If you ended up here, it’s probably because you have heard the buzzword “SEO” floating around. Or maybe, you recently bought a website or domain and have been getting emails and calls from people telling you they can bring you to the first page of Google, that they can improve your website, and help you get more traffic. SEO is a wonderful tool that, when done correctly and consistently, can bring you better rankings on search engines, thus bringing on more potential business for you. Unfortunately, not everyone does SEO correctly, and some marketers even lie about what can be expected with SEO. Today, we’re going to discuss what SEO is, and what it should look like, so you can have an idea of what to expect when you decide to look into it.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. If you adopt SEO marketing, you are optimizing your website for search engines such as Google or Bing. You are also optimizing your website for people, too.

Is SEO the same as PPC?

PPC stands for “pay-per-click”, meaning, it is a paid search result. A paid search result is an ad promoting a business and its service. When it comes to PPC, you are typically limited by your budget. You set a budget to spend with either Google or Facebook, and they charge you a certain amount every time someone “clicks” on your advertisement, thus taking them to your website. Once they land on your website, should they decide to take action either by calling you or filling out a form, it counts as a conversion. While paid ads appear first in search results, it’s still valuable to earn a top spot in organic search results, which follow paid search results.

SEO is not the same as paid traffic, since SEO comes from organic traffic. It helps your business earn more visibility in search results, only targeting organic search results. Many search engines will include paid and organic search results. You pay nothing when a person clicks on your site in organic search results, making it a better solution for long-term growth. Also, you should note that 70 percent of clicked search results are organic.

What are Keywords?

A keyword, or a focus keyword as some call it, is a word that describes the content on your page best. It’s the search term that you want to rank for with a certain page. So when people search for that keyword or phrase in Google or other search engines, they should find that page on your website. Having strong SEO includes constant content being added to your website, but not just any content; it needs to make sense and be relevant to the keywords you are targeting.

Different Strategies for SEO

 SEO consists of many different strategies to optimize your website, and the best marketers will be sure to implement all of these.

Web Design

The way your website is designed can affect SEO! Web design has to do with the way your website layout is, thus affecting user experience. It also affects search engine rankings. A website that’s designed poorly will lower your SEO rank, thus showing your website lower in that search. This has a direct effect on your business, which is why you should invest in SEO-focused web design from the start. When we design our websites, we optimize them for SEO.

Citations

Citations can be understood as how many times your website domain appears on the web, outside of your website. For example, being on many different search directories, as well as earning valuable links to site content from reputable and relevant websites will boost your SEO. It basically shows Google that other ranked websites acknowledge that your website is good, too.

Meta Data

If you’re not personally doing SEO, you don’t really need to worry about understanding meta data, but basically, they are snippets of code that tell search engines important information about your web page, like how they should display it in search results, and how to appear to users. Every web page has meta tags, but they are only visible in the HTML code.

What’s included in our SEO?

• Content writing optimized for SEO.
• Optimized images for fast loading and SEO.
• Optimize website metadata descriptions and titles for SEO.
• Manage technical SEO, on and off the page.
• Create and add backlinks to the backlink portfolio every month.
• Create pages for the relevant services as they grow.
• Add photos of completed jobs to the gallery and optimize for SEO.
• Monthly report displaying the last 30 days of traffic, Google, and Bing ranks.

When can I expect results from SEO?

SEO is a long-game marketing solution. In a world where there are millions of websites, all improving day by day, it’s important to have patience when starting out. Once you are on the first page of google, then the leads start rolling in. New websites take time to rank on your service area’s first page of Google. On average it will take 3-6 months depending on the competition in the area. In some cases, it could take 8 months to get to the first page. This may sound crazy, but the thing is, once you reach page 1 of Google, you may see an average 1100%+ return on investment per month.

How can I help with SEO?

There are a few things YOU can control when it comes to your SEO. For example, you can improve your Google Maps/ Google My business profile really easily. You can ask clients for reviews, and make sure you are on top of replying to both negative and positive reviews. Make sure to keep your listing up to date, by posting photos of recent jobs. 

We hope this was helpful to you, we know starting out can seem daunting at first, or feel like a lot of money is going into the abyss, but if you have patience and faith in the professionals, you will reap the rewards of organic traffic.