What is SEO and why it matters to your business
Are you wondering if your business needs SEO to grow your business? SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it shows up in the top results of the search engines. The idea behind SEO is to target search terms related to your business. By ranking for these terms, you're able to bring in qualified visitors to your website. This traffic can convert into valuable leads and customers for your business.
Considering that Google alone receives 5.6 billion searches a day, you want to take SEO seriously. Many of the search terms on Google tend to receive a steady search volume throughout the year, making it a reliable source of traffic for your business. But that's not all SEO can offer.
SEO helps you increase the visibility of your business online. Many users trust the top search results. This means that getting top rankings can help you increase brand awareness. As a result, you get to leverage the trust and credibility of Google. Many businesses see great traffic to lead/sales conversions with SEO. In fact, they report that it's one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies they use.
6 REASONS WHY YOU WANT TO WORK WITH US
Despite all the benefits of SEO, it can be quite challenging. SEO is very technical, requires years of expertise, is always changing, and is very competitive. As a business owner, you'd need to dedicate a big chunk of your time to build and manage an SEO campaign in-house. For this reason, the better alternative is to work with a digital marketing firm that specializes in SEO.
That's where we come in. Connective Web Design is a full-service digital marketing agency that has worked with many clients in establishing top rankings for their SEO campaigns. Our company has been working in the digital marketing field for many years, building winning campaigns for clients across many different markets and industries.
Our experience gives us far more knowledge and experience than the average digital marketing company. We know what it takes to identify opportunities, build out campaigns, lock in top rankings, manage campaigns properly, and create long-lasting results. Here are six reasons why you want to work with us for your SEO campaign:
We Understand
How to Design for SEO
We're Focused on
Your ROI
We Are Always on Top
of SEO Changes
We've Created Success Across
Many Markets and Industries
We're Dedicated to Providing
Excellent Client Support
Our Expertise
Goes Beyond SEO
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OUR 4 STEP SEO PROCESS
Step #1:
SEO Assessment
We break down the SEO process into four steps. The first step is an SEO assessment. This is where we prepare your SEO campaign. We start by analyzing the state of your website. We look into what search terms are working for you, what mistakes you're making on your website, and give you an idea of what can be improved. The idea here is to get an overview of where you are at so that we have a better understanding of how we can proceed with your campaign.
From there, we will start to conduct keyword research. We'll find keywords that are relevant to your business, products, services, etc. The goal is to build a list of keywords that you can target for your campaign. After we have a good list of relevant keywords, we'll start to conduct competitive analysis to see which keywords you should try ranking for.
Step #2:
SEO Strategy
The next step is to start building your SEO strategy. We need to get a clear picture of how to proceed with all the research and website SEO information. If you haven't started any kind of SEO at all, then we will build a strategy based on the keywords and competitive research. We are going to move forward into coming up with a strategy that works with where you are. We're also going to base the strategy on where we think the opportunities are.
It doesn't make sense to go for the most competitive keyword search term if you haven't done any SEO for your website. We like to lock in search terms (called long-tail keywords) that are easy to attain top rankings to get things going. The reason why this is the best strategy is that it helps you generate revenue from your campaign quickly. It also helps you build a foundation for the more competitive keywords later.
Step #3:
SEO Tactics
The third step is to develop a list of tactics for the keyword search terms you will be targeting. We rely on the competitive analysis to come up with the tactics. One of the things we look at is the on-page optimization (explained later) of the competitors. We want to understand what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong so that we can compete with their ranked pages.
We also look at the links that your competitors have built for their ranked pages. We want to get the same kind of links that they've been able to get to start matching them. We will also identify bad or worthless links that you should avoid for your campaign. From there, we'll get an idea of what links you should get for your pages to get an advantage over the competition.
Step #4:
SEO Reporting
The fourth and final step is the SEO reporting. We want to keep track of your progress so that we understand how your campaign is moving along. We'll see which of your keywords are performing, which ones still need some help, and which ones may need to be abandoned. The reporting gives us the data we need to guide the campaign in the right direction.
Aside from just how well your keyword optimized pages are performing in the search engines, we also pay attention to how they are performing. It's important to see which keyword optimized pages are generating the most leads, the best quality of leads, and the most sales. Even if a keyword doesn't receive much traffic, it could still be far more profitable than a keyword that gets three times the search volume.
THE SEO TOOLS THAT WE USE
SEO Tool #1: Google Analytics
In order to keep track of your campaign and get the data we need, we start by setting up Google Analytics. Google Analytics is Google’s free analytics platform. It will help track the right metrics to understand what’s going on with your campaign. We will specifically pay attention to the Organic Search data for SEO. What’s great about Google Analytics is that it can work for any digital marketing campaign and integrate with many third party tools. So if you’re running a pay per click advertising or email marketing campaign, you’ll be able to track everything in the platform.
SEO Tool #2: Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another important tool we use. It is a free service from Google to help webmasters manage their presence in the Google search results. With Google Search Console, you are able to identify problems relating to your Google search rankings. For example, you’ll be able to see if Google can crawl your site. You’ll see which pages have issues getting indexed in the search results. You’ll be able to see if your site is being penalized by Google. It’s an essential tool you’ll be relying on for SEO.
SEO Tool #3: AHREFs
AHREFs is the SEO research platform we use to research, plan, build, and manage everything related to your SEO campaign. It is an entire suite of tools that provide keyword and competitive data to build your campaign on. You can get information on keywords, competing pages, top performing content, backlinks, and more. It also will be used to tracking your rankings, set up custom notifications, maintain backlinks, and more. AHREFs is used by many of the SEO industry’s leaders.
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What is Search Engine Optimization?
So you know the basic idea of what search engine optimization can do your business. However, it's important to provide a more in-depth explanation of how an SEO campaign is built. Everything starts with having a search engine optimized site. The website structure, coding, and design is what needs to be worked on at the very beginning. The reason why this is important is that setting up and designing your site incorrectly makes it harder for the search engines to understand your site. Simply building an SEO friendly site can give you an edge over competitors.
The next step is to create pages that are optimized for your target keywords. Google analyzes keywords based on the tags and content in each of your pages. Usually, you will set up one page per keyword that you are targeting. In addition to making sure that the page is optimized, you need to create high-quality content for the page. The whole point of the content is to provide value to users. Google looks at various factors to check for high-quality content, so you can't take any shortcuts here. In addition, high-quality content plays a strong role in your site's ability to convert traffic into leads and customers.
The third step is to build links for each of your pages. It's a mistake to think that you have to send all the links to the top page of your domain (the homepage). Each keyword-optimized page needs to have links pointing to it (referred to as deep links) in order to rank for the designated keyword search term. Links are seen as "votes" for the search engines which is why you want as many of them as possible. It's important to diversify the types of links and the link text (called anchor text) used to point back to your page. When Google sees too many of the same kinds of links, they may believe it to be spam.
While these three steps explain the core parts of how SEO works, there are many other things that play a role in your rankings and how much traffic you receive. The list includes how fast your website loads, your average rating for reviews (for local search results), domain age, mobile-friendliness, and more. These are all things that we help our clients with.
White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
Knowing the difference (and the consequences) can mean success
or failure for your business
If you're new to SEO, it's important for you to know what white hat and black hat SEO is. Black hat SEO are techniques and strategies that attempt to break the search engine's rules in an attempt to secure high rankings. While some of these techniques and strategies can be effective, they only work for the short term. The search engines are usually able to find which sites are using them and penalize them accordingly. White hat SEO is the complete opposite in that you are building your campaign according to the search engine's rules. While the results may be slower, you can sleep knowing that your website will not be penalized or banned.
CREATING QUALITY CONTENT
The search engines want to reward websites that are offering value to their users. As a result, you'll want to create original and high-quality content for users. Black hat SEOs will use randomly generated and spun content to trick the search engines into thinking that their content is legitimate.
BUILDING LINKS NATURALLY
The search engines want you to generate links back to your pages and site in a natural way. This shows them that you have earned these links. Black hat SEOs will try to do things like buy links from ad networks or take part in link exchange schemes. This is very risky and usually backfires.
OFFER A POSITIVE USER EXPERIENCE
The search engines want you to build your website for the user. You want to make sure that your website is easy to use and that the users land on the content they expected. Black hat SEOs will try to use bait and switch tactics, send users to spammy pages, or simply provide users with low-quality content.
FOR ETHICAL SEO
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OUR 3 MAIN TACTICS FOR HELPING YOUR SEO
1. On-Page SEO
Everything starts with on-page SEO. Your page must be properly optimized with the right SEO tags. What this does is describe to the search engines what your page is about. We work on your title, meta description, header, and image alt tags for on-page SEO. In the past, businesses would focus solely on the optimization. They wouldn't put that much thought into the content, often creating thin articles that offered little to no value. But it is now important to make sure your content is written for search engine users, not robots.
Google looks at various signals of your page. It looks at your CTR, bounce rate, and dwell time. The reason why they look for these signals is simple. They want to reward businesses that offer relevant and valuable content to their users. This means that you really have to think about what kind of content your users are looking for. This is not always obvious as the keywords themselves often does not provide the whole story on what users came to your site for.
That's why you must really dig deep in your audience research and figure out the intent behind the keyword search. By getting your content right, offering valuable information, and making sure your on-page optimization on point, your chances of outranking your competitors are high. Many of your competitors will not look beyond basic on-page optimization and content. Just search for keywords that are related to your business and look through the results. You'll find that many of the pages are average or low quality in terms of content quality.
At the same time, it is important to look at the on-page optimization of competitors that are ranking well. You want to see what they're doing right so that you can model your on-page optimization partly on theirs. Of course, you'll still need your own original content and base the content on the message of your business.
2. Content Marketing
Another strategy we use to supplement your SEO campaign is content marketing. Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating and distributing content throughout the web. It is an inbound strategy that can be more cost-effective than traditional online advertising platforms. The reason why we use content marketing is that it helps generates links. People love consuming content and if they find it useful to them, they tend to post it on their sites, share it on a blog, share it with their network, or even talk about it on their social media accounts.
Content created for a content marketing campaign is used differently from content for your keyword optimized page. The whole purpose is to create great content and distribute it to the right channels. This includes press release networks, social media platforms, partner sites, related blogs, email newsletters, and more. As stated, the goal is to generate links for your SEO campaign. However, content marketing also has the added benefit of helping you generate leads, increase traffic, and grow brand awareness.
It's important to understand that content marketing isn't just about creating text-based content like blog posts, articles, and editorials. There are other forms of content like downloadable PDFs, slideshows, quizzes, infographics, animated GIFs, videos, and podcasts. There are many dedicated platforms to these types of content such as YouTube, Scribd, and Giphy. By creating different types of content, you can get greater distribution online. In fact, people are more inclined to engage with and share visual content like videos and infographics.
The big challenge with content marketing is to figure out what kind of content to create. You need to write about the right topic and angle. You need to figure out what kind of content formats would work best to further your content marketing and SEO campaign. Content marketing has been one of the pillars of our SEO campaigns. It is a very difficult strategy to pull off, but we created great results for our clients with content.
3. Link Building
Aside from content marketing, you also need to be executing other strategies for building links. There are many ways to go about link building. A reliable way to build links is to guest blog on sites that are related to yours. Another great way is to submit your site to relevant directories. You can also reach out to people looking for experts on industry or community sites. Many will be happy to link back to your site if you can offer them interviews, expert advice, or commentary.
Link building is not easy and it requires a lot of effort. You need to be creative about the strategies you use to generate links. It's also important that you focus on high quality and relevant links. Just because you can acquire a link from low-quality sites doesn't mean you should. In fact, doing this can actually hurt your rankings. Connective Web Design uses strategies that help you earn links for free, targets links from high-quality sites, and builds relationships with partners that can turn into links.
Another part of link building that isn't talked about is actually maintaining your links. Just because you've acquired a link doesn't necessarily mean that it will last forever. Sometimes websites take them down even though they're using your content. Sometimes there are technical errors on linking sites that devalue the links. As a result, you have to constantly reach out to websites that have linked to you in order to maintain the links. You need to provide solutions and/or instructions for getting the links pointing to your site again.
It's safe to say that link building is becoming harder by the day. Very few SEOs know how to build links in an effective manner. We've gone through the trial and error to figure out which strategies work and which don't. We also avoid links from questionable or low-quality sites as they either don't help your site's rankings or end up hurting them.
HOW WE DEPLOY YOUR SEO CAMPAIGN
At Connective Web Design, we take an effective approach to building and executing your SEO campaign. It's important to deploy an SEO campaign properly. Simple mistakes like building too many links back to your site in too short of a time can lead to delays in how your campaign progresses. Google becomes suspicious of websites that start generating links too quickly as it may be a sign of spam. Here's a breakdown of how we execute the campaign.
After we are done with the keyword research, competitive analysis, and audience research, we start by building content for keyword optimized pages. Our goal is to come up with content that is relevant to your audience and offers them value. We look deep into keyword intent in order to come up with the right topics and angles. Our goal is to match the intent of the user to the goals of your business (phone calls, lead generation, sales, etc.) with the content. After the content is created, it is optimized with the correct SEO tags.
After the content is created, we move forward with our link building strategy. The first part of this is content marketing. We will create content that's specifically designed to be distributed. This includes content for guest blog posts, short-form content for distribution on social media channels, press releases, videos for YouTube, and more.
We also use traditional and other innovative ways to build links back to your pages. Through the process, we make sure we diversify the anchor text of the links so that your link building efforts aren't seen as spam. And as said before, we build your links in a paced manner if your site is new. The idea is to avoid short term temporary penalties that Google places on new websites that build too many links too fast.
To navigate your campaign in the right direction, we focus on conversion data. We look at which keyword-optimized pages is generating the best leads and most sales. At the end of the day, rankings and traffic don't necessarily mean growth. We enhance what's working the best and focus less on what's not generating good results. We also start shooting for more competitive keywords as your campaign progresses.
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What is an seo company?
A SEO company is basically a team that will build and manage your SEO campaign. As you know, it can be hard to build an SEO campaign while growing and managing other parts of your business. It takes years of knowledge and experience to really understand and learn how to build a successful SEO campaign.
By working with a company that specializes in SEO, you can focus on your core competencies while realizing the benefits of SEO. SEO campaigns can take months to build and also needs to be managed which is why working with an SEO company is the ideal solution. However, it's important to distinguish an average SEO company from a great one. That's why you want to look for these SEO company characteristics:
1. Proven Track Record
You want to work with a SEO company that has a track record of creating winning campaigns for their clients. Look through their portfolio to get an idea of the different types of businesses they've helped. It will also help to ask for a few references to talk to their clients.
2. Data-Driven
There are many SEO companies that make generic promises about the results they can generate for you. But what's really important is to work with a company that is data-driven. By working with a company that uses analytics data and various metrics in their campaigns, you'll know for sure that the company is doing the right things. This characteristic also shows that they're building campaigns based on data, not theory.
3. Digital Marketing
There are many companies that strictly focus on SEO. However, there are many other parts of digital marketing that contribute to the success of an SEO campaign. This includes website conversions, email marketing, and even social media marketing. That's why it's a better choice to go with a company that excels in other digital marketing strategies.
TOP 5 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR SEO COMPANY
Figuring out how the SEO company will approach your campaign is the first thing you want to figure out. Will the company only focus on white hat SEO strategies? Are they up to date on the latest algorithm changes? Do they know how to deal with penalized sites? These are all things that play into the SEO strategy. In addition to these kinds of questions, you want to get a clear breakdown of how your SEO strategy will be built and deployed. You want to see how the campaign will move forward step by step.
It's important to figure out what the working relationship will be like with your SEO company. That's why you want to learn how they work with clients. Will you be able to pitch your ideas and feedback about your website and strategy? How often will we be communicating to see how the campaign is going? What kind of reports will you be sending to measure progress? Can we set goals together instead of you driving the campaigns based on your direction? Think about what you really need the SEO company to do for you in the relationship. With that said, you still need to allow the SEO company enough freedom to do what they do best.
Obviously, figuring out the cost of the SEO service is important. You want to get an idea of how much you'll have to pay and what the contract terms are. SEO companies charge anywhere from $1,000 to $7,500 a month for their services. Some will use a pay as you go model while others will require a one-year commitment. You want to see if the SEO company's services are within your budget. If it's not, you want to see if the company is willing to be flexible. For example, if you bundle in another service that you need, can you lower the cost of the SEO service? It may also help to go with a company that doesn't lock you in for a year. This gives you the opportunity to evaluate their service and go elsewhere if they're not doing a good job.
This is a very important question. Why so? Because while the goal is to secure the first page rankings, performance should always be measured by progress. For example, a page that's ranked 1031st in the search results doesn't move to the 5th position within a few months. SEO is a long term strategy. The goal is to make sure that progress is being made. Performance metrics like number of links, page rank of page, and how many positions the page moved up should be tracked. In addition, other metrics like leads generated, sales generated, bounce rate, and time spent on page should be measured.
The easiest way to separate the salesmen from a legitimate SEOs is to ask if they can guarantee that coveted #1 ranking. If the company only cares about securing the sale, they'll say yes to sign you up. In reality, nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking for the most competitive keyword searches. There are so many elements of a campaign that cannot be controlled. If the company is honest, the SEO should give you a general idea of what is achievable in the short term. It's also important for you to understand that a #1 ranking isn't always necessary. Just being in the top five positions may be enough to generate a lot of traffic.
It's not easy to find a reliable SEO company. You need to look for the right characteristics and ask the right company to separate the amateurs from the experienced experts. Connective Web Design has created multiple success stories for clients across a wide variety of markets and industries. We can help you do the same.
Give us a call today at (818)570-5620 or visit our contact us. Tell us about your goals and we'll give you an idea of how we can help you meet them. Rather than a salesperson, you can expect to talk to the owner of the agency who understands the challenges that businesses face online.
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