Ever wonder what questions to ask when you’re searching to hire an SEO firm? Here’s a short video from a colleague of mine that addresses just that:
Posts Tagged SEO
Selecting an SEO Firm
Apr 1
If you have focused objectives and a clear online strategy then SEO will almost always be a good cost effective addition to the marketing tool set. The first thing to understand is that search engine businesses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, have customers to satisfy too. Their customers are searching and they expect to see the ‘best and most relevant’ search results. I expect like me, you get frustrated if your searches bring irrelevant results first. No surprise then, that the methods used by the search engine operators are designed to deliver customer satisfaction. They work hard to eliminate bogus SEO services that aim to cheat.
It is possible for you to make your website ‘the best and most relevant’ for certain searches and to convince the search engine operator you are just that too. That is SEO. I assume that you will be committed to a long term marketing strategy, and to measuring results with a view to adjusting your activity. The steps include those of preparation as well of those of continuous repeated activities. The early preparatory steps are perhaps the most important as errors here will frustrate the effectiveness of the later ones.
Armed with our clear objectives and online strategy:
Step 1 – Keyword Research
A vital first step that should not be undertaken lightly. While experienced pay-per-click advertisers will know that you can easily test and change hundreds of keywords in paid search campaigns, they should understand this not possible for organic search optimization. It is normally advisable to concentrate on one to five key phrases for the whole site around a core theme. Then, for individual pages only one to three phrases. For large sites with hundreds of pages it is hard to optimize every single page. The effort and cost of SEO to the full extent produces diminishing returns.
Step 2 – Competitive Intelligence
SEO is competitive. There is only one front page and only one top slot so it is important to know your competition and perform better. What are they doing? Where do they rank and for which keywords? Who is linking to their website and why? The less competitive your industry is online the easier it is for you to outperform your competition. This is an important determining factor in the cost and resources necessary to achieve your desired SEO outcome.
Step 3 – Web Design and Development
Like trying to cable an old building for modern communications or boosting performance of an obsolete machine, fixing a bad website design is much tougher than building properly from scratch. When you create a new website, make sure to consider search engine friendly design and architecture before and during the actual development of the website. Almost all template-based websites are tough to re-engineer for SEO. A good design from the start will save you a lot of time and money. In most cases it will put you ahead of a considerable number of your competitors. In most cases a high performing design for SEO is also a user friendly design, but occasionally compromise is necesary.
Step 4 – Get Your First Inbound Links
There is no need to pay to submít your website to any search engine. Just as soon as you create inbound links from other websites to yours the search engines will find your website.
There are plenty of scam products and services. Avoid them. They are a waste of your money. No one can guarantee you a number 1 ranking. It must be earned and maintained by being the best and most relevant.
There are some web directories that are recognized by search engines and gaining a trade listing there will be a helpful kick-start to your SEO campaign. Then ask your customers and suppliers to place a link to your website from theirs. Most will be pleased for the favor to be returned.
Step 5 – Sitemaps
The larger search engines allow webmasters to submit a sitemap to them via a webmaster console. The search engines also provide reports and other useful information, such as technical problems with your websites you might not be aware of via their console. Even if you decide against the submission of a site map to the search engines, it is advisable to create an account and register your website with them, just for the reports and statistics they provide free of charge and which are invaluable for your internet marketing efforts.
After completion of the first 5 steps, schedule them for occasional review. The remaining tasks require regular and repetitive effort. In Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven (steps 6 to eleven) we look at taking a website that is a SEO ready site with a ready to run campaign and look at the steps and work needed to claim a high search engine ranking.
About The Author:
Tim Meadows-Smith is an experienced non-executive chairman, director and business advisor from a classical sales and marketing background gained with famous global FMCG brand owners. He has worked with businesses globally in the FMCG, logistics, service and technology sectors.
Why Hire A SEO Firm
Oct 8
If you’re exploring your options for getting your website ranked well with the search engines, you’re probably asking “Why should I hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm?” Your gut might initially tell you that you can achieve positive results from doing it yourself.
While anyone can certainly spend the time and effort it takes to submit a site to web directories and create some good backlinks, there’s definitely some skill involved in managing these tasks. I live in Steamboat today and work with clients throughout the country. I often encourage my contacts to weigh all sides of the issue before deciding to hire anyone to manage their SEO. So you don’t waste your valuable time, let’s explore the question of hiring a SEO versus doing it yourself.
SEO- The Breakdown
Hiring a professional SEO company can bring with it many advantages. Any SEO worth their salt has studied and knows what exactly the search engines are looking for. Not to bore you with too many details, this includes:
- “Do-Follow” vs. “No-Follow” links
- “On-page” vs. “Off-page” optimization
- PR (Page Rank) weighting
- Anchor text, and the proper use of it
- Keyword competition vs. monthly traffic
… and the list goes on.
Just like a lawyer needs to completely understand statutes and a doctor masters anatomy, SEO comes with its own set of rules. For a business owner pursuing SEO for themselves, and not as their full time job, this knowledge can quickly become cumbersome.
Believe it or not, the vast majority of active websites online today are optimized for the wrong set of information or not optimized at all. What a professional SEO brings to the table is the knowledge it takes to guide a site owner in the right direction so that all SEO efforts flow together toward the end goal (more traffic / more sales).
“Keeping Up With the Jones Family”
Remaining well versed in the most up-to-date and accurate information about what the search engines are looking for is the job of a full time SEO. I’ll go as far as to state that any business owner not pursuing SEO professionally is severely behind the curve.
Adjustments are constantly needed as entities like Google and Bing continue to revise their algorithms. It’s not best business practice, in any industry, to set the wheels of marketing in motion and never review the progress. Just like any form of advertising and promotion, regular adjustments are needed to maintain a websites’ competitive edge.
Well Researched, Professional Submission
Another advantage a business owner has when choosing to work with a professional SEO is the comfort in knowing their site will be submitted to the engines in the proper manner. This includes the research that goes into the marketing plan both before and during the SEO process.
As their customer, you should expect to receive timely reports on the status of directory and link submissions and the movement in your site’s search rankings. Reports should be supplied demonstrating where your site is positioned as well as where your traffic is coming from. If your site is positioned well for a keyword phrase and you’re happy with the traffic, there’s really no reason at that point to re-submit to the directories. A good SEO will rather shift focus to more competitive keywords and help a business rank well for multiple search inquiries.
Submitting your site manually, and not through the use of any “black hat” tricks or shortcuts is also something you should expect from your chosen SEO company. If you’re finding that too much of the work is being automated, the odds are good that its not being done properly.
Open communication throughout the entire process should be expected from your SEO as well. A good SEO should be able to explain his process in terms that you can best understand. Understanding what exactly you’re getting for your money is one of the most important things you should expect from your SEO firm.
DIY or Outsource?
So all of this might sound like a lot of work, and quite frankly, it is. Let’s face it, you’ve got a business to run and some things are better outsourced to professionals. A “do-it-yourself” approach in this aspect of your marketing is not always the best decision.
If you’re planning to hire an in-house employee to manage the job for you, first consider the cost of that as well. There’s salary, insurance, 401K, sick days, vacation days and liabilities involved in having a full time employee.
By outsourcing your SEO needs, you get skilled professional results but on a contract labor basis. Depending on your needs, a custom-tailored plan of action for your business may only run anywhere from $300-$1200 per month. It’s often far better and more cost effective to have a trusted pro manage your online campaign rather than retain another full time employee.
Your sales boost will also be a key indicator of worth. An SEO that’s getting your site ranked in the search engines and driving traffic to your website should often be seen as a “marketing expense.” As with any form of marketing, you should expect to see revenue increase above and beyond the expense you incur.
Realistic SEO Goals
Sep 27
When you’re ready to make an investment of time, money and effort into SEO, it’s important that you set realistic goals about the results that you are expecting to see. Many people know that SEO can be extremely beneficial for an online business, however they don’t quite understand how the process works, or what they should expect. Therefore it’s important to get an idea of what you should be expecting both in terms of the process itself and the success you and your business will end up seeing.
The Basic Process of SEO
There are many different elements of an effective search marketing campaign. With SEO, the details definitely do make a big difference, and the most successful campaigns are the ones that combine many different strategies into one cohesive plan. The element of SEO that gets the most buzz however remains the use of keywords.
Keywords, of course, are the actual terms that people type into the search engines in order to begin looking for something. By targeting the right keywords and key phrases, you can increase your chances of being found by more individuals. Research here is of the utmost importance, because by digging down into the data you can find great long-tail key phrases, which have three or more words, which will enable you to be ranked as highly as possible.
After all, very few people these days just type for something such as “football”. They may make a search however for “buying replica football jerseys”. Not to mention that ranking for generic terms and phrases is incredibly hard. Once you know the actual keywords that people use for your niche or industry, you can then go about including them on your site as a piece of your search marketing game plan. The result is that you will end up seeing not just more traffic, but traffic that is truly targeted, which will result in more prospects and customers for your business.
So how do you go about including keywords into your website after the research has been performed? Keywords can be used in any number of different ways, starting from the beginning of the process when you may want to choose a domain name that includes some of your targeted keywords. From there, keywords can be used in individual page names, in the links that you have from one page on your site to the others and most prevalently, in the written content of the page itself.
A crucial thing to remember with SEO is that you can’t overdo your keyword usage, a practice known as “keyword stuffing”. Not only with this turn off your visitors, who have a hard time reading the content you have on your site, but it also marks you as spam in the eyes of the search engines. Your rankings will plummet, and you’ll never receive the traffic that you have been craving. Ultimately, effective search marketing when it comes to the inclusion of keywords is all about walking the fine line between too many keywords and spam, and too few keywords and a lack of connection to those search queries.
It’s also important to note that while many people feel that “content is king” when it comes to SEO, content just for the sake of content isn’t valuable at all. Adding dozens of keyword stuffed pages to your website won’t produce results. What your site actually needs is high quality, unique and valuable content that serves a purpose beyond helping your search marketing efforts.
In addition to these onsite SEO tactics, effective search marketing also includes offsite SEO, primarily in the form of link building. Once your website is established, you can go about the process of generating incoming links leading to your site. Each incoming link from another site to your own is like a vote for your site in the eyes of the search engines.
The more votes the better, as your reputation and credibility will grow. Additionally, votes from more reputable sources do count for more, and will provide a bigger boost to your rankings. There are many different ways to go about link building, including directory submissions, article marketing, blog posting and commenting and on down the line.
Search Marketing Results
After you have begun work with an SEO strategy, what kind of results should you expect to see and how soon should you expect to see them? SEO works very quickly, but it’s not instantaneous and in many cases it is a gradual process. A few more links and a few pages of optimized content won’t send you to the number 1 spot in Google overnight.
However, continuing to develop your site in the right fashion and working hard to deploy a long term SEO game plan will get you to that highly coveted first page. You have to remember, all of those websites on the first page are there for a reason, and they probably have been doing a few things right. Therefore you can’t automatically supplant them when you start your own work, nor can you bypass all of the websites also undertaking their own strategies.
The bottom line is that you have to be in it for the long haul. The right combination of smart SEO strategies, consistently applied will get you to that first page, but you can’t expect to put a few keywords on your page and show up as number 1 tomorrow morning.
Once you know some of the basic processes involved with SEO you will be able to dive in for yourself. You have to remember to have realistic expectations though about what kind of work you’ll need to do, or what you would like to have done for you. Additionally, while there is an unlimited upside with SEO, there aren’t any free lunches either. It’s a process, and it can start working very quickly, but nothing is instantaneous or guaranteed when the competition is as fierce as it currently is with search marketing.
At first glance, the title of this post might be a little confusing. Perhaps it’s a little scary. To think that I’m openly telling you, as your prospective SEO expert, that I’m working other avenues of online marketing. That working on my clients’ search optimization isn’t my entire focus.
Now let me explain why you should consider that a GOOD thing. Let’s face it, in learning the ropes of effective search engine optimization and pay per click advertising, there become open doors all around to make money. After learning the craft over the last year and more, I have become proficient in getting businesses noticed by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Wouldn’t you expect me to put these talents to use for myself just the same as you?
Whether it’s affiliate marketing, launching new e-commerce sites, blogging for traffic or whatever, you should expect me to be doing these things for myself if you are to ever trust me to do it for you. I dare say that if I weren’t moonlighting on projects aside from the nuts and bolts of Zirkel Exchange, I run the risk of losing credibility.
I liken it to a realtor who doesn’t own property for themselves or a stock broker that doesn’t manage his own portfolio. By putting my own skin in the game (so to speak) of online marketing and e-commerce I hope to prove that my tactics and knowledge are solid like a rock.
Every client is different and I learn something new from each one of them. The same holds true for my own ventures. By exploring new markets and opportunities I see available when I am online I am able to broaden my depth of knowledge beyond just what I might learn from my existing client base. Besides, I’d much rather try and fail at something new when it is my own test site than to experience that disappointment with a paying customer. By taking my ”off hours” to work on my own SEO projects, I am essentially opening up a platform for experimentation at no risk to my clients.
The SEO business is a tough road to plow and continuing education needs to come from hands-on experience. New ideas are constantly being presented and I receive hundreds of emails a week with the “latest and greatest, must try” techniques. By putting these tools to use in real world situations for myself first, I am able to form an even sturdier bank of knowledge on which to stand.
For these reasons I hope it is clear why I am open about the fact that my SEO and PPC clients are not my only source of income. I am passionate about this business and I cherish the relationships I have formed with the businesses I help. But I honestly do not believe I could perform as well as I do for them without having first seen success for myself.
For an example of one of the e-commerce sites I have launched and manage, please visit the Swimwear Clothing Store.