Blog – Rocket Media

SEO Case Study - Security Company

Here at Rocket Media, we work with a range of different companies in different sectors and have a strong track record of delivering results for companies in various different industries. The basic building blocks of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are always the same and by using these solid foundations, you can always create an effective strategy that will allow any business to improve its online rankings. Quick Respond Security (QRS) is a security company based in Gateshead and trading since 2012. Despite having nearly a decades’ worth of experience within the security field, they were still finding that they were ranking well behind other companies who were relative new comers to the security business. Not only that, many of those with a better digital footprint were much smaller companies whose service was certainly not on par with what QRS offered. We undertook this project with the understanding that it would initially be an intense 3-month project and thus we developed a strategy that involved an intensive approach in order to get the maximum results possible in such a short time. We got to work straight away and filled the website with some high quality content related to the security industry. The aim was to show the world (as well as Google) that we were the ultimate experts in security and thus we created specific articles for different areas within the scope of services that the company offered. This included things such as Manned Guarding services, Alarm Response as well as CCTV Installation. We then focussed on targetting specific keywords and this involved a lot of research through SemRush tool as well as Seo Moz. We were thus able to identify specific services that we were able to rank for very quickly as well as locations where the competition was a lot less intense. By focussing on these low-hanging fruits, we were quickly able to increase the amount of Inbound leads coming through the website and by the end of the 3-month period, the company saw a 400% increase in the amount of Inbound traffic.

The Changing Landscape of SEO in 2020

Rocket Media’s team of SEO experts look at the changing trends within SEO in 2020

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed considerably over the years. Whilst Google still continues to ‘rule the roost’ as the number one source of traffic on the entire Web, recent trends have shown that more than 50% of searches in 2020 result in no click through!

This is big news for SEO and it means that there is now less ‘real estate’ to fight for on search engine result pages (SERP’s).

On the flip side, despite the lower click through rates from Google searches, there’s still a tremendous opportunity and potential for businesses. The old adage of whether the glass if ‘half empty or half full’ can be applied here and we see this as an opportunity to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’, the valuable from the worthless.

Traditionally, it wasn’t too difficult to rank highly on Google searches (depending on various factors of course) however, in 2020, the game has changed and it’s no longer ‘easy’ to get your ROI from SEO. This isn’t just down the the increasing amount of Digital Marketing experts within the field.

Unless your SEO experts and completely committed to the art of SEO, it’s unlikely that you can have consistent success within this inbound marketing field.

There’s a number of factors that have led to this situation. Google have added things like ‘Featured Snippets’ which has dramatically increased in recent years and reduced the need for searchers to click on the websites in organic search.

The Google My Business profiles have also become more detailed and now allow searchers to find specific information in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s). The need to visit a website is decreasing by the day as Google continues to improve the user experience for searchers. Our need for Instant Information is only growing by the day and Google will continue to ease the user-experience which will mean less visits to websites.

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In the past, even somebody with a very basic understanding of SEO could get a
website ranked highly for certain keywords. This led to a massive growth of SEO
companies who rode the wave but who never had the full understanding of what
was needed to rank highly on Google and also get the most relevant traffic to
their site. Thankfully, these types of companies will become more and more redundant moving forward as only companies with a complete and thorough understanding of SEO will be able to deliver results. The lower click-through-rate is a challenge that only the

best SEO companies can rise to. One of the major opportunities that we see is in the increased importance that Google is placing on Local searches. The GMB business profile along with the local 3-pack are excellent opportunities for companies to increase their exposure on Google. Local seems to be the buzz word within the industry in 2020 and those companies with a thorough understanding of this concept will thrive over the next few years. The local packs have a lot of detailed information including the distance from the searcher’s location, the option to click on to the website directly, get directions as well a click-to-call button. If you can master this area for your business, you’ll see a considerable return. The Google posts section has also become more prominent in the SERP’s and is another opportunity to get ahead. You can now promote your products through this feature although the success of the endeavour is dependent on good copy-writing to catch the attention of the searcher. We practice what we preach here at Rocket Media and we’ve made it a goal to rank on page one for a number of keywords related to our business. We see ourselves as digital marketing experts and as the best SEO company in Newcastle. For more information on how to get results through SEO in 2020, get in touch and we’d be delighted to tell you more.

3 free keyword tools for your SEO efforts

One of the most important aspects of any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign is the keyword research. There’s a famous old saying that says that if you ‘Fail to Prepare, then Prepare to Fail’ and that adage is very much true when it comes to the Keyword research component of SEO. There’s a whole host of different tools out there that you can utilise to help improve your SEO efforts. In this article, we will be mentioning 3 free tools for keyword research that will help to give you an edge in SEO and provide you with the quickest way to get the maximum results from your efforts.

Firstly, it’s important to understand how critical good keyword research can be. The thing with SEO is that it’s CONSTANTLY changing. There are literally hundreds of updates happening every month and you need to make sure that your on top of these changes, especially with a lot more changes expected within SEO as we head into 2020. However, there are some solid foundations of SEO that will always remain constant. For those with limited time, focussing on these core aspects of SEO will allow you to get the most out of your SEO efforts. One of these critical aspects of SEO is effective keyword research, something that most SEO experts would advise.

One of the reasons why many SEO campaigns never maximise their potential is through poor keyword research. Remember, it’s not just about any single ‘keyword’ but more about getting VERY clear on the types of search queries and questions that your customers are putting into the search engines. Long tail keywords are in many ways the secret to getting a lot of traffic to your website given the low level of competition although they are not popular. SEO keyword research is not the sexiest of tasks to do however, depending on your level of commitment to keyword research, you could save yourself a considerable amount of time and money by making sure you target the right keywords.

There are so many tools out there today and plenty of free ones that can really benefit your SEO campaigns, especially when it comes to effective keyword research. We’ve put down 3 of the most common free tools that you can use which can provide you with valuable information, metrics and data that will allow you to have a more focussed (and intimately successful!) SEO campaign.

Google Trends

This one is probably the best of the lot and is an excellent keyword research tool that can give you the bigger picture of what’s going on. As well as the basic information on the popularity of a given keyword, Google Trends also allows you to get very specific information such as valuable regional variations as well as information on the overall trends and changes with the volume of search engine queries.

One of the benefits of this is that you can use the data to predict the future trends as well as letting you know which keywords are perhaps not as popular as before. You can setup Google trends to show you the traffic trends over the past 5 years and this is invaluable information with regards to your audience trends. To put it simply, if the trend for the keyword is upward, then it’s worth spending more energy on those keywords. If the trend is downwards, then this suggests that your audiences consumption of content is changing which means you might have to adapt your targeted keywords.

People Also Ask (Google Feature) The next tool is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to Keyword Research, however, we have found the People Also Ask (PAA) feature to be a brilliant tool for helping us to determine similar keywords that we might not have come up with initially. As we all know by now, Google is an amazing source for any questions. It’s now very normal to tap into Google and get a response or answer immediately and this information can also be harnessed by smart marketers. This trend is only likely to continue as ‘Voice search’ becomes a lot more popular.

When you type a question into Google, what happens these days is that a section called “People Also Ask” normally pops up with similar queries to the one you just typed in. These queries use some of the most popular questions that people have asked on the platform in recent times. By analysing these questions, you can create high quality content that seek to answer these questions and then aim to rank on the first page for these questions.

Of course, having the authority to rank for the PAA SERP features requires a strong content marketing strategy along with solid link-building but again, if you can answer the question succinctly and efficiently, then that will make your efforts to rank even easier.

SEMrush (Free Option) The SEMrush software is an integral part of our SEO strategy and there are some excellent features in the paid packages that can make a big difference in your SEO efforts. SEMrush starts at $99 per month and we think that it’s well worth the price considering the amount of data you can extract to help you on your SEO efforts. The free version also has numerous features that you can use to help you identify what the best SEO strategy would be.

Although there is are some limits on the free option, there’s still more than enough for quick keyword research which as we have mentioned before. The dashboard is very simple to use and the Keyword Research tool is an excellent free resources, although there are daily limits on the number of keywords you can search.

There are a few other tools that we could easily have mentioned. The two that were in the running for being included in this article are Google Analytics and MOZ (free version). Moz has a free option which has many of the same features as SEMrush. Google Analytics is the bread-and-butter tool for any SEO strategy and we wanted to mention some other lesser known tools that would help SEO’s. Just remember to do thorough keyword research before starting any SEO campaign and this will ensure that your SEO efforts won’t go to waste.

What is SEO? A brief introduction

Newcastle SEO experts Rocket Media give an overview of what you need to think about when it comes to SEO.

You most likely have heard of the term Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and you may even have done some basic research into it. In simple terms, SEO is the process of bringing in customers to your business through online searches, mostly through Google. These are the BEST quality leads for any business as they are ‘Inbound leads’ of people who are actively looking for your products.

The seo process itself however is very complicated and thorough and you will need to become an expert in SEO in order to get the best out of your efforts.

A quick look at the Wikipedia definition for the term tells us that SEO is “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results”.

The word that jumps out in the previous sentence is ‘unpaid’. The beauty of SEO is that all of the traffic that comes from Google searches is free, hence why so many companies spend a small fortune initially to boost their rankings and get on page one. Whilst the Wikipedia definition gives a very general overview, it doesn’t help in answering the important questions for your business, such as:

How do you get your website to rank higher on the search engines?
How much time should you be spending on SEO?
How do you measure the Return-On-Investment (ROI)?
Here at Rocket Media, we’ve been doing SEO for some of Newcastle’s biggest companies and we understand how to play the SEO game. This article will take a look into each one of the above sections and try to explain it in simple terms that a layman will be able to understand.

How do you get your website to rank higher on the search engines?
There’s no simple answer to this one. The easiest way to answer this question is to say that there are numerous different strategies and tactics that you can apply to get your website appearing higher up in the search results. There is something called ‘On-site SEO’ which involves optimising your website to make sure that it ranks highly in the eyes of Google.

However, if there is one thing that will perhaps make the biggest difference to how high you rank on Google then it would be the quality and quantity of back-links to your website. Back links are a signal to Google confirming the authority of your website and whilst back-links are certainly not the only metric to be tracked for successful SEO, it is the cornerstone of any successful SEO campaign.

The saying within the industry is that ‘Content is King’. However, is Content really is King, then Engagement is Queen. Things like how long a person spends on your website, whether they click on more than one page all have an effect on SEO and have become increasingly important in showing your website as a high authority entity.

How much time should you be spending on SEO?
A considerable amount of time! That’s the simple answer. Regardless of what business your in, SEO has become more important in 2020 than it has ever been. Gone are the days when you can consistently get a tonne of leads by cold-calling them or sending out mass emails. This is interruption-marketing and the ROI from this is getting smaller by the day. People just don’t want to be interrupted during their day from salespeople promoting products they don’t need!

We have seen a huge increase in the amount of social media companies popping up as businesses become aware of the importance of having a social media presence. However, there still seems a lack of knowledge generally when it comes to SEO and this can be absolutely critical to the success of a business.

With SEO, you are gaining HIGH-QUALITY leads who are actively searching for your product and are most likely in the final phase of the buying cycle. Your unlikely to be searching for “Taxis in Newcastle” unless you were looking to order a taxi. The company who ranks at the top will have a massive competitive advantage. That’s why you should always actively be maintaining and implementing your SEO strategy as it’s a long haul game. It normally takes 6 months + to see a significant improvement in your SEO results but as the old adage goes, “Good things come to those who wait”. Once your ranking on the top of Google searches (which is free remember), you’ll be getting new relevant leads coming to your door on a daily basis!

How do you measure the ROI?
There are various tools available for this. The simplest one which is also free is Google Analytics. It’s fairly straightforward to install this on to your website and it then gives you access to detailed information about how many people are visiting your website. The Google Analytics tool also gives you specific data on what sources your traffic are originating from (Google, Facebook etc.) and also what times, locations.

In terms of other tools, we highly recommend using SEM rush as it gives you access to much deeper data that you can use to help you improve your SEO even more. Things like your positional movement on certain keywords along with tools to help you find keywords with less competition are hugely valuable for SEO and can make all the difference for your SEO campaign.

In conclusion, it’s better to be honest and admit the reality of SEO. It’s hard work and requires you to be on top of a number of things. What we’ve discussed in this article is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of SEO knowledge and we’ll be writing a lot more articles on the subject in the near future.

QRS - A Case Study

Quick Response Security (QRS) provides security services throughout the UK with a focus on the North East region.

The company has been trading since 2010 and have a strong track record within the security sector. However, the company lacked an online presence, and were being overtaken by numerous newcomers who had utilised Digital Media to become bigger than QRS, despite only being recent entrants to the industry.

Through various SEO techniques, Rocket Media were able to dramatically increase the number of Inbound Leads, and brought in 10+ clients a month for QRS.

The company saw a 400 % increase within 3 months through
Rocket Media’s intense SEO strategy