SEO Agency 101

Background of Search:

Different search sites have been around since the beginning of the Internet. There were players like yahoo, alta vista and even ask Jeeves.  These search engines were not very good at delivering relevant information.  They were also the target of black hat tactics to game the search engines and they didn’t seem to care.

Today, Google accounts for 91 percent of search traffic today.  Bing is 2nd with only 3 percent with Yahoo at 1.4%

Why Google is King:

I remember the first time I used Google search.  I was looking up a technical problem I was having on a database server.  I previously spent hours on Yahoo trying to find the answer with no luck.  However, on Google, the first result gave me the answer I needed.  At the time I thought to myself, ‘I would pay for this search engine’. 

Google didn’t just rely on the content of the page to deliver its results.  It looked at other sites and where they are linking.  Basically, Google let its users determine what was relevant.  If someone took the time to link that article I was looking for, then it must be relevant, and it was.

About 8 years ago, Goolge put out a white paper explaining what it takes to Rank on their search engine.  They referred to it as E.E.A.T.  Expertise, Authority and Trust.

Experience

Experience is something that AI cannot fake.  Google is looking for this as it combats low quality AI content that will be flooding the Internet soon.

Expertise

Expertise is about user experience.  Do they have the content that clients or customers want or need?  To they become a source of information around their industry.

Authority

Google is effectively a popularity contest.  When someone links to your website, it is effectively a vote for you. The more votes you have the more popular you are and will show up for customers looking for you.

Trust

Is your site free from viruses?  Do you use a secure certificate and is your company information consistent across the many different directory websites?

Following this methodology will almost guarantee results.

Google Spam updates:

What is blackhat?  This term refers to unscrupulous marketers that want to game the system so that their clients will get the top results on Google.

Early on in Google’s life, hackers figured out that Google relies heavily on links from other websites.  That opened the door to figuring out how to work the system.  One group of hackers created a lot of fake websites.  They then linked these websites together creating artificial value.  Then when these sites were linked to a real site, the results were very positive with very little work needed.  Unfortunately, these sites created a negative experience as a lot of these sites were not relevant. 

Google had a major problem on its hands, so Google started updating the algorithm to look for these types of tactics and low-value linking.  If they didn’t filter out the spam then they would lose confidence from their users and would stop using them.

Unfortunately, the hackers became more sophisticated and Google had to get one step ahead.  To this day, there are still Agencies that use a PBN(private blog network).  If you get caught in these networks, your site might be penalized.

Strategy:

Knowing how search now works and how Google spends a lot of time blocking Blackhat tactics, what should your strategy be?

Google wants to provide its users with a good user experience.  Delivering them relevant content for what their clients are searching for.  In turn, it wants the websites that it delivers to be relevant and informational. 

SEO really is a content marketing strategy.  Not only providing great onsite content but also great content that links to your site.  It really is that simple.

Content Development:

You need to have relevant content related to what your potential clients are looking for.  A good place to find the type of content, is to do a search on what you think customers would use to find your business.  Let’s use the search term ‘Pain free Dentistry’.

Here Google tells you exactly what your client’s customer are asking.  You can then develop content around answering these questions.  This is unique content both on your website and content that would like to your site from other sites.  As this establishes you as an authority, then the potential clients will trust you and your services or products.

Workflow management:

Managing the content and SEO tasks can be the most time-consuming part of SEO.  Setting up your SEO strategy has many moving parts, creating the strategy, creating content, reviewing, posting, and verifying takes up a lot of time.  Many agencies still use spreadsheets or project management software that doesn’t really help.

At LiftMyRank we use custom made technology so that we can provide the most cost-effective solution for our partners.

Reviewing Progress:

We all know Google moves slowly.  It takes time to see the effects of content and links as well as technical fixes to reflect on search rankings.  Your SEO strategist will continue to monitor and be alerted of any movement in Search.

Reporting:

This can be the 2nd most time-consuming task of the SEO agency.  Pulling data from Analytics and Google Search Console to get the full view of the results of better rankings is key.  Some agencies will only provide this data once a month or once a quarter.  Having an online reporting page will allow the agency to spend time on other tasks directly relating to helping their clients get results and more customers.

Accountability:

Accountability isn’t just for results, but for the type of work being delivered and the time spent for their clients.  Agencies need to show value in the work they are doing.  Some questions to ask yourself as an agency.

1. Is the content low quality or does it provide value.
2. Are your link-building tactics white hat?
3. Do you do true outreach or rely on Private blog networks(PBN)
4. Are you transparent with your tasks.