Wondering if your website and SEO are working for you?
Let’s start with the basics. Maybe you started your business out of your home with just a few friends and family for clients. Then with word of mouth, a few more clients trickled in. Next you were ready to take the next step and get a website up and going. But did you ever think about how clients would find your website in the infinity / ether of the internet?
That is where online marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), link building, directory submissions, Adwords campaigns and search engine optimization (SEO) enter the picture. For the purpose of keeping this post short and digestible, we will cover search engine optimization with the focus on the Vancouver BC market.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), what is it?
When a potential client sits down at the computer and tries to find a particular good or service, they will likely Google using a ‘search term’ (also known as ‘keyword phrase’ or ‘keyword term’). Often the term will be followed by a region, or sometimes not. For example, ‘dentist Vancouver’ will return results for dentists in Vancouver. Just the term ‘dentist’ will return results from all over the world. So, step one is to figure out what search terms your clients are likely to Google, and also which search terms are most often Googled. The Google keyword planner can be used for the second part. So, in the dentist example, people may search things like ‘dentist Kitsilano’, ‘pediatric dentist Vancouver’, ‘dentist reviews’, ‘teeth whitening Vancouver’, ‘emergency dentist west side’, the list goes on. The key is to figure out which ones are most applicable to your business and have the most number of people searching on them. There’s also the amount of competition the search term has to consider. We won’t go too deep into that in this post.
Once the search terms have been selected, the next step is to use a targeted approach on the website to implement those specific terms. For example, 5 terms over 5 pages with one term per page. These specific terms and some related terms can be sprinkled throughout the page copy, headings, meta tags, image names and tags, urls, links etc. Always with a generous nod to quality of course. Your clients and the search engines won’t appreciate keyword stuffing.
Also important is to get some high quality links. Not only is it another way for users to find their way to your site, but quality links factor into search engines algorithms in determining page ranking.
SEO, is it working?
Often, your SEO company will run a report before the work is done to find out where your company is ranking in Google for the specific keywords. Then the report can be run again to see how much improvement has been made. For tracking progress, the following can be used:
- if the keyword rankings improved. We use gShift for this type of tracking.
- if organic traffic to the site increased. We can see this in Google Analytics.
- if there has been an increased number of visits to the contact page of the site? (conceivably that can indicate client intent to make contact). We can see this in Google Analytics.
- if online purchases increased? (if applicable). We can see this in Google Analytics.
Once the basic SEO work is completed, there’s lots more that can be done. There’s pushing out new content through blogging, email campaigns and more.
But, as a starting point, if you do nothing else, the fundamental step to take is to have a professional SEO your site so that your website will hopefully be on the first page or two of Google for your most desirable/applicable terms. There’s not many people that will scroll to results pages much past that. A basic SEO package is enough for many businesses, so no need to get overwhelmed. And your SEO strategy can always grow and expand in the future.
Basic packages cost $1000 + GST and include keyword research, 5-7 pages optimized, custom Google Analytics dashboard and 2 ranking reports.