Search Engine Optimisation South Africa

Just like the rest of the world search engine optimisation and having your website visible in Google searches is incredibly important. Whether a company’s website can be found on search engines can make or break a business. As a South African SEO agency we work with businesses to make sure their online presence is as effective as possible, bringing them clients to purchase their goods and services.

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What is SEO/Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is how we help Google and other search engines know what our website and business is about so they can show it to the people who are searching for the services and products your business offers.

In more formal language, Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is the process of optimising a website to improve its visibility in the search engine results pages for specific keywords. The goal of SEO is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to the site by making it more relevant and authoritative for certain search terms.

Sometimes SEO is not the optimum approach and Google Ads is a more effective strategy due to its immediacy.

How Does SEO Help?

South Africa SEo Search Engine Optimisation 2

  • Increase Website Traffic

The core goal of all online marketing is to increase high quality visitors to your site and introducing them out to your business.

  • More Sales

The more high quality visitors your website receives the more leads and sales your business will create.

  • Long Lasting Results

SEO in South Africa generates sustainable long terms results that your company can rely upon to bring in new business over time.

  • Improve Brand Credibility

Google is an authority and when your business ranks well in Google, potential customers will identify you as a leader in your industry.

Free SEO Cost Calculator

Complete the form below to start our SEO cost calculator.

Why is SEO Important?

A 2011 Burke study found that 76% of people used search engines to find local business information vs. 24% who still relied on printed yellow pages. The internet has grown rapidly since 2011, and some people put the current number closer to 97%. This means that your customers are online and looking for you.

South African SEO Search Engine Optimisation Internet Searches

Will Your Customers Find You?

Even though so many people use the internet to search for the products and services they want and need, the amount of information being shown to them is huge. In order for you to be seen by your customers, you need to be at the top of Google’s first page search results.

Being number one in Google pays off, as over 33% of searchers click on the first result, 18% on the second result and only 11% on the third result. 92% of people never scroll past the 1st page.

South African SEO Click Through Rate Search Engine Optimisation

Storyteller Design specialises in South African search engine optimization*.  We help to rank our client’s websites on the 1st page and top 3 results of Google. If your company is not on the first page of the search rankings your website might as well be invisible.

1st Page Google Rankings = More Leads = More Business

Through crafted content and powerful link building strategies we provide the highest quality SEO and online marketing for your business to dominate the competition in your industry and appear at the top of the Google search results.

Proven results to get you to number 1.

We will only work with clients who we believe will gain substantially from ranking high in the search results and who operate in an industry where we know we can beat the competition to the top of the page in Google.
South African Marketing South Africa SEO Results

“My bookings have increased 300%”Ian Thomas

The first step in getting to number one is to access your website’s structure, content and links to see how it is constructed so we can optimise the way it is put together and the words used in the best way for the keywords being targeted. This is called a website SEO Audit.

Speed.

One of the easiest ways to optimise your website and get a boost in your SEO is to increase your website’s speed. In 2010 Google stated that page speed would now influence their search rankings. What they actually mean is that the time a visitor has to wait until your page is completely loaded is a deciding factor in your Google ranking.

Google Page Speed Insights South Africa SEO Search Engine Optimisation

The first thing to do when trying to optimise your websites speed is to test how fast it loads and get a list of items that may be slowing it down. Add your email in the block to the left to find out how you can do this yourself.

See how fast your website is:

Complete the form and we will show you how to test your websites speed yourself.

Alternatively email us at [email protected] and we can test it for you and send you a report.

Still not sure why you need SEO?

Check out our frequently asked questions section.

We live in a digital age. This means that people turn to their computers, tablets and smartphones to solve their problems, learn, discover and search for products and services.

A decade ago, people would turn to their physical yellow pages directory if they were looking for a specific type of product or service. They may even have called up a friend to ask for recommendations.

These days people do their own research on the internet usually using Google.

So, if a potential customer is looking for a specific kind of service (plumber, lawyer, accountant and so on) in Google, your website needs to appear at the top of those results. 54% of the volume of clicks goes to the top 3 results. If you are not in those top 3 results you are losing out on a huge amount of potential new clients, and if you are not on the first page you can forget about people finding your website.

SEO (or search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website by having the correct structure, pages and backlink profile so that you appear at the top of the results for specific keywords related to your business.

a backlink is a link pointing to your website from another website – Google sees this as a “referral” or “vote” that your site is worthy of visiting and having valuable information about that keyword. Thus, the more high quality backlinks you have from relevant sites to your industry, the higher you will rank).

To sum up, your website needs to be at the top of the Google results for as many keywords related to your industry as possible, e.g.:

yourbusiness + city/area
yourservice + city/area

Organic search is (still in 2015) the biggest source of traffic and lead generation. As long as Google exists (and as long as it dominates market share), it will continue to drive highly targeted users to billions of search queries every single day.

With the number of internet users growing at an enormous rate, every business should spend a portion of their marketing budget on obtaining top search results for keywords related to their business (because if your customers can’t find you, you’re losing business to your competition).

The more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you will receive. (Unless you are an incredibly well-known brand like Coca Cola), there is a good chance many people have never even heard of your existence. And what happens when they search for a product or service that you offer but you don’t appear in the search engine (or your competitor outranks you)…?

That’s right, you just lost a potential sale that clicked right into your competitor’s site.

If you’re still on the fence about needing to rank, here are some quick facts about SEO:

  • 61% of global Internet users research products online. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
  • 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
  • Worldwide, we conduct 131 billion searches per month on the web. (Comscore, January 2010)
  • 57% of TV viewers use the web simultaneously. (Nielson, 2009)
  • 70% of the links search users click on are organic, not paid. (Marketing Sherpa, February 2007)
  • 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results. (MarketingSherpa, February 2007)
  • 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. (MarketShareHitsLink.com, October 2010)
  • The average click-through rate for paid search in 2010 (worldwide) was
    2%. (Convario, January 2011)
  • Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010)
  • Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages. (HubSpot Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses, 2011)

Scan your websites SEO for FREE.

Enter the URL of any landing page or blog article and see how optimized it is for one keyword or phrase.

South African SEO Success.

Storyteller Design specialises in ranking our clients at the top of Google for popular search terms relating to their business. Not only that we love working with our clients to turn search traffic into leads and finally into paying customers.

We Love The Ocean

Client: cabrinha.co.za
Keyword: “kitesurfing lessons cape town”
Google Rank: 1st

We Love B&Bs

Client:
sunbirdguesthouse.net
Keyword:
“harare guesthouse”
Google Rank:
1st

We Love Guesthouses

Client: shandon.co.za
Keyword: “accommodation nelspruit”
Google Rank: Top 3 local results for all nelspruit accommodation searches

We Love Cocktails

Client: beaumontsa.co.za
Keyword: “spirit measures south africa”
Google Rank: 1st

We Love Safaris

Client: iconicafrica.com
CTR: 3.5%