News | Tuesday, 31st October 2023
Is SEO Dead? Is SEO Vital or Vestigial for Small UK Businesses?
David Edmundson-Bird is a Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing and Enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Faculty AI Lead in the Business School. He’s a Board member for FutureEverything, an innovative global arts organisation based in Manchester, and consults on digital comms for several small businesses.
In this blog post, David explores getting noticed on the internet and the role of search engine optimisation for small businesses.
Is SEO Dead? Is SEO Vital or Vestigial for Small UK Businesses?
I first heard about search engine optimisation (SEO) about 20 years ago. I was at an event for small businesses and BT were there talking about rolling out ADSL broadband. That is how far back we're going into the depths of history.
SEO has been around for a long time, and for a large part of that people have been crying its immediate demise. It is usually to get a rise out of digital marketers, many of whom are quite invested in it. These cries are usually from competing comms industries. You often hear PR professionals, content marketers or offline advertisers saying SEO is dead.
But it is not dead. It changes. It evolves. The ‘old’ SEO is dead. Old SEO was full of people doing all sorts of things that we would call ‘Black Hat’. Black Hat refers to the idea that you are trying to game the system, which is not something any contemporary SEO professional would recommend.
Search engine optimisation evolves, and the practice of search engine optimisation evolves too. It is evolving, I think, in favour of ordinary people creating useful content.
What is SEO?
Let’s be clear about what we mean by search engine optimisation.
People think of SEO as some kind of magic art - some kind of secret. But it’s not. SEO is a set of practices for improving the visibility of webpages, websites and mobile app content in search engine results pages (or ‘SERPs’ as they are known). The words visibility and visible are important. The aim is to have visible content towards the top of the SERPs for search engine queries for which you would like to be visible.
When somebody uses a search engine and types in a phrase, you want your content to turn up towards the top of those results. And you want that for all the queries for which you would like to be visible. In very simple terms, SEO is the activity that we do to try and make that happen.
Bear in mind that you’re not just dealing with the search engine to get to the top of the SERPs. You are also competing with everyone else on Google who is doing the same thing - including your actual competitors. Search engines change very regularly. They are constantly evolving (in the form of algorithm updates), constantly changing with new people creating content, building updated content, and creating new websites. It is a constant ongoing effort. It's all about constantly creating content and optimising your content for visibility.
Why is it important to be at the top of the SERPs?
More than half of all the traffic to websites and apps comes from search engines. It is probably the biggest channel to drive an audience to your website or content.
If most of your traffic is going to come from search engines, more than from any other channel, then it's important to get close to the top.
As an example, if you're at the top of the SERPs for a particular search query (excluding paid-for ads), 27% of the people (on average) who see that result will click on it. (Source: Backlinko 2023).
Being highly visible in Search is important because people (perhaps mistakenly) believe that the more visible you are in those results, the more trustworthy you are and more relevant it is to them (Source: Schultheiẞ & Lewandowski, 2021). Google believes that in the Search results it provides, those at the top are more relevant to that set of words that have been typed into that search engine. And people will click on that top result first.
Google employs an algorithm that is used to optimise search results. The algorithm is a very complex program, one that's been built up over years and constantly evolves. There are possibly more than 200 factors - we can’t be entirely sure because it’s hidden from us - that the search engine algorithm uses to determine what the most relevant results will be for a particular phrase that's typed into the search engine box (Source: Backlinko, 2023). Thousands of engineers have developed this algorithm over time and (certainly since about 2016) have been using AI to increase the number of tiny factors involved.
Because of this, there is a lot of experimenting done by SEO researchers to understand what those factors are and what people can do to make their content appear more relevant to that algorithm to appear higher in search results.
What factors affect SEO?
Relevance
Relevance is a critical thing. There are all sorts of things that impact relevance. For example, the searches I do are often geographical (“Poster Printing in Manchester”).
At the bottom of the search results page, you will often see the IP address for your computer (you might even see your postcode). Your IP address can give away your location in almost all cases. Google uses this IP address (and by implication postcode) to filter results that are relevant to your local area for example if you were to search ‘restaurants near me’.
Context and Intent
Context is quite important in search, and so are the search words used in a Search query. The algorithm will try to work out the meaning of the phrase, what the searcher is looking for, and what their search ‘intent’ is. Google is trying to figure out if they looking for something to buy or if they are bored and just want to be entertained, if they are looking for inspiration and ideas. Search intent is important to get relevant results.
Trust
The things that are bothering SEOs now are four little letters - EEAT (which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust).
You need to be able to demonstrate 'EEAT' and this is a little more subtle, but there are some simple ideas for making this happen. You might be surprised how often people don’t do it.
- Make sure your content is well-written and created by someone who is an expert in what they are writing
- Keep it updated
- Make sure all of your contact details (including a real-world postal address) are visible
- Demonstrate your expertise – do you have any awards?
- Demonstrate your experience – have you got great case studies?
- Get and share great reviews (especially Google reviews, but all are good)
- Try and get some lovely people to link to your site (and specific pages you would like them to link to) from their sites – especially if their pages contain positive words about you.
What does that mean for small businesses?
So - Google uses Location, Context, Intent, and Trust and works out what are the best results.
It is a positive thing for small and micro businesses because using intent, context, trust plus local relevancy means that they are not always competing with the entire internet.
- Create great content and make sure you have content that is relevant to what a local audience is looking for
- Make it a regular thing to do and to keep an eye on. Just because you don’t have huge marketing budgets and you don’t employ an SEO manager to manage your visibility in Search, doesn’t mean you can’t do some common-sense (and simple) things. You might find that you’re the only one in your niche doing anything.
More resources and insights via OpenSME
You can find many more learning materials and helpful insights at opensme.ac.uk
Or to get in touch simply email opensme@mmu.ac.uk
What is OpenSME?
OpenSME is all about the challenges facing small businesses and finding the tools to meet them. The free programme is delivered by Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Salford, University of Manchester and University of Bolton and is funded by the Business Growth Hub and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
To find out more about OPEN SME and what it can do for you, please visit opensme.ac.uk
