SEO FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (commonly referred to SEO) is an active practice of achieving website visibility on major search engines corresponding to consumer determined keywords. To put it into more practical words – the objective of SEO is to make sure that prospects find your website when they are ready to buy.
How can SEO help my business?
Search engines are “brand-blind” and do not consider marketing influence outside of the internet. This creates a level playing field between large and small companies because websites that rank at the top of search engines convey the image of industry leadership. Most importantly, ranking at the top ensures that visitors who are looking for your type of product find and contact you first.
How Does SEO Work?
Search engines gather their information about a website by periodically sending out ‘robots’ to scan websites. SEO works on the basic principle of making sure that a website contains all of the key ingredients needed by the robots to properly and efficiently gather certain types of information about the website. This information is stored in search engine databases in order to classify and rank the website within subject matter category.
What are the key ingredients or ‘components’ to SEO?
There are 4 key components to successful SEO strategy.
- Keyword research and placement
- Search engine friendly coding
- Search engine copywriting.
- URL propagation and link building.
A search engine robot will only stay on a website for less than second, and then leaves. Therefore, another important part of SEO is to map the key components efficiently so that the robot finds and process the information quickly and completely.
Why hire an SEO company? (why not do it yourself or use your web-developer)
There are two classifications of SEO. One is defined as basic-SEO skills, and the other is defined as advanced-SEO. Anyone who takes a reasonable level of interest can attain basic SEO skills, and today’s professional web-developers should no longer be making the basic-SEO mistakes of the past (some of these mistakes can result in serious penalty situations with the search engines). As things move forward, one can assume that all active business websites will have addressed basic-SEO requirements and all should more or less be sitting at an equal footing. However being ‘equal’ is not good enough or useful because you need your website to be ahead of the pack; this is where advanced-SEO comes in.
Advanced-SEO requires a specific type of knowledge and a unique set of skill set. Search engine companies such as Google spend millions of dollars every month developing and improving the algorithms used by their robots. A good SEO company focuses specifically on what search engines are doing and where the overall search engine marketing industry is going. A top SEO company continuously refreshes and advances its understanding of what is required to propel a website ahead of the pack and to keep it there.
What is the Return on Investment – ROI (how long does it take)?
There are 4 key factors that influence overall ROI:
- the keywords being targeted
- the level of competition for those keyword
- the current state of the website
- the aggressiveness of the SEO plan
It is important to target keyword strings that are being used by your market (note: there are tools that allow you to see statistics on what people are actually typing in search engine queries). Targeting word strings that nobody uses will likely get you the #1 spot on Google for that string (because there is no compefor these words), however, this will not provide you with any benefits or returns.
Keywords that are used in highly competitive markets are likely being aggressively targeted by the competition. For example, displacing a competing website that targets the broad based hotel industry would generally take longer than it would take to displace a site that targets a regional bed & breakfast industry.
Finally, every website has its own set of existing strengths and weakness from an SEO perspective. Creating and executing an SEO plan around these strengths and weaknesses is key to an accelerated ROI. On average, results can start to kick in less than one month and up to three months after SEO is completed
How much does SEO cost?
Just like ROI (see above), the costs associated with SEO can vary from site to site and are directly influenced by the same key factors:
- the targeted keywords
- the degree of competition that also target those keywords
- the present strength and weakness of the website
- the overall objectives of the SEO plan in terms of scope and timing
In general, websites that are targeted at highly competitive markets will typically require a more aggressive and extensive SEO plan which of course will impact costs. Typically costs will range from $3000 to $10,000.
How do you choose the right SEO company?
Every SEO company claims that they are the best. Some will even make very tempting promises or guarantees that seem too good to be true. Therefore choosing the right SEO company would seem to be a difficult task, but actually, it’s not. It’s very straight forward as long as you avoid basing your decision on the sales hype, and instead, focus on logical objective information.
The first and most important thing to look for is ‘where is the SEO company able to rank its own website on the search engine for all of the main keywords used in the SEO industry’ (these keyword are: SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, SEO Company, SEO Services, SEO Expert, etc). It nearly goes without saying that being on top of the search engines for the SEO industry is by far the most difficult category because all SEO companies target and compete against each other for these top spots.
Secondly: can the SEO company provide a strong and diverse list of customer references who have top ranking positioning for the main keyword in their respective industries?
Third, how accessible is the SEO company? Are they hiding inside the virtual world of the internet or can you call them or visit their offices, can you meet the owner and put a face to a name. Its always important to know whom you are giving your money to.
