SEO: It might seem like magic, but it’s actually expertise. Online marketing agencies understand all the secret ways search engines works and use them skillfully for your benefit.
An SEO marketing company drives traffic to your site, creates more qualified leads, and optimizes your website in a way that makes it more appealing to Google and other search engines. Here’s a look at how they do it.
Creating a Strategic SEO Plan
First, your SEO agency will create a cohesive plan based on your goals. This allows them to act based upon your company’s specific needs for traffic and leads.
They’ll help you set targets for the type and number of visitors you want, the number of leads you’re hoping to convert, your revenue goals, and any other meaningful benchmarks for your business. Then they’ll establish a clear plan to address each of them.
SEO strategic planning is the key to finding qualified leads, not just any old leads. Qualified leads match up with your desired audience and buyer personas you’ve developed. They’re much more likely to lead to revenue in the long run, because they were always better-matched to your company from the start.
Developing Keywords
Your SEO company will also help you identify keywords that are associated with your business, including those that relate to trending topics and your customers’ preferences. Keywords help you connect with your audience through search engines, which sort through the entire internet based on these specific words.
From there, you can begin to develop various types of content based around your keywords: website content, blog posts, social media posts, and much more. If you’re working with a full-service SEO agency, they should be able to help you with both keyword development and content development.
They’ll Get Technical
There’s also an aspect of SEO called technical SEO, which ensures your website is properly formatted for search engines to read. Search engines look for certain organizational and functional qualities that signify you’re a high-quality company that’s playing by the rules of the internet.
Technical SEO is the difference between going to a restaurant and receiving a plate of beautiful food that’s artfully arranged, or receiving a plate full of brown mush that looks like it went through a blender. Both have the same ingredients, but one is presented in a far more appealing way than the other.
Ask your SEO company to handle technical details like:
- Errors
- Encryption
- Indexing
- Broken links
- Redirects
- Incorrect and duplicate tags
- A site speed test
- A full site-wide audit
- How Google views your pages
- Mobile and desktop access
Content and On-Page SEO
SEO services usually include a look at your on-page SEO, which is the specific layout and formatting of the individual pages of your site. This goes beyond technical SEO. It’s a blend of making Google happy and still keeping your pages appealing to actual human beings through good web design.
For example, a page title length should generally be about 50 to 65 characters. That’s because Google only reads about the first 55 characters, and that length also makes sense to human readers.
On-page SEO also involves things like meta-descriptions, alt-tags, descriptive URLs, hyperlinks, and other features that make your site more intuitive and useful.
What About Off-Page SEO?
A great SEO marketing agency will even draw your attention to a lesser-known aspect of SEO: off-page SEO. This is what’s happening in the rest of the internet, outside your own site, that could drive additional interest and traffic to your pages.
Here are some examples:
- Do you have any partnerships with vendors or local organizations? Request that they link back to your site.
- Do you guest-write blog posts for other popular sites? Now’s the time to start, and generate some buzz for your own site.
- Do you comment on industry forums and add your opinions to published articles on topics in your field? Get out there and do it, and you’ll build off-page SEO.
Want More SEO Secrets? Let’s Chat!
At 11outof11, SEO optimization is just one of the many tricks we have in our bag. Contact us today for a web audit that reveals your SEO roadblocks and creates innovative ways to keep qualified traffic flowing to your site.