get the most from your seo
Let us assume that your business is not appearing where you need it to in Google search results but you don’t have the time or experience required to sort out the meta data, link-building, coding, and content yourself.
This is why you have chosen to work with a Search Engine Optimisation company – they can dedicate time to improving your website on your behalf.
If you are serious about improving your Google rankings and online sales hiring an SEO company is the way forward. However, there is no point hiring one if you don’t have a clear idea of what your overall business aims are and what you want from the company.
Rather than simply buying into SEO and then hoping that your rankings improve, you should make sure that both you and the company share a thorough understanding of what your business aims are and how SEO is expected to achieve them.
Embracing SEO means that you are entering into a land of opportunity where you can expand your audience and build relationships with them on a modern platform that everybody is a part of. Done properly, you can increase the awareness of your brand and reach new customers whom you would otherwise never have contact with.
Here are a few pointers to beginning a healthy relationship with your SEO company and getting the most of them:
Set off in the right direction
Before you have any discussion about price or think about signing any contracts you need to establish what you are looking for from an SEO company to begin with.
If it is your first time using a business like this don’t be afraid to ask questions about what the company will be doing with your website and social media, how it works and how long it takes.
Have a sit down and a thorough discussion to explain why you are interested in SEO. You should discuss any areas of your business that are struggling or any products or services that you are particularly keen to promote.
You need to be sure that your SEO company will do what you need them to do. Equally, they will want to be certain that they are providing a genuinely useful service that you are happy with.
If you are quite protective over your website for example, this is something that you should mention. Opening the doors to new marketing techniques means welcoming suggested alterations to the website – this might include altering the current onsite content, the website’s structure, or its overall design.
A large part of improving your rankings is about adjusting and adding to the website so the more willing you are for changes to take place the more effective it can be.
Targets
One of the most effective ways to measure how successful your SEO company are is to set targets. This allows you to check that they are doing what you agreed they would do and it plainly identifies what you are looking for.
Rather than simply stating that you need more Twitter followers and that you want to be higher on Google to increase sales; try to be as specific as you can.
For example you might agree that in 3 months the following will have been achieved:
- 50 more Twitter followers to increase brand awareness
- A Facebook advertising campaign organised to increase Facebook likes
- Your homepage updated and optimised for website users
- 3 new pages added to the website
- A 1000-word blog / month
- All rankings to have improved by at least 3 pages and certain keywords to be on page 1 or 2
- Technical errors on the website including 404s and broken links to have been fixed
- All problematic meta data to have been rectified
The targets that you set might be completely different to the example above but the point is that you should make it crystal clear what you want and expect from your company as soon as possible so they can organise a clear plan and do it.
Useful Publications
To help reach these targets as quickly as possible they will need to understand how to reach out and interact with your audience on your behalf. While they will be used to working within a range of different sectors you can help them to create useful content by informing them of any relevant resources or publications that contain information which your audience might find interesting.
If you yourself receive a monthly newsletter you can either send a copy to the company, or better yet email them a list of bullet points to outline some of the things that they could blog about.
To help your website, you should be thinking about how you can provide you audience with something that nobody else can. Think about what your unique selling point is so that this can be communicating through your website, link-building and social media.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of website competing for the top spots on Google. To reach the top you should be offering something that no other website does. You can work with your SEO company to arrange interviews with experts or a demonstration video for the website to show how your products / service works – these are ways to ensure that you stand out from the crowd and are providing your audience with something that nobody else has done.
Style
Okay, so you’ve set some targets and all that techy stuff is sorted but what about the content itself? I mean, ultimately it’s whatever is actually on the website that people are going to make their buying decisions on right?
If you want, your SEO team can speak in this chatty, familiar style. However, if you feel that this is an irritating style which is inappropriate for your audience you can let them know that you would prefer a more technical, formal way of writing.
Describing your desired way of writing can be a little tricky to begin with so just explain whether you would like it to be formal or not. Once you start proofreading examples of blogs you can suggest to the team whether you would like it to be a little more formal, simple, chattier, more succinct, or anything else – this way they will get to know how you like the blogs to be written.
Communication
It might sound like a bit of a cliché but SEO really is a good example of where communication is key. The more contact that you have with each other, the better you can get to know what is happening to achieve your aims and how you can assist in the process.
If your SEO company are in charge of your social media for example, send them a quick email (it might just be a sentence) to let them know of anything interesting going on in the company. This may include:
- A new product
- A large order that has just been made
- Employee of the month
- A new starter who has just joined your team
- An office clear out
- Sales or new promotions
- New business partnerships / clients
- If you have received an order from a well-known business
- A significant piece of industry news
- Any important changes in the company structure or what you provide customers
- Expanding into new regions
- Office refurbishments or rearrangement
- If you are featuring in a new edition of a magazine
- Any additional radio / television / local advertising that you are doing
These are all example of information that your SEO company will not know unless you mention them. If you are wondering why they would want to put any of this information onto social media, it is to help build relationships with followers / fans who can get to know your business on a more personal level (rather than just promoting products constantly).
If you own a business or work in the marketing department and feel that you need an organised online marketing approach to help increase your internet sales then you can contact our team to make an appointment. We will look forward to discussing your business needs and establishing a plan to achieve them.