Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a major part of digital marketing today, and it’s only becoming more essential.
In 2018, just 22% of marketers’ budgets went to SEO, but this number more than doubled to a whopping 48% in 2019. That year, 97% of surveyed marketers said that SEO was important for brand success.
When something is this significant, it shouldn’t be left to chance. SEO marketing services have the expertise and resources to improve a company’s position in search results — but how do they do it?
Content Creation and Evaluation
Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand. Good SEO marketing companies spend a lot of time evaluating content quality, structure, and keyword usage to make sure that it aligns with the criteria search engines are looking for.
If a client needs to add content, update existing content, or change the structure of articles, an SEO marketing company will offer that advice.
Keyword Analysis
Today’s search engine algorithms focus primarily on user intent.
Crawlers will examine the words a website uses across its titles, headlines, and body copy of each page. If they notice a match with a user’s search term, they’re more likely to place that site on page one. SEO marketing companies help clients to enhance this match by researching which keywords a specific audience are the most likely to use.
Link Building
Search engine crawlers also use the number and quality of backlinks to determine how a site should rank. A site with more relevant links from authoritative sources will rank higher than its competitors, always.
SEO marketing companies regularly check on the backlinks aimed at a client’s site. If a site doesn’t have enough backlinks, the marketing company will advise the client on how to obtain more.
Good SEO marketers will caution their clients to avoid less-than-reputable strategies like buying links, recommending above-the-board strategies like guest blogging or affiliate programs — in lieu of potentially shady practices.
Web Design and Development
Search engines won’t put a website on the front page unless its crawlers can confirm that the site matches the intent of the search query, features relevant content, and comes from an authoritative source.
This is why quality website design plays such a large role in SEO. It’s also why NeONBRAND and other top SEO marketing companies design websites as part of their value proposition.
Analytics and Reporting
SEO is all about results, so SEO marketing companies spend a lot of time investigating how their clients’ pages perform.
They look at how a site’s ranking changes after certain SEO adjustments, and they use that information to determine what should happen next. The good ones make sure to communicate all of this to the client in plain language that the client can understand — after all, it’s the client’s site performance that matters.
SEO marketing companies also track the performance of competitive sites. They need to know how each client’s competitors are doing in order to surpass them and rank higher.
Why Hire an Experienced SEO Agency?
SEO has never stood still, and it never will.
An SEO marketing company or agency devotes its time to understanding the ever-changing face of SEO and, most importantly, it can advise companies on what they need to do to keep up. Without this kind of advice, it’s hard for a brand to stand out from the crowd.
An SEO marketing agency can help a brand to make focused decisions and achieve results so that client companies can focus on what they know best — their business.