James William
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the suite of techniques used to improve a website’s visibility in organic search results. It’s a constant process of monitoring, testing and improving.
High-quality content is essential for improving rankings and attracting organic traffic. Professional SEO services will include a keyword strategy and a content gap analysis.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of discovering popular search terms and including them strategically in your content to help your website rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP). It is a fundamental practice in SEO, and it is also important for understanding how your website is performing.
It is also vital to understand the intent behind each keyword. If you are targeting keywords with the wrong intent, they will be useless for your business. For example, if you are trying to rank for the keyword “wedding cake,” users searching this term may have very different intentions than “buy wedding cake in Boston.” The latter shows clear commercial intent and is much closer to the point of purchase.
Effective keyword research is vital to generating traffic through search, streamlining your content strategy, and enabling you to create content that wins over the right people. This is why keyword research should be at the core of any SEO services. Keyword research should be revisited regularly to keep up with trends and new opportunities. Using tools such as Moz’s Keyword Explorer and SEMrush can help make the process much easier.
SEO Audit
SEO audit is a process in which experts review your website and its components to find out the strengths, weaknesses and potentials for long-term success. It is a critical element of any successful digital marketing strategy as it provides an in-depth analysis of a website’s content, architecture, technical issues and social media engagement.
SEO technical audits analyze the underlying code of your site to identify errors that can hinder its visibility in search engines. They check for duplicate content, remove redirects, rid the site of junk and other factors that can be impactful to your SEO visibility.
In addition to the basic technical SEO “table stakes”, a quality SEO website audit should include a competitive website analysis to find out what’s working and not working for your competition in order to inform future strategies. A website audit can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks and will be conducted by a dedicated SEO specialist on your account who will report back with recommendations based on the results of the audit. Regular bi-weekly or weekly checks in are also included in the services so you and your team know where the SEO audit is at every stage.
On-Page Optimization
If you’ve ever thought that a page that ranks at the top of Google SERPs just got lucky, then you should think again. There’s a lot of legwork that goes on behind the scenes to make this possible. This legwork is called SEO and is a complex process that consists of three main categories: on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and link building.
On-page optimization includes all measures that webmasters have control over on a website. This includes optimizing content and improving meta descriptions, titles, and internal links.
The key to on-page optimization is creating high-quality content that answers the questions search engines and potential customers have. This includes keyword research, writing for your target audience, and adding relevant visual content.
On-page optimization also includes optimizing internal links, image alt text, and structured data. Lastly, it’s important to improve site speed to reduce load times and increase user experience. In addition, it’s crucial to monitor your page rankings and track your progress over time. A drop in rankings can indicate that your on-page SEO needs to be improved.
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization encompasses all of the strategies that go beyond what a website or business can control. This includes activities such as link building and social media marketing that can help to generate more online exposure for a business.
Although some SEOs will advise getting your on-page SEO ducks in a row before focusing too much on off-page optimization, the two work in tandem to improve search engine rankings. As a rule, off-page SEO is more time-consuming, but it can yield much more significant results over the long term than on-page optimization alone.
Currently, backlinks are the most important off-page SEO factor. They act as an independent “vote of confidence” that tells search engines a website is worth mentioning and worth crawling and indexing. However, a robust off-page optimization strategy can also include techniques such as adding your business to local listings and internet directories, writing guest blogs, submitting your content to news sites, and participating in forums (like Quora, Reddit, and Yahoo Answers) where you can add links to your site in your responses to questions.
Link Building
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to yours. This helps boost your page’s authority in search engines, which ultimately leads to better rankings and more traffic. According to Google’s Andrey Lipattsev, links are one of the three most important ranking factors.
To get links, you need to create high-quality content that is useful and interesting. This can be in the form of a blog, infographic, chart, white paper, video, or anything else that your audience will find helpful and valuable. To help you find prospects to reach out to, use tools like Semrush’s link building tool.
Creating and promoting this content is a full-time job, so it can be difficult to keep up with. A link building service can take care of this for you, so you can focus on your core business. Just be sure to choose a reputable and trustworthy service. You don’t want to end up with spammy, low-quality links that can hurt your site rather than help it. The best services have a good track record and will be transparent about any issues they encounter.
