Search engine optimisation practices are constantly evolving and continuously advancing as search engines update their algorithms and ranking factors to try and improve user experience. Modern practices should be an important part of your digital marketing strategy however nowadays it’s harder than ever to compete when it comes to optimising websites, there’s more competition than ever before on the web.
Hiring an SEO company is a great way to ensure success and achieve great results but it can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know much about search optimisation. So when finding an SEO company to work with, what questions should you ask?
How do you approach search engine optimisation?
A great question to ask your SEO company is about how they approach optimisation strategies. There are three basic components to most strategies and the best specialists will manage all three. The three components are technical which involves the code, site structure, site speed and other metrics of your website which could impact on the search traffic of your website. Professionals will crawl your website to pick up any 404 errors, redirects or any other potential issues. They will also look into the user experience of your website by analysing the look of your site, keywords, navigating and content. Next they will look at improving your website presence by finding back links to increase your domain and page authority.
How will you create a strategy specific to my business?
There is no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to search engine optimisation. Any reputable SEO company will adapt their strategies specifically to the needs of your business and evolve their approach to your specific goals and industry. Ideally they’ll also have experience with your specific industry and be able to speak knowledgably about what does and doesn’t work for your audience.
What defines success?
At the end of the day the measure of the success of any search engine optimisation campaign should be defined by you, but it’s important to get an idea of what kind of goals or metrics your potential SEO company has in mind. They will be able to tell you what you can reasonably expect based on what you’d like to achieve and your budget. There is no SEO company out there that can guarantee top of the page rankings. Legitimate businesses will also ensure that they only carry out white-hat practices to achieve success, whilst certain techniques can get you traffic for a small amount of time, they can result in penalties later on.
When can we expect to see results?
Get results can take time but an experienced SEO company will be able to give you an approximation of the timeframe you expect before you start to see certain results. Generally you can expect to see good results from legitimate techniques in about six months from the time you start. Getting good results is totally dependent on the health of your website and whether or not technical issues and user experience issues have been managed.
If you website is already well structured and doesn’t require much work then you can expect to start seeing changes more quickly.
How will search be incorporated into our overall marketing strategy?
Your search engine optimisation will be far more successful if it’s integrated into your overall marketing strategy. Search optimisation should tie into your content marketing strategy, public relations and social media marketing strategy.
How do you do keyword research?
Back in the day keyword research was simply about putting a term into a keyword research tool and then developing content with keywords included in a number of places. Modern research requires an understanding of user intent, which means your SEO company needs to understand your audience properly and their search behaviour.