Have you always wanted to learn tips and tricks from inside an SEO agency? Well, you’re in luck! The Vocal team are here to fill you in.
Are you ready to learn our secrets? Here goes…
Before we go any further – what exactly is an SEO agency?
Basically, an SEO agency employs experts in various aspects of search engine optimisation. They know exactly how to climb the SERPs, bring more organic traffic to your website and ultimately, boost your business.
The services on offer will differ from agency to agency, but here’s what you might find:
You already know that working with an SEO agency will give you access to SEO experts. But what will this actually do for your business?
Here are the benefits of working with an SEO agency:
You might know the basics of SEO, but do you know enough to actually optimise your website?
If you don’t, don’t worry! That’s what SEO agencies are for.
When you work with an SEO agency, you can rest assured that your company is in the hands of experts. No matter what your company’s goals are, they’ll know which solutions will work best for you.
As we’ve already established, SEO is tricky to understand. Not only do you need to wrap your head around it; you need to create strategies too.
It takes time to develop and implement an effective SEO strategy. Not to mention tracking the results! Do you have time to handle all that on top of your other responsibilities?
And remember, your SEO strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought! If you don’t have time to focus on SEO, you should consider outsourcing to an SEO agency.
You might not have considered this before, but using an SEO agency is actually cost-effective for your business.
You already know that it takes SEO experts to climb the SERPs. But did you know that an SEO agency is the most affordable way to access them?
Of course, there are other ways. You could hire an in-house professional, or upskill your team through training. But doing this will cost your business a lot more money. That’s the last thing you want, right?
When you work with an SEO agency, you won’t just benefit from their experience. You’ll have access to a whole team of SEO experts, all with different backgrounds and specialisms.
To benefit from SEO in-house, you’ll most likely need to hire your own team of experts. Just think of how much time, effort and resources that will take from your business!
So, we’ve already established that an SEO agency will save you time. But more than that, they’ll be completely dedicated to improving your business’ SEO strategy.
It probably goes without saying that an SEO agency is all about SEO. But that means that they have the time to focus all their efforts on climbing the SERPs. And that will make a huge difference for your company!
You might think that an agency needs to know everything about your business to really make a difference. However, that isn’t necessarily the case.
Yes, the SEO agency will need to know about your goals to help you reach them. But they don’t need to know the ins and outs of your business to help you succeed.
In fact, it’s actually possible to know your business too well. Knowing everything there is to know about your business makes it difficult to see things from the customer’s perspective. And that’s exactly what you need to do for an SEO strategy to help you grow your business.
Our first tip from inside an SEO agency… you need to use keywords in your content. Without keywords, you’ll never climb the SERPs.
Now, just because keywords are important, doesn’t mean you can overload your content with them. If you do, you run the risk of being penalised for keyword stuffing.
You might be wondering what we mean by keyword stuffing. Well, let us clear it up for you!
Basically, keyword stuffing is when an SEO writer overloads their content with keywords, just to climb the SERPs.
And believe it or not, this used to work. In particular, writers used to manipulate search engines with the following techniques:
Nowadays, search engines know to look out for these kinds of tricks. So, if they find you guilty of keyword stuffing, your SERP ranking won’t improve.
So, now you know what not to do. But how can you use keywords to boost your SERP ranking?
You need your keywords to blend in with the rest of your content. If your readers can immediately pick out the keywords, you need to go back to the drawing board!
Take it from an SEO agency! To climb the SERPs, you need to make use of internal linking in your blogs.
Basically, internal linking is the process of linking to other pages on your website.
To really improve your ranking, you should link to your other blogs. But even something simple, like linking to your contact page, will help boost your ranking.
Let’s look at an example…
If you’re writing a blog about digital marketing services, we’re willing to bet that you mention copywriting. Look through your published blogs and see if you’ve posted an article about copywriting in the past. If you have, there’s your opportunity for internal linking!
When you use internal linking on your site, search engines follow those links and store that content in an index. The more content you have stored in a search engine’s index, the better. This is because the search engine is more likely to present your content to its users. So, it’s a great way to climb the SERPs!
So, now you know that internal linking is important for SEO. It’s time to tackle external linking.
Generally speaking, external linking is more complicated than internal linking. Luckily for you, you have an SEO agency to talk you through it!
There are two types of external linking that you need to know about:
Both are important for SEO. Let’s go through it, shall we?
Outbound links are any links from your content to someone else’s.
You might be thinking, ‘why would I send my audience to someone else’s website. How will that benefit my business?’
We get why you might think that! But take it from an SEO agency – outbound links add depth to your content. They show that you know what you’re talking about. As long as you stick to trustworthy, reputable sources of course!
And remember, avoid linking to your competition! The last thing you want is to send your customers straight to a competitor.
Backlinks are links back to your content from someone else’s.
They’re great for SEO because they increase your authority on a subject. If other websites are sending their customers your way, you must have something important to say! Search engines recognise this and assume your content will answer the user’s questions.
Securing backlinks is no easy task. But as any SEO agency will tell you, it will do wonders for your business!
If your business has more than one website, it’s easier for you to get backlinks. After all, as long as it’s appropriate, you can link between your websites with ease.
But if you don’t have more than one website, here are some things you can do to secure backlinks:
Remember! While backlinks are great for SEO, you’ll only benefit if the links are from credible sites. It also depends on the website’s domain authority!
Basically, a domain authority is a website’s overall SEO score. If a website has a low SEO score, you won’t benefit from that backlink. The quality of the websites linking back to your site is more important than the quantity.
Not sure how to check a website’s domain authority score? You can use tools – like SEMrush – to find out!
Search engines have one main goal: to make life easier for their users. So, if you want to rank higher in the SERPs, you need to keep your sentences short and sweet!
Shorter sentences are good for SEO because the search engines assume this makes your content easy to understand. This is because, generally, people only read about 20% of the content on a page. People are put off by huge chunks of text! So, when you keep your sentences short and concise, you’re more likely to hold your audience’s attention.
Top tip from an SEO agency! To make sure your writing is easy to read, keep your sentences to 20 words or less. Any longer and the search engines won’t like your content!
You might need to keep your sentences short and sweet, but there’s no limit on the length of your blogs. In fact – the longer, the better!
When you post lengthy blogs, you’re more likely to climb the SERPs. This is because search engines assume that your content will be the best to answer the user’s questions.
Make sure that your blogs are at least 1000 words in length. With more popular keywords, you could go even longer! When you work with an SEO agency, they’ll help you figure out how long the blogs need to be. But as a general rule, the more searches a keyword has, the longer the content should be.
Our next tip from inside an SEO agency… don’t overlook your website’s page speed!
You might not have considered your site’s page speed before, but it’s really important for SEO. Your audience won’t be impressed if the pages on your website take a long time to load. It might even put them off your website in the future. If that happens, search engines will notice your lack of traffic, and push you down the SERPs. That won’t do your brand any favours!
To stop this from happening, you need to improve your page speed. Remove any unnecessary content or pages from your website. Compress your images to make the files smaller. Anything you can do to declutter your site – do it!
Here are some extra tips and tricks from an SEO agency for increasing your page speed:
To boost your SERP ranking, you need to produce consistent content.
It’s not enough to write a handful of blogs for your website and call it a day. Even if your content is super SEO-friendly, you won’t get anywhere if you don’t produce enough content.
For search engines to place you at the top of the rankings, consistent content is key. If you’re not sure why, just think about your favourite blogs. If they didn’t post any updates, how quickly do you think you’d lose interest in their site?
The same goes for search engines! If you don’t publish regular, SEO-friendly content, search engines will assume that you can’t help their users. And as a result, your SERP ranking will go down.
Here’s a tip from an SEO agency! Creating consistent content is so much easier when you stick to a posting schedule. Try and publish three blogs a week. Don’t think you have time to produce that much content? Outsource copywriting services to an SEO agency!
Just like your page speed (tip number 6), you probably haven’t given much thought to your website’s URL structure. But as a matter of fact, your website’s URL can make or break your SERP ranking!
Search engines don’t like URLs that are overly complex or long-winded. They want the user to have an easy, stress-free experience. If your URL structure is complicated, they’ll be sure to bypass your content!
To make sure that your URL is SEO-friendly, only include the keyword. Anything else is unnecessary! Not only is this good for SEO, but it’s obvious (to the user and reader) what your content is about.
Nowadays, there are so many SEO agencies out there. How are you supposed to find the right one for your business?
First things first, you need to decide what you want the SEO agency to do for you. So, before you make a decision, you need to think about:
Once you’ve figured that out, you’re one step closer to finding the right SEO agency for your business.
But to narrow down your search even further, you should make sure you choose the right SEO agency for you. So, without further ado, here are 5 things to look for in an SEO agency:
We can’t stress this enough – the best SEO strategies incorporate different kinds of digital marketing. So, for your content to pop, the SEO agency you choose should have a diverse team of specialists.
Before you make a final decision, check out their team and see what they have to offer.
Choosing an SEO agency is a big decision – you shouldn’t take it lightly! So, to make sure you choose the right one for your business, check out their portfolio of previous work.
Have they helped other clients in the past? What kind of SEO strategies did they develop for those companies? Are their strategies in line with your business and your future goals?
If they don’t have an impressive portfolio just yet, you can still check out their business. They could be a new business, after all. But if that’s the case, make sure you do your research! Talk to the team and find out exactly what they’ll do for you and how it will benefit your brand.
When you invest in an SEO agency, you want to make sure they’re experts in the field, right?
So, before you hire an SEO agency, check out their blog and social media pages. Do they regularly post about industry-specific topics? If they don’t, then chances are they’re not the right SEO agency for you!
Before working with a SEO agency, check out their client reviews and testimonials. That’s the best way to gain insight into their work!
Do they come highly recommended? Were the past clients happy with their work? Did they help them climb the SERPs?
Just like when SEO agencies don’t have a portfolio, newer businesses might not have many client reviews just yet. But that doesn’t mean they can’t help your business with SEO! Just make sure that you do your research before making your final decision.
Outsourcing SEO services might be cost-effective, but it’s still important to outline your budget.
Once you know what you’re willing to spend on SEO, only consider SEO agencies that can work within your budget.
It goes without saying that the SEO agency you choose needs to have a realistic price for your business. But did you know that choosing an agency with too low pricing can be risky?
If the price is too low, there’s a good chance they won’t be much help to your business. And if they don’t follow SEO best practices, they could actually damage your brand’s reputation.
Here at Vocal, we’re a full creative service that knows a thing or two about content. We may be a small creative content agency, but we’re by no means shy!
Check out our list of services to see what’s on offer. No matter who you are, we’ve got your back!
Get started with Vocal in 4 easy steps:
Step 1 – Tell us about yourselves! We want to hear about your company’s goals and ambitions. What do you want your marketing strategy to achieve?
Step 2 – Now it’s our time to shine. We’ll do some research and create a proposal of ideas – just for you! This includes recommendations drawn from our extensive experience. Are you ready to hear our ideas?
Step 3 – There’s no point investing in your content if you don’t know what it will do for your business. So, based on our knowledge and experience, we’ll make predictions about the likely outcomes of the content. That way, you can see how our services are going to benefit you.
Step 4 – Finally, we’ll provide a quote for our services. Once that’s out the way, then the real fun can begin!
Let’s get Vocal! Get in touch with a member of the team and get ready to watch your business grow.
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