Last week I presented 5 things about SEO that I have learned over the last year and a half and things that I have incorporated into our process at Webspec. This week I have 5 more things people should know about SEO at Webspec Design.
6. Quality content makes a big difference
In addition to quality content on the homepage, having quality content on the whole site makes a huge difference. Content that is easy to read, relevant to the service/product/topic at hand and that is informative ranks best in Google. Google is getting closer and closer to being able to read a webpage just as a human does, i.e. checking spelling and grammar. Headings throughout the content that include keywords are essential. Google reads the webpage content that is most important first, which includes anything in the title tag, navigation and headers on the page. After that it begins to crawl through the paragraph content, counting keywords as it goes so that it can decide what terms to rank the content for.
7. Backlinks are something, but they aren’t everything
Many SEOs will tell you that backlinks are everything when it comes to ranking, but that simply isn’t true. Quality backlinks are valuable for raising your domain authority, which scales between 0 and 10 and has an impact on your placement in search results. However problems arise with spammy backlinks, which are backlinks that are not related to the content on your site or are from a poor quality website. We incorporate backlinks into our strategy but they are not our main focus. We have seen much better search results overall for sites that have quality content on them and relevant page titles and headings than sites that just have a bunch of low to medium backlinks.
8. Realistic expectations are key
Good SEO campaigns take time to get you to the top to the search rankings and that time frame can range from a few months to years. This depends on the quality of your site, the quality of the sites that rank above you and the competition level of the keywords that you are trying to rank for. After researching the competition and how your site stacks up we can usually give you a pretty good estimate as to how long it will take to improve for different words you want to rank for. Accepting the fact that good SEO takes time will actually improve our professional relationship. We can’t control your search rankings, all we can do is try to improve them and increase your traffic in the ways that have worked for the majority of our current clients.
9. Transparency is crucial
At Webspec we strive to keep you up to date with how your campaign is going, what exactly we’re doing with your site to improve its rankings and what enhancements may be necessary to keep that forward momentum going. We will send you updates on a regular basis with what we have been doing and will schedule meetings (either in person or on the phone) to go over the progress of your site. You also receive monthly ranking reports and quarterly Google Analytic reports that showcase how your traffic has been improving among other things. We want you to have control over what happens on your site so you choose your level of involvement. Whether you want to review every paragraph we write or just major content or layout changes before or even after they roll out, that is up to you. We have found that open communication leads to the best results, so as long as you are willing to work together with us it shouldn’t take too long before you start seeing results.
10. We are on your team!
We get very excited when your campaign makes even the smallest improvement and we literally scream out loud in the office when your campaign makes a large improvement. When your site succeeds, we succeed too so we work hard to make sure that your site does well. If your rankings begin to fall we are going to do everything we can to influence Google to raise them back up. We want to make sure that you are happy with the level of service you are receiving as well as the progress of your rankings in relation to the realistic expectations from the previous point.
When you work with the experienced SEO specialists at Webspec Design, you are working with people who truly care about the success of your site. Contact us today to get started.
