SEO Gauteng | Search Engine Optimization Pretoria & Johannesburg | Company | Marketing Services
(Gauteng, South Africa)
Gauteng SEO Experts! As a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Company in the Pretoria and Johannesburg area (Gauteng), NextG specializes in optimizing websites for Internet marketing purposes (SEO) in the hospitality industry, hotels, guest houses, wedding & conference venues and traveling websites. We also have various clients in other business sectors. These include for example online training websites and various other businesses marketing their services online. Though most of our clients are from Gauteng and the surrounding areas, we also do SEO on websites in other provinces of South Africa, North West Province, Freestate and the Western Cape, from Cape Town and up along the coast.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best investment you can make in marketing your business online and can be considered a blend of more than a 100 key criteria in web programming and Internet marketing. NextG only uses experienced and specialized web programmers for the server-side and back-end coding of the website, as a slight mistake or something that was over-looked can be the end of your online marketing strategies.
Most businesses are beginning to realize that customers are more and more turning to the Internet to make bookings or to find companies selling their products or services online. The fact is also true, that most websites have no SEO coding, or the website back-end coding was done in such a way that it is actually blocking the search engine spiders from crawling the website and as a result being unable to index the website properly. Other websites have outdated coding, or had even been hacked and might contain malicious coding. In cases where the web programmer did not follow the correct guidelines for ethical search engine optimization, the websites are blacklisted or penalized for spamming. In most cases where there were attempts made to do the SEO on the website, the keyword strategies were done incorrectly and they are targeting the wrong audience online.
In the light of above concerns, you can read through the following general statements being made and some general miss-conceptions and our comments below.
Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information. We will gladly assess your website and the chances are good that your SEO strategies are failing due to some of the points mentioned below.
Most Websites are not Optimized!
Most websites have either no SEO coding, the websites were designed without taking the internet users and search engines into account or the website coding is blocking the search engines completely. Further, you need to understand the correct keywords for your specific industry. If this is not done correctly, your website can even be penalized for spammed links or coding that was inadvertently entered in the back-end. The most important point is that people need to find your website, otherwise it is a "white elephant" and you can rather resolve to email marketing and email brochures.
What keywords do your potential clients use?
It is no use to try and search for your own website, the way that you normally search for information online. All people search differently and it is only by statistical information taken from a a large group of people and analyzing their behaviour, that you can begin to understand what your keywords are. The broad keywords are for general advertising. They are shorter combinations, with a lot of competition and the users stay very briefly on the website. If your website is optimized for the correct niche market, your visitors will stay longer and you will need less hits to attain to a sale. Getting the correct combination of both, can either mean the success or the end of your business.
During a recent discussion with one of our guest house clients, he made the following statement: "In the past, we relied mostly on word-of-mouth and on existing clients returning. We now notice a significant amount of new clients, that are directly related to the SEO done on the website. If these new clients make an online booking, it is nearly 100% certain that the deal will go through. Our business had been operating for over 25 years and we did not experience a decline in bookings, during times of economic pressure. Recently 3 other guesthouses in very close vicinity to us, that had also been operating for over 20 years, had to close their doors due to a decline in bookings". Another client in the weddings, conferences and accommodation industry replied: "When NextG started on our website, we had a client base of roughly 80% existing or returning clients and only about 20% new clients from advertising on other websites. Now most of our clients are new ones, visiting and making bookings on our own website.".
SEO is here to stay! Social media cannot replace it.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process, where the web programmer aims to achieve high rankings in the Organic Search Results or SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for his website. This should not be confused with Google Adwords or PPC Campaigns.
As Google has the aim to provide the most relevant information to people searching the web, SEO is here to stay. Only a small portion of the browser real estate is used for other purposes than results most relevant for the keywords typed in by the user. In most cases, it is the top 3 results or it is displayed in the r.h.s. column.
Social media has a role to play and can be very effective, taking the example of a restaurant where various friends and circles meet on a Friday night. Have you tried finding indexes of social media pages for highly competitive keywords? They are just not showing up, lacking proper rankings to be effective.
The effectiveness of SEO.
One of our permanent clients recently did an email campaign, sending out over 600 emails to potential clients. They got 3 responses and no sale. This was not very effective.
Another client had his business advertised in a TV show. We checked the website and for 3 days we noticed about 15 additional hits on the website per day, with no real evidence of additional sales. This is also not very effective advertising.
You can compare this to the guest house mentioned above, where the owner stated that nearly 100% of the website visitors filling in the web form, leads to a successful booking. Your website needs to be found and it needs to have credibility. Having high rankings in the Search Engines fulfills both criteria, as the search engines do not normally give high rankings to "fly-by-nights".
Look out for these slogans and be aware, as this is not how SEO works:
"I will add the SEO coding for you" - There is something wrong with this statement, as it is really not that quick and simple. To be "just adding" or "automatically adding" something that requires time for research and besides that requires the skill and experience of specialized web programmers, I guess it will just not be done!
"You need to purchase a domain name (or many domain names) with the keywords in the domain name" - This statement is false, as SEO is not just "all-in-the-name". Watch out, as this has never worked and will never work. We normally redirect all domain names, so the search engines will only index one of them. So what happens to all the other domain names? It is just waste of time, money and effort.
"You need to update and change the website content daily and then the search engines will visit your site regularly and give you high rankings." - This statement is also false, as there are only a few websites in the world that have this privilege. The other websites (event though their are giants) are just too small or unimportant in comparison.
"My website is already on Google Page 1" - This might not be true. Please remember to clear the browser history. Did your website now disappear from Page 1? This is why your potential clients are also not able to find your business online.
"You need to have many links pointing to your website." - Some links might be good, but Google is getting better every day, catching people that try tricking the search engines. This may have your website penalized or even banned from the results pages. This trick does not work anymore. Having useless and irrelevant traffic directed to your website, is really a bad idea and needs no more explaining here.
Contact:
As mentioned above, please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.