Answering 3 Common SEO Questions
We thought that today might be a good time to answer some of the most common SEO questions. So, if you have been wondering what is involved when you hire a company to do SEO, this blog is for you. (Our company performs SEO as one of our services.)
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the work done to get more people finding your business in Google and other search engines. There are many aspects of SEO, based on budgets, plus the experience & skill of who is doing the work.
Why is SEO Important?
When was the last time you opened a phone book? How about looking at the classified ads in the local paper? Yes, referrals are still super important. But what do people do when they are looking for a service? They search Google.
So if you want people to find your business when they search Google, then you very well could use a search engine optimized website.
Does everyone need SEO?
Most, but not every company needs SEO on their website.
It’s all about return on investment. A lightning fast website, with lots of work done to make the content great is good for Google. However, there are only so many positions on page 1 of Google. If you are a small business selling T-Shirts to the world, you are going to be spending a ton of money before making your money back. As a reputable SEO company, Cityline Websites will let you know if we think you could make your money back by having us do your SEO.
Many small ecommerce businesses selling generic items will have a tough time with SEO. They’d be better served focusing on social media or online advertising. Real Estate is also a tough nut to crack.
Or you may have more business than you want or need. If you can’t handle any more work, then why attract more business just to turn it away.
SEO works well with local businesses, especially those offering local services.
In summary, optimizing a website is generally always a good thing. Whether you continue to work on the SEO side of things depends on the type of business.
What Does the Company Performing SEO Do?
This is not a question that has a black and white answer, but we will give you an idea. If you already have a website, the SEO company will likely start with a website audit and make sure that everything related to the website structure, content, image sizes and meta tags is optimal. If necessary, they may suggest reorganizing or rewriting the website, and rewriting the tags is common.
The most important aspect of a website is having good content. And oftentimes a fair amount of it.
The SEO company will likely suggest that you have a regularly published high-quality blog which shows Google that the website is expanding and growing with good content. They will also write the blog for you or suggest blog topics based on research that staff does on what the public is searching for with Google. The idea here is to have your website show up on the first page of results when people search for a business like yours or ask questions related to your business.
Another very important part of SEO is optimizing the load time. Time is money, both for people and the search engine robots. So, if you website is slow, nobody wants to stick around for it to load. Google is the same. If Google doesn’t want to spend time on your site, then you won’t be on page 1. So a good SEO company will spend time making your website load quickly.
Other Optimization work includes, but is not limited to: link building, structured markup, compliance upgrades, programming updates, image compression management, and more.
What is blogging for SEO?
There are a million articles about how to blog for SEO purposes, and we have even published a couple ourselves. The key takeaway here is that you want to add useful information written in a human voice. Yes, AI is starting to do some internet writing, but that does not mean it is better than human-written writing.
If a SEO company is writing blogs for you, let them. Sure, you can look at the blogs before they are posted, but the SEO company has writers trained to write for SEO purposes. These people are going to do a better job than someone untrained will, so let them do it and just watch for the results and performance of your website.
What Are The Client Expectations?
Remember that even if you hire a company to do SEO and they do a stellar job (like we do) of bringing people to your website, the work does not end there. You still have to reply to emails or individuals who fill out your forms. You still have to convince potential customers of the worth of your product or service.
One of the biggest complaints of potential customers is businesses with an online presence who simply do not reply to email inquiries on a timely basis or at all. The SEO company can only take you so far. There is still work for you to do, and the timely response to email inquiries is critical. You should be responding to inquiries as soon as humanly possible. Often the first response gets the business. Even if your service company is booked for six months out, politely respond to the inquiries. That is how a business should be run, and that’s how we run ours.
We perform SEO for dozens of companies on an ongoing basis and publish hundreds of blogs. If you’re wondering if you would benefit from SEO, give us a call in Vancouver at (604) 377-0110.
