FAQs

What is SEO?

Search Engine Positioning or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in English. It is a set of techniques, and the process of carrying them out, which increase visibility when searching for a website by appearing in the top positions returned by a natural search (results on the left).

A successful SEO campaign will result in: visibility, high quality traffic, establishing brand image and the result you define as conversion (registrations, clicks, sales,...).

What is the difference between sponsored links (first results on the top right) and organic results (results on the left)?

Sponsored links: also known as Pay per Click (PPC). These are adverts for which the advertiser pays a sum to the search engine each time someone clicks on the advert. You choose the key phrases for which you wish to appear and your advert will be displayed when the potential customer types that phrase into the search engine. Pay per Click generates traffic immediately, regardless of the quality of the website. Once the budget is used up, the advert stops appearing.

Organic results: also known as natural results. Your website will be listed in the first set of search results when your potential customer types in a phrase related to your products and services, as long as the search engines consider your website relevant for those terms. These positions are achieved through the correct use of source code (programming) of each website and the adequate inclusion of standards proposed by the search engines.

How can an SEO process help my business? Can you guarantee sales?

We cannot guarantee results as such since SEO not only depends on our good work but also on the search engines. We can commit to results based on our experience and on the results obtained by our customers. We also like to develop long-term working relationships with our customers, as "partners" rather than "customer/supplier" which gives us flexibility when deciding upon positioning processes.

Fortunately everything on the internet can be measured allowing you to analyse the results of the positioning process. Through greater visibility you will obtain more high quality traffic (registrations, sales,...). It is important to understand that the sales process as such is not in Internet Advantage's scope since we cannot control the speed of responses, quality of the products or whether they are to the customer's tastes.

Is there risk of being penalised by Google?

The most important tool an SEO professional has is "know-how". It is important to keep up to date with the techniques that may be considered ethical or fraudulent by the search engines. If the SEO techniques used do not comply with the established ethical code then there is a possibility of penalisation.

Therefore it is extremely important for you to be guided by a serious, professional company with proven results.

What is the Google PageRank?

PageRank (PR) is a numerical value that represents the importance of a website in the eyes of Google based on a series of factors.

Google PageRank has no bearing on organic results positioning.

I hear a lot about Social Marketing. How can it help my business?

Social marketing is a highly effective internet marketing strategy based on the professional partnership interests of target markets, maximising, through this, the results of your investment. It can help your business by:

• Establishing brand image, increasing visibility on the blogosphere and on the more relevant social networks.
• Building loyalty with customers and users of relevant communities.
• Increasing relevant traffic and the number of incoming links which will support the natural positioning of the website on search engines.
• Identifying opportunities in the market through interaction with the community.
• Obtaining free word-of-mouth publicity through viral marketing, a very powerful tool for your business.

Why should I promote my business via the internet instead of investing more in traditional forms of advertising?

Because the internet offers competitive advantages over traditional forms of advertising:

1. Your business will operate 24 hours a day.
2. You will be able to measure absolutely everything (visibility, traffic and conversions).
3. You will reach only your target customers (customer segmentation).
4. Production and maintenance costs are low.
5. It's easy to update content.
6. It's interactive.
7. It favours free advertising (word of mouth).

How long will I take to reach the Top 10?

It will depend on the current situation of your website and the marketing actions you have already carried out: Do you already have visibility? How old is your domain? How many incoming links do you have? Are you in a very competitive sector? What key phrase do you want to position?

Based on these things it is "dangerous" for us to commit to obtaining results during the first 3 months of the process, although we have seen cases in which the customer has obtained results almost immediately.

How do I choose the right keywords for positioning?

It is important to take into account the fact that we don't all think/search the internet in the same way. For example, how many people would look up "Learn Spanish" in the UK? 550,000. And "Study Spanish"? 60,500... Obviously we would like to optimise for the phrase "learn Spanish" since the potential market for this key phrase is larger.

So as not to fall into the trap of promoting less relevant key phrases (a very common mistake) it is necessary to carry out a keyword analysis that will enable us to identify those key phrases which are more relevant to our website, which will bring in more traffic and potentially more sales.

Why are high quality incoming links necessary to obtain a high position in search engines?

Links are the main artery of the internet, the connections between different "places" in cyberspace.

Links taking you from one site to another are considered "votes of confidence". Therefore, if your website receives a link from a website relevant to your business, search engines will view this positively and consider your website to be valued in the sector, which will be a factor in increasing your visibility.

That is why obtaining high quality links helps us in three ways:

1. Increasing high quality traffic to the website: these references (links) become a new channel for traffic. The greater the number of references to our website, the greater the amount of traffic we receive.
2. Improving the ranking of our website (PageRank): obtaining links to our website is one of the factors Google takes into account when assigning Page Rank. Therefore, incoming links can help us improve our website's ranking.
3. Helping the indexation of our website by the search engines.

Can I myself optimise and position my website?

You can try, but the SEO is a professional in his own right (an SEO is not the same as a designer, web or computer programmer) with complete dedication to and broad knowledge of search engines.

An SEO process requires know-how, a great deal of time and professionalism.

12. Can I buy the top positions in the SERPs?

No. You can buy pay-per-click adverts, advertising on other websites via pay per lead or per impression payment systems... but you can't buy positions in natural results since your website will be listed based on the relevance that the search engines give your website for specific key phrases.

If I invest a lot of money in Pay per Click will I obtain better results in natural positioning?

No, they are two completely different strategies (although complementary) and search engines themselves refute that investing more in Pay per Click affects organic positioning in any positive way.

What happens if you are working with the same key phrase for several customers?

There can be hundreds of combinations of key phrases in the same sector and not all customers will necessarily want to optimise for the same key phrases. In the case of the top 10 we would need 10 customers with the same key phrase to occupy the first page of search results. The possibility of this happening is limited. In the case of the top 3/1 positions we establish an exclusivity system per customer and key phrase.

What service should I choose: Pay per Click, SEO or Social Marketing?

It depends on the internet marketing phase which your business is at and the objectives you want to achieve. On the other hand, the three strategies are complementary, not exclusive.

Call us and we'll help you choose the most profitable route.

Can I optimise my website for several countries and/or markets?

Yes. At Internet Advantage we work in 7 languages (native level) and we have a great deal of experience in optimising multilingual websites.