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SEO Companies Explained

A strong online presence is necessary to nearly every business in our modern, digital age. As a small business owner, odds are you have enough on your plate without adding on search engine optimization (SEO). As a result, many businesses will consider a number of SEO companies for this work rather than perform the task themselves. But choosing the right SEO company can be a difficult decision, as there are numerous aspects to consider—as well as companies.

Once you have selected an SEO company, though, you will need to track your SEO progress to ensure your efforts are worthwhile, whether you perform SEO yourself or hire a company to do so. With StatCounter, you can track a variety of important metrics like bounce rate, popular pages, and many others to help you develop a sound SEO strategy or ensure the company you hire is making progress on your website. Before you get there, however, allow us to explain what SEO companies do and how to choose the company that is right for your business.

Suggested Reading

If you’d like to find further information with regards to SEO, be sure to view the articles we’ve provided below:

What Do SEO Companies Do?

In short, SEO companies work to improve your online presence in search engine results pages (SERPs). No matter the company, a major aspect of SEO is acquiring traffic to site organically, or without paying for your traffic, as you would with pay-per-click ads. To accomplish such tasks, a range of tactics are employed within SEO. In fact, there’s a few specific tactics involved in any SEO strategy—no matter the business or website at hand.

Keyword Research

For starters, SEO always involves extensive keyword research to determine the best search queries, or keywords, to target. Some websites have stronger authority, allowing them to rank well for more competitive keywords, or those with higher search volumes, while newer sites will need to focus on lower volume keywords at first. This keyword research is quite important, as many of the tasks to follow will require a list of selected terms.

Content and On-Page Optimization

Once keyword research has been done, content is then written focusing on these queries and published to the site. This includes creating a title tag, meta description, and humanized URL using the according keyword to improve the rankings for that page. This is often the more time-consuming task involved in an SEO strategy. However, it’s also one of the key aspects of SEO. The content you write based on your selected keywords, as well as the on-page optimization, directly impacts how pages of your website rank within search engine results.

For more insight, title tags are the clickable, blue links listed in search results, but they also appear at the top of your browser for any given page. These tell both users and search engines what the page is about, so be sure to add in a keyword and some descriptive text. Meta descriptions sit right below title tags in search results, but they remain hidden on site. As with title tags, metas should also tell what the page is about and include the keyword. Finally, as you create new pages, the URLs for such should also include the keyword for its according page.

Backlink Building

The next step for many SEO companies is to build a strong backlink portfolio for these pages, as well as the entire domain (or website). This will help drive more traffic to your site as well as improve your website’s authority, allowing you to target more competitive keywords later on. Building backlinks can be a tedious task, but luckily there are a range of tactics to get backlinks and improve your website’s domain and page authorities.

Essential Definition

Backlinks, also referred to as inbound links, are any link for a page of your website, posted on another website. In other words, if a company mentions your business on their website and leaves a link for users to visit your site, you’ll have acquired a backlink.

Key Strategies to Look for from SEO Companies

In addition to the essential tactics listed above, there’s plenty more services to seek in an SEO company. Many of the SEO services offered will depend on the SEO company you choose, and each of these services are able to benefit your website’s online presence. Some of these common, and often necessary, SEO services are as follow:

  • Social Media Marketing: Many SEO companies will offer to manage your social media accounts and post often to garner more followers on these platforms. Social media is essential too, as it increases your visibility and provides a means to engage your audience.
  • Title Tag and Meta Description Optimization: As mentioned before, title tags and meta descriptions are immensely important to search engines and they will need to be optimized correctly using keywords. As mentioned previously, these tell users and search engines what each page is about, so keep this in mind as you create title tags and meta descriptions for each page of your site—be descriptive!
  • Ongoing Blog Post Content Writing: In order to remain competitive for keywords, you will need to publish fresh content on your site often, and blog posts are a sound way to do so. If you don’t have a blog section on your site, the SEO company you hire will simply add one. Much like social media, blog posts are also a great way to engage your audience, as they can comment on posts which you can then respond to.
  • Press Release Writing and Distribution: If your company is planning an upcoming event, writing, publishing, and distributing a press release can help build awareness. Plus, many press releases get their own web page, which gives you a backlink.
  • Page Speed Analysis: You will also need to ensure that your website load speed is fast, otherwise you are at risk of having a high bounce rate and losing keyword rankings. Of course, your SEO company should be able to do this for you. They’ll simply run a page speed test and make the necessary changes.
  • Local SEO Setup and Optimization: If you run a local brick and mortar storefront, local SEO can help drive local traffic to your website. Yet many of the tactics involved in local SEO are also suitable for small business or those just getting started. Whether you’re a local, new, or small business, local SEO could be essential.

Choosing an SEO Company

Some SEO companies specialize in specific niches or areas of focus, such as dentistry or legal services. So when choosing your SEO company, you’ll need to be sure their services match up with your needs. For example, some SEO companies focus on local SEO services. While this would be great for a local business with a brick and mortar storefront, an online e-commerce store may not want to focus on one local area, as this limits their online visibility.

Track Your SEO Progress with StatCounter

As we’ve mentioned above, once you have picked an SEO company to improve your website, you’ll want to monitor the results of their efforts to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth. With StatCounter, you can use a range of detailed metrics to gain insight as to how traffic interacts on your site, as well as how you can improve your site for better traffic.

If you have questions or comments, you can StatCounter member support by completing the form below.

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