Why Choosing An SEO Expert Is DifficultChoosing an expert can be difficult, as there are thousands of SEO experts around the UK.
The question is, do you choose a freelancer SEO expert, or an agency with a team of experts?
How do you know they are experts, is it because their website says they are the best agency in the UK?
Many SEO companies claim to be the ‘number 1 optimisation company in the UK’. Or a top Google preferred partner to encourage you to go with them rather than the next agency.
Added to this is the number of website optimisation companies outside the UK that are offering cheap optimisation taking half the time.
How do you find the right one for you?
This is the problem that any UK business faces. There are only 10 spots of page 1, how do you ensure you get onto page 1 and remain there?
Does your website not get enough daily visitors?
Does your website get lots of website traffic, but not enough conversions?
These are actually two different points, but both are connected, in that your website is not functioning as it should be. Your website should be a lead generation machine, if it is not producing enough leads, you need help from an SEO expert.
Perhaps you have tried SEO in the past and not seen results?
This could be either that the SEO has not been effective, or it has been targeted in the wrong way.
Since the internet began, the main search engines at the time needed to rank websites to present relevant results to website users.
Google, Yahoo and AOL spearheaded this in the early days, ranking millions of websites so that when people searched and went to the first result, they would remain on the website because that is what they were after.
This is known as ‘bounce rate’ when someone goes on to a website and then leaves.
Local search was introduced, because if you are looking for a dentist, chances are you want one that is local to where you are doing the search.
Search is a lot more complicated though, as there are globally so many websites with lots of website owners trying to manipulate the results so they appear on page 1.
This is known as ‘search engine algorithm’ which is constantly changing. What gets you onto page 1 today could not work tomorrow.
SEO experts should be up to date with what news the search engines are releasing for best practice. What is tried and tested and what could be happening tomorrow.
Any SEO expert that is worth their salt will advise you that website content is king, it always has been.
Consider news websites, social media websites, they all have new content posted daily.
For this reason, if you can update your website on a regular basis, either the main pages, or a blog, this should tick box number 1.
Typically a web page should have around 800-1000 words, giving it a good density of content. Putting your keywords throughout the web pages and variations of them is also good practice.
What all websites need it good content; are they going to work on your content or are you?
Choosing an SEO expert can be done on their own SEO. Probably the first thing to do is to see where they appear if you type in ‘search engine optimisation’ into a search engine.
If the agency/freelancer is not on pages 1,2,3,4,5 etc. then they are probably not very good at optimisation.
The other angle could be that they spend so much of their time doing optimisation for their customers, that they do not do their own.
A tricky one, as the reason is a credible one.
The same could be said for website designers Many say they have not updated their websites because they spend so much time working on clients websites.
Choosing a marketing company to handle your SEO needs to be done with care. With SEO (and marketing in general) you do not get what you pay for. The most expensive SEO company does not make them the best.
Most SEO companies can help you write website content, however no-one knows your business better than you do. Therefore if you can produce new website content, this is ideal. You can then send it to the SEO expert with your target keywords so they can look over it and ensure that it is both relevant, engaging and SEO good.
If you cannot write website content, all SEO companies should be able to support you with this either through their own team, or outsourcing to a website copywriter.
Writing website content takes time, it takes focus, so paying an agency to produce content may cost quite a lot.
This is known as ‘onsite SEO’, your website, the titles of the page, meta information, images etc.
When choosing an SEO expert, you need to check their website page rank. If they have a low page rank (4 or less) then chances are, they are not a genuine specialist.
If they are good at optimisation, then search engines will rank their website well, this is due to it being trustworthy.
If you are looking for an SEO expert in Manchester, do a search for ‘SEO companies in Manchester’. Are they on page 1? If they are on page 1, they should be an SEO expert to talk with (freelancer or agency).
One thing to remember is that search engine optimisation does take time.
It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of an search campaign as it is very much in the hands of the search engines and how they react.
A change can be made however it may take a few weeks to take effect and be picked up.
Web optimisation can be monitored using google analytics, to track the number of visitors that visit your website, the average amount of time visitors spend on one page, what pages are least visited.
Using analytics can give you a feel for the progress that is being made on a month to month basis and if the SEO experts are worth their salt.
We have provided more information on choosing an optimisation company for specific locations and businesses below:
Digital Marketing
Marketing And PR Agency
Creative & Design
Web Development
Events & Hospitality
Other service