We're getting more and more people asking how Webstix can help them with SEO (search engine optimization), so I thought I'd outline our process and explain it a bit more.
We, most likely, haven't worked on your website so we need to see where you're website is at. The first step is to investigate your website and then come up with a baseline.
We'll run some tests on your website to check structure and for what issues you may have. We've even seen remnants of old websites on some clients' servers. Sometimes there are some big problems that haven't been detected.
We also look at your website in general. This is the design, how fast it loads, if there are page errors and how the website is at converting traffic into leads and sales (which we simply call "conversion"). For example, your website might convert traffic at a 4% rate. If you went up to an 8% rate, you'd be doubling conversions with the traffic you already have. That's huge!
And then once we do get you more traffic, that new traffic will convert better, which means even more leads and sales - bonus!
At this time, we do keyword research for you, agree with you on a list of keywords to focus on and then take some baseline readings on where you rank with those keywords.
And then we'll take a look at your competition to see where they rank, which keywords they are using and so on. This helps because in order to beat your competition, we need to research them and see what they're up to.
To do all this work is a flat charge of $499. It includes evaluating your website, coming up with a punch list of items to fix, design changes/suggestions and keyword research.
In nearly every case, there will be a list of things to fix from step #1. We'll quote these items to you and then get them fixed. The price of our quote will, of course, vary per website. Some need very little work done and yet others need quite a bit of work. It all depends on how well your website was developed.
This step would include making the website load faster if that is necessary. Maybe some content needs to be re-arranged or some pages might need to be changed to "noindex" and so forth.
After we work on your website, we should see a pretty immediate uptick in your rankings. This depends on how much we needed to fix but there's usually a bump up in rankings now. We may have to wait a week or two for this to happen.
We'll record where your rankings are with the list of agreed on focus keywords.
We'll now start on a 12-month SEO contract. After seeing where your website ends up after we've worked on it, we'll come up with a budget. This budget will cover the amount of work we believe will need to be done to get your website to rank higher.
The reason it spans 12 months is because with this kind of work, you need to work on a few things and then wait and check rankings. If we took care of 30 things at once and your website moved up in rankings, it would be difficult to tell which change had the most benefits. That kind of knowledge is very beneficial, so it's best to spread the work out over time.
Another reason we use 12-month contracts is because new keywords / keyword phrases will appear over time. SEO takes time and if you did all the work at once, you'd miss out on new opportunities during that time.
Every month, we'll be making adjustments to your website. This may include changing page titles, meta descriptions, page names, adjusting headings, adding keywords and so on.
You get 3 reports each month:
As we go through the 12-month contract, some content may need to be developed. Having a copywriter work on this content is in addition to the SEO contract but the time to update the website with the new content may be included (depending on how much content needs to be added, etc.).
We do a check to make sure the content on your website is original and not used anywhere else. If someone has copied your content (this happens often), you may need to have some of your content re-written or else contact other website owners and ask them to change the content they've stolen from you.
With the monthly reports we send you, you get that list of top keywords you can use in new content that you develop. This is in addition to the focus keywords we're tracking for you.
Although we do not guarantee #1 rankings for every keyword we focus on (and you should not go with an SEO company that does do that - I'll explain later), you should start seeing an increase in traffic and conversions. If you follow our guidelines and suggestions for adding new content, you'll see this increase even more.
After step #2, we very often see a very good jump in rankings. This step focuses on fixing website structure and other on-site SEO practices that your current website developer either missed or just didn't know about.
We have a budget on our side of time and resources to put into your website and sometimes we'll go over budget for a month and then choose to do less the next month and go into a waiting period to see the results of the work we did. This is a part of how the process works and each website is, of course, different.
Any work specifically being done to optimize a website to rank higher is technically "black hat." The question to ask here is, do we use techniques that are above board? That answer is yes.
We focus on website structure, crawl budgets, design to help conversion, and website content through keyword research, which is using keywords that your target audience uses. The goal is to give Google and other search engines what they want.
When it comes to obtaining links, we'll use methods that are not typically frowned upon by search engines - such as guest posting, which also provides great content for search results.
As we work on your website, you may need more traffic right away as your organic rankings increase. If you're in that situation, then we can get you that additional advertising and traffic. We can help you with Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and we have other partners we use to help our clients get the traffic they need - even social media posting and related work.
Over the years, we've seen people come in and show us the SEO contract they are in and the "results" they are getting sent to them. You have to be careful here because some companies out there are getting your website ranked for keywords and keyword phrases that nobody is searching for.
Sure, they show you ranking #1 for a keyword but if nobody ever puts that search into Google, you're getting no benefit at all. This kind of ranking is super easy to do, so the $800/month or whatever you're paying is basically for an hour of work or less. You're getting ripped off.
You also want to be careful about SEO companies that will send a lot of garbage links to your website. You may get a short term lift from that but it's not good in the long run... no way.
At Webstix, we're very SEO-minded. When we build websites, we follow the best practices to make sure your new website has the best chance of ranking high. Yes, we're not the cheapest website design company around but we feel being the cheapest is not a "win-win" for our clients. You wouldn't get the results you want. You get what you pay for, right?
We'd rather have you be so happy with the results we give you, that we get your business for years to come and you tell others about what we've done for you - that's our goal and we think it's a great one!