Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of positioning your website to rank highly in search results, making your website visible to people who are looking for your business. SEO increases search traffic from terms relating to your products and services.

An SEO company is responsible for managing on-page and off-page optimization. Some of the most important activities your SEO firm will do for your Website includes:

• Research keywords and competitors to select appropriate, relevant search terms.
• Obtain “backlinks” from other related websites and directories in order to generate link popularity and traffic.
• Content marketing, to include creating and promoting unique keyword-rich articles, each posted to a unique, high authority website and/or blog.
• Edit and optimize website text for various html tags, meta data, page titles, and page text as necessary.
• Analyze and recommend optimal website structure, navigation, code, etc. for the best SEO.
• Recommend, as required, additional web pages or content for the purpose of ranking for specific keyword/phrase searches.
• Create traffic and monthly ranking reports for the Client website to monitor and evaluate progress.

SEO works to improve and optimize online content to rank higher on different search engines.

It is important to understand how search engines work. If Google, Bing, and Yahoo can’t find your Website, no one else will either.

This is why keyword research, on-site optimization (optimized design, user experience, content quality/relevance, information architecture), technical SEO (structured data, meta tags, site speed), off-site optimization (link building and establishing authority), monitoring and measurement all must work together for SEO to work for your Website.

Google processes approximately 70,000 search queries every second, translating to 5.8 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your business, paid advertising, social media, e-mail marketing, and text messaging. But organic search results, the search results that come from effective search engine optimization (SEO) are the most influential and valuable source of visitors to your Website. You are responding to their search intent naturally and credibly with the quality and relevance of the content on your Website. This generates trust – a critical factor in customer action.

78% of mobile local searches result in offline purchases, so even if you are not an online business, you need to be thinking about your online presence, and SEO is how you get seen online.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) are essential for analyzing your Website. These free tools provide actionable insights to understand how visitors are interacting with your site, where they are coming from, which pages they are landing on, how much time they are spending, and what steps they are taking once they get there. You can add and track goals and measure ROI with built-in e-commerce tools.

With Google Search Console, you can measure your site's traffic and performance, fix technical issues, and increase your site’s visibility.

One of the best tips for making your Website more SEO-friendly is to take advantage of well-reviewed free-plugins that will improve the optimization of the content you post on your site and technical issues that need fixing. Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin offers content analysis functionality and the ability to easily edit titles, keywords, and descriptions as well as automate a number of technical improvements that will deliver immediate results.

Premium SEO software including Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush is also used by the best SEO companies to perform an SEO audit, monitor the progress of an SEO campaign, and optimize your Website.

SEO has the best long-term return on investment because you do not pay for clicks from organic (non-paid) search results. Competitive keywords can cost several dollars or more per click. And those paid visits add up fast, which is why many business owners want to develop an organic search strategy that can deliver targeted traffic at a much lower cost than PPC.

This doesn’t mean SEO is free. A dynamic SEO program that evolves in response to changes to search engine algorithms and responds to your Website’s visitors is needed to earn and maintain page one rankings.

The best SEO company will develop a customized, data-driven strategy to help your Website:

(1) increase conversions, leads, and sales;
(2) increase targeted traffic; and
(3) achieve higher rankings in search engines.

SEO can either be charged as an hourly fee, a flat monthly fee, or a performance-based fee (based on impressions, clicks, or conversions).

There are many factors that influence the cost of SEO services, including the age and current state of your Website, the Website’s current rankings, the number of pages, the site’s authority and links, the geolocation of the Site and the competitiveness or level of difficulty for the keywords you are trying to rank for.

A good SEO company will be able to develop a campaign that works with your budget, establishes realistic goals and sets reasonable expectations.

If you are a small business with a small advertising or marketing budget you’re not going to be able to effectively compete for highly competitive national keywords like “housecleaning” or “daycare” but you can dominate your local market for these keywords that are critical for your business by targeting your most important keywords with the city or neighborhood where your customers are located through optimized local business profiles, keyword-rich blog posts and highlighting local promotions via press releases.

Since most people shop and search local, this is how a small business can quickly turbocharge their local SEO.