What does SEO mean? It’s complicated.
“I have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But what does it actually mean? What are you actually going to do?”
These are questions that I receive from clients when they explore our SEO services. They try to understand what it is they are paying for and why it is important for them.
Unfortunately, in the SEO market, there are many people who claim that they can put companies at #1 on Google.
The reality? It is NOT that simple. No guarantees can be made. A track record backed up by data and research is the only real way to know if someone can help you with SEO. Still, it will take time.
When we look at reasons why companies don’t involve themselves in SEO, three main reasons stand out:
1. It seems too expensive.
2. They have been burned before by someone promising everything and never seeing results.
3. They just don’t understand why SEO is needed or important to them.
All legitimate concerns!
I will break it down into simple yet important points to know and keep in mind.
1. What is the difference between On-Site SEO vs Off-Site SEO?
Great question! We first need to understand the different pieces of SEO before we can discuss the next steps.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization
To put it simply: it is how you optimize your website for focus keywords and search engines.
What it involves:
-
- Setting up an SEO plugin (we recommend Yoast)
- Reviewing page loading speed
- Making sure that the content on the website is focused and clear
- Setting up a sitemap with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (plus Yandex if you have a more global audience)
This is what I would call a basic setup for your website, to ensure search engines can find, read and understand your website. The focus keywords will be “indexed” along with all the pages / posts you have on your site so that your website is sharing the most relevant information aka the information you want Search Engines to know.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Off-Site SEO
Things get more complicated with Off-Site SEO. With On-Site SEO, once you set it up you will have to maintain it. But for the most part, you don’t have to change things very often.
But, Off-Site SEO is always changing and is something you have to constantly keep up-to-date.
Off-Site SEO refers to backlinks to your website. This is the core of how Google measures your domain authority and trustworthiness. The more trustworthy and high authority domains link to your site, the better Google will view your site.
While it might sound easy, it is very hard to maintain consistent high quality backlinks to your site. The best way to do this is by creating high value content that people will share and repost.
– Adam Lawrence, Enspire Development
Also included in Off-Site SEO: social media, guest blogging, influencer marketing and brand mentions.
On-Site SEO vs. Off-Site SEO
On-Site SEO requires research, setup and basic maintenance. But once it is setup, you have a nice foundation. Off-Site SEO requires a full strategy for daily monitoring, creation of high quality content, social media sharing and finding opportunities to guest blog or submit a press release to news about something you are doing.
2. How do we know what our focus keywords are?
This is another question that is very important and asked often by clients.
The trick here is that most clients already know their focus keywords as they say them daily to clients and their colleagues. The process is collecting all the focus keywords, doing research on what your competitors are doing and then narrowing down the focus keywords to the most effective, relative to the industry / service you want to target.
There are some great resources and tools out there to help with this process such as Moz, ahrefs and Raven. Many of these tools are for agencies and not for small businesses as the pricing can be steep. Some do offer free trials for a limited time. There are also the free options, i.e. Google Analytics and Google Keyword Planner.
Say you have all the information collected and in front of you. What does it all mean? How do you know which is the best one for my company?
This is a process that takes time. Having all the research and information is only the first step towards great keywords.
Put yourself into your clients’ shoes and think about what they would search for in Google. How would they look for your service? Start to make a list of whatever comes to mind as it is important to balance what you know about your company within your industry and what your clients might know as well as understand.
Now it is time to analyze the data, competitor research, internal research and perspective of the client to find the best focus keyword(s). These are the keywords that should not only be easy to search to find your website, but are also naturally used in the content you have on your website.
3. Why is SEO so expensive?
SEO can become expensive, but it really depends on resources and how big of a reach you would like to have.
The question you will need to ask yourself is: how much are you willing to invest?
Keep in mind that there is an initial investment upfront to get some things setup.
What it includes: the setup fee for optimizing your site for SEO, installing plugins, setting up / refreshing Google Search Console, etc.
These are things that don’t need to be done all the time, but it is important to set them up correctly and maintain them to ensure there are no errors or problems impacting performance. This refers to On-site SEO.
In terms of how much you spend on researching key focus words and Off-Site SEO … that can really add up quickly.
If you don’t have the time or resources, then the most important part of the process is the research / finding the current focus keywords. If you don’t start with the right keywords then everything else you do won’t be as effective.
Off-site SEO would be the area that you would want to invest in last because the other two need to be setup correctly before your off-site SEO can be effective.
How To Grow Organically
This is also the part where you can “leave it” (but still maintain it) to grow organically over time, or invest in a blog, videos, infographics, white-papers and other high quality content along with a strategy to develop some serious backlinks. These efforts will give you stronger rankings, trustworthiness and domain authority.
You need to make sure you know where you are going (focus keywords) and have a good base (on-site SEO) before making a large leap (off-site SEO). Without the previous two, the last would land quite badly.
4. Can I do this myself? Or should I hire someone?
Yes, you can, but it will take time for you to learn what needs to be done. It will also require technical skills to make tweaks to your site.
Look at the trade-off of hiring someone or doing it yourself. You are going to spend a lot of time learning and setting things up yourself. How much is your time worth? Compared to hiring someone to do it for you?
The combination of the company working with an SEO expert is a winning combination. You are balancing the technical skills and understanding with the knowledge of the industry / company. Great things will happen with this combo!
5. What are some other factors that impact SEO?
There are a ton of factors that impact your SEO and we are not going to cover all of them in this post, but I would like to highlight a few that are very important to know and understand.
Website Page Load Speed: This is becoming more and more important in SEO rankings. While not the MOST important, it is a factor that will gain in significance. As SEO is not just about quality of information and authority, it also takes into consideration user experience and the site that offers the better experience is going to win. This means that if your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load you are offering a poor user experience.
Check out Pingdom and Gtmetrix to test your website and see how long it takes for your website to load.
Encryption: If you don’t have an SSL certificate, it will start to impact your rankings, as your website will be viewed as not as safe compared to a website that has one. Chrome browser will mark non-https sites as not secure in July, 2018.
It is important to stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends. Things are changing faster and faster, but if you offer great value and user experience on your website, you are on the right track.
How can you harness all of the above to get your website working for you?
Check out our 3 Custom SEO Packages.
Please reach out to Marcia @jmgroupdesign or call her at 561-906-3436 if you have any questions or would like to talk more about our SEO services.
