While it’s hard to quantify the effect of a single backlink on a single page, we can look at the correlation between the backlinks and the ranking of a group of pages. Based on a study by Ahrefs there is a clear trend between the number of referring domains to a page and its organic search traffic (see graph below).
What is a referring domain?
A referring domain means a unique website linking to your page. “Unique” means a site that hasn’t previously linked to your page, as opposed to a site that has already linked to your page before.
Why are referring domains important?
The referring domains act as a “vote of confidence” from another website. When Google crawls a site it trusts and sees a link to your site, it considers this as a vote that your site is trustworthy/popular. The more unique votes Google encounters, the more confident it is that users will find value from your page, thus improving your ranking in SERPs.
There are several factors that influence how effective each referring domain is:
How trusted is the referring domain?
Is the page that links to your page relevant to your industry / topic of the linked page?
Is the link “dofollow” or “nofollow”? (Dofollow backlinks and nofollow backlinks are two ways of identifying a link and telling Google how to associate the website you are linking to your website. Dofollow links are a way to pass on authority to a website, while a nofollow link does not pass on link juice.)
Is the anchor text relevant to your page?
What is guest posting?
Guest Posting is the vehicle by which we optimize the 4 criteria:
The websites we choose to post on are filtered by a third party metric that measures the authority of the website
Since we write the article ourselves, we control the content and can ensure the article is highly relevant to the page we link to
A “nofollow” basically means here’s another resource, but we’re not giving it a vote of confidence, whereas “dofollow” means we are giving it a vote of confidence. We only post on sites that allow us to link to your page using a “dofollow” link.
Anchor text is the actual text of the link. If you wanted to rank a page for the search term “leather boots” a link with anchor text, “premium leather boots” would be more effective than a link with anchor text, “click here”. Again, since we control the content, we can optimize this text to be highly relevant to your page.
Why are guest posts important?
Let’s take a look at it from Google’s perspective. When a website begins to gain more and more votes of confidence, the algorithm’s thought process goes a little like this:
“Wow, this is great content, let’s see how it compares to existing articles…Okay, it’s better than most but there are a few that are similar quality. Let me look at the other metrics to determine how to order these. Ah, I see that these other articles have upvotes from other websites and have been around for a while and I know that our users are finding what they need in these existing articles because they’re staying around long enough to read all of the content. I’ll put the new one below these for now and reconsider its position if things change.”
The links from guest posts help break this tie with your page winding up higher in the results. Even if the content on your page is much better than a competitor’s page, the page with the better links will often win the exchange. The “quality” of content is subjective by nature and difficult for a human to compare accurately. It’s even more difficult for an algorithm. This is evident if you’ve ever seen popular websites on the first few results of the SERP but not found what you’re looking for in the articles and had to click on results at the bottom of the SERP to find what you’re looking for. The big names won the top spots because they’re more trusted, rather than because their content surpassed the others.
Final Thoughts
A final note on why guest posts are important — when we research the keywords or search terms we want to target with blog articles, we look for the terms with the highest traffic that we have a good chance of ranking for. We can see how many referring domains the competitors have and what quality those referring domains are. Knowing we will have a few referring domains shortly after article creation allows us to target search terms with higher traffic. Without referring domains we may only be able to confidently target search terms with 50 – 100 searches per month as opposed to terms with 500 – 2000+ searches per month.
Guest posting has risen to become one of the best Search Engine Optimization practices for any website, from everyday bloggers to large corporations. One of the biggest challenges for an online business is getting your messages to your potential leads, and though a solid social media strategy will always be beneficial, it can take a while to see the fruits of your labor. This is where guest posting can come in. Below you’ll learn how guest posting can help your bottom line, and how to do it the right way.
First, it’s important that we answer the question, “What is guest posting?” According to newbreedmarketing.com:
Guest blogging, also called “guest posting,” is the act of writing content for another company’s website. Generally, guest bloggers write for similar blogs within their industry in order to: Attract traffic back to their website.
It may seem counterproductive to spend time writing articles for other sites (that you may even look at as competitors no less), when you could be using that time to create content for your own site. But the opportunities that guest posting can offer you can be monumental for your SEO and sales goals. Here are some of the things that guest posting can do for your site.
INTRODUCE YOU TO A NEW CROWD
Writing blog posts for other blogs allows you to get in front of their audience, thus raising your brand awareness to potential prospects who may be unfamiliar with your brand.
INCREASE YOUR BRAND TRUST
If your brand provides quality content, people will come back for more. It’s really as simple as that. Building authority in your industry goes hand in hand with building customer trust. Guest posting on other related sites allows you to display your depth of knowledge in your field.
HELP YOU PULL IN MORE SITE VISITS
A website without traffic is a website without profits. When your article goes live on another site, this can supply you with months and years of traffic, depending on the popularity of the site that it’s posted on and how helpful your post is.
ENABLE YOU TO GET FREE BACKLINKS
One last advantage of guest posting is that it allows you to get a backlink to your website, which is a major factor in SEO ranking. Why? Because backlinks are the lifeblood of SEO, and typically the more backlinks a website has, the higher Google will rank it in search results.
QUICK TIPS FOR OUTREACH
Start by making a list of anywhere from 10-50 sites that you’d like to guest post for.
Determine whether or not the site accepts accept guest posts first.
Bypass your competition and instead look for related blogs to write for.
Shoot for sites that are bigger than yours, but not so much that you’ll likely get ignored.
Don’t forget to continuously do keyword research to find new opportunities.
GETTING YOUR PITCHES READ
When you’ve discovered the sites you’re going to write for, you now have to figure out how to produce an astonishing pitch that is sure to make the blogger you’re reaching state yes without fail. Here are a few ways to do this.
BE A “PEACOCK”
How can you make your ideas stand out from the rest? Try to think of unique angles to subjects that have been discussed recently, or consider re-hashing an old post and spinning it with new ideas and updates. Be sure to create a title that is attention-grabbing and memorable, and don’t be afraid to include links to other noteworthy pieces that you’ve published. It’s OK to show off a little bit.
CUSTOMIZE EACH OUTREACH EMAIL
Your content strategy can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. Don’t send the same template email to every site you pitch. Make sure to tailor all of your pitch emails to the specific person (and site). Also, be sure to include the person’s name (and the name of the site) as well as a reason why your pitch should be considered.
BE GENUINE
Attempt to make an actual connection with whoever you’re contacting. Keep in mind, there is a human behind that site as much as there is behind yours, and regardless of whether their blog is bigger than yours, we’re all human at the end of the day. Be yourself and be clear about what you want from them. When it comes to effective outreach, people are more receptive than you may think.
Lastly, don’t spam your prospects. Create a spreadsheet or other tracking document and note all of your follow-ups. Try following up once or twice, and if they don’t respond then simply cross them off your list.
Guest posting can offer a great way to meet and share with other bloggers, introduce your content to new audiences, and get valuable SEO backlinks. Remember to be personable, direct, and unique when conducting your outreach. It’s really just a numbers game at the end of the day.
Are You Making These Common Keyword Research Mistakes In Your SEO?
Keyword research is one of the central pillars of an effective local SEO strategy. When you make the right keyword choices, all your traffic generation techniques can be optimized correctly. Primarily, keyword research will be used to influence your SEO decisions. You can, however, use the data to make better choices about content marketing, social media, and video creation. While most marketers will perform a level of keyword research, some mistakes frequently occur. The following errors won’t always ruin an SEO campaign, but it helps to avoid them if you want to achieve serious search rankings.
ONLY DOING KEYWORD RESEARCH ONCE
The most intensive period of keyword research will be when you are setting up your site or embarking on a paid advertising campaign. This phase can lead to much useful information that will drive your planning into the future. The search results don’t remain stagnant, though, so you need to update your research periodically. An estimated 15 percent of all Google searches per year are brand new, meaning you can find relevant keywords based on trends, product releases, and more. Aim to make keyword research part of your regular schedule.
IGNORING SEARCHER INTENT
Google is focused on searcher intent when they answer a query. In the past, results for a search were often broadly tailored towards a keyword. However, improvements in the algorithm mean the listed pages are now tightly focused around the search intent. If you are targeting a keyword, look at the top results and think for yourself about exactly what a searcher would be looking to find. The content you create, including the title and URL, can then be tailored to deliver a close match.
ONLY TARGETING THE MOST POPULAR KEYWORDS
Most niches will have several broad keywords terms that have a high search volume. These keywords can be enticing as they would bring a great deal of traffic. You may find, though, that these popular terms don’t convert particularly well, with searchers having a range of needs. While it can be useful to target these popular terms, also make sure you focus on keywords with moderate or low search volume. The traffic for these terms can add up, and they often convert exceptionally well.
FORGETTING TO ANALYZE THE RESULTS PAGES
Keyword tools are a vital part of your research. A quality tool will provide search terms and related data. Unfortunately, many people take this information and immediately start a campaign. Analyzing the results pages, though, will give much useful information, allowing you to make considered decisions. Go to Google and search for your desired keyword. Look through the first page results, focusing on the type of content that Google is offering and the titles for each page. This research will explain in better detail precisely what you should be doing to rank successfully.
BUILDING MULTIPLE PAGES FOR EACH KEYWORD
As a site develops, it is common to find multiple pages targeting the same keyword. This approach might be by accident or design, but it is unlikely to produce positive results. Google can struggle to understand which page to rank, damaging the chances for either page. Also, other sites might not know which page to link to, so your backlinks are split, and each page receives a lower level of authority. Try to structure your site so that each page has a focus on a particular keyword, providing the most comprehensive information about the term.
Targeting the right keywords can save your business a lot of time and money. Keywords that are too competitive or don’t offer any real search volume will not provide the type of returns you want. In most cases, though, these keywords will still require significant effort to gain top rankings. By avoiding the common mistakes, you can focus on the right areas, selecting keywords that are achievable and convert. Fundamentally, keyword research is an integral part of online marketing, so following the right path has to become a significant priority.
How To Stay On The Top Of Google Search Results
There’s plenty of advice out there to tell you how to get your website to the top of Google search engine rankings. Once you get to the top, however, what does it take to stay there? Read on to learn what you need to build a strong local SEO strategy.
UPDATE YOUR CONTENT ON A REGULAR BASIS
When Google released its Caffeine update a couple of years ago, it enabled the search engine to crawl and store websites much faster than before. This meant that Google was able to see when websites added content. Google’s update came to mean that websites with the freshest content were pushed to the top of the search rankings.
Not only do you need to keep creating new pages for your website, you need to update old pages with new content and keywords, as well. You should be able to keep your pages as fresh as possible by putting in some keyword research.
KEEP CHECKING OUT THE COMPETITION
If you don’t keep an eye on your competition, it’s likely that they will try better moves than you at some point to overtake you in the search rankings. Free tools such as Ubersuggest help you get a detailed look at competing websites to see what keywords they use for their advertising and what their ad copy looks like.
GET GREAT SOCIAL SIGNALS
A lot of business owners argue that social media isn’t worth the time. It’s true that the number of times that a post gets shared or liked on social media does not directly affect search rankings. It does help indirectly, however, by giving web pages more authority and traffic. If you are to remain in the top three on Google’s search rankings for your keywords of choice, then, you need to pay attention to the social signals that your content gets.
The first goal should be to post quality content on social media as often as possible. It can also help make sure that the captions and posts are built around good keywords. When audiences find your business by the keywords you use, they will like and share your content to make it popular, which send social signals to Google. Your popularity on the social networks can help you get to the top on Google.
MONITOR MORE EFFICIENTLY
You need to keep an eye on every variable that is likely to affect your ranking, and take action the moment you detect a problem. A website business analytics dashboard AHREFs can help you stay on top of a wide range of variables from keyword rankings to linking websites. When you have every detail to do with your website accessible in one window, you’re usually able to keep track of more, and act quickly on any problem that turns up.
MAKE YOUR WEBSITE MORE USABLE
Building a website that loads quickly and allows easy navigation is important if you want to maintain your ranking. If your website either fails to load completely in a short period of time, or makes navigation difficult, it will likely send visitors away. When a website has visitors who stay for only a short time, it affects the site’s search ranking.
NEVER STOP BUILDING LINKS
You need a great link profile to even enter the top three search rankings on Google. If you want to keep your position, however, you’ll need to continue to build links even faster than before. This is because once you get to the top, you will have your competition studying your link profile to build a similar one for themselves.
If you want to stay at the top on the search engines, you can’t slack off on the effort that you put into building a great website experience. You will need to continue with everything you did to get to the top, and then do some more.
Common Web Design Mistakes To Avoid & Other Helpful SEO Advice
SEO is crucial for promoting and growing your brand. This is because only the top ranking sites on search engines get the most clicks. Using SEO enables you to boost your website’s ranking in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and stay at the top.
However, SEO is no mean feat, and even experts can make mistakes. While designing your website, you must be aware of the most common mistakes that can happen, how they can affect your SEO, and how to avoid them.
Otherwise, since the first five sites take about 67% of site clicks, these mistakes can cost you dearly. To help you avoid such costly mistakes, we will take you through the six most common web design mistakes that can hurt your SEO and how to correct them in time.
1. YOU FORGOT TO MAKE YOUR PAGE ACCESSIBLE
A study done by the Search Engine Journal reports that site accessibility and indexation take up about 21% of SEO mistakes, making accessibility a significant SEO error that many people make out there. This is the number one web design mistake that can impact your SEO.
To create an all-inclusive content that accommodates every type of reader, you should prioritize features such as alt text and omit other features like iframes.
To fix this problem, include alt text in your images so the visually impaired reader or visitor can decipher the content depicted by pictures. Put accuracy first, then keyword density.
Also, be sure to remove any iframes on your website as they can negatively impact your page’s overall speed, and they also don’t contribute much to your SEO objectives. Finally, get rid of any flash elements on your pages, as well.
A ‘noindex tag on robots.txt prevents the search engines from indexing your page. Therefore, you can invest heavily in keyword research and SEO, but unfortunately, you won’t rank anywhere near the top of the SERPs.
Failure to remove the noindex tag from your site is among the most common SEO mistakes, accounting for about 4.68%. Sometimes it may be necessary to omit some of your pages out of organic search, but you shouldn’t keep all of it out.
To fix this particular problem, Check for the noindex tag on the robots.txt for each of your pages. Remove it if you want to achieve better SERPs.
3. INSUFFICIENT CONTENT
Third on the list of web design mistakes is insufficient content. Gone are the days when website content used to be shorter. These days, most websites have a minimum of 1000 words, and the trend keeps changing. Of course, you don’t have to make every
SEO-oriented page long. However, if you want to see better results from your site, investing about 6 hours on your content, and you can achieve about 25% success.
Experts recommend giving Google or similar search engines a minimum of 300-500 words to work with. However, longer content like 1000+ words is ideal. In a recent study conducted by SERPIQ, the first SERP generally contains a minimum of 2,416 words, with the tenth having about 2,032.
This is not to say you should strain to attain the required word count. You only need to ensure the content is long enough to cover and address the searcher’s intent and topic. Suppose you can achieve that with 300 words, well and good. But if it requires 2,500, by all means, invest the time and attention needed to accomplish an in-depth resource.
To fix the problem of insufficient content, go over the original article to see if there’s something you missed or relevant points you omitted and try to churn at least 300 words out of it.
Look for any helpful resources relevant to the topic and flesh them out. You can also go over your competitor’s site and see what they’ve created out of the same topic, then work on creating a better piece to outshine them.
Go a notch higher by creating longer content in the future and publish them regularly. If you’re no expert in content creation, consider outsourcing or contracting the work to SEO writers. This will help you meet some of Google’s required standards which are expertise, authority, and trust.
4. YOUR HTTP STATUS CODE IS PREVENTING YOUR PAGES FROM CRAWLING
A server status code 4xx or 5xx (in which x’s represents numerals) can keep search engines from crawling correctly on your pages, leading to an SEO approach that doesn’t meet the cut. These web design mistakes typically happen when you have broken server links. It can adversely affect your Google ranking since the search engine has a fixed crawl budget for each site and wouldn’t waste it on sites that tend to send broken links.
To fix it, use an SEO tool to remove any broken links with 4xx or 5xx HTTP status codes. If this is beyond you, enlist the service of an expert.
To help prevent web design mistakes, this tool helps accelerate the loading time of pages on mobile devices, enabling pages to be more user-friendly. Studies have shown that AMP can significantly improve your page’s ranking on SERPs.
However, incorporating AMP with Javascript or CSS stylesheets can cause Google to index your page ineffectively
Solution: Don’t use Javascript code or CSS stylesheets together with AMP since they’re not compatible. Instead, consider using AMP independently on other pages. Also, ensure you remove any expired tags in the AMP document.
6. IMPROPERLY OPTIMIZED META-TAGS
Meta tags are essential texts within a webpage that explains what the contents of that page are all about to Google and other search engines. This helps the search engine decipher what the page is all about to give it proper indexing.
If you’re not providing meta tags in your content or doing it the wrong way, you’re treading on a dangerous SEO path.
So retrace your steps and get back on track, ensure your meta title has a maximum of 11 words, and let each meta description have between 150–180 characters. Include the focus keywords into both the meta title, meta description, and naturally throughout the content. To create perfect SEO-optimized content, incorporate other relevant keywords throughout the text alongside the focus keyword.
Additional Considerations
Web design mistakes are common, and these mistakes have a way of ruining your site’s SEO ranking. However, with proper guidance and support, you can avoid them even if it’s your first time designing a website. The good news is that SEO is ever-evolving, so you can continue learning a new trick each day.
As search engine algorithms continue to change, so do SEO strategies. We hope these six web design tips and SEO mistakes can help you get started on the right foot.
How SEO Marketing Can Quickly Increase Traffic To Your Site
SEO usually takes time to show results, and it will often be weeks or even months before your site ranks well in the search engine result pages (SERPS). This might make some people reluctant to use SEO if they are looking for fast results, but good SEO practices can do more than just get your website ranking in Google. However, adopting a good SEO strategy can also help you to gain traffic in the short term even if your website is not yet ranking well. Here we take a look at how this is possible.
GLORIOUS GUEST BLOGGING
Guest blogging remains a cornerstone of a good SEO strategy. Guest blogging allows you to acquire backlinks, which act as recommendations, telling Google that a lot of people are talking about your site. These recommendations then encourage Google to rank your site well. But that’s not the only benefit they can bring.
Good quality backlinks on guest blogs are typically found in good quality content. This means content that is interesting and useful, occasionally compelling people to click on your link and, hey presto, you have organic traffic coming your way. Even better is that it’s likely to be relevant traffic – provided your link ties in with the content it is found in.
WHAT’S THE CATCH?
The catch is that you need to create content that is genuinely good quality. Try to keep customer value management in mind at all times; offer something of value to the reader. Try and make sure your content helps them in some way by giving useful, actionable information and advice. Your content will also typically need to be posted on good-quality, relevant third-party sites that see a lot of traffic themselves. Such sites are likely to have high editorial standards meaning sub-standard content will be rejected.
There’s another reason to focus on good quality content that’s useful to people – it also encourages people to share it with their friends and family. Sharing will also help to get more traffic to your site in the short term, while also helping to build a natural backlink profile that benefits SEO in the long term.
USE SOCIAL MEDIA
Having social media accounts won’t contribute directly to giving you a boost in the SERPS. They can, however, contribute to SEO indirectly, meaning they should still be incorporated with your SEO campaign. Using social media will also help to send you traffic in the short term. Sharing good quality content on social media means more people are going to see the content, meaning more people will click on your link and end up on your website.
Using social media also means more people are likely to share your content, which itself means more clicks and more traffic coming your way. Plus, of course, shared content means more quality backlinks that will help get your website noticed on Google in the long term.
FOCUS ON LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS
Long-tail keywords are basically keyword terms that contain several words. For example, a long-tail keyword would be something like “where can I buy discounted computer hardware,” as opposed to something like “discounted hardware.”
The main advantage of this is that long-tail keywords are less competitive – fewer businesses are targeting them, meaning it will take less time for you to rank. The downside is that fewer people are using long-tail keywords in their searches, meaning less traffic will be coming your way. However, using the right content strategy, you can have several long-tail keywords helping to bring traffic to your site.
Using long-tail keywords will also help you to rank for standard keywords in the long term. In the example given above, the long-tail keyword also contains the term “discounted hardware,” meaning you could rank for that term also in the long term. Try and incorporate both short-term and long-term strategies in your keyword research to help you make the best of both worlds.
THE BOTTOM LINE
If you’re looking for quick-fix SEO that gets your site ranking in the SERPS quickly – you’re going to be disappointed (depending on your definition of quick). This does not mean, however, that good SEO practices can’t start sending traffic your way even if your website is still ranking on page 50 on Google. Indeed, use the right strategies and focus on quality, and you can have good quality traffic coming to your site quicker than you might expect.
4 Tips For Creating An Impressive Website
The following four tips will put you well on your way to a website that has a good chance to attract and hold visitors. You have about five seconds or less to entice a visitor to decide to navigate your website or move on to another. Here are the top four, and a few more, things you need to achieve this as suggested by small business website design companies like Proecho Solutions.
STRUCTURE CONTENT USING A LOGICAL VISUAL HIERARCHY
The visual hierarchy of your home or landing page is about the color, contrast, and size of the visual elements on the page. It directs the eye to a particular order through relative prominence. Research shows that every website page has a visual hierarchy, but only if it is deliberately used to attract and hold visitor’s attention does it contribute to a good website.
You want to grab the visitor’s attention to the important elements first. The layout will put important things at the top of the page whether they are headlines, graphics, icons, or videos. Contrast and white spaces make it easier for the visitor to see each element.
PLACE KEYWORDS HIGH ON THE HOME PAGE
The first thing a visitor wants to know is if they can get what they want from the website they landed on. To achieve this, your home page needs a descriptive headline at the top of the page that informs the visitor within the first five seconds that they are in the right place.
You may be tempted to write a clever phrase or something humorous at this point but, it’s better to give a clear and simple presentation than to try to catch visitor’s attention with something clever. Most people don’t want to waste time wading through text to get answers to their questions. A crystal-clear message is the best way to hold the visitor’s attention. For example, if you are selling organic cotton baby clothes, visitors need to know that immediately. A good headline would be Comfortable, Organic Cotton, and Affordable Baby Clothes.
USE HIGH-QUALITY IMAGERY
Beautiful photographs, especially of human faces will communicate your objectives as well or better than text. Photos of faces can guide the visitor’s attention.
One famous example found through a study is that if the photo of a baby is looking at the camera, visitors look at the baby. If the baby is looking at the headline, people look at the headline. In other words, the line of sight in a photo of a human face can guide the visitor to a service page or call-to-action. Another effective way to guide attention is with arrows.
Memes are one way to attract visitors especially if they are clever or funny. You can find programs online that teach you to make your own memes or offer free templates for professional-looking memes.
Make sure all the imagery you use is high resolution. Any photo taken with an old smartphone may not give the sharpness you want. However, you should avoid stock photos. People appreciate genuineness, and a few high-quality photos from your business will be more impressive than stock photos that they see on other websites in your industry. Luckily, there is plenty of photo and video editor software to help you make this happen.
SOME DOS AND DON’TS
Do put your social media links at the bottom of the page and not the top. Do put HOME on the left of the menu because that is where visitors expect to find it. Don’t link your service page to your blog page. You want to keep visitors on your service page, and it is too easy to exit from a blog page. Do be careful linking to other sites. If your visitors go to that link, determine if it will help your business. Do use clear, professional SEO text with the right number of keywords to make Google put your site higher on the first page. Don’t keyword stuff as this will not help with Google. Do use short paragraphs and avoid walls of text. Do put the call-to-action high on the page.
If you are already doing SEO or want to start, a common question is whether you should outsource your SEO efforts to a company. Control and financial concerns may make you hesitant to hire out, but outsourcing to an agency can be a much more efficient option. All too often, managers attempt to save money by doing it themselves, only to find themselves in over their heads, wasting both time and resources. That’s not to say that insourcing isn’t a good option for you, but if you’re on the fence, here are some reasons why you should hire an SEO agency.
It will save you time.
Most business owners and managers do not have the luxury of time, especially for a strategy as time-consuming as SEO.
SEO is a never-ending process that necessitates numerous hours of research, optimization, and maintenance. When you outsource SEO to a company, you get a team of experts behind your brand, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. This is one of the reasons why many businesses find it appealing to hire an SEO agency; they specialize in completely managing your search marketing campaign practically 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
An agency can handle all of the time-consuming tasks associated with search engine optimization, such as:
Keyword research and a coordinated SEO strategy that focuses on your company’s key performance indicators (KPIs).
Meta-data optimizations tailored to your needs
Keyword density and content optimization
Internal linking optimization on a strategic level
Campaign data analysis, reporting, and data-driven adjustments
Monitoring for indexing issues and SEO performance issues
You can see all of the results, but your company won’t have to worry about fitting search marketing into an already hectic schedule.
It saves you money.
To finance the salaries, software, and equipment required to build a complete team of in-house SEO professionals, a significant and ongoing investment is required. One of the advantages of hiring an SEO company is that they can provide a strong team and resources at a lower cost than it would take to maintain an in-house team.
The service fees required to pay an outside company can be a turnoff for many businesses – but the importance of SEO for business growth and its unbeatable ROI make it impossible to ignore.
According to Statista research, SEO is one of the single most effective ROI-driving marketing strategies available, with 32% of marketers worldwide claiming the highest ROI and 41% claiming a medium ROI. This means that one of the most significant advantages of hiring an SEO firm is that any costs are offset by the valuable revenue generated.
Even better, the long-term growth in brand recognition and customer loyalty that SEO provides can allow businesses to save money when attempting to achieve the same results with other strategies – such as search PPC, paid ads, commercials, and so on.
Take Advantage of Industry Knowledge
Agencies provide a diverse group of experts, such as SEO professionals, web developers, and content writers, who are prepared to handle specific situations. Every individual in an agency has a focus and excels in that area to deliver the best results to your company.
Hiring an SEO company means getting advice from experts who specialize in SEO, have years of experience, and know more than you do.
Search engines like Google and Bing are constantly releasing new updates (dozens or even hundreds per year), making it difficult for businesses to keep up. Worse, they can cause businesses to lose important traffic without even realizing it!
Here are some of the reasons why hiring an SEO agency will provide you with nothing but professional assistance:
Agency experts can keep an eye on industry news channels, forums, and competitors for information on algorithm updates and their impact on SEO rankings.
Monitor the health of your website for indexing issues, traffic drops, ranking loss, manual actions, and other issues.
Capable of diagnosing problems and determining the root causes of algorithmic penalties and drops.
Provide direction and development advice for resolving issues.
Experts have access to cutting-edge technology and key industry platforms – and they know how to make the most of them. And they spread it to your brand.
They’ve worked with brands similar to yours before.
SEO agencies have worked with a wide range of clients and industries and have a thorough understanding of which strategies work best. They’ve already gone through years of trial and error and rigorous testing across a wide range of business landscapes, so they’re already ahead of the curve in terms of what will drive results.
So, why should you hire an SEO firm instead of doing it yourself? After all, who knows your company better than you do?
An agency, on the other hand, will have worked with dozens of other brands in your niche that is similar to yours. They will have assisted other businesses in rising to the top of page one of search results. And they can do it for you again. Agencies also understand how to combine your expectations with their strategies to create a fully customized campaign. For instance, they can:
Use their client SEO case studies to demonstrate tried-and-true strategies.
Rely on keyword research, competitor analysis, and effective content.
Pinpoint the KPIs and audiences that are important to you and know how to tailor SEO to them.
Create strategies for business-to-business (B2B), eCommerce, service-based marketing, software, content publishing, and other industries.
Target high-value, conversion-ready audiences at every stage of the sales funnel by focusing on “search intent.”
Increased Efficiency
Agencies have a tight-knit team that can develop and implement your SEO strategy at the same time. Agencies have the team and resources to make seamless changes with SEO professionals, website technicians, and content writers on staff. Because they are constantly working on your website, updates can be made much faster, and any urgent changes can be made on the spot.
Keep up with the latest trends.
SEO is always changing. Strategies that worked last month may no longer be effective today, so staying on top of trends and algorithm changes is one of the most important aspects of SEO. SEO agencies devote time to research and trend monitoring that many businesses do not have.
Your Company’s Security
SEO can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, as it opens the door to search penalties, spam, and hacking. One of the reasons why hiring an SEO agency makes so much sense is that SEO agencies know what to look for to avoid any negative consequences and keep your website (and rankings) safe!
Going with an SEO agency can be a great option for some businesses, but keep in mind that not all agencies are created equal. If you decide that outsourcing to an agency is the best option for you, make sure you do your homework. Be wary of any companies that offer guarantees or anything else that appears to be too good to be true (These could be red flags for a digital marketing agency).
This is where professionals can assist you.
Agencies have a dedicated team to monitor tools such as Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and others for major issues. Errors such as black-hat attacks, bad backlinks, manual actions, security vulnerabilities, and so on can cause major issues if you don’t know what to look for. Another advantage of hiring an SEO company is that they can help protect your brand from negative publicity, competition, common SEO myths, and other threats.
Get Useful Data and Analytics to Help Your Business Grow Even More
The ability of SEO is to increase site traffic and drive long-term sales. But, an often-overlooked side benefit of hiring an SEO firm is the extra stuff: data!
You’ll also get professional insights into the data that you can use to grow every aspect of your business.
Most brands already use statistical data to better understand their customers and grow their businesses. Most businesses already use data tools like Google Analytics to track site traffic and key performance indicators (KPIs). So, why should you hire an SEO company to handle all of this? To digest the data you require to fine-tune your overall online strategy, and they’ll know exactly how to incorporate that data into the SEO campaign they run for you.
Consider the following capabilities of a digital marketing team:
Assist you in defining your ideal target customers and aligning your keyword strategy with those audiences using keyword research tools.
Determine which channel (i.e. social media, PPC, blog , etc.) are most beneficial to your business.
Understanding concepts such as “search intent” will allow you to precisely target conversion-ready searchers.
Monitor search traffic click data, impressions, and click-through rate (CTR) to determine where pages can be improved.
To determine where shoppers are most interested, read and comprehend data from Google Analytics eCommerce reports.
Isolate areas of a site that have a higher “bounce rate” and devise strategies to help prevent site exits.
Understand traffic data to identify when something is wrong and how to fix it before it’s too late.
What content leads to conversions and what does not.
These are just a few of the advantages of hiring an SEO company, particularly in terms of how data-rich, agency-level analysis can help you understand your entire digital marketing strategy. Not just look.
You Increase Your Sales and Revenue
This may seem self-evident, but it bears repeating. One of the most important reasons to hire an SEO agency is to increase sales and revenue. And not just a little. A lot.
According to BrightEdge research, search engines generate 40% of all online revenue and more than 53% of all internet traffic! SEO leads have a close rate of more than 14%. They are 8X more likely to close than leads from outbound marketing strategies. Businesses that rank first on page one of search results can expect to receive more than one-third of all clicks!
These figures highlight the importance of search optimization in driving actual sales/revenue.
SEO is far too important to overlook. So important that the benefits of hiring an SEO company have become too great for many businesses to overlook. Because of the importance of SEO as a foundation for business growth, it is not worth the risk of getting this channel wrong.
