that you want to be indexed. This is very important to have for SEO purposes.

8) How can I see what pages are indexed?

Simply visit Google and type in: site:www.YOURDOMAIN.com

9) Why do you need alt text on your images?

Search engines are machines and as such cannot see images, but they can read the text. The alt text helps them figure out what the images are all about.

10) How long does it take to see results from SEO?

There are numerous different factors that will determine how quickly (or slowly) results will take. This list includes, but isn’t limited to:

• How much content you create and publish on your site
• The quality and relevancy of the content
• How the content resonates with your audience
• If you’re a big or small website with strong or weak domain authority as well as other important metrics

For example, a large site, with history and content could possibly see keyword results within one week if a search engine is crawling the site regularly. Smaller or unestablished sites will most likely take longer because they get crawled less frequently and need to establish themselves. Depending on the niche, this can sometimes take up to six months.