Partnering with experienced SEO services can help you position your website in a prominent spot-on search engine results page. You expect them to provide reports, answer your questions, and do a lot of work – but do you know what an SEO company actually does?
The entire process can be involved, but it boils down to doing a lot of research and creating an informative and well-structured site that provides value.
Search engine optimization is an investment, and it takes time. For your customers to always find your website, you need to know what your SEO agency is doing.
Exactly what is SEO?
The primary goal of search engines is to provide good results for users, so they use algorithms to review sites to find the best match for a given search. Optimizing a website for search engines is called SEO, or search engine optimization.
Quality content and well-optimized backend elements of a site increase its value to search engines and potential users. If a search engine identifies a site that provides helpful information, it is more likely to feature it on the search results page.
Having covered the basic definitions of what we’re trying to accomplish, let’s move on to how we accomplish it.
The Algorithm is being monitored
Although algorithms are a big part of SEO, not much is known about them. Google keeps its inner workings under wraps and rarely shares its details with the public. Search engine optimization companies study how search engines react to different sites in order to better understand how their algorithms work.
With the help of SEO experts, the ability to improve a site and ensure its inclusion in a results page increases as we learn more about algorithm behaviour. This involves staying up-to-date with industry standards and testing and revamping everything to make sure it is running optimally.
How to Get Started
An SEO company needs to understand your current position and trends in your industry to develop a strategy to improve your rankings. Questions that an SEO will ask include:
- How is your site currently performing?
- What are the relevant keywords for your business and industry?
Do you have unique title tags and meta descriptions on your site? Do you have schema markup on your site?
Is your website user-friendly?
What sites do you link to, and what sites link back to yours?
Then we take a look at your competitors. We need to know what your competitors are doing right and what they are overlooking since that could provide opportunities for your site. The industry also has specific expectations and standards, and your site must follow the best practices.
Service Providers of SEO
Your SEO agency will create a custom strategy after all the research has been done. We will address areas that need improvement to create a well-rounded, effective, and user-friendly website. The strategy may include:
Researching keywords
The most well-known aspect of SEO is keywords, and for good reason – they matter. Keywords correspond with search terms people are likely to use, and they tell search engines what the content on a page is about.
An SEO company will research all the keywords that are relevant to your product or service and determine how difficult it will be to rank for them. If those difficult words prove to be the most profitable, it may be worth it to pursue them.
Creating content
By providing helpful information about your products or services, and beneficial and relevant tips, quality content draws users into your site. By converting users into customers, good content can generate sales and show search engines that your site has something to offer.
The SEO Consultant you hire should optimize your website’s content and provide you with a steady flow of new, relevant content.
The mobile experience
Your site needs to be user-friendly on all devices, but most traffic comes from mobile devices. A good SEO company will make sure that your site is responsive to mobile users and ensure they have an enjoyable experience.
Time to Load
Even the most patient person will not stay on a website if it takes a long time to load. Search engines will take note of a leggy or slow site. A skilled SEO knows how to find the fixes that will speed up your site and make it load fast enough to keep your clients on your site.
Metadata
Metadata is essentially data about data. Search engines use this information on the backend of websites to understand what’s going on. Metadata enables search engines to find appropriate sites based on a search query, so your strategists will take advantage of this to make your set more appealing to users and search engines alike.
Continual Process
Once your strategy is in place and your site has been optimized, it’s time to hurry up and wait, sort of.
An SEO strategy can take months to see results, but that doesn’t mean your company isn’t actively working during this time. The process is continuous. After that first wave of data comes in, there will still be plenty of work to be done since search engines and users will interact with your site.
By analyzing “clickthrough rates” and “session durations”, you can get a better understanding of how users interact with your site, and fine-tune everything to better connect with them.
There is always room for improvement, and there is always a competitor looking to overtake your position. You need to adjust and maintain your Search Engine Optimization strategy.
Additionally, SEO is always changing. While some aspects remain relatively constant, search engines regularly update their algorithm. Occasionally, updates can be significant and drastically change the course of the internet, but most often, the changes are minor. It is designed to deliver better results, and updates can affect how a search engine responds to a site.
Experienced SEO experts stay current with updates and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Focus on Your Knowledge
It can take a lot of time to develop, implement, and monitor an SEO strategy, especially if you’re unaccustomed to this type of work. All of this can be handled by an SEO expert, so you can focus on what you do best while taking care of the new leads coming into your optimized site.