What does SEO mean for my business?
The chances are you have a business website. SEO is a marketing technique that is available to all websites, it is a way of getting your website found in search engines (Google + Bing) for particular terms. (referred to as keywords) These are the pages that appear below adverts and other search engine generated content. There are a number of different factors that influence where you appear in search results, some of them are technical, some of them are just good practice.
How do I find out if I need SEO?
Easy, type what you want to be found for into Google eg, [your industry] in Manchester (change the location modifiers to suit your business, eg. Bury, Ramsbottom, Liverpool)
Don’t see your website in the results? Or even worse you see your competitors! Then book a FREE no-obligation basic SEO audit today.
You can get your website ranking for more than one search term, try another one!
How long does SEO take?
SEO is really an ongoing process, if you have had your website for a while there could be quite a lot of work to do to get your website working properly. Results normally start improving within a couple of days, you should be able to monitor improvements over time.
Typically for a small website, a few days per month are all that is necessary once your website is in working order. For larger sites, a week or two per month may be necessary. For large e-commerce sites it is common to have full-time dedicated teams.
If your website is in a very competitive sector it could take serveral months to create the necessary content.
How will I know SEO is working?
You should receive a report or update on the performance of your website, these can be generated using tools from Google, you may just want an overview rather than great detail but a regular review of performance & future plans helps keep everything on track. We provide a dashboard you can visit with key information.
Make sure you know what each measurement means, you could be postition 1 for a term no one uses as a search on Google or Bing
How long does SEO last?
That depends on how your competitors react! Once you have optimized your content you should find fairly consistent results but search engines (Google) are changing their rules all of the time, apparently to improve customer experience, when these changes happen you may need to do more work on your website.
If you are in a particularly competitive sector you may have to work continuously to out perform your competitors old & new!
How much does SEO cost?
Rather than the cost for SEO think more about the value of a customer to your business. If you have a high value product you will quickly see a return on investment. If you have a lower value product or service you need higher volumes so cost is quickly spread across a number of transactions. SEO doesn’t run out so you will see an ongoing return on investment.
Typically for a small website, you should budget between £500 – £1000 per month, for an e-commerce website start at around £750 per month. Typically SEO is a part-time service for many small to medium-sized businesses, as it takes a little time to see improvements.
What do I get for my money?
To perform SEO effectively you have to do a number of things to achieve the overall result you want more relevant traffic to your website.
Firstly, A large part of SEO is research into the keywords or phrases you want to be found for & analysing your competitors websites. (Quick rule of thumb if they have 500 words on their page you will need a similar number on yours). There are some FREE tools read 3 steps to start seo search engine optimisation but normally some special software is needed to help as well.
Secondly, the structure of your existing website needs to be working in the best way possible & all future content needs to work correctly as well. This means checking the technical performance of certain features.
Third, your website needs to be easy for search engines to read & save, this is your internal linking structure
Fourth, links from other websites to your content & pages. These are called backlinks & require a lot of time & effort to achieve. This can also include additional work to post on social media channels.
Finally, content for your Blog needs to be updated and/or created to support your sites ongoing SEO
Can I do SEO myself?
Yes you can apply the necessary techniques but remember you can also make a coffee or a sandwich for your lunch. If you buy a sandwich or a coffee you are just outsourcing the work to a supplier. SEO is time consuming & you will need to concentrate on it rather than other aspects of your business.
You will have to provide some input about the customers you want to target, where they are the and the type of services you want to offer them. This is the start for all other keyword research.
If you can concentrate on generating great content to help support other SEO that is a more valuable contribution. Videos & live streams are great if they are optimised.
Someone built my website for me will they have done SEO?
Possibly, you need to make sure that they set up the website to be found by search engines. Some suppliers will say you asked for a website & hosting not SEO. If you are not sure just book a FREE SEO audit with us. All of our business websites are set up to start measuring SEO from the start!
Do I need a new website to do SEO?
Maybe it depends on where your website is hosted, this is getting a bit technical but your website could be in a bad part of town when it comes to what else is hosted on the server where your website lives. You may also have a site built using a website builder, Wix, Square Space, 123-reg, they all offer cheap website & hosting options but they are designed to make their platform money and are not always the most SEO friendly sites!
