Manchester SEO

Welcome to Gorilla Marketing. We specialize in delivering targeted traffic, conversions, and maximum ROI.  Let’s work together to unleash the power of search engine optimisation for your Manchester business!

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SEO Agency Manchester

We’re Gorilla Marketing, the SEO agency Manchester can depend on. Did you find us by searching for ‘SEO Agency Manchester‘? Would you like potential customers to find you as easily as you found us? If you answered yes, then you need search engine optimisation, Manchester

Gorilla Marketing are a specialist search engine optimisation agency who work with established businesses in most industries. Contact us today or call us on 0161 850 3963 to talk to our experienced team of SEO specialists

Manchester SEO Case Studies

Fantastic results for fantastic clients. Below are recent case studies with Search Console screengrabs to show the impact that our efforts have had on search engine performance. 

Our Manchester SEO Agency, Reviewed

Our Manchester SEO Experts

With over 30 trillion web pages in the Google index, getting your business easily found by potential customers is akin to being lost in the jungle. Meet the troop who thrive in that environment.

Kyle Clifford

Operations Director

Charlotte Woodend

Client Success

Jamie Fallon

SEO Manager

John Carey

SEO Manager

David Galvin

SEO Manager

Sam Etherington

SEO Manager

CJ Hamand

Outreach Manager

Emily Shepherd

Content Manager

Gemma Lutwyche

Content Manager

Ana Arakcheyeva

Content Manager

Emma Irwin

Content Manager

Why Choose A Manchester SEO Agency?

Manchester is one of Europe’s top SEO hubs. The best and brightest in search marketing come here to study and work, which means there’s stiff competition between SEO agencies.

From a business perspective, working with an SEO company in Manchester makes a big difference:

  • There are so many ambitious and talented SEO agencies in Manchester that only the best win business. Standards are exceptionally high.
  • Many of the largest businesses and media companies in the UK have moved to Manchester, fuelling the cities growth and attracting an incredibly talented pool of SEO, copywriting and content marketing experts — many of whom work here at Gorilla Marketing.
  • London agencies have to pay London prices. SEO agencies in Manchester are generally able to provide better value for money.

Our Search Engine Optimisation Strategy

1) SEO Audit & Campaign Planning

Every search engine optimisation campaign begins with an in-depth SEO audit. This phase is where we will comprehensively analyse your website, targeted search terms and competitors. The results of this audit will be the foundation on which your bespoke campaign is built, as well as the benchmark that we use to measure your progress.

The audit of your website generally takes two to three days. This audit focuses specifically on areas such as your website speed, user experience, structured data, schema mark-up, site structure, internal linking and most importantly, your content.

When analysing your keywords (such as ‘SEO Manchester’), we will also look to identify additional and relevant ‘longtail keywords’ that could be more straightforward search terms to target (such as ‘Search Engine Optimisation Agency in Manchester’ / ‘SEO Agencies in Manchester’). The premise behind this is that while we are working towards ranking for the main keywords (‘SEO Manchester’), we are also bringing relevant search traffic into your sales funnel and generating a quicker return on your search marketing spend.

Looking at your competitors next, we will identify why the search engines are rewarding them and to what extent their content adequately answers the searchers’ question. We will also analyse their backlink profile and see why they have attracted the links that they have, outlining strategies to get similar links as well as how to attract additional higher quality ones.

2) Technical SEO Manchester

After the audit is complete and a campaign roadmap has been established, the next stage is often to implement the identified on-page SEO fixes. This stage is where the quickest improvements in organic rankings can often be seen.

At the highest level, we may need to install an HTTPS certificate, update your server to LiteSpeed and optimise caching to improve server response time. Next, we will optimise your content management system. This may include adding or developing plugins that eliminate render-blocking resources, remove unused CSS and reduce JavaScript execution time. During this phase, we will also analyse your site structure and ensure relevant content is grouped together properly. This is important to solidify your website as an expert on the topic and therefore appear as a more relevant result in the eyes of search engines.

Next, we will implement any UX and structured data changes to the website to ensure that your visitors are finding the information that they need quickly and in an easy-to-digest format. This is a highly data-driven task, where we will analyse the flow of traffic through your website from Google Analytics, as well as use heat-mapping software to see if users are performing the actions on-site that we want them to.

3) SEO Content Writing

As part of the SEO audit process, we will create a content calendar. This will outline new pages that may need creating as well as improvements in current content. The content that is curated and published will need to be engaging, informative and most importantly answer the searchers’ question comprehensively. Content can also be used to expand on certain topics around your root keywords, further solidifying your website as the primary authority on the subject.

Additionally, we may also publish flagship pieces of content built around attracting links to your website. This could include in-depth studies, surveys and polling to develop unique data sets and perspectives on your market that is likely to be picked up by both the press and relevant websites in your industry. We will always work closely with you to ensure that the content we curate fits well within your brand identity and is appropriate for your market.

4) Digital PR, Backlinking & Authority Building

A fundamental aspect of the Google core algorithm (and the subsequent order of the search results) revolves around how many ‘backlinks’ a website has. Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites that reference content on another domain. The more ‘high-authority’ backlinks that a website has, the more likely Google is to see the website as trustworthy and an authority on a topic.

There are numerous effective and sustainable strategies for building backlinks that we use at Gorilla Marketing. Common methods often involve creating content for other websites (guest posting), finding broken links on sites that we want links from (and asking for it to direct to you instead) and ‘sky-scraping’ competitor content by vastly improving it and getting their backlinks changed to your website instead.

Lastly, we also receive daily updates from a network of over 10 000 reporters and media contacts who are looking for comments on stories from industry experts which will often include a backlink from high-authority news domains. We are also able to curate and pitch industry news stories on behalf of clients to further maximise coverage opportunities.

5) SEO Reporting

We truly believe that transparency and accountability to the client are integral mechanisms of any SEO campaign working. You will work with a client success manager from your onboarding, who is your business’ advocate here at Gorilla Marketing. You will also have full access to the directors and entire team working on your account. This means that you can get instantaneous updates on your campaign with either a quick phone call or email.

Additionally, we put a lot of emphasis on our reporting and ensuring that you understand why we are taking the steps that we are. You will get an overview of everything that has been implemented and what we plan to implement next; as well as tracked improvements in your website rankings, traffic and subsequent sales.

Latest SEO Manchester Updates

FAQ's of Manchester SEO Agencies

What is SEO and how does it work?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO for short, means improving your site and its content to rank higher in the search engine results. In doing so, you can reach a wider audience  into customers.

There are two kinds of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO involves improving the technical and content aspects of your site. This often means rewriting site code, restructuring content, improving user experience, making the site load faster, writing site copy that converts and lastly, publishing keyword-researched content and media.

Off-page SEO is where you establish your website as an authority in your market, mainly by obtaining backlinks from relevant resources. There are different ways to do this—some that Google approve of, and some that they don’t. We exclusively use organic ‘white hat’ link building to grow our clients’ sites sustainably.

Our expert SEO team will examine (or audit) your site to see how they can boost its on-page and off-page performance. Some improvements can be made quickly, e.g. rewriting the site’s code. Others are done on an ongoing basis, like content creation and curation. We then monitor and report on the performance of the site’s key metrics, such as position in the search results, the number of visitors through organic search and how many convert into customers.

What are the advantages of SEO?

There are several advantages to SEO over other traditional ways of promoting your business:

  • SEO puts you in front of people who are ready to buy. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you sell bananas. If your website is easily found for search terms that people may type when looking to buy a banana, then you are no more than a click away from a new customer. Added to that, is that you can also be found for keywords that may influence someone to buy a banana before they go back to Google to look for banana sellers – meaning that you’ve taken your competitors out of the equation. 
  • SEO converts visitors to customers. According to Hubspot Research, 14.6% of SEO leads turn into paying customers. This conversion rate is over eight times the average from outbound sales and marketing. 
  • Organic traffic can be scaled with minimum cost. Online adverts give you instant visibility and are imperative to any search marketing campaign, however, you pay the search engine when people see or click your ad. SEO is a marketing channel that can be compounded with a set monthly cost. 

Are there any negatives to SEO?

If done according to Google’s guidelines, there are no negatives to SEO. Google’s aim is to bring their users the most relevant, most engaging results for their queries. So in a sense, search engine optimisation is learning what users want, and providing it for them—and what could be the downside of that?

That said, there are many digital marketing agencies and freelancers out there that use ‘black hat’ SEO tactics. These involve methods of tricking Google into ranking a site higher than it deserves to be. This might work in the short term, but Google’s algorithm is ever evolving; it quickly learns to deal with every black hat hack and shortcut in the book. 

The punishment? Being dumped further down the search results than you started, or, for serial offenders, being removed from Google’s search index entirely.

You’ll be pleased to know that all our SEO practices here at Gorilla Marketing are 100% ethical and ‘white hat’. The remarkable results we achieve for our clients are a reliable, sustainable source of relevant organic traffic.

How long does it take for SEO to work?

The million-dollar question!

Almost every prospective client asks how long it takes for a new SEO strategy to work. While we are able to make approximations based on analysing your website and keywords, unfortunately, there is no fixed answer. Organic search results take time to change, and that change is based on hundreds of variables. only some of which are under your control.

You also have to consider where you’re starting from. If you’re entering a competitive niche with a brand-new domain, the time and effort needed to get 1st-page rankings for your most important pages are guaranteed to be significant. Any SEO agencies promising quick results in this scenario should be treated with extreme caution.

This is generally why we will start a campaign targeting long-keywords that can start to generate you a return on investment while your campaign catches up on more competitive search terms.

Is SEO a one-time thing or an ongoing process?

Some SEO services only need to be done once, while others you have to do consistently.

Take your site’s code, for example. You can improve it so that it loads faster —and stays faster. You can also change the design of your website so that all pages meet certain SEO criteria. You can research keywords and use them on pages without having to repeatedly update them.

Other elements of SEO involve ongoing processes, such as content creation and link building. But besides that, every so often, Google releases a substantial ‘core algorithm update’ that changes the criteria they judge sites by. These updates can reshape search results rankings across every industry with an online presence.

Core updates used to happen once or twice a year but are now more frequent. Google also make minor changes, adjustments and improvements to their algorithm on an almost daily basis. Any experienced SEO will therefore tell you that there’s no such thing as ‘one-time SEO’.

It is our job as the best SEO company in Manchester to stay on the cutting-edge of Google’s algorithm updates and ensure we are optimising each of our clients’ websites in accordance with the latest changes.

Is SEO better suited to B2B or B2C businesses?

SEO is equally useful to both B2B and B2C businesses. The reason is simple: if your target audience is searching for terms related to your products or services, you want yours to be the first website they see listed in the results. That applies to all businesses.

The first step of SEO is to identify the most popular search phrases or ‘keywords’ relevant to a new client. If we know, for example, that your target audience is specifically B2B, then we steer our research towards phrases and language that industry insiders would use, whereas B2C search phrases can often be more broad or non-specific.

Each new Gorilla Marketing client receives an in-depth report detailing our keyword research. The report identifies the highest value search phrases within their industry and location, regardless of if they’re B2B or B2C!

What is on-page optimisation in SEO?

On-page SEO is the process of making changes to your website so that it is better understood by search engines. The improvements we would implement depend on the current state of your site, but may include:

  • Speeding up your website. The quicker a site loads, the more engaging it is to users and the more likely it is that a search engine will promote it.
  • Improving your site’s content. We ensure that the pages we’re optimising are seen as the most relevant result to a search engine user. Keywords should also be strategically added to headings, titles and paragraphs.
    • Optimising page titles. The page title is the text that appears in the tab when you open a page on your web browser. It also tells search engines what the page is about. Changing the page title can also make your pages more appealing to click on in the search engine results.
    • Optimising page headings. Important to both users and search engines, ensure that web pages have a logical and relevant heading structure that adequately summarises the page topic.
    • Optimising Content Assets. It is always great when a web page has fantastic imagery and informative videos, but search engines don’t have eyes and they need to be told explicitly what the content is about. Adding alt text to images and captions to videos help search engines understand if they are relevant to the topic.
  • Internal and External Linking. Internal and outbound links are as vital as ever in SEO. For information to be taken as fact by a search engine, you need to prove how you came to the conclusion or quote sources who you have referred to.
  • Robots. Websites need to be easily crawled and understood by search engines, as well as encounter the minimum number of errors as possible. There may also be aspects of your website that are hidden from crawlers for commercial or SEO reasons.

What is off-page optimisation in SEO

When search engines evaluate a website, they look at both on-page (relevancy and expertise) and off-page factors (authority and trust). The main off-page SEO factor that search engines use to determine authority and trust is the number of links a site has from other relevant and authoritative domains. Search engines understand that these links demonstrate credibility, so if your site has lots of good backlinks, Google and other search engines will trust what is has to say. It’s almost like an online version of voting.

Some SEOs try to manipulate this fact by creating their own sites with the sole purpose of linking to their clients. While this may have worked several years ago, search engine algorithms are now smart enough to spot this practise and penalise it.

The key to long-lasting results when it comes to link building is creating an ethical, organic, content-focused strategy. If you create valuable content that earns backlinks, then relevant domains will cite you as a source, precisely the way Google wants them to!

As mentioned above, creating content that helps to earn new links to your website is the best and most sustainable method of SEO link building.

As a leading SEO agency, it’s our job to identify areas where you can create valuable content that is likely to garner the attention of other websites within your niche, and ultimately lead to an influx of new backlinks.

Content marketing like this could come in the form of a newly-released dataset or study, a free e-book, an interactive online tool or an attractive infographic (to name just a few). The ultimate goal is to create a content asset that is engaging, entertaining, controversial or useful.

Digital PR also now plays an important rule within the practice of SEO, helping to promote and circulate your content by reaching out to online press and bloggers to secure coverage for your content piece in advance.

What is local SEO vs. a national SEO campaign?

The kind of SEO you need depends on the kind of business you run.

Let’s say you run a café in the Northern Quarter. You want to reach people who live or work nearby, which means you need local SEO. Manchester-based businesses reach new customers through optimising their Google My Business details, and through appearing in ‘Map Pack’ results on Google Search. You can also use site content to be relevant for ‘long tail keywords’, which are highly specific things that people search for on Google (you may have found us through searching for ‘SEO agency Manchester’, for example!).

National SEO campaigns are for businesses that have a wider audience. They target common search terms like ‘car insurance’ or ‘SEO agency’. Ranking for these terms is more difficult than local SEO because there’s more competition.

It’s possible to take a fully local SEO approach, a fully national SEO approach, or something in between. In our initial consultation we can figure out the kind of campaign you need and how we can deliver it.

What is E-commerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO is a specialist SEO service specifically for E-commerce websites. While many of the SEO practices used on E-commerce sites are like those used on local, national and enterprise websites, there are many E-commerce specific optimisations that we can make too!

This includes the use of various types of ‘schema mark-up’. This is code which allows E-commerce stores to feed various details and ratings related to their products through to the search results listings, making the site links much more attractive to search engine users, which in-turn improves click-through rates.

E-commerce SEO also requires a considerate and user-friendly website architecture plan, ensuring that website visitors can easily navigate around the website and find their way to products via the thematically categorised navigation menu.

What is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is a large-scale, strategic, technical approach to search engine optimisation. Sites that require enterprise SEO may:

  • Represent very large organisations,
  • Have thousands of pages (like brand and product pages in an online store),
  • Cater to an international audience,
  • Be presented in multiple languages.

If the site targets several countries, then it should be optimised for search engines like Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia), as well as Google and Bing.

Because of the large scale of enterprise SEO, it involves targeting competitive keywords, automating as much as possible and using templates. Another fundamental part of enterprise SEO strategy is reputation management. This means SEO done on other websites to ensure only positive results about the brand are seen in the organic listings.

For enterprise search engine optimisation to achieve maximum results, various departments across the business and possibly the globe need to work together harmoniously. The SEO agency must communicate effectively and orchestrate content, marketing efforts and implementations seamlessly.

What strategies work best for SEO?

The best SEO strategy depends on the type of SEO campaign we are delivering for a client.

For example, with ‘local’ SEO campaigns, establishing our client as a local authority and presence using verified map listings, optimised Google My Business profiles, congruent business directory citations and a well-optimised website is better than targeting a high-competition national keyword.

For national SEO campaigns, something a little more labour-intensive is often required. This includes building the brand through digital PR or backlink building campaigns, substantial on-site content development and possibly even a technical website overhaul.

The same thinking can be applied to enterprise and E-commerce SEO campaigns. We have refined specific strategies for every type of website that we then tailor-fit to ensure each client receives the best possible results. All of our strategies follow best-practice methodology, using ethical SEO practices that deliver measurable and sustainable results.

What tools do SEO agencies in Manchester use?

Every SEO has their preferred toolbox of SEO tools and software; however, if you’re looking to get started in the world of SEO or conduct research and analysis on your own website, we have some great suggestions for tools you can use to get started!

SEMRush provides a host of handy SEO tools that will help you cover almost all aspects of a basic SEO campaign, including website analysis, keyword research, monitoring search rankings, backlink audits and much more. While there are better specialist tools on the market that provide a more in-depth technical review or backlink analysis, SEMRush is a comprehensive package that should provide more than enough insight and direction to begin your SEO journey!

For those looking for a comprehensive backlink report of their website, Ahrefs and Majestic offer the most in-depth and well-rounded backlink audits, with a broader catchment of domains across the internet (including some lower authority domains that slip through the net of other tools like SEMRush and Moz).

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is also a staple of any SEO’s toolkit; this handy desktop app can quickly crawl your website and return a list of URLs’ along with status codes and a breakdown of the content and SEO elements of each page. From here, you can quickly identify any crucial issues, such as 404 pages, missing title tags and so on.

Does social media help with SEO?

Social media does not have a direct impact on a website’s search engine rankings; however, the existence and activity of these profiles can help paint an overall picture of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘credibility’ of a business or website domain.

These platforms can also be utilised to market your product, service or offering in their own right, which can result in the establishment of an initial customer base or audience, a collection of reviews, site engagements around your domain or even exposure from other established social media profiles you may wish to engage with.

Social media profiles can be used as a tool to build your brand and engage directly with hashtags, trending content, and other profiles to give you the initial exposure needed to get your first few customers. The engagement, reviews and content those sales result in can then be utilised for SEO benefit.

Do you provide SEO services for all of Greater Manchester?

Yes, we provide SEO services to businesses across all Greater Manchester. You can read more about the services here:

PPC or SEO? Which one is better?

While PPC and SEO are both primary categories of search engine marketing, each has its own benefits. One may be better suited to a particular client, based on their budget, offering, KPI’s and more.

PPC is better suited to clients who need instant visibility. A paid search campaign can be set up and activated in one day, with rankings appearing within the search results almost instantaneously. The audience targeting within PPC campaigns can also make this type of search marketing very valuable to those looking to focus their spend in a specific location or user type.

SEO, on the other hand, is more cost-effective. Website clicks that come from organic search listings don’t cost a penny. If managed correctly, a website can often appear for thousands of relevant keywords by producing long-form, informative content without having to invest any money to display the page in the SERPs.

A well-rounded search engine marketing campaign usually consists of both PPC and SEO. But for those with a limited budget, your needs and targets will help us determine which avenue of search marketing is best for you in the beginning.

How do you become an SEO professional?

There are many ways to get into the SEO industry. Traditionally, digital marketing could only be learned by practice and mentorship. Today, though, you can take online and offline courses or start out with freelance SEO experience. Either way, every professional SEO spends years refining their digital marketing strategy and figuring out how to boost their clients’ search ranking.

Through experience and practice, we have developed a range of effective SEO techniques that we tailor to each of our clients. With 80-plus years of combined experience in the field, we have worked on countless campaigns for countless clients, both nationally and internationally. That’s how we have honed our skills and became one of the leading SEO agencies in Manchester today!

Do you have any jobs at your SEO Manchester Agency?

We’re always looking for talented SEO specialists and content writers. If you have experience as an SEO in Manchester, we’d love to hear from you! We have an excellent city centre location minutes from a tram stop — so you won’t spend half your day commuting to an agency in Altrincham — and our team’s as close as a bunch of bananas.

What are typical SEO Manchester prices?

As with any industry, all of the SEO agencies in Manchester have their own pricing structure and packages. If you are shopping around for SEO services in Manchester, be sure to get quotes from each agency that you like the look of, ensuring that the quotation also outlines their strategy and output. This will give you an idea of what you are getting for your money.

At Gorilla Marketing, we’ve done our research and have priced ourselves extremely competitively against other city centre agencies, all while delivering a first-class SEO service.