Chances are, if you were already successfully running your company well before the internet age, you might not know anything about search engine optimisation (SEO) or the enormous relevance it has to your business.

However, if you still don’t have search engine optimisation (SEO) incorporated into your marketing strategy, it’s highly likely that you’re inadvertently giving your competitors a significant advantage over you.

In this article we’ll explain:

- What SEO is & how it works

- How to tell if your competitors are using SEO and;

- How you can outsmart your business rivals, regardless of the SEO strategy they're using

What Does “Search Engine Optimisation” Mean?

These days, the vast majority of consumers conduct online research before making purchasing decisions.

Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is all about using a combination of technical tactics and traditional marketing to make sure that your business’ website is most visible when potential customers search online for the products and services you offer.

The way SEO works is simple:

1. Your website is optimised so that both search engine’s robots & actual users love it (see the next section to learn how we do this).

2. Google begins ranking your newly optimised website above your competitor’s websites. Now, when potential customers search for words and phrases that are related to your products or services, they’re seeing and clicking on your website before others.

3. With more visitors to your website than your competitors and web pages that are optimised to improve user experience and increase conversions, you get more business!

How Does SEO Work?

So how exactly do SEO companies go about increasing your business’ Google visibility?

Google’s end game is to ensure that the pages it lists first are those that are most relevant and useful to the searcher’s purpose.

Google uses a variety of factors to measure how well your website fulfills searcher’s intentions, including:

• How well your website integrates keywords and the words/phrases that are frequently associated those keywords

• How much relevant and useful written content your site contains

• How easy your site is to navigate

• How many credible websites are linking to your site

• How long visitors stay on your site and how many pages they click through

• How quickly your web pages load

Google evaluates every business' site according to these factors. So, even if your product, services and marketing are superior in every other way, if your company isn’t using SEO then your tech-savvy competitors will be taking the business that should be yours.

How to Identify & Outdo Your Competitor’s Strategy

To take your market share back from your competitors, the first thing you’ll need to do is to identify:

a) Whether they are using SEO techniques on their sites

b) Whether the techniques they are using are “Black Hat” or “White Hat”

Once you know what they’re doing, you’ll be able to respond most effectively with your own marketing strategy.

How to Identify Websites with No SEO

Integrating SEO into marketing budgets is slowly becoming the norm across many industries.

However, with billions of websites on the internet, the vast majority of pages have not been optimised

Dead giveaways that your competition is not yet utilising SEO include:

• Lack of keyword focus (no keywords in the site’s headings or within the content)

• No forms or calls to action

• Low volumes of content

• Poor navigation

• Over-reliance on Adobe Flash Player and/or slow loading speeds

If your competitors are not yet using SEO, you are in a very fortunate position!

The longer you hold your position as the strongest website in your industry, the harder it will be for future competitors to outrank you.

By building your link profile, optimising your on-site elements and improving your domain’s strength before everyone else, you can solidify your position as an online market-leader early on.

What a Website with Poor SEO Looks Like

As SEO is still a relatively new, yet very powerful, addition to the marketing world, there are many less-than-desirable SEO companies currently operating in Australia and overseas.

What makes these companies so undesirable is that they exploit the tactics outlined in our “How Does SEO Work” section to create quick but short-lived results for their clients.

Some ways you can tell that your competitors are paying for poor SEO include:

• Keyword stuffing (an unnecessary and unnatural number of keywords within the site) is present

• Content doesn’t read very well (poor spelling & grammar)

• Content is duplicated across their site (e.g. location pages that all say the same thing)

• Forms are large and have too many fields to fill in

The good news for you is that if your competitors are hiring a “Black Hat” SEO company that isn’t using Google-approved techniques, their website will eventually incur online penalties that they might never bounce back from.

The best thing you can do in this situation is to start optimising your website using “White Hat” SEO tactics straight away. That way, when your competitors do get penalised, you’ll be there to quickly rise up the ranks and take their place!

What a Website with Great SEO Looks Like

In some industries including basic trades, many professional services, and the SEO industry itself, hiring professional & reputable SEO providers is the norm.

You’ll be able to recognise a well-optimised website by searching for elements including:

• Naturally integrated keywords

• Well-written & highly useful content

• Instigation of the general principles of conversion rate optimisation (calls to action, short forms, thank you pages)

• Great navigation & user experience

• Mobile-friendly web pages

If this is what your competitor’s websites look like, you simply cannot afford to avoid investing in SEO any longer! SEO is a long-term strategy and the longer you wait, the stronger your competition’s standing in the digital sphere will become!

And remember, just because your competitors are doing SEO well now, that doesn’t mean you can’t get the edge over them. Great SEO takes:

1. Time to implement strategies and wait for Google’s website crawlers to recognise these efforts

2. A team that is ahead of the curve, always anticipating Google’s next algorithm change. That way, when the algorithm is rolled out, your business' site will reap the rewards straight away

Whether your competitors are using no SEO, Black Hat SEO, or White Hat SEO, the best thing you can do for your business is to start investing in quality SEO services today.