SEO, as I assume you already know, is simply a process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a website. This improvement in traffic is achieved by getting the website to rank high on search engine results pages.
This is really not as easy as my explanation above would make it seem. In this post, I’ll take you through a breakdown of SEO services you should be getting in order to achieve your project objectives. It’s also important to note that you need to stay away from those who engage in black hat SEO techniques. You can learn more of that in the post – what is black hat SEO?
List of SEO Services
1. A Comprehensive Website Audit
Starting an SEO service without requesting for a comprehensive website audit is like building a house on a land without carrying out a survey first.
Before you build on a land, you’d want to make sure that you carry out a proper survey. From the survey you can determine the state of the land and identify anything that requires fixing before you commence your construction.
This is the same case with your website. There are lots of efforts and resources that go into optimizing a website to rank on Google. You don’t want to start it out blindly without its ‘health’ or state first.
A comprehensive website audit can help you identify issues such as manual penalties from search engines, indexing issues, website hacks, and so on. Without this service, you will not be able to identify issues that may prevent your website from ranking well on Google.
2. Competition Analysis
In the world of Search Engine Optimization, “copying you competitors” is allowed.
Hold on…. I don’t mean that in the literal sense of it. I don’t mean you have to lift content from your competitors’ websites and put them on yours.
By copying your competitors, I mean looking at what they’re doing well and replicating it.
Who are your competitors exactly? These are the websites ranking on Google for the same keywords you want to rank for or already rank for.
Let’s say you have an ecommerce website where you sell Samsung phones and accessories. Ideally, some of the keywords you’d want to rank for would include: ‘Samsung smartphones’, ‘buy Samsung Galaxy Note’, and so on.
Your competitors are all the websites ranking on Google’s first page for these keywords. These are the websites you want to take their position.
And what better way to do this than analyzing them and finding out why Google loves them so much as to give them a place on the first page of their search results.
This is what competition analysis is about. Any SEO service that lacks this is already a failure before it even begins.
3. Keyword Research
Remember the keywords I mentioned earlier for your Samsung ecommerce store? This is how you identify them.
Keyword research is an SEO service that involves finding the words and phrases your target customers/audience are searching for.
It is easy to assume that you know what your target audience is searching for on Google. The fact is, you don’t know until you carry out a proper keyword research. You may be assuming your target customers are searching for ‘affordable flights’ while they’re actually searching for ‘cheap flights’.
Choosing an ideal keyword to optimize for involves different factors such as: the keyword’s average search volume, difficulty, click percentage, and so on. Keyword research is a very important SEO service that cannot be overlooked.
4. Technical Optimization
This is an important SEO service that lays the foundation for the project. It’s a process of ensuring that Google and other search engine bots can effectively visit your website, identify its content, and determine what it should be ranking for.
5. On-page Optimization
On-page optimization is a process of using keywords and related words from your research strategically on content on a page in order to get the page ranking for the keyword.
6. Off-page Optimization
Off-page optimization involves every process of improving your website’s authority, reputation, and referral traffic through backlink building from relevant and high authority websites.
Conclusion
The SEO services outlined in this post are an integral part of every search engine optimization project. Another service worthy of mention is the periodic reporting. This can be done weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or any preferred time. You’ll need to reach an agreement on this with your SEO Expert.
If you’re looking to grow your website’s ranking and traffic on Google, you’re in luck. I have helped businesses in different industries grow their visibility, traffic and revenue using my expertise in SEO.
Reach out to me. Let’s discuss your needs.