What we now know as the public internet was introduced to the world in the 1980s. There was no such thing as SEO back then because search engines didn’t exist. When search engines finally did emerge, SEO amounted to nothing more than choosing a few keywords and building content around them.
How things have changed over the last 30 years. SEO services in the 21st century are dramatically more complex because the internet has evolved in ways that nobody imagined back in the 80s. As a business owner, you need to be aware that effective SEO services go way beyond simple keyword analysis.
Salt Lake City-based Webtek utilizes a multi-pronged approach to providing comprehensive SEO services. Whether involved in a healthcare marketing project or working to provide the best SEO services for attorneys, the work they do centers around five key principles.
Table of Contents
1. Audits and Analyses
SEO services always begin with audits and analysis. A competent SEO expert audits the client’s website and social media channels to understand what is going on in the moment. The reasoning is simple: it is impossible to know where you are going until you know where you are and where you have been.
Analyses of competing websites and social media channels follows. This practice provides a framework for how the client is going to use SEO and digital marketing to distinguish itself from the competition. This is critical to achieving high search engine ranking.
2. Keyword Research
Keywords are still the foundation of competent SEO. Google may have changed its algorithms over the years, but they still rely on keywords and phrases as the primary determiner of what a particular web page is about. As such, SEO services still have to focus heavily on keywords.
To that end, research is invaluable. It is not enough to know just what keywords are important to the client. Marketers and web developers also need to know how client sites rank for given keywords, how the competition ranks, and even the thinking that goes into a user’s choice of search terms.
3. Content Creation
SEO results ultimately boil down to the content search engines use to rank websites. In the SEO business, content is king; keywords are the queen. Comprehensive SEO services combine both in ways designed to improve SERP performance.
Smart content creators know what makes Google algorithms tick. They understand how to effectively use keywords and the many derivations thereof. They know how to incorporate content length, formatting tools, and even headlines to satisfy search engines and captivate readers.
Understand that content is not necessarily limited to text. Even though text still dominates, search engine algorithms are now able to analyze videos, graphics, and even audio files to some extent. Thus, it all has to be created with SEO in mind.
4. Quality Backlinks
Strong SERP performance is tied to the effective use of backlinks. What are backlinks? They are links on external sites that point back to the client’s site. Comprehensive SEO services do not focus so heavily on other aspects to the detriment of backlinks.
Backlinks are important because they establish authority. Such authority is important because Google has made a concerted effort over the last 10 years to weed out internet junk by punishing sites with little or no authority. The goal all along has been to put an end to the practice of keyword stuffing.
Quality backlinks are links found on sites with excellent reputations. They are sites belonging to well-known companies, trade groups, educational institutions, reputable news organizations, government agencies, and even NGOs. The stronger the reputation of the host site, the stronger the backlink to the client’s site.
5. Solid Analytics
Tying everything together are solid analytics that measures performance and drives improvements. As with anything else, an SEO expert has no way of measuring his own success without analyzing the results of his marketing efforts. This reality dictates that SEO services without solid analytics are not comprehensive at all.
Analytics tell the SEO expert whether or not his keyword research paid off. It tells him how the website in question is performing for the most coveted keywords in the client’s marketing strategy. It tells them where website traffic comes from, whether or not casual visitors are converted to active participants, and even how long visitors stay on the client’s site.
Strong analytics provide the basis for improvement. It is hard to imagine how any SEO strategy could prove effective without analytics guiding it.
Regardless of the business, you are involved in – be it healthcare, the legal sector, or anything else – today’s comprehensive SEO strategies go way beyond choosing a few keywords to focus on. If your SEO provider is not delivering comprehensive service, your company could be missing out on a lot.
