“SEO is easy. Just slap in some keywords and she’ll be right.” Does that sound familiar? Well it’s not the truth!
While there are definitely some things that you as a business owner or administrator can do yourself, SEO is not a do it once and you’re done kind of thing. Figuring out your long-tail keywords, building inbound links and working on creating good quality content should be achievable, albeit an ongoing work in progress. So what’s the big deal about working with an SEO company then?
SEO: The Technical Stuff
When it comes to your website, there is a lot of things that happen on your content management system (CMS) before the website goes live. Magento, WordPress, Joomla, OpenCart and Processwire, to name a few, all have their own unique setup and interfaces. Getting to grips with these can be a complex and technical job. On top of that, customized websites have many other features and challenges that might need a website developer to maintain. This does not mean once your website is set up, all the technical stuff is taken care of. You may make changes to your website, your CMS schedules an update or search engines require new things that would cause technical issues on your site.
Your SEO company will be taking care some of the technical aspects within their SEO services, leaving you free to focus on your business goals. Some of the technical aspects that impact how your website performs in search engines and for users are:
- Where your website is hosted
- Page speed
- Site security
- Sitemap
- Optimized URL’s
- Site structure
- Plugins and updates
- Mobile Responsiveness
SEO: Optimizing Content
When people think of SEO, they automatically think of keywords and headers. While it is true that keywords are still useful within search engine optimization, knowing how to use them is the crucial point. Optimizing does not stop at keywords. DMM evaluates every page on your website, one by one to see if your content is up to scratch. We use SEO tools to help us get information around the user experience and content on the site to establish what is effective and contributes to your profitability. We also interpret the signs on the website itself that show us what needs attention and where we can improve. Effective SEO includes a long list of actions that need to be implemented frequently to make sure your site does not lose traction in search engines. Being on page one today is no guarantee that you will still be on page one tomorrow – your competitor might have an SEO expert working on influencing your position to their benefit. This is where Dynamic Multi Media’s expertise in SEO can assist you, in helping to combat that influence.
Some of the on-site optimization components:
- Content ratio
- User experience evaluation
- Meta descriptions
- Image sizes
- Error pages
Some of the off-site optimization components:
- Inbound links
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Advertising
- Competitor tracking
SEO: Understanding Statistics
Once your website is set up, the real work actually begins. Keeping the technical aspects of the website up to date is one job that requires attention over time. What you need is to know how effective your website is with bringing you more business. You need to understand the impact of your investment on your profitability. While there are tools to track the performance of the website and your marketing efforts, you also need to understand and interpret the results. This is where DMM excels. We are a Google Certified Partner, with training and experience to communicate thorough and useful interpretations of the data. Being a Google Partner also has the benefit of getting the newest training tools, industry news and changes first. We are also well-versed in the use of Google Tools. These tools are exceptional at giving you insight into what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong and how people are reaching your website.
Useful Google Tools:
- Google Analytics
- Google Console
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Data Source
- Google Ads
- Google Voice
There are tools besides Google’s tools that are increasingly popular as they give a better understanding of user behaviour on your site. Heatmaps can be great for seeing what the user is focusing on, and here you can look at Hotjar and CrazyEgg. You might want to look at user testing, which you can do with UserTesting or UsabilityHub. Or you might want an all-in-one tracking tool that gives you usable results at your fingertips.
Conclusion
While it is tempting to let your SEO slide, it can cost you in the long run. It might seem easy to do but once you get deeper into the work you will realize that industry knowledge and training are a necessary component of SEO. Working with an SEO expert will benefit you. You will also avoid having to pay for making mistakes or missing crucial elements. You will see the right sort of traffic come to your website. You will save yourself from doing blackhat SEO, things like keywords stuffing and spammy links, which could get you penalized by search engines. We do the SEO so you can focus your time on running your core business and giving the best service to your customers. Need some help with your SEO?
