“Oh, you run an SEO firm? So…what exactly do you do?†This is one of the most frequently asked questions I receive. I often give the simple and short answer “We help companies get business from search engines,†but this always leads to the follow up question “How do you do that?†I then explain that SEO is primarily three activities; 1) creating content, 2) building high quality links (I used to just say “building links†but when there are thousands of companies building bad links and doing all sort of harm in the process, I have to qualify my statement), and 3) analyzing results and adjusting accordingly.
Telling someone that SEO is made up mostly of these three activities will usually satisfy their curiosity if it’s a casual conversation, but not for the potential client shopping for SEO services. If you’re looking to hire an SEO firm you want to know real details before you shell out several thousand dollars per month. But it’s often hard to get those details from an SEO firm. This isn’t because the SEO firm doesn’t want to tell you what they’re doing, but because it’s hard to know where to start without going into a two-hour long explanation that is sure to make your eyes glaze over. This post is an attempt to clarify, in some detail, exactly what an SEO firm does.
Initial Research, Audit, and Analysis
SEO always starts with research, audit, and analysis. Every client is different, every website is different, and every industry is different. This is why the best SEO firms are hesitant to make predictions or give guarantees–there are too many variables, and what worked very well for one client may not work nearly as well for the next. Good SEO firms don’t have a set formula for producing results, but rather are experts at solving problems and overcoming challenges. Like early explorers, they may not know exactly where they are going, but they know they’ll be able to figure it out. But as the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen prepared well for his successful expedition to reach the South Pole, a good SEO firm also prepares well so as to avoid doing a lot of work but never reaching the intended destination. Standard activities centered around initial SEO research, audit, and analysis include:
Keyword research. Identifying and researching keywords to identify those which will produce the best results for the client once good rankings are achieved. The ideal keyword is searched for a lot, is relevant to the client’s business, and is not being targeted heavily by competition.
Google Analytics analysis. Reviewing past performance through Google Analytics or another web analytics tool may reveal positive or negative trends and opportunities for improvement.
Google Webmaster Tools analysis. Likewise, being able to review a client’s history and current status in Google Webmaster Tools may bring opportunities to light, as well as potential technical issues with a client’s website, such as a penalty that could be negatively affecting rankings.
Link profile analysis. Many companies over the past several years hired SEO firms that promised to build hundreds, even thousands, of inbound links at low prices. This practice is now penalized by Google and for many companies the path to SEO success starts with cleaning up the spammy links pointing to their websites. Whether this link cleanup is necessary should be identified early on, because fighting against these negatives effects reduces the value of all other SEO services until the link profile is refined.
Site audit. Sometimes after the above research and analysis is complete, but often in parallel, an SEO firm will perform a thorough audit of a client’s website. This audit will include various SEO factors such as website and webpage load speed, URL structure, internal linking, title tags, meta description tags, and content. Many SEO firms will also extend this audit to include factors that influence not just rankings but the metrics that ultimately matter like conversions and profits. These factors include usability, design, and messaging.
Initial Optimization
The results of all the above research, audit, and analysis work will lead to both one-time and ongoing SEO activities. Some of the one-time, initial optimization activities may include:
Website redesign. In the most extreme cases a complete website redesign is needed before beginning SEO services. A redesign is in order when the website is outdated, converts visitors poorly, has poor code, and the cost of fixing everything is greater than starting over from scratch.
Code overhaul. Even if a complete redesign isn’t needed, it may be necessary to overhaul the code of a website to make it more SEO friendly. How extensive this overhaul is depends on the details, but it can range from light cleanup of the existing code to a complete replacement of the code while maintaining the existing design.
Link removal and disavowal. If the link profile analysis reveals a large number of low quality, harmful inbound links, or worse yet, a manual penalty, then it will be necessary to remove as many links as possible by contacting webmasters, and then disavow backlinks that cannot be removed.
Link Building
While some aspects of SEO are one-time services that rarely or never need to be repeated, the bulk of SEO activities are ongoing in nature. Like your lawn, if you don’t maintain it, it will get out of control. Link building is one of those activities that never ends because Google likes to be fed a constant stream of new, fresh links to know that your website is still relevant and should continue to be featured prominently in its search results. There are many ways to build links and many activities related to link building, some of which include:
Link monitoring. Although rare, it’s important to keep an eye on links to ensure one doesn’t become the victim of a negative SEO attack. More to the point, it’s important to monitor links in case inbound links are created that could provide more value if the text of the link or the specific part of the website where the link is pointing were modified.
Competitor research. By monitoring competitors your SEO firm can see what links they have built and replicate their activities or get inspiration for other links that could be built.
Brand monitoring. Any mention of your company should include a link to your website, but when that’s not the case your SEO firm should find these instances, track down the person who has control of that mention of your company, and seek to get an appropriate link.
Outreach. There may be hundreds of websites that are relevant to what you do. Your SEO firm will reach out to these targets in order to promote content and generate links. Part of this service may include guest blog posting which, despite statements from Google’s Matt Cutts, is still a viable form of link building when done properly, as my fellow Forbes contributor John Hall details in his post Guest Posting Isn’t Dead: Google Just Raised The Quality Bar.
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/05/02/what-does-an-seo-firm-do/