Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a series of practices that increase the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. Examples of search engines are Google and Bing.
Our approach to SEO
We make our websites as SEO-friendly as possible, so that our content is as easy as possible for people to find. We use ethical white-hat practices that reflect both the RNLI’s values and our long-term marketing interests. Our approach breaks down into three broad areas:
Content
We make our content relevant, accurate and timely for our target audiences. This means delivering high quality information in a digestible (and often entertaining) way to not only reflect our work, but also share our expert knowledge on subjects such as water safety. We use keyword analysis to understand what site visitors want, in order to inform and improve our creative process.
Architecture
The information architecture elements of our UX principles don’t just support a great user experience. They also make our site easy to crawl for SEO spiders (the mechanism used by companies such as Google to map and understand the internet).
Our focus on strong mobile performance also supports SEO because search engines favour content that gives users a great mobile experience. Our approach to site security is not only good for users, but it’s good for SEO too. Search engines (and browsers) value the impact and importance of safe browsing. In particular, we have been early early and consistent in our application of HTTPS (TLS/SSL).
Beyond this, we focus on industry basics such as consistent and readable URL structures to boost our SEO efforts.
On-the-page technical SEO
We use industry best-practice techniques to help SEO spiders understand the content of each page, in context. That means clear and uniformly formatted page titles, subheads that ground the content, plus additional information such as meta descriptions, which reinforce a page’s purpose and often provide some of the information you will see on a search engine result page (SERP).
Off-the-page SEO
We have only listed the on-the-page elements of SEO covered by the RNLI. A lot of work happens off site, through the acquisition of links to RNLI.org from other prestigious organisations such as the BBC. However, since this work is broadly delivered by teams such as Media Engagement, and drives awareness of the RNLI beyond organic search engines, is not covered here.
More on SEO
Moz provide useful tools to the SEO industry and have compiled this useful primer on the subject.