Search engine optimization (SEO) remains an exceptionally important aspect of continued growth for most any company that is hoping to advertise online. This is because a great majority of people all over the world use various search engines to help them find various products or services.
Many people are aware of the importance of SEO but simply have no idea how to get started on implementing best SEO practices. Consider this blog post to be your primer on achieving the best results.
There will essentially be seven different groups of factors that will dictate how you make decisions relating to SEO. You should actively be considering all seven of these factors whether you are handling SEO by yourself or are relegating the duties to an SEO agency.
Methods
Keep in mind that SEO does not involve completing a single task. Instead, you will have to be prepared to perform multiple duties that can bolster your SEO performance.
For example, most any SEO strategy will require creating significant amounts of new website content, performing keyword research, examining how a website is designed, making sure website navigation is seamless, studying coding, optimizing a website based on Google algorithms, and identifying your audience queries. It is certainly possible for a person to do all of these things by themselves, but it can also be a lot of work for one person to handle alone.
On the other hand, working with an agency will usually mean you have a team of individuals dedicated to performing all of these functions. An SEO agency will be able to handle all of these kinds of issues for you and let you have more time to handle other duties.
Continuous Monitoring
There are always SEO trends that companies need to be mindful of and it is important to continuously examine your SEO strategy to see if it is, in fact, effective. More importantly, you will want to study how your target audience’s own behavior may change over time as it relates to your website.
There are a number of tools that a business owner could employ to make sure its employees are actively monitoring these kinds of concerns. Delegating various tasks can work when a business has enough employees to ensure full compliance, but it can still remain tricky to make sure that everything is being covered.
On the other hand, an SEO agency will deliver Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART) goals for you. The SEO agency will usually have enough employees dedicated to specific areas with a deep understanding of issues to ensure that you are regularly updated on all issues affecting your company’s website.
Time Constraints
SEO is not an overnight success story. It can take several months to begin to see meaningful results.
For this reason, all companies need to keep in mind that it will typically take significant time to begin to see the kinds of changes they are hoping for when it comes to SEO results. This will be true regardless of whether you are handling SEO yourself or delegating the responsibilities to an SEO agency.
Attempting to handle all SEO concerns on your own will be incredibly time-consuming, and you could even risk seeing a decline in productivity if you are not fully astute when it comes to certain aspects. Most people are going to require a team of some kind to assist with these efforts.
An SEO agency is typically going to have a team in place, with multiple people being assigned multiple duties to be responsible. The agency will not have to worry about many of the other aspects of your business that are of concern to you, so they can be focused on only ensuring that you are getting the best possible SEO results.
High-Quality Content
Bill Gates wrote an essay entitled “Content is King” in January 1996. In it, he wrote, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”
The same belief still holds true some quarter-century later as content remains incredibly important for every single website on the internet. Keep in mind all of the things that your website content can accomplish, including answering questions, educating website visitors, generating leads, creating backlinks, telling a story, conveying a message, and setting a tone.
For a person handling SEO on their own, it can be incredibly demanding to handle content creation by themselves. A content strategy is necessary to be successful, with new content being continuously added.
An SEO agency will have writers on staff to help immediately craft new website content on demand and keep a website fresh. The agency will also have a strong idea of which kinds of content are going to prove to be most effective.
Budgeting Concerns
One of the primary concerns about hiring an SEO agency for most companies will be the cost, but there is simply no getting around that dollars will need to be spent on marketing efforts. The State of Marketing Budgets 2021: Insights from Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend Survey found that marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue fell from 11 percent to 6.4 percent in 2021, which was the lowest proportion allocated to marketing in the history of Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend Survey.
Even a person attempting to handle SEO on their own is still going to have to dedicate money to various SEO tools such as Moz, Semrush, or Ahrefs. It can be very difficult for any business to grow without dedicating some aspect of its revenue to marketing concerns.
While hiring an SEO agency will most certainly constitute a major expenditure, a business owner can still negotiate the terms that will be most favorable to them and also compare agencies to help reduce the costs.
Generating Growth
The bottom line with SEO comes down to how much you are improving a website’s performance online and how much it is helping your company grow. There will be numerous metrics used to support findings relating to growth, so identify the areas that are of greatest concern to you.
In addition to your search engine results page (SERP) rankings, you are also going to want to be mindful of the number of leads you have generated, the number of website visitors you had, and your basic domain authority. Once again, it can take a number of months to see meaningful results.
Handling growth on your own can mean studying all of these metrics by yourself and trying to determine if the results you are seeing are adequate for your own purposes. When the results are not what you had hoped for, you will be on your own however to determine the best path forward.
With the help of an SEO agency, you will presumably be given some kind of plan outlining the expected results and be able to compare what was promised to what was delivered. An agency that fails to honor its promises is probably not going to be worth your time, but you may be able to get a reasonable explanation for any shortcomings.
Finding New Value
Consider multiple aspects of your overall website goals to determine whether you are succeeding in creating additional value for your website. For example, more website visitors and improved SERP results could be viewed as being valuable for creating awareness while more website inquiries and increased followers on social media accounts could translate to higher engagement.
For many companies, the end result is sales and this usually denotes a better performance in the decision stage when more is being sold. At all stages, a company owner is going to be aiming for continual increases.
A person can certainly measure many of these aspects by themselves, but it is once again time-consuming and demanding. It can also be challenging to create the necessary changes when the desired results are not being achieved.
An SEO agency, on the other hand, is going to have a strong idea of how to measure all of these aspects and should be able to compile them in a single report for you to review.
Find a Local SEO Expert in Houston, TX | SERP Matrix
The team at SERP Matrix are expert when it comes to local SEO. We know how to help companies in Houston and all surrounding areas get more reviews, create uniform NAP data, and optimize online content.
Our team handles all kinds of search engine submission concerns and works to achieve the best possible results. This will include all necessary keyword research including implementing keywords in the best possible way to help a company rank most favorably on all local searches.
Our web design and development team also ensures that your website is as functional as possible for every single visitor to your website. SERP Matrix will be able to handle every single aspect of your SEO strategy from beginning to end.
If you need SEO help in the greater Houston area or anywhere else in the United States, you are going to want to be sure you contact SERP Matrix. We can perform all of the steps needed to help you compete and achieve every one of your SEO goals.
Our team can work with you throughout the entire SEO process and keep you informed about everything as it relates to your SEO strategy. Call (713) 287-1134 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation and get our help developing the best possible SEO strategy.
