Blog

In the proverbial minefield of SEO Experts and Digital Marketers its important when considering hiring and SEO company that you due your homework to ensure you find the right fit. The search engines are very specific as to what they look for in order to rank your page and more importantly to rank your page well.  The SEO company you consider needs to be familiar with SEO best practices.

Its important you know enough about SEO to ensure you get value from you SEO expert.

Understanding the Basics: SEO Strategy

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of ensuring your website is best optimized or suited so that  search engines such as google, will be able to find them.  Your SEO strategy should follow the following outline:

Make sure your site is build on a content managed platform  such as wordpress. Content managed systems enable you to create and manage all the content on your website.  We are in a era where content is king.  The more content you can get out there the more authority the search engines see you have over your industry / market.

Ensure all your images have alt tags. Alt tags ensure that your images are named and can be located online. Its a great way to gain extra traffic to your site.

Links and back links. No good SEO strategy would be without links and back links. Ensure you are linking to other sites relevant sites. Share links with others in your industry.  Links ensure traffic to your site and the more traffic you have visiting your site the more relevant the search engines believe you are.  Link to other areas in your site as well and ensure your links follow a logical path way.

Ensure your website is submitted to the various search engines- once your site is complete make sure the search engines know about it.

Content content content.  I cant stress this enough. As mentioned previously, content is king.  keep generating good quality content via blog posts, mail shots Facebook posts etc all linking back to your site.  You want to get as many visitors / traffic to your site as possible.

SEO Campaign

Now that you know a little about what SEO is about you can build an SEO campaign. A successful  SEO campaign consists of the 3 key elements.

A well targeted keyword focus – Keyword research is the starting point for any successful SEO campaign. Keyword analysis will only ensure long term success if all the relevant keywords around a topic, product or service on your website have been thoroughly researched.

Strong page element optimization – HTML elements of the page must be optimized in order to tell the search engine crawlers what the page is about. The following elements must be optimized:

• Page Title – Needs to have the focus keyword in it and needs to be 64-70 characters long.
• Page Headings – Page headings and subheadings need to be formatted correctly using H1 H2and H3 tags including the targeted search terms.
• Image Alternate Text – Optimize the Alt text for images on the page using the relevant search term.
• Link Anchor Text – Site content needs to contain links to other pages that have the same keywords in the text.

Good Quality Content – A website needs to have good quality content that is flowing and easy to read.Search engines only wnat to rank pages that are offering value to those that are searching for it. So although its important to make sure your site is technically correct, it also needs to be pleasing to the audience.

How to Screen SEO Freelancers

Now that you have  basic understanding of SEO you are in a better position to engage with an SEO company or freelancer.  When dealing with SEO companies its important to ensure that they employ SEO best practices. There are no short cuts and defiantly no guarantees in the SEO world so ensure the company you are considering has experience in the field.  Poor SEO practice and strategy can lead to your website being blacklisted which will undo all the hard work you have tried to achieve.