If you’re looking to hire a Houston SEO company to help your business grow online, you’ll want to read this article to help you get a clear understanding of what you need to know and help you make the best decision and investment for your business.
Marketing online is tough for small businesses. Having a website with pretty colors and a cool design isn’t going to cut it anymore. Search engine optimization is essential to attract more visitors to your website, create a stronger online presence, and achieve a high Google ranking. Many businesses, especially small business owners, often think that they do not need the expertise of an SEO company and can implement SEO on their website on their own. The harsh reality is SEO is tricky; making one simple mistake can cause Google to red flag your website and could result in your website being pulled from search results.
There are so many SEO companies in Houston that claim to offer the best SEO services out there, but many aren’t based in Houston. They normally advertise from out of state and even from another the country. Finding the right Houston SEO experts will ensure that your site gets the best SEO strategy tailored to your business and goals, high-quality backlinks that generate traffic, and deliver ready-to-buy leads for your business.
Does this sound like you?
First, let’s clarify what SEO is.
The acronym SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” i.e., the optimization of your site concerning positioning on search engines, in other words, the set of activities that increase your online visibility.
And this is exactly what SEO Company does: make your site more “attractive” to search engines by changing the design, content, and code of your web pages. The more optimized your website is, the more likely your content will rank on the first page of Google and other search engine results for keywords and phrases relevant to your business, products, and services.
One of the main advantages of relying on a local SEO company is the competence and experience in your local market.
The Algorithm for how website is ranked is always evolving and requires constantly updated and specific knowledge in this field. This mainly involves the understanding of the rules for how to optimize and position your site on search.
THEREFORE, a Houston SEO Consultant must have the right skills in different areas: site auditing, SEO friendly copywriting, designing a custom SEO strategy, and implementing the actions that will help your company achieve its goals.
Let me start by telling you that the word “SEO” is deeply linked to the phrase “The most relevant “. In addition to analyzing, measuring, optimizing, and positioning your website, the most important reason why you turn to an SEO expert is that you want a “tangible improvement” … from various points of view.
But what are the main advantages of relying on a valid SEO Consultant:
An experienced SEO consultant knows what to do; using the most appropriate and up-to-date tools and strategies can help your business website rank higher in search engines. Not all businesses and websites are the same, and therefore SEO strategies must also be different.
The SEO expert can help you find the keywords your site should rank for because they are the search terms your potential customers use. By bringing more targeted and qualified traffic to your site, you increase the chances of influencing conversions because the people who visit your site are genuinely interested in your products or services.
Unlike traditional marketing strategies, SEO can easily be tracked and measured during each stage of your campaign. You should receive periodic reports on the progress of campaigns (traffic volumes, traffic sources, positions occupied on search engines, and much more). In this way, you will evaluate if and how SEO brings value to your company and allows you to have a return on investment.
A valid SEO Consultant can guarantee you long-term results (more lasting and constant than, for example, Pay-Per click campaigns). So if your goals are to have long-term visibility online, a valid SEO strategy can be a valid solution.
Let’s see what services Houston SEO Expert can offer you.
The SEO consultant begins with a careful analysis, better known as an audit, of your site and its positioning.
This includes evaluating the structure of the site and its content. The ultimate goal of this phase is to highlight your strengths and weaknesses to lay the foundation for implementing the new SEO strategy.
There are more than 200 factors that influence the positioning of your website on search engines, but there are some factors that have greater importance, and that cannot be ignored. We list some of them down below.
In addition to the analysis done on your website, your SEO consultant will also look at your company, your industry, and your competition. By knowing your business and your audience, the SEO expert can decide which strategies to improve your website’s SEO.
Once the SEO tools have been defined and installed, the SEO specialist consultant can then start executing the customized optimization strategy.
Every SEO strategy generally starts with on-page optimization.
Actions that are performed at this stage usually include:
This search engine optimization phase also includes off-page SEO strategies.
Since these are external factors to your site, you may not have full control over all the resources that help you increase your site’s authority or over-building links to your site (link-building). Your SEO consultant will be able to provide you with useful tips on optimizing your off-page presence and improving the authority of your website.
Choosing an SEO company can be quite daunting, but it is essential to improve your page rankings. There are also some additional factors to consider when choosing the right Houston SEO Company, and we will show you do that.
Choose a company that comes with a good reputation and experience. It is recommended that you use a company with many years of experience within the SEO field. This will help ensure that you are dealing with a company that knows the business and is aware of SEO trends and developments.
Do background checks on the company’s track record. Request a list of their previous clients and check their websites. Many companies will have a few testimonials on their website – ignore them! Essentially what you are looking for is information about the company from their other clients to form a more honest opinion. You must know from the outset that you are working with a legitimate company.
SEO isn’t a simple one size fits all solution. The first thing you need to do to make sure you choose a Houston SEO agency that is the right fit for your business is to learn some terminology about Search Engine Optimization. There is often a lot of confusion around what SEO is and what actions it requires on a website. Sometimes, SEO is only described as the organization and structure of content, but this is only part of SEO. Search engine optimization involves various aspects, which go beyond drafting content with certain keywords.
SEO can be seen as a triangular relationship, where each side of the geometric figure is as important as the others in determining the final result. The three slings of SEO have in common the ultimate goal: to achieve positioning on the first page of Google for search queries that bring targeted traffic. Here are the three sides of our SEO triangle:
On-Page SEO: This is the best-known aspect of the SEO strategy. It concerns the optimization of the pages with adequate use of keywords, a studied choice of titles, Meta Descriptions, and Title Tag. It is used to optimize the single page and allow Google and your users to identify quality content, which allows its positioning.
Technical SEO: What is the use of having optimized pages on a website that is not optimized overall? You will reach the third or even the second page of Google, but you will hardly reach the first page with a website not optimized with On-Site SEO. This aspect of SEO verifies and improves the site’s loading speed, security, usability for smartphones and tablets, and other technical aspects related to the reference CMS.
SEO Off-Page: Each website has a value score given by the search engine. To improve the ranking of your website, you need to increase this score by improving the authority of your site in the eyes of Google. Links and social media come into play on this side of our SEO triangle. The activity of link building and social media marketing are two aces up his sleeve that an expert SEO Specialist cannot overlook. Your website’s internal and external links will constitute a path for the Google bots, which will help them understand the structure of your site, the topics covered, and their importance.
Once you have narrowed the list of potential SEO companies you want to work with, you need to interview them thoroughly. Ask many questions before you make your final decision. What types of techniques will be implemented to optimize your website’s search ranking? Note whether basic steps such as link-building to other sites, keyword optimization, and link and headline evaluation are mentioned.
Will you receive regular progress reports and updates? What will be the return on your investment? Have a look at their portfolio and look at examples of SEO work that these companies have done and their website rank.
If you hear about the insertion of keywords generically, link building, or PR activities, start to worry: as you have learned, things have changed drastically since SEO 1.0. If you hear about content, blogs, search intent studies, buyer personas studies, editorial calendar, performance marketing, and KPI, then you might have a winner and you are on the right track.
Before you start contacting local SEO agencies, decide what budget you want to allocate for SEO services every month. An acceptable budget is approximately 5% of your annual revenue. Hiring an SEO company can range from $5,000 to $250 per month. If you have a set budget in mind, find a company that can work with that budget and will give you a fixed price ahead of getting started. Remember that paying a higher fee does not necessarily mean that you will receive better results or services. There are many scammers out there more than willing to take advantage of business owners who don’t understand SEO.
Finally, in our list of things to understand when choosing an Houston SEO agency, we suggest that you do not rely on an SEO Specialist who tells you about a strategy before analyzing your target market and your website. Each market has different keywords that must be carefully analyzed and different types of users and queries on Google.
Be wary of agencies that send you an SEO quote or post a fee on their website without asking you questions about your business, goals, and history. Furthermore, no serious SEO quote can be sent without a study of your specific sector’s search engine results pages, without a study of your competitors, or an examination of your site.
Think about it, would you feel safe if your doctor prescribed treatment without knowing your medical history, without taking a serious medical history, without knowing your symptoms and ailments?
In this article, we have seen the requirements that a Houston SEO company should possess and choose it among the thousands present in the USA. Here are the questions you should ask yourself when making your final decision:
By taking the answers to these questions into account, you can make the best decision for your company’s future. On the other hand, if you are still at the initial stage of hiring an SEO company in Houston, we would love to show you how we went from a startup to the first page of Google in just 18 months! Contact Us today.