The Innovative Manchester SEO Agency

Not the most glamorous service but one of the most important ones, technical SEO involves all the work carried out to ensure that the indexing and crawling phase is as efficient and optimised as it can be. Technical SEO work is all carried out behind the scenes. So, while the user may not see or appreciate the efforts made from a technical standpoint, having a technically sound website sets the foundations for a strong, reliable and user-friendly site, equating to enhanced visibility.

Tech SEO is a term that is packed with different practices. These practices include the more simple and rudimentary such as optimising your URL structure, adding breadcrumbs to your navigation, editing image filenames, and ensuring your website looks great on mobile. Technical optimisation work can also be extremely complex and include stuff such as structured data markups, JavaScript SEO, XML site map optimisations, and canonical URLs.

From WordPress to Shopify, any eCommerce website looking to grow their online visibility and increase sales needs a reputable eCommerce SEO agency by their side.

Growing sales and appearing in the search engine results pages for transactional keywords takes a lot of SEO effort. Our SEO specialists will suggest new category pages, optimise product pages, ensure the right pages are indexed and produce a user-focussed content strategy to improve keyword reach. Several SEO tactics apply to eCommerce websites. it’s about knowing how to achieve results based on your site’s platform, implementing product schema markup, optimising for mobile browsing and more.

Luckily for you, we’ve got eCommerce SEO consultants that know what they’re doing.

Reach new markets, audiences and sectors by investing in international SEO for your business. Made up of various tactics, international SEO is all about expanding your internet presence beyond your business’s country of origin.

The bulk of the workaround global search engine optimisation is about adding a variety of signals to your site to tell Google that your content is suitable for audiences outside of X country. For instance, a unified URL structure that includes the codes of different countries – ‘de’ for Germany and ‘es’ for Spain, for example – is one of the key ways of expanding your reach. As well as URLs, geo-targeting, and hreflang tags are other techniques that will help you be seen by people across the world.

The benefits of international SEO are fairly obvious. Done right and you open yourself up to a limitless market of billions that flock to your website, bringing you more sales and revenue.

For businesses that want to become the market leader in their local area, optimising for and investing in a local SEO company to help target specific places, towns and cities, is incredibly potent. For example, for an agency like ours, based in the northwest of the UK, we’d always like to rank higher for things like ‘SEO Manchester’, ‘Manchester SEO’, ‘SEO Agency Manchester’ as well as non-local terms like ‘SEO Agency’.

As with international SEO, its ‘local’ sibling is all about structuring a site in such a way that it sends signals to Google’s crawlers to say it wants to be indexed in a particular manner. For local SEO, this would probably involve optimising your Google My Business (GMB) page and building important name, address and phone number citations in websites that are being used by people looking for your services among other things.

Writing and optimising key areas of your site for locally-themed, intent-focused search phrases and terms will help Google to understand just how crucial you are for local searchers.

Also, local SEO can be quite a cost-effective solution as your budgets are focused on just one specific area, not the entire nation.

Carrying out an audit is the best way to understand the current state of your website and online presence. Audits done on sites such as SE Ranking or SEMRush will scan through your sites, rate your score out of 100 and highlight major red flags that need addressing. Audits, in many ways, are priceless because they provide you with the information you need to succeed – they are telling you what to do to improve your rankings.

Audits tie in nicely with Google’s Core Web Vitals which is the programme by which they judge websites on how fast they load, their user-friendliness, and technical merits. Search engines obsess over the user experience and are constantly looking for a way to provide the best answer (i.e. website) to the question/search term someone has just typed in. If you can combine the best content with Core Web Vitals scores that are in the 90+ percentile your website is in a fantastic position to be rewarded.

Undergoing vast, fundamental changes to your website to future-proof it and improve the long-term performance of it all is an extremely delicate and serious job. Undergoing website migrations can be overwhelming and cause a great deal of damage to your site from a search engine optimisation point of view if done wrong. That’s why 99% of the time it’s best to invest in website SEO services. allowing a technical SEO expert to advise on the entire process from start to finish.

Web migration can include moving from one domain to another, restructuring URLs, rebuilding the architecture of your website or a combination of all. Anything you do on your website that fundamentally changes it can be classed as a migration-like practice. They can be extremely beneficial, no doubt, people don’t do these sorts of things for fun. The long-term benefits will arrive as long as the short-term migration is handled with the utmost delicacy.

If local search tactics target your nearby area and international SEO aims to expand your presence globally, it stands to reason that national optimisation techniques are about getting your name out across the country.

Investing in National SEO is ideal for businesses at a certain growth stage who are looking to expand their brand to places beyond their current location. In a granular sense, optimising for national attention is just a scaled-up version of local SEO where instead of trying to rank for one area, you’re working to be visible across multiple. This type of optimisation also often falls under an Enterprise SEO strategy.

One of the key ways of achieving national SEO success is to create bespoke content for different locations. Having multiple different URLs and pages that target Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and York, for example, would be an example of a national search engine optimisation campaign. Optimising GMB profiles, developing a coherent website architecture, and conducting thorough keyword research are some of the most important elements of national SEO.

According to Sistrix, around 64% of all searches are made on mobile devices such as phones and tablets. With three out of five people tapping rather than typing into Google, investing in mobile SEO is an absolute must. Almost every industry should think of their internet presence as mobile-first, meaning that everything you do, and every investment you make, should be geared toward making your site run on mobile well first, before you even think about the desktop. This is especially true if you’re in an industry like the Food & Drink sector.

Attention spans are the lowest they’ve ever been and if users land on your site and find that JavaScript or CSS is being blocked, images are slow to load, and the pages weren’t optimised for the device they are on, they’ll simply go elsewhere.

All these little steps need to be resolved if your mobile SEO is to be the best it can be. Once it is, your site will be nothing but a joy for people to visit, meaning they’ll come back time and time again.

Making all the visual elements of your website the best they can be can drastically improve rankings and visibility. Known as On-Page SEO, this type of service is about getting all the elements of a page that a user can see to be as optimised as possible. On-Page SEO includes considering multiple ranking factors like URLs, heading tags, images, heading tags, alt-text, and metadata.

Working on the front end optimisation has become so important in the last few years as Google’s algorithm has become more nuanced and intelligent. It’s judging how presentable and optimised your site is for the user to the same degree it’s looking at your schema markup and URL structure. The proper on-page investment will aid search engines and users in their quest to understand the context of your website.

More and more, Google is aligning its ranking factors to the factors that make a user want to click on your site.

A technical SEO audit is a process by which you or your SEO agency checks the technical aspects of your website to make sure it’s optimised and healthy. The need to remain relevant and respond to Google et als ever-changing algorithms. Carrying out technical SEO audits once every few months ensures your site is optimised for the newest and most impactful ranking factors.

The stark reality, and the reason why you need to carry out technical SEO audits, is that 93% of clicks are made on page one.

Our technical audits are by their nature rigorous and performed by experts who’ve done hundreds of them between them. We’ll look at the front end factors of your site such as URL structures and the sitemap, as well as back-end elements like indexing and hosting. We also, as standard, examine the areas that impact your websites such as link quality and current backlink profile.

Loosely related to local SEO, small business search engine optimisation refers to how those new companies make themselves known online. Often with a small investment or available funds, small business SEO is all about maximising budgets and ensuring optimum ROI. While some small businesses shy away from investing resources in search, it should be seen as an opportunity to disrupt the bigger competitors. With so many keywords, small business SEO can be clever and target those lower-value, long-tail keywords that aren’t being covered by rivals.

Startup search engine optimisation can also leverage free tools such as Google My Business and free backlinks from directories or guest blog sites to grow their presence for a cost that is within budget.

In our experience, businesses that have fewer than 50 staff can use clever, in some cases more radical tactics to rank well. Spending time writing long-form content, for example, is just one of the ways that a business can include ontology, earn greater keyword visibility, and steal ranking positions from legacy businesses that have neglected their website. If PPC management is out of your budget, a small business can opt for a basic SEO package to elevate rankings cost-effectively.

You might be surprised to learn that videos can be optimised for SEO, as well as text! That’s right, video SEO is a type of optimisation service, one which can be very effective if you’re a business whose main industry is visual.

From the outset, it’s important to know that there is only so much you can do with video SEO, and it’s not as powerful as ‘regular’ SEO. This is primarily because the video itself – i.e. the visual and audio elements – cannot be altered after it’s been filmed. That’s not to say it can’t be beneficial, the transcripts, descriptions, titles, and tags can all be changed and tweaked so that they are more relevant to the terms you’re looking to target.

Creating useful, unique and quality content is paramount to any SEO campaign. Sure, on-page optimisations and tech work contribute to performance, but good content is what Google needs to see in order to rank your site highly. At our SEO agency, we have a big team of content and copywriting experts that follow tried-and-tested methods for crafting quality content. We write what your audience wants to see. We don’t keyword stuff or simply regurgitate what your competitors are saying, we work with you to create industry-leading pages and blogs.

The branded phrases are those that include a brand’s name as part of a larger term or are just the keyword themselves. Branded keywords are usually a good indication that a company has a good market share and is known by its audience. Unbranded keywords are those which don’t feature a company’s name. Both come with benefits, the intent behind branded terms is more commercial. If someone is typing a company’s name in, the chance of them purchasing something from them is higher because they know where to go.

Seed terms are the broad keywords that could cover a multitude of subtopics. These types of terms are usually searched for in the early stages of the buying journey. On the contrary, page-specific terms related to those phrases are a bit more specific and are looking for one thing.

Think of it like this, the seed phrases will be relevant to most of your website whereas the page specific ones will only really be relevant to one, maybe two pages on your site.

SEO keywords are so many because they can be almost any length. These are categorised into short and long-tail terms which are sometimes called ‘head and tail’ terms.

Generally, the shorter the keyword, the larger the search volume and the harder it is to rank for it. Whereas a long-tail term has lower search volume but is usually far easier to rank for. The keyword “socks” for example is going to take longer to rank for than “What are the best socks to wear with hiking boots?”.

Real inroads in search engine traffic can be made by aiming for those mid to long-tail keywords as they tend to have higher converting traffic.

A whole bunch of Google search terms can be segmented via the classic buyer journey. Different keywords will provide clues as to what stage in the buying journey someone is.

These clues can be used to leverage content toward them. The ultimate goal is to attract all the traffic from search engines for all the different buying phases so that you’ve constantly got different people, at different stages in the pipeline, coming to your business.

These segments of phrases explain themselves in a way. Local keywords are those which include terms that are relevant to the area in which you are based or feature a term that’s unique to an area. National phrases expand on that and focus on entire countries, with global terms not having a geographical bent and being more generic.

Audiences, target markets, and sectors all type different things that are associated with them and their identity. For instance, Manchester United fans may type terms that are related to their club as they are interested in the team and see it as part of their identity.

These terms allow you to align your marketing to the customers and learn what types of things they are searching for. You write content to that and you have a pretty successful, if niche, strategy.

Evergreen terms are phrases that never lose their relevance and are not affected by the time of year, outside influences, or changes in trends. Topical terms are the exact opposite and will suffer peaks and troughs depending on when people are interested in them and are searching.

A primary term is the main phrase you’re looking to rank for when writing a blog or a piece of content. As with many key topics, there are usually 5-10 sub-topics within it, these are what secondary phrases are, the keywords that will help support the performance of the target phrase.

Setting goals is so important when making a plan for your search engine optimisation tactics. Goals will ensure everyone knows what the point is behind what they are doing. In addition, work will be done with that goal in mind, making it more relevant and impactful.

With your goals set you can start to decide which platforms and types of content to invest your time in, as opposed to just throwing money at things and not knowing if they are relevant to you. If performance isn’t where you expected or it’s not helping you get to where you want to be, you can make small adjustments because you set goals at the start and have a north star to face it.

Your indicators of performance could be anything, they just need to be specific, like doubling the traffic in 6 months, increasing sales by 30% in one year, or increasing the number of page one keywords to 50. Whatever they are, goals will help you measure ROI which will allow you to budget more effectively going forward.

No matter your industry, you’ll have competitors who are online and ranking on page one for the keywords that are just as relevant to them as they are to you. So when the time comes for you to invest in SEO make sure you research the content your competitors are putting out. Check out their backlink profiles, keyword rankings, online reviews, blog strategy, everything. After all, they are winning in the online world.

Analyse your competitors and the people who are ranking for the key terms you want to rank for. The latter may not be direct competitors but at the end of the day, they are doing something right and are therefore worthy to be analysed.

It sounds obvious but with it being so integral, it’s certainly worth a mention. Undergoing extensive keyword research is vital if you’re going to create targeted content that ranks for what you want it to rank for.

You wouldn’t believe the number of businesses that write and write and write without thinking about what it is they are targeting. Advanced keyword research allows you to avoid cannibalizing rankings (this is where two pages of the same domain end up competing with each other for the same ranking) and reducing the impact of the pages that you’ve worked so hard to complete.

Keyword research equals better ROI, there’s no greater incentive to do it than that.

Your content could be the wittiest, most engaging piece of work you’ve written but if it doesn’t match the intent of the query it’ll never succeed. Certain keywords you’re looking to target may be driven by a particular type of intent that just doesn’t match what you’re creating.

Be sure to analyse the intent of the first 10 or so results for a keyword, you’ll get a better understanding of how the content is matching the intent.

A car is only as good as the tires it runs on. The same principle applies to a website. If your website isn’t technically optimised then your on-page content isn’t going to perform to the best of its abilities. Providing the best user experience starts with back end optimisation – removing bloated code, reducing image sizes, ensuring your site has breadcrumbs, these three things just scrape the surface of what needs to be done from a backend perspective.

SEO web design is a great opportunity to get these back-end practices in as you’re building them rather than having to put them in after. Doing them as you build them is a great way of ensuring your website’s launch has the fullest possible impact.

SEO is a long game, with so many different pieces of content to index every single second, getting ranked online can take a while. Once you’re indexed, the process of moving through the rankings takes a great deal of time. All the while you should be looking to add fresh content to that page to further enhance its relevancy and potency.

Once your blog, page, or entire site is published, the hardest part is to wait and let it index. You really should wait 3, 4, 5, or even 6 months to check your website’s online visibility, rankings, and traffic.

Your business goals and KPIs form the foundation of our SEO reporting. Our process involves curating data boards from GA4, pulling keyword ranking reports from SERanking and summarising the work carried out. Each account receives a monthly report from us, along with a written commentary and optional follow-up call. Our SEO account managers and client service managers work hard to ensure clients understand what we’ve done, why we’ve done it and how it impacts performance month-on-month and year-on-year. If you

Yes! Our proposal process involves diving into various segments of your website and audience, and understanding where users come from. SEO helps to improve your organic performance, whilst cross-collaboration with digital PR helps broaden brand awareness and build authority. Paid media generates more engagement and revenue.  Website design services make your website engaging and attractive.  A rounded digital marketing strategy captures every stage of the buyer journey, maximising your success online.

We don’t whack together any old proposal. We use available data, competitor information and your KPIs to produce a data-led SEO proposal. We can have a casual chat, and speak to you informally first, should that be your preference. However, our indicative workflow and thoughtfully crafted strategy are best presented to you. If you’re a marketing manager or CEO looking for a new SEO partner, get in touch with us with your inquiry, and we’ll take it from there.

Exceptional client service is incredibly important to us. This is why each of our clients gets a dedicated SEO account manager, content writer and client services manager. Beyond this, togetherness is what sets our agency apart. So we work with the wider delivery team and strategists to ensure we’re delivering high-performing work. After all, a team of brains is always better than one!

SEO is what we’re experts in. We’ve evolved intuitive tools, developed tried and tested strategies and hired industry specialists to generate performance for our clients. We have access to industry trends, allowing us to continually adapt and put those new trends and guidelines into practice. An SEO agency like Embryo doesn’t merely exist to create content and help you rank for keywords, we become a solid arm of your business. The main difference is that we have the time and resources to give your website the TLC it deserves, whilst you focus on expanding and maintaining your business.

Why settle for an in-house SEO individual when you can rely on the expertise of a dynamic agency?

To come to the correct answer for your business you need to look around you and consider your current capabilities, knowledge, and skill level. The need to work with SEO experts is all based on where you’re at in your growth journey and there are dozens of scenarios where you may or may not need to work with a team who can accelerate your growth online. For instance, if you have an in-house marketing team that has a solid understanding of SEO then the need to work with an agency may be less than a business that doesn’t have dedicated staff members who work on growing the brand. Or, if your website isn’t getting enough relevant web traffic from your audience, working with a team who knows how to help achieve this could be extremely beneficial to your business. Another scenario we see when brands get in touch with us is that they’ve been caught out by a Core Update which has seen their traffic dip severely (virtually overnight, or at least that’s what it feels like) and they need the help of an agency to right the ship. So yes, in short, there are probably more scenarios than not which would lead you to needing an SEO agency.

There is no cookie-cutter answer to this question. Before thinking about results, it’s important to first appreciate the scale of Google’s search engine. Every day there are millions of pages which go live on websites, all of which want to be scanned and indexed by Google. This takes time. SEO results can be sped up if you have a website which has been around for a while and has had content published on it regularly. On the other hand, new websites or those that are of poor quality will take longer as they’ve yet to make an impression on Google. It also depends on what results look like to you – if you want to target hyper-competitive keywords like ‘Black Nike Trainers’ it might be months, even years before you see a page one ranking. While there are several quick wins that a good quality website can achieve by carrying out routine technical optimisations results that impact revenue or leads can take between three to six months.

The majority of SEO services are charged on a retainer basis whereby a certain amount of money per month equates to a pre-agreed number of hours that a person or team will work on your website. The number of hours (and thus the amount of work that can be completed on your site) can be increased if you have the budget to increase your investment. One thing to note when it comes to paying for SEO is to watch out for those that promise miracle results in a short space of time for a small fee. On the whole, these promises do not result in the transformative results promised. That’s not to say you need to spend tens of thousands of pounds a month to guarantee results, it’s about finding the right monthly retainer or project fee for your business, one that you can afford, without falling for cheap tricks or black hat SEO techniques.

We are, in that we have SEO specialists in our team and our Organic department (which consists of search engine optimisers, content writers, and digital PR specialists) is our largest team with around 19 members. However, as well as being specialists in search engines we also have teams that can create eye-catching paid social campaigns, PPC and affiliate marketing campaigns that can convert audiences into buyers.

There are lots of agencies out there, there is no denying that. Up and down the country there are teams of marketers helping businesses so why not choose one of them instead of us? Well, while these agencies do do good work none of them have the proprietary technology that we at Embryo have. Living up to our value of ‘Seeing what others don’t’, we built Intermingle and Needle so that any brand, in any industry, could see where they stood online within the context of their competitors. As well as technology we have a client services department that acts as the bridge and communicator between the brand and the delivery team, ensuring that there is always a familiar and friendly face ready to answer any questions and action requests. Our team of strategists also work alongside all departments to offer their perspectives and impart their decades of collective experience to find innovative solutions.

Your input in those early phases will help us better understand your business, its priorities, and what your version of success looks like to you. We can then use this information and mould our SEO strategy accordingly, ensuring that what we’re doing aligns with your overall goals as a business. There are, of course, very basic things we need from your brand to successfully carry out work for you such as website logins (if we have agreed to upload content on your behalf, for instance). In addition, prompt approval on content provided by our team and agreement on short-, medium- and long-term strategies all make for a smoother process for all parties.

Yes! International SEO can help brands unlock new territories and audiences who are interested in purchasing the goods and services on offer. We can, and have, scaled clients who are based in the UK and helped them start earning revenue from places in Europe and beyond. It is important to recognise that to be successful organically, abroad, you need to have a website that is set up to be found overseas by people – which is something we can take care of. As well as that, you also need to have the physical infrastructure in place to be able to offer goods and services to other countries. If you don’t have the latter, it may not be the right time to invest in international SEO, instead, focus on your native market or work to build your business’s physical infrastructure.

Certainly. Embryo’s array of teams can work with large in-house teams and plug gaps where your team might not have the expertise. So, while you might have a great social media team, we can assist with PPC or SEO campaigns which can complement your in-house team’s work. Beyond that, we can offer consultancy and training services that can advise and train your in-house team, ensuring long-term success. Essentially, Embryo’s team can be whatever it is you need for your business at a given time.

Content is one of the core pillars of our entire SEO service, along with authority (link building and digital PR) and technical SEO. When Google crawls your website, it needs to see useful, unique and relevant content on your website to rank it for the right keywords. Content is the most effective way of telling search engines and people about who you are and what you offer.

So you’ve decided to choose Embryo, we’re excited to get started. After initial conversations with our sales team and client service team, we’ll set up a kick-off call. Here, we’ll tell you more about how we work and find out more about your KPIs and focus areas. Then, we’ll get started with refining your strategy and deliverables. You’ll receive consistent updates from us, content to sign off and reports every month.

Of course! Whilst our office is based in Manchester city centre, our clients are all across the country. We can do meetings in person or online, whichever best suits you.

Utilising our various in-house tools, we strategise based on where you are currently in your industry from an organic perspective. We’ll look at the technical soundness of your site, your authority and backlink profile, content and opportunities. Our tools show us how your competitors are performing and analyse what you could be doing more of (or need to improve on). From here, we’ll spit resources between our various organic channels to get performance.

SEO campaigns can grow traffic from relevant audiences by helping your brand be found for key terms. Then, once on your site your audience views your valuable, optimised content, and if convincing enough, members of that audience will contact you. Optimising for search engines can increase your sales by growing the quality and quantity of the leads coming through to your site.

More than ever, with Google’s renewed emphasis on intent, smaller businesses can look to compete with bigger businesses in their sector by working hard to offer, as well as a slick website experience, and great content that is expansive and meets the needs of the user. Beyond this exciting new opportunity, SEO has always been important for small businesses as it’s the marketing channel which works to grow your business organically online. Organic marketing is one of the most sustainable ways of growing an online presence. When following good SEO practices and producing great content small businesses can start to rank for the key terms that matter to them.

It is not so much a question of better, it’s more a case of what is right for your business. If you want to grow your business organically, earn traffic from interested buyers and keep this up for a long period of time then SEO might be more appropriate for your business. Alternatively, if you have a strong SEO presence but want to look for quicker conversions from audiences with high buying intent then optimising your Google Ads account might be the preferred route for your brand. In our opinion good, sustainable marketing efforts should involve multiple channels to maximise your audiences across all stages of the funnel. For example, a user could find your brand organically via a blog that imparts some valuable information and then when they are ready to purchase they find your paid advertisement across the numerous Google networks (such as YouTube or banner ads on other websites).

We’ve worked with a great deal of industries at Embryo and we have found that for the vast majority of them, their goals can be split into one of two camps – leads and online sales. And for both, SEO can work. Generating good quality leads takes time and requires a fair amount of trust between the search agency and the client. SEO can help with lead generation by creating content that imparts knowledge and gives value to readers who, in time, will go to the brand that has worked hard to earn their trust. Alternatively, SEO can help to achieve goals that are more product-led and e-commerce-based. With optimised content on bespoke product landing pages, campaigns can help brands be found for keywords searched by people who are ready to buy there and then.

Payments for SEO depend on whether you partner with Embryo for a one-off project or a retainer. Payment for project work is often taken in advance whereas payment for retainer work occurs monthly via GoCardless.

Official reporting occurs once a month and is sent to you early in that working month. This report will contain results which are relevant to your business and its goals. There is no boilerplate report, each one is unique to you. We avoid vanity metrics that look good but are meaningless to you and instead focus on improving the performance indicators that mean your business is growing.

While at our core we are an SEO agency that looks to run campaigns on your behalf, should you have an in-house team of marketers but want to work with a team that can provide clarity, direction, and insights then we can act as consultants.

In some instances, technical SEO can be confusing. However, you don’t need to know a lot about the nitty-gritty of technical SEO, that’s what our team of experts are for. What is helpful is how to think about technical SEO. And the way to think about ‘tech SEO’ is that it involves a series of small things done very well, and in some cases, done regularly. Good technical SEO is about good practices and behaviours that, done concurrently, add up to long-term success. Things such as ensuring images are uploaded with relevant file names and alt text, removing redirects to pages that no longer exist, and making sure that you are internally linking to other relevant pages on your site are all examples of technical SEO services. All are relatively simple things but need to be done once and then done consistently to ensure your website is technically sound.

Yes, of course, this is something that we would do as a matter of course and the amount of tags and descriptions that need optimising would depend on the results from our audit phase. While title tags and meta descriptions are not traditional ranking factors, optimising them forms part of our wider best practices that we follow along with image optimisation and ‘cleaning’ content of unnecessary HTML code.