SEO is quite often misunderstood, but SEO is actually quite simple. There are lots of places that talk about link juicing and link building and promise you a bullet list of 50 things they will do to improve your SEO. We won’t try to overwhelm you, here is our attempt to answer some common SEO questions. Our services and rates are here.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of preparing your website and content to be easy to find from a web search. Most people think of Google, but there are other search engines that should also be kept in mind. To make things simple, a good SEO strategy can be split into 3 main parts, although each part involves it’s own set of challenges:
1. Good website structure that makes your content easy to find and read. This regards both the mapping of your website, as well as the syntax and code that makes up your web pages
2. Good mix of content (text, video, images) and use of key words that provides value to a reader on a topic. This doesn’t mean you use your target words 50 times. Your content should be informational, fun, or provide some sort of value to your site vistors.
3. Marketing or promotion of your content so that other sites and people will visit, review, and link or share your content.
Why do I need to worry about it?
If you want your web site to be found, you should have SEO in mind. For example, if you have a pet grooming place called “wipe your paws pet grooming”, you want your site to rank high whenever someone searches for pet grooming. Without a good SEO strategy, your site may not rank high unless someone specifically searches for your full name. You can expect new customers to hardly ever search by your company full name, but they will most likely search by your business industry/category.
Why should I pay for SEO services?
The truth is, you don’t have to. You know your business the best, so coming up with good content should be something that you can do better than anyone else. You will have to make sure your website follows some good practices to make sure your site is readable, but after that, you can do it all yourself. Depending on your target, you may eventually require the needs of an seo company, but there is a lot you can do on your own… IF… you have the time.
Most often if you are in business, your time is spent managing whatever it is your business does. Finding the right mix of key words, digging into your HTML markup, and creating content may or may not be something you want or even have time to do. In that case, paying for SEO services may also make sense.
How long will it take to get to #1
Lets get this straight right now, getting to #1 can NOT be guaranteed, so we can’t put a time frame on it. Usually your can start to see changes within a month or two, but the impact of the changes will vary. The competitiveness of your market, the mix of key words you are targeting, your commitment to building good content, how much of a head start your competitors have over you, all these factors will weigh in on how fast you see changes.
We think your goal shouldn’t be to get to #1, that will lead to taking shortcuts and being more susceptible to changes in the way search engines rank sites. We think your goal should be to provide value to your audience and create a community around your site. These activities overlap SEO and will help your rankings in the long run.
How will I know if it’s working?
Ok, so you know this is a marathon not a sprint, but even marathons have mileage markers right? The good news is that there free tools out there that will let us compare your web site traffic and where your traffic originated from. Google analytics is a really useful and free tool for this and will provide a historical view that will make tracking your SEO efforts easier.
SEO can be as simple, or as complicated as you want it to be. If you want to learn more, there are plenty of sites out there with good information on the topic.