SEO Cape Town

What Is SEO?

Matt Cutts's take on SEO is clear in this video, concise and straight to the point. Because, of course, Matt Cutts works for Google (Head of web spam team) and knows exactly what their search engines are looking for on your website and how their algorithms work. When anyone drops a keyword into the Google search bar, Google will trawl through its very extensive library of indexed websites, searching for websites that most closely match your specific search query.

As in integral part of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is the process or method of optimising any website (preferably right from the start) so that search engines understand your website, know what it is about and easily crawl through it so that the website can be listed in their index.

Numerous factors (about 275 different ones) can attribute to your website being found during this lightning quick process and implementing most of these factors make us at Xcellent Media specialists in our field.

Typically as a start you would want your website to have a strong and sound page structure based around your top keyword phrases that you'd typically want to be found or "ranked" for. These are the basics, hence why keyword research is so important right from the start. Many of your toughest competitors may or may not rank for these terms already and this is where good SEO practices come in to give you the edge over your competitors by ranking on the first page for your targeted keywords.

This might all sound a little Greek to you, but this is what we do well and this is why we specialize in SEO.

What SEO isn't.

The opinion of what SEO is differs and varies in an entertaining and educational way, and Xcellent Media is all about making it work for everyone. However, everyone can agree, pretty much to the letter, about what SEO is not. SEO is not any of the following and it would be unwise to expect any of it:

SEO does not happen immediately. In other words, your website won't change its ranking overnight. SEO is a strategy and, like any strategy, needs time and energy to prove successful.
SEO is about more than targeting keywords, building a certain amount of links per month and submissions to social bookmarking sites.
It's also not just about submitting your site to the search engines and then expecting a flood of traffic.
Adjusting your meta data does not give you a magical edge. Equally, it's not just about getting a listing, creating landing pages and posting one article a month as fresh content.
SEO is definitely not brainstorming keywords and then stuffing them into your website as many times as is grammatically (and sometimes not so grammatically) possible.
Above all, SEO is not a solution or a guarantee – it a plan.
There is NO quick way of ranking high consistently.

Many companies, especially in South Africa, promise exceptional results in search engine rankings. With our focus over the last decade being in the UK, we have since come to South Africa and brought clients serious success with their rankings. For this reason, we may come across more expensive than the local companies, but our results speak for themselves.

Our minimum price for SEO services is R10 000; if this is viable to you please feel free to contact us and we can discuss how we can help you.

Why do I need SEO?

Xcellent Media (Internet Marketing South Africa) is all about making your website search engine friendly in a way that pleases both search engines and your visitors. Without good rankings you will not have the amount of visitors top ranking sites have for a particular keyword phrase, and without visitors you will not have the customer base needed in order to sell your product.

Look at this analogy: You walk into a library and find yourself surrounded by thousands of books. In this case none of them have covers or a foreword. You are looking for one book in particular. You don't know who the author is or what the title is but you do know that it is about Thai cooking. Basically, it means you would have to go and sift through every single book in the library to find the book you are looking for. This could take forever. But, luckily for you, all the shelves have big signs on them that lead you right to where you want to be. You find your book. Problem solved.

The internet is like a giant library where you are constantly looking for specific information. If there isn't a good measure of SEO done on your website, Google and other search engines simply won't be able to easily index, crawl and list your site. On the other hand, if good SEO practices are in place, and all the right signs are up, a searching user and, by proxy, Google will be able to find your site easily. And, of course, if you want to know more about Thai cooking, you won't have to go to a library, will you?

Our SEO Promise

With a combined 18 years' experience in the field of SEO and SEM (search engine marketing), Xcellent Media can and should be responsible for your entire Search Engine Optimisation. Based in Cape Town, we are incredibly dedicated to bringing you competitive SEO practices and offer the passion that is sure to get you on the ever present Google and other major search engines.

As more and more website owners realise that SEO is the way forward to get noticed in South Africa, Xcellent Media should be your first stop for the highest quality SEO available. Here's a promise that we will always keep.

To write unique and original content every, single time without stealing other content and spinning it.
Xcellent Media will always speak in plain English, no matter what the topic. Our aim is to ensure that you are completely clear about the service we are providing and what you can expect from us.
Once we have begun with search engine optimisation, the traffic to your website will pick up.
From the keywords and phrases we choose and use with your consultation, top search positions for your product is the aim and you will see a steady climb in rankings in due course.
Xcellent Media prides itself on fast turnaround times, as well as friendly and efficient service.
We at Xcellent Media are never too busy for our clients and we will respond within the hour during office hours.
As a team, Xcellent Media will always be on your side.

SEO Code Of Ethics

When it comes to SEO, we want you, as the client, to know that we follow a strict set of principles when implementing our SEO strategies. And that we adhere to international standards and best practice so that the service you receive from us is of the highest quality, wherever you go.

Xcellent Media will do everything in its power to respect and protect the privacy of our clients, at all times.
We will never use SEO practices such as cloaking techniques, black hat or unethical methods which may harm your website and in turn, may misrepresent the SEO industry.
Xcellent Media will not use automated SEO tools to promote your product; all our SEO services are done manually by our team of experts who has been in the SEO field for over 10 years.
We never guarantee, in any form, that our work will result in first page or first position results for any of our clients; we do guarantee a drastic improvement in current rankings.
Xcellent Media will not accept clients that are in direct competition and similarly never intentionally infringe on any trademark or brand name.
We will not charge clients for services that hold no value for the client; we make all efforts to provide services of the best quality and use to clients.
Xcellent Media treats all clients equally and fairly.

SEO Services by Xcellent Media in Cape Town

Onsite SEO

HTML and all language coding best practices
Flash best practices
Formulating great body copy
Navigation planning and layout
Optimised Title tags
Meta Description tags that convert
Correct Internal linking
Optimised Anchor text
Heading tags
Page layout suggestions for optimal crawlability
XML Sitemaps
CMS optimisation
404 page optimisation
All SEO friendly redirects
Canonicalization
Server side SEO practices
Bing and Yahoo XML site map inclusion
For Ecommerce sites - Google Merchant help and optimisation with feeds

Offsite SEO

Link building
Backlink analysis
Identify non-linking references
Link building progress
Deep link ratio
Inbound link quality
Backlink history
Poor linking anchor text
Backlink sources
Competitor analysis
Initial Main directory entries in a suitable category on Best of The Web, Ezilon, Go Guides, Joe Ant, and Gimpsy

Keyword Research

What your competitors are ranking for
What you should be ranking for
What your copy should consist of
What pages you should have
Which keywords you should be targeting
Estimated traffic per keyword phrase
Estimated competition per keyword phrase

Blogging services

Writing fresh daily blog posts for you

In-depth SEO Analytics Reporting

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Analytics

Provide basis for monthly reports on visitors, keywords used, enquiry / sales conversions

Customised reporting
Detailed end of month statistical reports: – giving your conversions and click-thru data, top keywords used, geographic visitor details, historic visitor numbers, visitor and keyword analysis
Monthly keyword report and positions in Google over time

SEO Audit

Complete in-depth audit of your current website and which methods should be employed to improve your current offering

Localised Google optimisation

Google Places
Google maps

FULL SEO Audit

Contact us for a full SEO audit and find out how your website holds up in terms of SEO, usability and marketability. Once you have this detailed report in your possession, you will know exactly what needs to be done on your website so that it conforms to the latest SEO standards and practices. At the same time, get a good idea of how you can tweak your website to be more user friendly to your clients.

We offer a FULL SEO Audit, instead of standard and intermediate packages that leave you with an incomplete SEO or usability offer. SEO is never an afterthought, because it forms part of the blue print of any website.

This comprehensive SEO audit is clear and easy enough to understand should you choose to have these recommendations implemented by yourself. If you want complete peace of mind without having to deal with coding changes, server issues or even a possible redesign, Xcellent Media will implement these for you at a competitive hourly rate.

Link Building

Onsite SEO might not be enough on its own. The thing is, you also want search engines to find your website via links that point to your site from other websites. This means that, by linking to you, websites also find your website interesting.

So what is link building?

In laymen's terms, one would expect a website to be somewhat of an authority on a particular topic. This can be judged by the amount of similar websites that link to a particular website because they either want to be associated with that website or they simply just like it. Google and other search engines understand that the more incoming links to your website you have, the more popular your website appears to be. Your ranking in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) is then higher than other websites that have virtually no incoming links, because the main focus of search engines is to serve their customers (visitors) the most accurate results for their individual search queries.

Additional Services

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Social Media Marketing

Twitter
FaceBook
Social Bookmarking

Conversion Marketing

Optimizing your landing pages for optimum conversion rates for both PPC and organic search

Competitor analysis

Website design and development

Article writing and submissions / Copywriting

Press Releases writing and distribution

Email and Newsletter campaigns

Web usability & SEO consulting