Like many business owners, you have probably heard of the benefits that SEO (search engine optimization) can provide for businesses. You probably understand how important it is to grow your business presence online but you might not be sure where to start or have the time to invest in building a strategy.
An SEO agency can help you to make the most of your budget and they employ experts in SEO to take on your strategy as if they were an in-house team. However, when looking online for an SEO agency, it can be difficult to know what you’re looking for and what exactly you’re getting for your money when you employ an SEO agency.
In this blog, we’ll explain exactly what an SEO agency is, what they should offer and what you should expect when you hire an SEO agency.
What Is SEO and Why Is It Important?
Understanding what SEO is can help you to understand how an SEO agency can help your business.
SEO is a range of methods that you can use to improve your website and increase rankings in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Google is the most prominent search engine to invest in as it currently accounts for 86.64% of the market.
Around 93% of online experiences start with a search engine, and over 25% of people click the first search result when looking for an answer to their question online. If your website appears lower than the top three search results or on page 2, your chances of driving organic traffic to your website are significantly lower.
By ensuring that your website appears when your target audience is searching for relevant queries around your products or services, you can increase the amount of traffic coming to your website and help to convert visitors once they have landed on your site.
What Does an SEO Agency Do?
An SEO agency, or a digital marketing agency, is a company that employs a team of SEO specialists who often work with clients on a retainer basis to help improve your visibility online.
An SEO campaign can include researching and targeting relevant keywords, improving site speed, or making your site more mobile-friendly. The ranking of your website is determined by a number of on and off-page factors on your site, all of which work together to build authority for your website. Ranking for relevant keywords and improving your site will help to drive more relevant traffic and improve conversions for your business.
SEO agencies have specialized experience in helping businesses to rank on search engines and will know exactly what activities you will need to undertake to drive more traffic to your site. The strategy they use should be tailored to your business and your business goals so this is something to look out for when choosing an agency.
In addition, the team can work as part of your own in-house team to drive results but they have the time and the knowledge required to know what works and what doesn’t.
What do SEO services include?
SEO is made up of a number of factors that can affect your website’s ability to rank highly in search engines. SEO companies will provide a range of services that will work together to help meet your business goals – not all activities will be relevant to your business, this is something that the agency you choose should advise on.
- Keyword research – SEO agencies will use their experience of your industry and tools such as SEMrush to learn more about the keywords that people are using to search for your business and build a strategy to make sure your website is found in the right place, at the right time, by the right people.
- Content optimisation – good quality content and landing pages are not only key to ranking for the right keywords but to make sure visitors convert once they land on your site. This involves writing copy for product, category and other landing pages, adding internal links and optimising for target keywords as well as making sure the user experience is optimised to show visitors what you want them to do next.
- SEO content strategy – building supporting content through a content marketing strategy such as a blog or advice section on your website is key to attracting organic traffic and building your website’s authority with search engines.
- Link building – building links between your site and other relevant and credible sources helps to build relevance, authority and trustworthiness and can really boost your rankings in the search engines.
- Technical SEO – SEO experts use specialist tools to crawl and audit your website to help identify any issues that might be affecting your rankings and need to be fixed.
- Local SEO – if you want to target customers in a particular area, such as when you have a physical shop or shops, local SEO or local marketing can help to build your presence online and drive more customers to your store.
What Should You Expect or Look Out for When Choosing an SEO Agency?
When choosing an SEO agency to work for your business, there are a few factors to look out for to make sure you choose an agency that is likely to drive results for your business.
Take the Time to Understand Your Business and Goals
Before getting started on any work or a strategy for your business, an SEO agency should take time to get to know your business, target audience, competitors, and what you’re looking to achieve over the next 6-12 months.
If they don’t have any knowledge of your brand or your objectives, it will be very difficult for them to help you grow your business! Once they have all of this knowledge, they should build a clear strategy and share it with you to let you know which tasks they will carry out to reach your targets within an agreed budget and timeframe.
Through Research and SEO Site Audits
To build your strategy properly and make sure it’s as successful as possible, an agency should start by auditing your website and existing SEO strategy (if you have one!) to highlight any performance issues such as content, page speed, navigation, or images that may be affecting your site’s performance. Once they have identified these issues, they can create a priority list to help improve rankings.
Another key step to a successful SEO strategy is keyword research and competitor analysis to make sure your website is visible to your target audience when they’re searching for your products and services. This allows the agency to find and target the most relevant and important keywords for your business.
Monitoring and Reporting
Throughout your contract with an agency, they should continuously monitor your site’s performance and traffic to make sure the SEO strategy is working and to provide recommendations for improvements or changes to get the best results. This will also help to stay on track with your goals and change strategy if needed.
Transparency
When communicating with your SEO agency, it’s important to make sure that they’re as transparent and realistic about meeting your goals as possible. They should let you know the tasks they’re going to be carrying out and the results it will help you to achieve.
Remember that SEO isn’t always straightforward when it comes to getting results. It may be a case of trying different techniques and activities to inform the overall strategy and help to plan future activity.
Result (Not Immediate)
When you pay an SEO agency to help meet your business goals, you will expect to see significant improvements.
However, it’s important to remember that SEO can take 3 months to start seeing any results, depending on the activity you were running before, and 6-12 months to see significant results.
Successful SEO strategies take time to start working so you should always be cautious of an SEO company that promises instant results from SEO. It can take time for Google and other search engines to recognize and reward your content and efforts which is why SEO strategies need more time to start working when compared to PPC or Paid Social campaigns which can be easily turned on and off. If you’re starting to see positive results, it shows that your SEO strategy is paying off.
Case Studies
Good SEO agencies will have worked with a number of clients before so should be able to show you case studies that outline the work they carried out and the results achieved through the activity. This should provide you with reassurance that you’re investing your budget in an SEO agency that has the capabilities and expertise to help you reach your goals.
To find out more about SEO services and the results they can drive for your business, please contact the team at Logica Digital.