5 tips to follow when getting help with your small business SEO

There are many layers of online marketing and SEO that can greatly benefit your business. But how do you know what advice to listen to and what will work for you business?
Published:
February 6, 2016
Category: SEO

Search engine optimisation is the process of improving a website and a company’s online web-presence, to increase the positioning in search engine results. Because search engines do not accept payment for listing in the (organic) search results – this involves optimising a website for hundreds of factors to improve compatibility, whilst creating interesting content, so that others will want to share and link to your website.

You will have no doubt received spam emails from companies offering SEO and #1 rankings for $99 along with strange sounding link building services. In fact, hundreds of links from irrelevant, spammy and generally low quality sites will not be able to offer the same performance as just one link from a high quality, reputable site; so our citations and link building campaigns always endeavour to obtain links that are of best-value to our clients, either for traffic generation or SEO benefits. As you might imagine, there are many layers of online marketing and SEO that can greatly benefit your business. But how do you know what advice to listen to and what will work for you business? With more and more small to medium size businesses relying on external ‘marketing departments’ it is hard to see what you should be focusing on. So we have put together a few tips to help save you from the bad advice!

1. Go with your gut instinct

This may seem obvious but if the plan or strategy you have been presented with doesn’t sit well with you, don’t go for it. Be honest and open about what you want and don’t be pushed into a corner.

2. Set a period of time to measure the results

The benefits of search engine optimisation don’t happen overnight and any company offering guaranteed results should be avoided at all costs. If you are using a good digital agency for your SEO, they will tell you that laying strong foundations one link at a time is the best way to get you positive long term results. Google is normally a couple of months behind the live content that is published on your site so allow for this when publishing new content and pages. Some of the most important KPIs to track the performance of your campaign before you get traffic would be the visibility of your target keywords in the search engines. We use tools such as search rank trackers and Webmaster tools impressions data, to chart progress from page ten up to page two, the tough wait before you really start to see the benefits of your SEO investments, when keywords reach page one of results.

3. Ask questions

If your agency is using jargon, don’t be overwhelmed or be made to feel out of your depth. Ask them to explain it to you in more simple terms so you can understand. SEO follows logical steps that are done to help your business get the most out of the internet, and they are there to help explain that to you.

4. Play by the rules

Using spammy, broken and temporary links, or even link networks, will cause google to give your website penalties, which will knock your rankings down, so beware of these underhand tactics. Generally such techniques are used by companies which use bulk, cold emailing tactics and other automated contact systems, so never work with an SEO company who has cold contacted you by email.

5. Set real goals

The results you are ultimately aiming for are live website enquiries, sales and leads. You want to see a good return on investment, not millions of clicks per page from foreign countries, which are false positives. It could be great that loads of people are coming to your website, but the conversion rate and value of conversions are the most important things to track. Keep in mind the first few months of any SEO campaign will be slow to deliver returns, but persistence and continuous tracking of rankings, ongoing improvements and optimisation, anything is possible.

More information

If you would like to benefit from our local SEO or national SEO and inbound marketing services, you can check out our packages here. All our plans come with the following features:

  • Dedicated account manager who will know you by name
  • Monthly rankings reports to see how Google is responding
  • Quarterly progress reports to monitor trends
  • Local SEO service to get on top of the Maps
  • Alloy SEO Tool Access for clear data and analytics

Head here to learn more about our SEO agency.

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