You need to describe your products and services using the language that searchers use when they’re trying to find your products and services in the search engine. If they use inaccurate terminology then, by all means, explain the nuances to them in your content; but if you don’t use the same words and phrases that they use to find you – then you won’t be found.

Search engines need enough unique text on each page in order to understand what the page is about and to determine the relevant keywords. If most of your page is navigation, headers and footers that are on all pages or text is contained in images, then the search engines will struggle to understand what your pages are about and won’t know when to show your pages as a result.  We generally recommend that each page of your website should have 250-400 words of unique content.

When we suggest adding new pages to your website, it is so that we can help you acquire additional relevant traffic. The more different words and phrases relating to your business that you have on your website, the more searches your listings will appear in. If these additional pages deal with the specific user intent of the keyword and provide useful, valuable information, rather than just having a couple of catch-all pages, then not only will your visitor numbers increase, your conversion rates should also increase accordingly.

Yes. You need to demonstrate to search engines that your site is relevant – and remains relevant. A relevant, trustworthy site should have new visitors every month and hence should also obtain new links regularly. If you only link build in spurts now and again the search engines may feel that the pattern of link acquisition is unnatural and decide to discount the links. Furthermore, your competitors aren’t letting up, so why should you? The more you do on an ongoing basis the better off you’ll be.

As Google tries to improve the quality of its results, one thing it is constantly looking for is whether a website is legitimate – is it a trustworthy business or just a thin affiliate; Legitimate businesses (or Brands, according to Google), will have not just history, quality backlinks and good content, they will also have a constant buzz online of news and PR, incoming links, online reviews and recommendations being passed on by happy customers – often via social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If your brand has no social media presence, you may be missing an opportunity to encourage customers to share your content and recommend your services. You may also miss an opportunity to create positive sentiment towards your brand – something which will reflect in your rankings, your shopping search results and your Google Places listings.  The question shouldn’t be why do it, the question should be, how can you afford not to do it?!

We monitor a number of relevant KPIs to understand if the SEO and social media work we're doing is helping. The first thing we'll do is keep an eye on how key terms are ranking in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk andBing.co.uk. If we can see these terms moving up in the search engine results month-on-month, we know our work is helping things. We also know that you probably won't see a significant jump in your traffic until you're on the first page; whether it's a local result, a shopping result or an organic result.

We'll also keep an eye on both the number of keywords sending traffic to your site, brand and non-brand, and the number of keywords that are delivering conversions as well as the nature of those keywords. If more non-brand keywords deliver visitors each month then we know the SEO is working. If more brand terms deliver then we can see that word of mouth via social media is helping. As the number of keywords sending visitors increases, your traffic should increase. As your traffic increases so should your leads or sales. If this doesn't happen then we need to assess the quality and relevance of the keywords and we need to assess whether something about your website is confusing visitors.

Ultimately, we're really looking at the bottom line; are you getting more leads or making more money? Our aim is for your online marketing campaign to deliver a good return on investment and we want to know what's working best branded or non-branded traffic? PPC? Shopping? Social media sites? If we know what's working well, we can adjust your budgets or your campaigns accordingly and try and improve on the things that aren't working as well.