Chapters
WELCOME FROM CEO THERESA AMUSU 2
Why Your Business Needs SEO 7
Getting Started With Your SEO 17
How To Chose A SEO Company 30
How To Measure The Results Of Your SEO 33
Conclusion 37
INTRODUCTION
Every day things change. The way we eat, sit and talk change. So also is the way people are being sold to.
On an average, 2billion Google searches are made per minute as people search the internet looking for information on the services and products that they want to buy or simply research information concerning their purchase. Combine this figure with a Nigeria population of over 12 million users on Facebook alone interacting daily with family, friends and sometimes business brands.
This increasing access to the internet now makes it possible for a customer to find out everything they need to know about a business, product or services even before the brand gets the opportunity to sell to the customers who already have done their research and have a huge knowledge about what they want.
As the business landscape get increasingly competitive, the ways and manners we get our products and services to our customers change over time. Since most of our customers can be found online, businesses need to take to online marketing to be able to leverage and retain their customers.
This leaves us with no choice but to consider Digital Marketing. Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, reddit have opened a new way of getting the attention of people as they play or work online.
The only issue for most businesses is how to make use of these new opportunities to get new customers and retain old ones. Apart from getting your brand in front of clients so as to leverage these media to build your brand, how do you as a business brand stay within the guidelines so that while making sales, you do not get your brand’s reputation damaged in order to get good Returns on your Investment?
This guide seeks to answer some of these questions by helping you understand how your business growth is affected when using the search engine to grow your web traffic. This guide does not seek to answer all the digital marketing questions you might have but it seeks to help you understand how Search Engines can help your business grow.
We decided to talk about only Search Engines here because like it or not, the first place a business should start, is to seek first high visibility on Search Engines. When you can do this successfully, you can start exploring other options including social media marketing and email marketing.
Enjoy your reading.
Theresa Amusu CEO
VTNS Solutions info@vtnssolutions.com
CHAPTER 1
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SEO AND SEARCH ENGINES
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization popularly known as SEO is a technology that aims to enhance the visibility of a website on search engines.
What is a Search Engine?
In its most simplistic definition, a Search Engine is a machine-like computer that stores information and retrieves such information when a request is make of it.
For it to meet its obligation, a search engine must carry out three acts. It must first be able to find information beforehand and store it on a storage medium. Secondly, a good search engine must be able to identify what a user is searching. And thirdly, a good search engine will seek to understand what a user wants.
For example, a user types the words “Online shopping” into a search engine search bar, a search engine must first and foremost correctly interpret this. Does the user want a list of online merchants? Is the searcher interested in the history of online shopping? Thirdly, a search engine must be able to display this set of results to the user in a particular order. This order is based on a series of factors which are called the Search Engine Ranking Factors.
Search Engines e.g the Google search bar while looking so simple does a lot of work behind the scene to make sure that it presents a set of relevant results to the searcher in a way that the searcher will understand at any point in time.
Google while being the leading search engine with a percentage of over 90 in developing countries and 65% in developed countries has always sought to make sure that its search engine “Google”, as it is popularly known, seeks to carry out these three areas of search engine functions and make its results as relevant as possible to the searcher.
This has lead to series of updates. The three main updates which re-defined the way a search result is displayed were the Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates.
A BRIEF LOOK AT THE THREE MAJOR GOOGLE UPDATE IN RECENT TIMES
Panda Update:
Google’s panda update was rolled out in February 2011 with its sole aim at removing website with low quality content ranking on its search engine result page. Therefore for a website to rank on Google, it must have quality content amongst other things or its ranking will be devalued to give way to websites with more quality content.
Penguin Update:
Google rolled out its first penguin update in 2012 to target websites that seek to manipulate their position on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) by buying links. Link building has been a major component of the Google ranking factor or what is known as Google Algorithms. Since links are an integral part of increasing a website’s ranking on a search engine, Google places websites with more links higher on its SERP. Therefore the aim of the penguin update was to penalise websites that engage in buying or manipulating their link profile by either removing it totally from the SERP or by reducing its ranking position.
Hummingbird Update:
Google’s Hummingbird update was rolled out September 2013 to celebrate its 15 years anniversary of presenting search results to users. The purpose of this is to present better results to searcher.
Pre-hummingbird era goes something like this:
“Hotels in Lagos”.
Google returns a set of results of website that has probably hotels in Lagos as its keyword. Fast-forward to post-hummingbird era with the same results:
A webpage containing a list of hotels in Lagos is usually retuned. A better result that might be displayed would be a webpage containing a list of hotels in Lagos with their full contact details and emails.
This means that the new humming bird tries to return a set of results that matches the intent of the searchers.
The three major updates gives us a clue into the way Google and other search engines thinks and want to continue to think.
TIP:
As a small business seeking to dominate the search results for your keywords and earn links, you need to make your web pages into a website of relevant information for your keywords.
CHAPTER 2: Why Your Business
Needs SEO
Why does my business needs SEO
From the previous chapter, you have seen the way Search Engines operate, how they rank websites using a series of algorithms or ranking factors and what you should be concerned about.
Optimizing your website will give you numerous benefits. The largest selling point or benefit of SEO services is that it helps bring high traffic levels to the sales funnel and ultimately produces new customers to your existing customer base – keeping the marketing department very happy.
But this is not where it stops. There are many other benefits of SEO services that can be felt and these include:
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ü High ROI
When you buy 1000 visitors from a paid ad, 2% of those visitors might convert into a sale. When you get 1000 clicks from SEO, 4% of those visitors will convert into a sale, leading to a better return on investment. A hit from Google is much more valuable over a hit from an advert online.
Naira for Naira, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) brings you a higher ROI (Return On your Investment) than any comparable form of marketing. This is because as traditional methods of advertising become increasing expensive, alternative channels are being sort. The best alternative channel is online. Over 2 million searches are conducted on Google per minute.
For example: the term Car Loan in Nigeria generates 980,000 results. Any website ranking high on this term will automatically get majority of the traffic associated with this term.
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ü Long Term Positioning
Once in place, a properly designed and optimized site should stay long term in the rankings compared to PPC (pay per click) where costs and outlay are ongoing and unpredictable. This means you have a cheaper alternative online marketing medium which is cost effective. This is achieved when you implement SEO early. The early birds have options.
ü Definite Increase in Targeted Traffic
With analytic and reporting tools, you’ll see a clear cut increase in traffic. This is a definite way to maximize your business efforts. SEO will give you results (not immediately but rather quickly) and as soon as you start your SEO efforts, traffic will increase at a steady rate. Using tools to track traffic to your site, you can clearly watch as more people visit your site and sales go through the roof.
Interested in doubling your traffic with a few simple changes? Use the right keyword on your webpages and Google will reward you with people searching for such phrases.
Do you know that the term car financing have more web traffic than car loans?
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ü Promotion that Doesn’t Sleep
Your website is your online front store. With proper optimization, we make sure that your clients find you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days every year. That’s the benefit of SEO!
ü Increase Brand Visibility, People Trust Google
SEO builds brand credibility. People often perceive brands listed in Google’s top positions as worthwhile and trustworthy. You don’t want your customers asking, “Why aren’t you listed in Google for your core product?”
You can hardly claim to be the absolute best in the business when no one has ever heard of your company. Sometimes you need to work on making people aware of your company even if that doesn't result in immediate sales, but you will gain more revenue in the long term by building yourself up and ensuring that your target market knows who you are. If your website is ranking in search engine results pages then users will spot your company name, and the more they see it, the more they will associate with your expertise in the field. A great way to earn brand recognition from potential consumers is to get your website ranking on the search engine results pages
SEO can give your brand a high international profile – and for a comparatively low outlay.
ü Faster Loading Pages
Do you have an idea of how fast your website loads? If your website is slow, this decreases your user experience. Likewise, the search engines (especially Google) use site speed metrics as ranking factors. A slow loading site decreases user enjoyment and your clients will leave your webpage. Guess where they will go? Your competitors! When you implement SEO on your site, you will get suggestions and strategies to help speed your site load times.
ü Increased Accessibility
First, building incoming links helps your buyers and search engines find your pages by clicking and following links to your site. This is the basis of link building. Links that will be created will help you get more qualified traffic to your site.
ü Cross-Browser Compatibility
A properly optimized site will be as near as possible to high standards. This means that it will work in all browsers, meaning your site may be viewed by the greatest potential number of visitors. When you implement your optimization, you can validate your website using international standards and indentify areas where you need to improve and which browser your website is not compatible with.
ü Navigable by the Engines
SEO helps you build a website that is easily navigable by both Search Engines and Humans. As your website becomes larger, regular SEO audits helps you identify broken links that can hurt your ranking and reputation.
ü Usability
Does the design and look of your website add to the enjoyment of your visitor? Does the design of your site hinder the search engines finding your content? A good SEO can help you with this.
ü Focus on Web Standards / Accessibility
Designing a website for search is an exercise in designing a best practice website. Search engine crawlers notice errors in your code, so valid code is a must for SEO. And that makes for a healthier, more accessible website for Google’s crawlers, and for people.
ü Lead Generation
Want to generate more lead? A good SEO is an extension of a proper digital marketing tactics. With SEO, you can set up A/B split testing, Web Analytics, Webmaster tools and Conversion Optimization. You get to figure out which piece of copy or which Lead Generation offer works the best for your brand.
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ü Take Your Business to the Next Level
SEO can bring in thousands upon thousands of visitors to your website a day. This may put your company in a position of needing to expand to a larger web server to accommodate the traffic and sales to your website. Your customers may recommend you a product or service that they were looking for when they visited your website. SEO is a really great investment for your company and could be what you need to take it to the next level.
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ü 550 Million websites on the web, SEO makes you stand out
There are well over 550 million websites on the web. It can be pretty hard to make a name for yourself with that many out there especially if your product or service is highly competitive. Using SEO will make your brand stand out from the rest and can easily be the boost that you need to see your sales go through the roof.
ü 60% Of Clicks Go to the First Result
This means that only 40% of clicks are left for the second through the millionth result on Google for the keyword. Securing that top spot on Google is a sure fire way to gain thousands upon thousands of visitors. SEO is certainly the tool needed to gain that top spot as well. For a small upfront investment you are looking at potentially millions of sales.
ü The Results are Permanent
Unlike advertisements, the effects of SEO are permanent. They don’t suddenly stop if you stop paying for them. Of course you will need a little upkeep to maintain that top 1st spot ranking, but if you can get that top spot chances are it will be quite difficult for it to get taken away.
ü You’ll Have Access to Data
What data you may ask? You get customer data. You understand what people are looking for as they land on your website. You get an insight to where they come from and understand how search engines perceive your website. You can discover new products to expand to by looking at keyword data and seeing what people are searching the most for. You can use this to your advantage and find a high search volume keyword with low competitiveness and although that may be hard to find, it has the potential to bring in thousands of sales per month to your website. Customer data is extremely valuable in this business and is not that hard to come by with the right tools. Manipulating it to your advantage can be exponentially beneficial for your business.
CHAPTER 3: What is Search
Engine Marketing
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What is Search Engine Marketing?
There are various ways by which search engine marketing (SEM) can be described. Search Engine Land; one of the leading Search Engine Magazine described Search Engine Marketing as the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts.
Wikipedia defines Search Engine Marketing as a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising. SEM may use search engine optimization (SEO) that adjusts or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages or use pay per click listings (PPC).
From the above definitions, it is seen that Search Engine Marketing is only one of the means of promoting a website. Other Internet Marketing methods include Email Marketing, Paid Advertisement, and Social Media Marketing etc.
If we break down the definitions above, we will notice that there are two main forms of Search Engine Marketing technique. The first is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO and the Pay per Click or PPC.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization or what is known as organic listing is the process of increasing the visibility of a website. Since people research information using any of the search engines, by increasing a website ranking, the website gets higher or increased impressions. This increased impression will lead to more traffic. The more traffic a website has, the greater the potential that such traffic would result into sales for the brand. This is the founding basis for organic listing or SEO.
Due to the complexity of the organic listing and its fluctuations, inorganic listing or what is now referred to as Pay per click advertising became a second option.
What is Pay Per Click (PPC)?
Pay per Click advertising is an advert method in which a website pays a Search Engine to place its advert on its SERP based on how much the website is willing to pay when such advert is listed or displayed. This in theory means that the higher your bid, the higher placement you receive on the inorganic listing. Rarely does it happen this way.
ANATOMY OF A SERP.
A Search Engine Result Page is broken down into various pages with each page listing 10 websites. The maximum default number of pages is set at Two Hundred. This listing is done with the intention that the most relevant results are arranged in an increasing order with website on placement 1 being the most relevant and website listed on the 200th position being the least relevant.
Based on a series of research, it has been noticed that in highly competitive industry, once you get past the first five pages, you start seeing irrelevant results. Based on this, searches hardly move past the first two pages. Once a searcher notices that he doesn’t get value for the results he want on the first two to three pages, the query is rewritten.
As a result, the only grail of SEO is to achieve the highest maximum ranking for your website on the first position of a search engine result page.
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Fig 1 : Illustration of a Search Engine Result Page (SERP)- The image above shows the ppc listing above and on the right hand side of a serp while the organic listing is on the right hand side. Note: Results may vary depending on your location
HOW DOES SEARCH ENGINE ARRIVE AT THEIR RESULTS
Search Engines list results on their SERP page based on a number of ranking factors or what is known as “Algorithms“ in the SEO world. These ranking factors as seen in this image are seen as signals which the search engines use to determine the relevant placement of a website.
The Infographic above shows the total number of ranking signals that Google use when it is calculating the relevant placement position for a website in its search engine result page.
While most of these signals have not been officially confirmed, actually about 200 of them and they might even have been more, it is worth noting that both Onsite Optimization
(Technical SEO) and Backlinks (Off-page optimization) places a key role in the signals considered. Therefore in the next chapter, we will consider what an Onsite optimization is and how is it being done. We will also look at Backlinks and how you or your SEO Consultant should approach link building in an age where what was once known as White Hat can become black hat in a jiffy.
CHAPTER 4: GETTING STARTED
WITH YOUR SEO
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ONSITE OPTIMIZATION
Onsite Optimization is also referred to as technical SEO. Onsite optimization is the process of trying to make a search engine understand what a website or webpage is all about. In the early days when search engines were at its infancy, this was a very important aspect. You could spend hours and days tweaking your web pages and looking at all factors that could affect your page optimization. You could spend time stuffing your Keyword title, Meta Description tag and Header tags and try to ram as much keyword as possible into the body of the webpage. This practice was done with the belief that the more you repeat your target keyword in your webpage, the more search engines understand what your website was all
about and the higher they rank your webpage. But that was in the Dark Age when men used stones as weapons and lived in cave and trees.
If you fast forward to the new era, search engines have evolved so much that they don’t need all those on page tweaks to really understand what your website is all about. With your keyword in your Title tag and Header tags, without repeating your keyword anywhere else, search engines can now interpret your webpage and your human visitors also can understand your webpage. The gospel according to St Google is that you must build your website in such a way that your human visitors understand your webpage when they land on it. So while keyword density and Meta keyword tags are still relevant, they have become so obsolete that you can do without them and still have good ranking for your business website.
What Are Keywords?
Keyword is perhaps the most important aspect of any SEM campaign and the foundation of a search engine optimization. When you have the right keyword that correctly describes your website, Google displays your website to the right kind of people. This targeted people will then visit your website, browse through it and if your offerings are right and they are ready to make the purchase, they will patronise you.
In the same vein, if you have the wrong keyword on your website, your website is displayed to people who do not need your services. They may or may not visit your website and this invariably means you do not get more traffic to your website and therefore you cannot increase your sales. It is therefore extremely important you spend time on your keyword selection process or what is known as keyword research. If you successfully conduct a keyword research phrase and your keywords are correctly implemented, you are surely on your way to increased ranking and more sales.
So let us take a look at how Google plays with Keyword.
If a user enters a phrase into Google’s search bar, that phrase is being taken as a keyword as illustrated below:
If a user enters the phrase “Shoes” into a search query, Google attempts to understand if the person wants information on different kinds of shoes or the person is looking for information on how to repair shoes. Since this type of query is not explicit, Google will return a set of results based on a website that talks about shoes and have the highest number of backlinks pointing to it.
Fig 2: Search Engine Result Page for Shoes
But let’s say our user wants to buy “red running shoes”. You can see that the results are slightly different from what we got when we entered the first phrase “shoes”.
Fig 3: Search Engine Result Pages for Red-Running Shoes
This is why it is extremely important that you choose the right kind of keyword for your web pages. While your homepage can be a generic keyword phrase that describes your main business, each product page should have its own keyword.
Let’s imagine that you are an outsourcing company with a wide range of services from consulting to training to business process outsourcing etc.
The first thing you want to do to know the right kind of keyword for your business is to ask yourself these questions.
1. How do I describe my service?
2. How do people describe my business?
Asking both questions is pertinent to your business survival. It has been observed that while most business have a different kind of way they see their business and describes it, their customers and the market generally have a different way by which they also describe it. It is extremely important that both sides are well-balanced.
Whatever information you get from the process above is what is going to be your “seed” keyword. This seed keyword is what you are going to use in researching other keywords for your web pages and also use on your home page.
Sometimes you might have your seed keyword and you might be like “This is what best describes my business. Why do I still need to research my keyword”? The following example will explain this scenario further.
Imagine that you are a financial institution and you have different products and services. We can even be more specific and say we are a banking institution and we have different products and services from car financing or car loans to house mortgage.
We have created a website. We have designed a webpage for car loans. But we want to know if we should use car loans as the keyword on the web page or we should use car financing.
Now the terms car loans and car financing are our seed keyword.
For this exercise, you would need a Gmail account as we are going to be using the Google Keyword Planner tool.
HOW TO CONDUCT A KEYWORD RESEARCH IN 6 EASY STEPS
1. Navigate to the tool using the link https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/ and log in using your Gmail account.
2. The screen shot is the first page you are shown.
Fig 4: Google Keyword Planner
3. Pick the first option “what would you like to do” and enter the phrase “car loan”.
4. Make sure the following parameters are set like. A. Your location B. Language and if you want the search to filter out some keyword, leave default setting as it is.
5. Click the “Get Idea” button
What you see next is a set of results as shown below.
Fig 5: Adword Campaign Results
Google search result automatically defaults to “Ad group ideas”. The results in this tab is useful when you planning on running a Pay per Click campaign but for running organic search campaign, simply click the tab labelled “Keyword ideas”
Fig 6: Organic keyword result for car loans
The screen shot shows the result you are likely to get. The result will be based on your location and any other parameters you changed in the setting in step 2.
There are 6 header tabs we need to pay attention to:
A. Search Terms: This is your keyword phrase closely related to your seed keyword
B. Avg. Monthly Searches: This gives you the average monthly amount of times the keyword was used.
C. Competition: This result is calculated based on how many advertisers are bidding for the same keyword. The results can be of three types: High, Medium, Low
D. Suggest bid: If you are planning on running a PPC campaign. It tells you how much your keyword is worth.
These four tabs seek to quickly give you an overview of the way your keyword is used over a period of time and how competitive it is.
What keyword was returned? Where you disappointed? Did you think “car financing” was a better online keyword choice? This is why it is extremely important to always research your keyword instead of depending on gut feeling when choosing your keyword.
Now that you have your results, you should click on the “Avg Monthly Searches” tab to help you sort out the keyword based on how much traffic they receive.
While other tabs are equally important depending on what your target is, the amount of traffic a keyword get over time is one of the most important criteria. Logic dictates that you need keyword that people actually search for, in large quantity.
This is important because the more traffic a keyword sends to your website; the more the chance of converting this traffic to sales or at minimum repeated customers.
Another factor you might want to consider before finally settling on a keyword is the level of competition for that keyword.
The level of competition depends on how many advertisers are bidding for that keyword on Google result page. We have high which means many advertisers are bidding for that word and we have low which means few advertisers are bidding for that word. If you are a small business, you ordinarily should pick a low competitive word for your PPC campaign although this should be done after a proper analysis.
With these guidelines, we can safely pick “car financing” and then go ahead to create our webpage making sure that it is included in at least, the Title tag, Meta description tag and the H1 tags
A case for the Meta description tag:
In my years as a SEO consultant, I have seen numerous cases where people obsesses about their title tag, Header tag, body content and pay little attention to the meta description tag. Usually the attitude is: Let’s get other things done and then we come to it. But because the world moves very fast online, by the time you are done, you most likely have forgotten your Meta description tag.
What are Meta description tags and why are they important?
Meta description tag while not a ranking signal or factor is a key component of a web page. If you noticed, most of what we have been doing has been to actually enable search engine and humans understand what your webpage is all about. So you went ahead to research your keyword. You have picked the best keyword that describe your business model and have implemented it on your keyword. With other best practices in Search Engine Marketing, Google has rewarded your effort with high ranking.
But wait!
People are not clicking through to your website. The traffic that was promised has not been delivered. This is what happens when a business focussed all its attention on search optimization without proper investigation into the people who the effort is targeted at.
While Google may give you the ranking you deserve, your Meta description tag is probably the only factor that will make those traffic click-through to your website. Therefore your Meta description tag is worth obsessing over.
What is Clickthrough?
Clickthrough is the percentage of people who visit your website based on the number of times your website was shown in Google search engine result page
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Therefore the higher your click-through rate, the more web traffic you get. The more the traffic, the more opportunity and chance you have of convincing that singular visitor to visit your website.
Now, unfortunately, there is no hard or fast rule to writing the perfect Meta description tag that will improve your click-through. All you can do is to follow best practices and keep improving on your description tag until you have a high click-through rate.
The Click-through rate can be seen in your Google Analytics report if it has been connected to your website. Here is how to locate the click-through rate for a webpage.
Formula for writing the perfect description tag:
Using the following steps, you can write the perfect Meta description tag that will improve your click-through.
1. Make sure that your keyword is included in the description tag
2. Include a good reason while a visitor should click-through to your website
3. Deliver on the promise.
Once you are done with your Meta description tag, the next place you want to make sure your keyword is included is in your Header tag and the body of the content. As explained earlier, the obsession with how many times your keyword is included in your body content no longer holds; therefore I would not spend time on it.
Images
Just before we conclude this important section on On-page Optimization, finding appropriate image and tagging it according, not only makes your website visually appealing but also improves your content discovery. Imagine a searcher looking for an image and then stumbling on your image in Google Image search. If your image is appealing, the searchers click-through to your website and might be tempted to read more. This is actually dependent on the motive of the searcher. It therefore implies that using a corresponding image on your webpage is crucial.
In order to approach the image, take an image of your company that best describes your product and use it on your webpage. Stock images are expensive and over-done. Go local and natural and you might just be rewarded for it.
That is it. You have learnt how to conduct a basic keyword research using the Google keyword Planner Tool
BACKLINKS
Backlink is an integral component of a search engine DNA. Search Engines have been programmed to think in terms of the amount of links that are pointing to a website. As one of the principal ranking signal, the amount of relevant links that are pointed to your website determines how well your website will be ranked for a particular topic.
The webpage with the highest number of backlinks will rank accordingly on the search engine result page.
This is why all your web pages might not rank for all your keywords. As you build links to each page, each webpage is then ranked accordingly. Because most natural links usually point to the homepage, the home page which is your index page naturally ranks higher faster than any other page. It is therefore extremely important that you take time to design a good home page that can sell your services and products. The Moz website is one home page I have come to love.
If backlinks or links pointing back to my website is an important ranking signal, how do I start approaching link building to improve my website’s search engine ranking? After all, my entire website must rank high before I even think of converting my visitors.
Key backlinks Factors:
1. Relevancy
Every Link coming to your website must be relevant to your niche. Relevancy can be thought of as being in the same industry or related industry. Sometimes relevancy can be explained in terms of geographical locale. A link sought from a company in your geographical location is very much of higher relevancy than a link from a company in another part of the world.
2. Quantity
The amount of link you earn or build depends on how much higher your website is going to be ranked. You must continue to build links in larger quantity than your competitors.
3. Quality
Perhaps the most important backlink factor is really the quality of the links you build. A link from a well-built website, properly designed, not linked to pornography or gambling website and of Page rank 2 is of much higher quality than a link from a page rank 10 website but which is not well maintained. Therefore the quality of each link is crucial.
The Easy Way to Build Links for Small Businesses.
When small businesses are being approached by SEOs, the concept of link building is usually very fussy. Due to the nature of link building, the process though a bit complex are usually simplified if you can answer this simple fast questions.
1. Why do I want this website to Link to my website?
If most link earning practice asked this question, most of the wasted effort in link building will be cut in half. If you don’t know why you want this website to link to yours, then you might as well not seek to earn links from it. A website whose link you should seek should be able to help build your brand reputation and still send traffic to your website.
2. Do I trust this website?
Can I vouch for its integrity? Yes, the integrity of a website is usually the most important part of any link earning consideration. You need to find out if the website is actually being maintained, contact information can be easily verified and such website are not into bad and shady practice.
Most business websites that has been hurt by Google update is usually as a result of bad link building practice. Google does not want you to actively seek link. Google wants every website to produce something worth talking about so that people of their volition link to them. In an ideal setting, this is very possible. But the reality on ground proves otherwise. In an increasing competitive world, there is nothing you have done that has not been done before. Therefore, while producing good digital content is a basis of link earning, getting that content out to the potential people who might otherwise not have seen it before is one of the most fundamental parts of link building.
Therefore the easiest link building tactic for any website is to produce information in form of content that people will love to use as a reference. When they do, they give you the link you so much desire. Google then rank your website appropriately in addition to other factors that are all part of the Google algorithm.
CHAPTER 5: HOW TO CHOOSE AN
SEO COMPANY
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This chapter is one of the most important chapters of this book. As a small business, you do not have the resources to keep your own in house SEO team so most often than not, you want to outsource your SEO so that you can focus on your core competence. So, how would you choose an SEO Company to outsource your SEO to? What criteria are best to use? How do you know when they are on the right path and how do you tell when it is time to fire your hired SEO company or team?
These are some of the questions that we will seek to answer in this chapter.
First, you need to understand that while some people keep a list of recommended SEO Companies, such lists are susceptible to manipulations as some of their criteria for getting on the list are so unnatural.
I remember when I was trying to write this chapter, to reaffirm my suspicion I got in touch with a SEO review site, which regularly publishes a list of recommended SEO Company. I
contacted them through their online chat system and asked for the criteria to be listed as an SEO company. One of their criteria is that I must pay a certain amount of money to be “reviewed” as they say. This shows that a lot of online review of SEO companies cannot be trusted 100%. However, there are some which are an exception. That is why, it is important to know what criteria you should use when thinking of picking an SEO Company.
In the face of the above fact, how should one choose an SEO Company to work with?
The beginning of this book was dedicated to telling you most of the things you need to know when starting your SEO. From what on-page SEO is to what off-page SEO are. The purpose of this is to introduce you to the concept of how SEO works. Having a basic idea of how SEO works will really help when you want to pick a SEO Company to outsource to.
So what are some of the things to use as criteria when choosing your SEO Company?
1. Visit their website
Practicing what you preach is a great way to know if you are on to the right SEO Company. A good SEO company must be ranking for their main keyword. If their website is not new, not re-launched and they are not ranking at minimum on the second page of Google, then there is a problem. So the first thing you want to check is if the SEO Company is actually optimizing their website. You also want to find out if their website is well designed, have good navigation structure, uses best keyword practices etc. While great design is not a must, it is a sign of responsibility that they are paying attention to what they do.
2. Get to know their About Us page
After visiting their website, you want to take a look at who the brains behind the company are. You want to check out their twitter page, their social media pages. You want to know as much as possible about them. You want to have an idea of what their position is on certain issues like some link building practices, what kind of information is shared on their social media pages and what they believe in.
3. SEO strategies
One critical criterion that you want to pay attention to is the kind of SEO strategies they use. Some of the questions you want to ask them will include things like “what kind of SEO strategies are they using?” Can they explain in simple terms what techniques or tactics they intend to use to get your SEO done? Do you see a red flag when mentioning their tactics?
Can they distinguish between black hat techniques and white hat techniques? Will they be
using Traffic Generation Softwares. Do any of their strategy falls under black-hat? Are they giving you a guarantee of first position within 6 weeks? Above all, do you feel convinced? Or after discussion you still feel you don’t understand a heck of what they talking about? If you answer yes to three of these questions, then you might want to take a few minutes off to ponder if you should outsource your SEO to them.
4. Reviews of past job done:
One major reason why you might need a review is to simply take your discussion further in case you are not convinced they are the right person for you. You want to know if there is anyone else they have worked for and what was the level of success or otherwise. An SEO Campaign can fail for a number of reasons. Therefore asking for a review of any work done in the past might be able to help you understand if you want them to handle your SEO. Ask for one or two references and if possible, check out the references and even get in touch with the owners. Try to find out why the project worked out or not. If the SEO Company boasts of having worked for many clients and is still afraid to give you one or two references to the website so that you can check if the job was properly executed, if the client is still ranking well and if the company does not give you a contact you can talk to; then it is advisable you do not outsource your SEO to them.
These are just a few ways to know who to outsource your SEO to. As you read this guide and discuss with time, you will get a better picture of what and what not to ask.
CHAPTER 6: HOW TO MEASURE
THE RESULTS OF YOUR SEO
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With the huge investment required to run a successful SEO campaign, knowing how to correctly measure your SEO success is important to your business survival.
Most small businesses will fail with SEO, not because it was not done according to a rigid set of established guidelines, although this is one major reasons most campaigns fails, but simply that they are not sure what results they should track even before signing up for their SEO Service.
Should you be obsessed about your ranking or should you watch over your traffic like a hawk? How do you know what to look for in an SEO report with all the technical jargons contained in it? What things should you watch out for to signal if your SEO campaign is on the right track or soon to hit a rock?
Most of the metrics we will discuss will usually be contained in your SEO report but you don’t have to wait for the bi-weekly or monthly report. You can actually track a lot of these metrics yourself and we will discuss how in this post.
Critical SEO metrics you must measure:
1. Your Search Engine Result Page ranking
Website ranking on Google is the movement of a website on the Google’s Search Engine Result Page and the main aim of any SEO activities is to influence this result. Your Google ranking is usually the first indication of a successful or unsuccessful SEO campaign. With your SEO in full throttle, your website should start ranking higher. You should go from invisible that is from above 200 to less than page 5 within a short period. The challenge with Google ranking is that it is a very flimsy way to measure your success. This is because your ranking can disappear overnight due to Google’s update or due to any other combination of different factors. You might also end up being a victim of negative SEO. As a result, while ranking is a good measure of what a good SEO is all about, it should not be the only metric.
How do you check Your SERP?
There are a lot of tools you can use to track your website ranking position. Just go to your Google webmaster tool, sign in and look for the tab Search Traffic. Under the search traffic is the Search Queries and once the results are displayed, this is a sample of what you are likely to see. You can see your keyword ranking by looking at your Avg Position column as shown below:
2. Rate of Web Traffic Growth
Search Engine Optimization is actually about getting targeted traffic to your website. A good SEO campaign will place your website in front of the people who needs it through the implementation of a good technical on-page optimization. Therefore, measuring your traffic level during your SEO is crucial. If your traffic increases as your SEO progresses, you might actually be on the right path. If your traffic reduces, then you might want to audit your process to ensure that you are on the right track. More traffic does not mean you are doing the right thing especially if you are heavily involved in paid marketing or buying traffic but at least you get an indication of a glimpse of being on the right path.
How do you measure your website traffic?
The Google Analytical Tool is a great tool that gives you an overall situation of what is happening on your website. When you login to your Adword, you are presented with a
summary report of your website. Right on the home screen, you can view your Audience overview. This will give you a summary of your total website visits.
3. Increased Sales
While there must be an increase in traffic as a result of a good SEO strategy, there should also be a corresponding increase in the number of people requesting for your services or a greater number of people out rightly buying your goods or products in the case of an e- commerce website. Increase in targeted traffic is not the sole aim of any of SEO campaign. There must also be an increasingly increase in sales. While B2C websites might be able to measure their sales directly, B2B might have a hard understanding about how more traffic can translate to sales. This is where setting up Goals (www.titan- seo.com/NewsArticles/goaltracking.html) for your website becomes very important. Goals are measurable actions you want visitors to your website to take after landing on your website.
4. Brand Authority
People trust the results they see on the organic listing of Google’s page. They therefore see the website listed on Google as good authoritative sources of information regarding the product, services or information they are looking for. With Google authorship, you even get a chance to put a face to the information you supply to them. This gives your website more brand visibility. People will start seeing your website as an authority in that niche.
5. Total Amount of BackLinks
Links earning is the backbone of Google’s algorithm and according to a recent article, even Google acknowledges that links are not going to disappear in the nearest future. To lend support to Matt Cutts’ post, Moz CEO, Rand goes further to explain why links still holds much value and what you should be doing when link building. Because links is built into the DNA of Google, for you to outrank your competitors, you need to have more relevant quality links that will make your website perform better on Google search engine result page.
While link building is a game of number, note that you can be penalized for buying links, it is important to understand how you or your SEO company will be getting these links. Most brands that disappear from Google SERP have usually been involved in link manipulation scheme. You then want to watch how many links you are getting and where those links are coming from.
6. Percentage of Repeat Visitors Vs Unique Visitors.
During a stage of your SEO, you want to measure the number of unique visitors that you get versus the number of repeat visitors. Unique visitors are the number of people that are visiting your website for the first time. Repeat visitors are returning people to your website. If you are aggressively producing new content, being active on online forums and on social media, you will find out that the percentage of your unique visitors tends to increase more than your repeat visitors. In the early stage of your SEO, your unique visitors should be more than your repeat visitors. Having a high percentage of repeat visitors is good, it means people who have discovered your content or website find its content useful and therefore may be buyers, if new people are not finding your content, then you might need to worry.
This means you are not picking up new traffic and as a result, your growth will slow down.
The kind of metric you measure will depend on what is most important to you as a business and how much effort both you and your SEO Company are ready to put into your SEO. The metrics above are critical metrics, everyone must track.
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION
Glad you made it this far with our simple guide. By now, you know what Search Engine Optimization is and how to pick an SEO Company to work with. In addition, you can track your SEO progress and measure valuable metrics that is important for your SEO Strategy.
Thank you for reading.
