If you want the benefit of search engine optimization (SEO) but just
don’t have the time, or inclination, to learn how to do it or to spend
the time doing it yourself, you don’t have to miss out. You can hire
search engine optimization experts to do it all for you.
If you’re a small business just starting out you may think that you
won’t be able to afford to hire anyone, and you may be right. I don’t
have any way to know your budget, but I do know that there are many
companies online who specialize in this type of work and work with
small and mid sized companies.
The reason I know many of these professional firms is that here at the
Search Engine Academy, we’ve been training many of them over the last
11 years or so since 2002.
When you reach out to a SEO firm, you may actually find that you may be
able to afford it after all.
The truth is that to have a vibrant and effective SEO campaign will take
some time and effort. You see, the search engines are always “improving”
their algorithms and they don’t like to share to much detail, but they
prefer (naturally to sell sponsored Pay Per Click listings) and they don’t
exactly tell every one just exactly how they figure out which sites will
be ranked for top visibility.
For this reason a lot of self-taught SEO is little more than intelligent
guessing. It is pretty much a full time job to stay abreast of all the changes
being made in regards to SEO. That’s why you want to hire someone if at all
possible.
Many of our professionally trained SEO students are Alumni graduates, which
means they tend to come back to our Workshops every so often because they
understand the value of being kept up to date with the freshest strategies.
And don’t think that just because your niece Sally, is online all the time
and can put up a blog or send out a tweet that she is competent to do SEO
for you, because most of the time that won’t be the case.
There are many elements that go into a successful SEO strategy and a professional
firm will have their own way of doing things, but there are some things that you
will want to look for.
1. For one thing, any company you are looking at should provide you with an initial
assessment of your website. They should be able to give you an idea based on where
you are already, how much the whole thing will cost.
2. After that, they should be able to come up with an extensive keyword list based on
actual research (not guesswork) that is loaded with highly targeted and highly relevant
keywords based on how your ideal buying audiences are searching the Web.
How can someone determine the most exact and correct keyword phrase usage
by searchers?
The thing to remember is that the reason people search the Internet in the
fashion they do, is nearly always based on the conditions in a searchers life.
So as important as it is to search for very exact keyword usage, it can be very
useful to learn how to discover user intent, through a study of search behaviour.
This is just one skill we help our students with. How to actually discover and find
the reasons why searchers are doing what they do. In class, we refer to this as
“keyword forensics research and analysis.”
Whether someone is looking to renew their mortgage, or searching for a place to
dine out on the town, or even if they are looking for specific professional
services, or price comparisons, it all begins with a search on the Web. But the
surprising thing is, that often Webmasters miss they keyword phrases that offer
such a telling story about their needs and user intent.
Nevertheless, if chosen properly, this list can be just like money in the bank for
you and your online business.
Once the keyword list is in place, the next step is to “clean up” your website. Make
sure everything is set up in the optimum way to grab the search engines attention as well
as it needs to be compelling to the reader.
And the next step once everything is as ready as can be, would be to get your optimized
pages into the search index for the search engines. After that, it will be important to
track your results so you can see how effective the changes you’ve made are.
This final step is very important, and often overlooked. If you can’t track your results
how will you know whether or not the money you’ve invested in your SEO company is money
well spent or just a waste?
What should you be tracking?
- Track how long your visitors are staying on your pages.
- Track your conversions and you should see new leads and sales coming in.
- Another thing that you should be tracking are the analytics that are important to
your business.
What should you not be tracking?
Remember not to get caught up in traditional ranking reports which these days tend to
fluctuate do to the “personalization of search.” In our newest classes, we actually
teach our students how to accurately measure other things like your competitive landscape.
How to optimize your pages with more accuracy and exact5ness than ever before.
If you want to learn all the ins and outs of SEO and Social Media, Google Analytics and
how to watch for strengths and weaknesses in your competition and how to recognize new
opportunities and take advantage of them, then consider coming out to a 5 Day Complete
Hands-on SEO Workshop.
But if you are too busy just running your day to day business, then hiring your own search
engine optimization experts to oversee all your SEO needs is a great idea for any online
business. You can get the maximum benefit with a minimum of effort from you.
Choose carefully who’s voice that you listen to. When you find someone who has proven their
ability (don’t be afraid to do some due diligence checks or even ask to speak to a couple
of the SEO firm’s recent clients to see how happy they are with services rendered.