What Does a Local SEO Agency Do?
If you have a business, you have a website, and if you have a business website, you’ve probably heard of local SEO experts. But when you try to find out what an SEO agency does, exactly, and whether you need to hire one, all you get is a lot of buzzwords like “conversion rate optimisation.”
We’ve created this helpful guide to help you understand what SEO is, why it’s important to local businesses, and what to expect from a search engine optimisation team. We answer many of the frequently asked questions by potential SEO clients who are unsure whether they need the services of a professional SEO agency.
Do you want to know more? Call Pixel Juice Digital Marketing Glasgow to speak with an SEO expert to get a free, no-obligation assessment of how search engine optimisation can help your business.
Services Offered by Local SEO Agencies
If you are looking for an SEO service, you want to be sure that the agency is doing everything that will help you get the best value for your money. Search engine optimisation agencies are numerous, but they are not all made equal. Your chosen SEO agency should provide the following services.
Keyword Research and Strategy
One of the most important aspects of the SEO process involves carrying out effective, thorough keyword research, especially for local search rankings. Popular, generic keywords are extremely competitive, making it very hard to rank highly for them. Targeting optimisation efforts on specific keywords that your local target market uses is significantly more beneficial because it not only lessens competition but also helps you attract local customers who are interested in your products or services. Instead of using costly pay-per-click ads, like a Google Ad, to generate leads, your SEO agency should be able to optimise your website for high-value purchase intent keywords.
Optimisation and Technical Audits
Enhancing and optimising the technical aspects of your website design to make search engine crawling easier and faster, as well as to help show your website’s authority and relevancy, is known as technical SEO. Title tags, meta descriptions, and image tags are just a few of the components of your website that your SEO agency should take the time to carefully assess and make necessary adjustments to make sure they are completely optimised. Also, they must look for problems like broken links or missing pages and fix them.
Content Marketing Creation
An SEO strategy must also include unique, captivating content marketing. This involves writing content for your website that is optimised for search engines, such as blog postings, service pages, and location pages, in order to raise its rankings for your targeted keywords. For instance, if a roofing company’s website has a blog post called “10 Signs You Need Roof Replacement,” the site’s ranking for the keywords “roof replacement” and other blog-related phrases is enhanced.
However, Google’s indexing bots are too intelligent for a simple keyword mashup. Well-written and informative content requires effort and expertise. Your chosen digital marketing agency must hire skilled copywriters who will create material that is optimised for you and, with your consent, upload it to your website. Furthermore, content greatly enhances SEO. Google probably doesn’t consider your website a relevant answer to search queries from potential customers in the most wealthy neighbourhoods of your city or the small towns and suburbs close to your main town if you aren’t doing much business there. Local citations are essential to your content as customers in the locations where you most want to conduct business might be targeted by optimised location pages.
Link Building
Backlinks are created when another website links to yours. Backlinks are a very valuable component of off-page SEO because they let Google and other search engines understand that actual people find your website to be a reliable and helpful source of information. High-quality backlinks from reputable websites are far more beneficial for search engine optimisation than any backlink that meets with search engine guidelines, especially when targeting local audiences.
The majority of SEO agencies provide link-building services, but you should work with one that prioritises “quality over quantity” and carries out genuine outreach to relevant websites within your industry. As a result, you not only build local links but you establish lasting, mutually beneficial business partnerships. Also, you receive organic traffic to your website from users who clicked on a link from a reliable website.
Citation Building and Business Listings
Is your company’s business listing optimised for all relevant major business directories in your field of business? If not, this is something you should look for from an SEO agency. Business directories always include a connection to your website, so they can be a good source of backlinks, and having a listing in every relevant directory shows potential customers that your business is reputable and widely recognised.
Google Business Profile Optimisation (formerly Google My Business)
Google My Business (GMB) has grown from its inception in 2014 to become the world’s largest business citation. As such, it is an essential part of the search marketing strategy that should not be disregarded, particularly for local SEO services. You may already have a GMB listing, but you can’t just “set it and forget it” – your listing must be optimised and constantly updated with new content, offers, and images to be an effective social media marketing tool that may deliver quality leads to you. To promote greater participation, respond to queries and reviews placed on your GMB. Effective Google My Business management requires a substantial amount of time, which you most likely do not have, so it is best to hire an SEO agency that provides complete, done-for-you Google My Business management solutions.
Prevent Black Hat SEO Tactics
As a reputable business owner, you want to play by the rules; but, this doesn’t mean that your competitors in the local search results do the same. It makes sense to engage an SEO agency that is willing and ready to monitor your competitors and report violations of search engine policies. By preventing your competitors from using black hat SEO tactics, your business will level the playing field and ensure that your competitors are not unfairly outranking you.
Performance Tracking and Analytics
An SEO expert may want you to simply take their word for it that their SEO efforts are effective. That is not enough. Transparent, easy-to-understand SEO audit reporting is required so that you can keep track of what is going on and your SEO team can find areas for improvement. Customised dashboards are quite useful since they allow you to log in and get clear results whenever you want. Increases in sales and call volumes are the most important indicators to look for, because that is why you intended to use search engine optimisation in the first place. However, your team of professionals should also track SEO performance metrics like:
- Online visibility
- Google Analytics
- Click-through rate
- Online traffic
- Keyword ranking
- Conversion rate
- Click-through rate
- Inbound links
- Bounce rate
How Can I Find the Best Local SEO Company?
When looking for a local SEO specialist to assist you reach your SEO goals of improving call volume and sales, there are a few things you should keep in mind. You need the assistance of an expert SEO service skilled in developing personalised SEO strategies to handle the specific needs of your company. Check out their client case studies and online reviews to learn more and ensure they are not just talking the talk.
What are the signs of black hat SEO?
The term “black hat SEO” refers to unethical SEO tactics that violate search engine standards to get an unfair competitive advantage. Some unethical SEO services might use deceptive optimisation strategies to surprise you with substantial boosts at first, but the advantage will rapidly fade. Even worse, major search engines may penalise or suspend your website, making recovery extremely difficult.
In the first place, you should be cautious of any business that promises to help you rank at the top of a Google search result page quickly. A legitimate local SEO professional will never make you this promise since there are too many ranking elements at play, and Google’s algorithm is always changing. Keep an eye out for these other signs of suspicious black hat SEO tactics:
- Plagiarised material
- Automated content
- The “invisible” hidden text is the same colour as the page’s background.
- Targeting irrelevant keywords for your business and directing traffic to irrelevant pages
- Cloaking is used to generate misleading redirection to prevent real website users from viewing poor material.
- Using link-building techniques or purchasing backlinks to generate a large number of low-quality backlinks
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It is the process of managing your online visibility and optimising your website so that it appears at or near the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for business-related search queries. An effective SEO plan combines on-page approaches for direct website optimisation with off-page tactics that affect your search engine ranking.
Google and other search engines always attempt to match the search query with the most relevant, authoritative websites on that topic. Search engine bots “crawl” through websites and index them based on indicators such as the quantity and quality of material, the availability of important keywords, and the number of other authoritative websites referring to a site.
Search engine optimisation tells search engines that your website should rank high for keyword phrases related to your industry and services. That way, when a prospective customer in your service area types in a search query related to your business, your website will appear high on the search engine results page, and you will receive more web traffic from people in your local area who need your services and are actively looking for someone to hire.
Is SEO so important?
If you are unfamiliar with the complexities of search engine optimisation and how significantly it can impact your bottom line, it may appear nebulous and irrelevant. However, after you’ve seen the results of a well-executed digital marketing campaign, you’ll realise why ranking high in organic searches is important.
When someone was looking for a product or needed a service-based business, they used to contact their friends and neighbours for advice. This is less common these days. Customers now rely on Google to recommend the best options or buying possibilities. In fact, 93% of online experiences start with a search engine, and 85% of customers trust online reviews as much as a personal referral from a friend.
However, simply being online is not enough. If you want to get seen by potential clients and achieve long-term, sustainable growth for your company, your website should rank as high as possible in SERPs. Approximately 70% of clicks go to the first 5 organic search results, with less than 1% of searchers clicking a link on the second page. Your competitors are gaining attention from all the new potential customers in your neighbourhood while you sit around waiting for the phone to ring or hoping someone will walk through the door if you search for keywords related to your industry and location and then have to scroll past many of them before you find a link to your website. This is why SEO is so important.
Why is SEO taking so long to take effect?
If you’ve tried a few search engine optimisation tactics in the past and been disappointed because they didn’t seem to have a quick effect, there’s a reason for that. Google is continually upgrading its search engine algorithms to improve ranking strategies, and sites must be re-indexed to reflect changes in website design. Search engine indexing bots are relatively fast, but when you consider the vast volume of online pages available, it becomes clearer why indexing takes so long.
The exact amount of time it takes to see results from your SEO efforts varies depending on a variety of factors, including the success of your approach and the level of competition in your area. However, most business owners will see visible results within three to six months. Remember that the effects build up, so your 12-month results should be significantly better than your six-month ones.
Is it necessary to hire an SEO agency?
Are you wondering if your company’s website needs search engine optimisation services? Organic SEO solutions from an experienced digital company are essential for every business owner who wants:
- Generate qualified leads for clients and customers who require your services or product immediately and are prepared to make a purchase.
- Consistent, sustainable growth that you can build upon year after year to generate a steady flow of income.
- An increase in revenue, which really says it all.
Expert SEO specialists may provide you with a great return on investment if they have a solid plan that they can modify to meet the specific needs of your company. Your SEO should compensate for itself many times over in a year or two. You don’t require a local SEO agency if you have more customers than you can manage and would like no one else to learn about your company. But if you want to benefit from the advantages we mentioned above, you need an SEO agency that can help you connect with your target market.
Do You Still Need local SEO services? Try Pixel Juice Digital Marketing Glasgow!
Now that you have a better understanding of the functions of SEO agencies and the kinds of services they ought to provide, we encourage you to schedule a free, no-obligation, 15-minute consultation with one of our SEO experts to learn more about how we can help you generate more qualified leads and boost your revenue. Tell us about your general goals and problem areas, and we’ll address all of your SEO concerns and highlight what’s effective.
Pixel Juice Digital Marketing Glasgow is committed to your company’s success. For many years, we have developed and refined a tried and tested SEO strategy that can be tailored to your specific company’s demands. We’ll maximise your online presence by boosting exposure and search engine rankings while you concentrate on the task you want to be doing. We’re your digital marketing ally.
