Are you not sure where to start when it comes to SEO? Would you like to know more about what an SEO company actually does, and thesorts of results you should expect? Search engine optimisation is a complicated and ongoing process. However, it is absolutely possible (in fact it’s essential) to get a good grasp of the basics. This will help you to appoint a trustworthy company and avoid ‘shady’ practices.
In a nutshell, an SEO company will use a variety of strategies and tools to draw more visitors to your website. They will start by ensuring that your website is well structured and coded to give each page the best chance of being indexed and found by search engines. They will complement this with other more long term strategies such as blogging, link building and social media. Plus, they may also recommend advertising via Google Adwords.
Google’s advice about SEO
Google recently released a video called ‘How to hire an SEO’,providing advice for absolute beginners and outlining some basic questions that you should ask when hiring an SEO company. These include asking them to tell you about their success stories, finding out if they have experience in your industry, and establishing how long they have been in business.
Google recommends that you check they follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines. This is extremely important, because Google penalises any website that fails to meet its guidelines. If an SEO company engages in dodgy practices to promote your website, it’s you that will suffer, not them. Note: as a website owner, we’d strongly recommend that you read the guidelines, too.
Google also advises that you ask an SEO company what results you should expect to see, and in what time frame. SEO is not a fast process, but you shouldn’t have to wait for an unspecified time to see results.
Together with the video, Google provide more tips and advice, with some links to other useful websites.
Should you invest in Google Adwords?
Google Adwords can certainly be useful in driving traffic to your website. However, it must never be relied upon solely. Indeed in some cases you will not need to spend money on it at all. Good SEO can generate a lot more traffic than Adwords for less money. Organic traffic also tends to have higher conversion rates rather than that generated through advertising.
Remember that Google is actually in competition with SEO companies. It doesn’t necessarily want you to get great results by optimising your website alone; it wants you to spend money on its own advertising platform.So, it’s bound to heavily promote Adwords when providing advice about increasing traffic to your website.
What next?
Once you’ve had a look at the links above, you should feel much more confident instructing an SEO company. If you have any further questions, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
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