AD | Picture the scene. You’ve launched a shiny new website, filled with lots of engaging content, and now you can sit back and wait for all those shiny new clients to contact you, right? Unfortunately not, because life isn’t all Disney, and the sad truth is if your SEO isn’t up to scratch, no-one will find you. If you’re not an SEO whizz and you rely on your online presence, then hiring a professional SEO agency to fix this can save you both money and time in the long run. So then, what do SEO agencies do, and how do you choose one that’s right for you?
What Does A Professional SEO Agency Do?
SEO agencies aim to improve your website so people can find you when searching online for whatever services you provide. In other words, the higher up the unpaid organic search engine rankings you appear, the more clicks you’ll get. Effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) lets search engine spiders crawl your web pages easily, index them properly in their database, and rank you for keywords your ideal clients are using in their searches. SEO agencies also offer other digital marketing services that help businesses grow online, such as social media marketing, content creation, and link building to boost your website’s authority.
A professional SEO agency will carry out an SEO audit on your website and give you a list of problem areas such as slow loading times, low rankings, and low conversion rates. Some of these – such as metadata and titles, ensuring all URLs are unique, optimising images – you could probably implement yourself. More technical items – such as in depth analysis and enhancement of website performance, speed, competition, keywords, backlinks, duplicate content prevention – will most likely need expert SEO services, software, and online tools to fix and improve your site’s performance in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Two Basic SEO Truths You Need To Know Before You Start
SEO constantly adapts and evolves. Unexpected algorithm updates can affect rankings (hello, Google Core Updates), as can undiagnosed technical issues, which is why it needs to be managed on an ongoing basis. If you don’t have time to keep on top of this, it makes sense to outsource to a professional SEO agency or consultant.
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Steer clear of any SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no such thing. In fact, you can submit your own website to Google directly, either through their URL Inspection Tool or by submitting an XML Sitemap (a roadmap to your site’s structure for the search engines, which helps search engines find, crawl, and index all your website’s content). I’ve done this for my blog, and it’s really not as complicated as it sounds 🙂
Do SEO Companies Really Work? Why Should Your Business Use An SEO Expert?
Having run my WordPress blog for nearly 6 years, it’s now at the stage where I’m monetising it, so keeping it in good shape is critical for me. And I’m confident enough to apply a certain level of SEO myself, partly through plugins and partly through searching Google for easy fixes. However, I’m in no doubt that hiring a professional SEO agency would make a quantum leap of difference in respect to the following 4 types of SEO, as part of an overall content marketing strategy.
UX – User Experience
UX covers many areas including:
- Website navigation – does your website make it easy for clients to find what they’re looking for?
- Responsive design – does your website work correctly in different browsers and is it a mobile-friendly website?
- Load speed – if your web pages take more than three seconds to open up, chances are at least half of your visitors will leave.
At the time of writing, 62.06% of all website traffic comes from people using mobile devices. That’s why load speed is one of Google’s key ranking factors. Additionally, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are being used more and more to speed up webpage loading on mobile phones as these stripped-down HTML copies of web pages load faster.
Local SEO and National SEO
If you’re a gardener wanting to reach clients in your local area, you could target keywords such as “Bath gardener”, for example. If you’re a national horticultural chain, or an online e-commerce website, you’ll want to target all users in the UK searching for your products or services instead. This requires a more in-depth competitor analysis, keyword strategy, and backlinks campaign. It can also include off page SEO such as Google Maps, social media management, and obtaining citations in local directories and online forums to boost your web presence. Something an SEO services company is well-placed to help with.
Technical SEO
Also known as the geeky stuff that goes on in your website’s HTML code, such as title tags, meta description tags, alt tags on images, structured data markup, schema data, robots.txt files, rel canonical tags, etc. This strand of on page SEO is important because Google’s robot spiders only respond to HTML code, they can’t recognise lots of pretty pictures, unfortunately. I’ll give you a couple of examples TRCREATIVE, a professional SEO Agency in Cheshire who’ve been recognised as official Google Partners since 2009, picked up on my Horse Riding in Cornwall blog post:
In line 25 of the HTML code I have this, which is great:
But on line 176 I had this, which was a bug, and was confusing Google (not what we want), so they told me how to fix it:
Next, my header tags:
My H1 tag is great, but there are a few H2’s and H3’s that I don’t really want there (Nav Social Menu, Reader Interactions, Primary Sidebar, Share this post, Comments, Leave a reply). These have no value and dilute my actual targeted headers. I need to tidy them up and then this post will rank a little better in Google. That said, this is not something I know how to do, but of course a professional SEO agency could sort it out very quickly indeed.
Ongoing Data Monitoring And Evaluation
As previously mentioned, SEO is an ever-evolving and fluid process, which requires ongoing data monitoring. An SEO agency will monitor your Google Analytics to check traffic sources, landing pages, dwell time, bounce rate, conversion rate, and more. Google Search Console also reveals a mine of information, such as the types of keywords that people are searching for in your ranking pages. This can be used to further refine your website content and get the most out of your visitors, through CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation).
How To Choose a Professional SEO Agency
If you don’t know anyone who’s used an SEO agency, your first port of call will probably be to Google search terms such as “SEO agencies near me”, “local SEO companies”. And whatever the search results yield will also give you a good idea of how effective each agency’s own SEO expertise is 🙂 However, as the overall aim is to get your website ranking higher in the SERPs and generate more traffic, I found Google’s 12 tips on what to ask your potential professional SEO agency to be a useful starting point.
- Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories? (also your chance to check references)
- Do you follow the Google Search Essentials?
- Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
- What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what time frame?
- How do you measure your success?
- What’s your experience in my industry?
- What’s your experience in my country/city?
- What’s your experience developing international sites?
- What are your most important SEO techniques?
- How long have you been in business?
- How can I expect to communicate with you?
- Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?
Google also recommend finding out if the SEO agency is interested in you and your business – common sense really but still noteworthy. And if they’re not interested, find someone who is. Your SEO consultants should ask you questions such as:
- What makes your business or service unique and valuable to customers?
- Who are your customers?
- How does your business make money, and how can search results help?
- What other advertising channels are you using?
- Who are your competitors?
What Are The Benefits of Using An SEO Agency?
SEO is all about letting your ideal clients know where you are, what you offer, and how it can help them when they go looking online. Although making all the changes recommended by a professional SEO agency takes time, effort, and commitment from both parties, you can access all the necessary technical expertise in one place. So they’ll be able to help you implement a well planned out, co-ordinated, digital marketing strategy with 3 main benefits and results:
Higher Organic Traffic
Technical SEO helps you rank for more relevant keywords, which in turn will encourage more ideal clients to visit your website. Couple that with a good UX and engaging content, and those visitors are likely to stay on your site for longer as well. You’ll be able to see from your Google Analytics Traffic Sources just how effective this can be.
More Warm Leads
If your website is ranking for more relevant keyword searches, you’ll attract higher-quality leads, who are actually interested in your products, services, and solutions to their particular problems. Particularly important for your very niche B2B or B2C ideal clients.
How long does it take to see results from SEO? Unlike other marketing channels such as social media, SEO is a long game. In some cases you could see results in 2 months, but it can also take as long as 12 months to work. TRCREATIVE often start a Google Ads campaign whilst waiting for the SEO to kick-in and then reduce the Ads campaign down once it has. Social media allows people to discover new content or brands they might be interested in, SEO allows you to gain traffic from people who are searching questions or phrases related to your business. Therefore it makes sense to integrate your SEO and social media as part of your overall content marketing strategy.
So, if you’re looking to give your website a competitive advantage, whether you’re in a crowded or niche marketplace, then hiring an SEO agency is a great place to begin. After all, what business owner or entrepreneur doesn’t want more traffic, better qualified leads, and ultimately more sales? 🙂
How much technical SEO do you employ on your website? Have you ever considered using a professional SEO agency to improve your online presence? If not, do you think this is an investment you might explore now?
* This is a sponsored post – please see my Disclaimer.
Great information about choosing agencies to help. People offer me help I can ask them for previous work. I will keep these in mind. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you, there’s a lot to consider so I’m glad this post was helpful 🙂
I never thought of hiring a professional SEO agency for my blog business. But reading your post makes me thinking. Thank you for sharing.
It’s really interesting, isn’t it? SEO is a whole other world!
Great post Lisa with lots of helpful tips. Good luck in monetizing your website!
Thank you, Jodie, on both counts 🙂
Really interesting post. I think you have to be careful since there are a lot off scammers out there trying to take advantage of people. This is great to see thanks for the tips.
https://www.bauchlefashion.com
Thank you, Heather, and yes, you’re right, so hopefully this post will help!
I do write on SEO, and after reading through this post, I have gained some new knowledge on SEO especially why companies should employ it as marketing strategy.
Thank you, John, that’s good to know, glad it was helpful.
I love the idea of hiring a professional SEO agency, I actually never thought of doing something like that to help with my SEO! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
I know, until I looked into it, I had no idea about everything SEO encompasses!
I’ll be honest, most of this has gone straight over my head. Which I think goes to show that I would be the PERFECT person in need of hiring someone to help with my SEO! If I genuinely could, I absolutely would. I hate SEO with a passion but the thought of where my blog would be today if I had 1) taken it more seriously earlier in my career and 2) actually knew what I was doing, makes me feel a bit sick actually xx
Funnily enough, I quite like SEO, even if I don’t understand all of it. I think it satisfies my inner geek, I find digging around in the back end code and searching online for fixes quite interesting and even good fun 🙂 That said, I’m no expert, and I know exactly what you mean! x
I’ve been wondering about this and if it’s something I want to invest in so I found this post really helpful.
Thank you very much, that’s great to hear 🙂
Ugh i could really use this!! A great idea if you have some extra cash lying around.
Yes, a good agency does cost more but at least you know you’re getting what you pay for.
Thanks for this post, Lisa. I always get emails for SEO optimization, but I have never considered it. But after reading your article, I may need to think about it 🙂
Glad it was helpful, Via – but do be careful about the emails, most of them are spam!
this is a super helpful post. like many other bloggers I get the usual spam SEO agency posts, guaranteeing the earth!
but your post actually tells me where to go find the best agency and what to ask them.
Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you – I’m very happy this post was helpful 🙂
I’ve previously considered this but never acted on it. Will stew over this post in more detail.
Thanks for this knowledge sharing.
You’re most welcome, happy stewing!