People ask us all the time what does a SEO specialist even do? One of the best explanations I’ve heard is that SEO’s are like the aisle signs in a grocery store. If they weren’t there, then it would take you forever to find where the gravy was. The aisle signs make it easy for shoppers to find what they wanted to buy. The same concept applies to what SEOs do. We make it easier for customers to find your website.
But hang on, it is SO much more than that. While many people believe that SEO is dead, the reality is it is very much alive and is constantly evolving.
What is SEO?
SEO is the art of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. It is not just about getting your website to rank #1 in search engines. While that is of huge importance, SEOs exist to help your overall online brand presence. We seek to not only help businesses find the relevant information people are searching for, but we also create content that seeks to answer these queries.
Over 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Meaning, people are spending a lot of time and money online. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of the millions of searchers out there?
SEO helps those people find you’re your business online using legit and measurable tactics.
Now when I say, “legit,” I mean there are two types of SEO. Black-hat SEO and white-hat SEO. White-hat (the kind that we provide) uses over 200 ranking factors to create effective and sustainable tactics to help your business organically. Black-hat is referred to as “shady” practices that may help you short-term but can be really damaging in the long run.
What exactly goes into white-hat SEO? Think of those 200 ranking factors as a set of guidelines SEOs adhere to that help make pages rank well in search results. Some of those factors can be placed into three categories: Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO and Technical SEO.
Off-Page SEO
When we talk about Off-Page SEO, we are referring to the actions taken outside of your website to impact your rankings in search engines — things like improving your site’s popularity, relevance, and trustworthiness. We do this by creating effective, qualitative linking strategies, managing local search, and ensuring there are positive social signals.
On-Page SEO
This includes everything that is “on-page” like creating keyword strategies. We create effective strategies for the creation of engaging and compelling content to gain traffic and visibility. Things like quality and quantity of your web pages’ content come into play here.
Technical SEO
This is the foundation of your website. Things like having a website that is both user-friendly and search-engine-friendly are key to a successful online presence. Some of the technical ranking factors include ensuring your website is secure (https vs http), how fast your pages load (site speed), adding structured data and so on.
Now you’re wondering how we influence these ranking factors, right? Things like checking our ranking tools, using analytics tools, navigating to the website, looking “under the hood” at the code, and evaluating the search landscape are all things we check daily. SEOs work hard on both the front-end and back-end to ensure your website is running smoothly and can be found by both search engines and potential customers.
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