SEO Agency

Anyone can learn SEO – there are thousands of online tutorials, blogs, seminars, and podcasts aimed at educating beginners on the do’s and don’ts of SEO, and most of it is free.

Many people, including us, find it a very interesting industry that is constantly evolving – but, if you plan to do it yourself, it’s worthwhile thinking over the following considerations:

• Could you spend your time more productively?


• Are you going to invest potentially thousands of pounds in SEO software, as we do?


• Are you going to be able to carry out all aspects, such as graphic design, content writing, technical SEO, user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) testing, and content marketing?

SEO marketing always starts with research! So, start off by asking yourself the following questions:

Which keywords does my website already rank for?
There are multiple ways you can find out what your website currently ranks for. You can use paid options like a keyword ranking report or SEMRush – but alternatively, you can set up Google Search Console for free.

The performance report will give you the exact keywords your website is currently getting impressions and clicks for, making it free and straight-forward to get started!

Which keywords are my customers typing into Google?
Again, there are a couple of ways you can find this information.

Firstly, you can use Google’s keyword planner, but this will only give you limited information depending on how much you spend on Google Ads.

You can also get Google’s exact information by using third-party software, such as KW Finder, which is much easier to use but will cost a monthly subscription.

Another way we like to find relevant keywords is through competitor research, which involves gathering information from five competitors and identifying if we are missing any important keywords that are gaining traffic for your competitors.

How many people per month search for my services?
When you carry out keyword research, this will give you the monthly figures on how many people are searching for your services in your target area. This could be Liverpool, Manchester, London, or places even further afield, such as Marbella. How competitive is the industry?

Before we start working on an SEO campaign it’s vital to know if we are going to be able to achieve results!

For example, if you want to rank for car insurance, it’s going to take a long time and a lot of investment because:

• You are competing with well-established companies


• They have a huge marketing budget for TV ads etc.


• These companies have in-house teams of 10-15 people working solely on content, search engines, and SEO

At Paramount Digital, we don’t provide set SEO packages as these don’t work in an industry where strategies differ from client to client.

We carry out all the research required and come back to you with a proposed affordable SEO budget. This will be based on a couple of factors:

• Where you currently rank – the further away you currently are from the top, the more work is required to get your website into the positions required to start gaining traffic.


• How competitive your industry is – if you are targeting an easy term like ‘SEO Agency Liverpool’, this is a localised, low-difficulty search term, so it wouldn’t require as many hours of work as a national campaign.

The performance of an SEO campaign should be judged on the following factors:

• Rankings – we track over 150+ keyword rankings for every one of our clients and you should start to see your organic rankings grow from month one.


• Impressions – this is the amount of times your website has been shown in search engines. As your rankings increase, so should your impressions.


• Traffic – This is the next goal once your listings start to become more visible as more potential customers should click on your listings. We can improve your CTR (Click Through Rate), by making meta descriptions, page titles, and schema more attractive


• Goal completions – The most important step is that the increase in traffic should lead to an increase in customers. Unlike other forms of advertising, all digital advertising leaves footprints so we can track the user’s journey right the way through and can then use this information to tailor your sales pitch.

Contrary to popular belief, SEO work can have an impact on your rankings within hours!

This has been tried and tested here at Paramount Digital. We can create a new targeted page on your website with 400+ words of content, correct metadata, and internal links – then all you have to do is submit the page for index through the Google search console. As long as you ensure this work is done correctly, this page could be on the first or second page of Google in no time!

Granted, this will not work in a competitive niche, but it could start generating a small amount of traffic immediately.

That being said if you have purchased a brand-new domain, this will have no authority and could take a while to rank organically, depending on how competitive your industry is.

Here at Paramount Digital, we would always recommend structuring your website, so you are targeting both:

• High volume and competitive keywords – a slightly longer process


• Low volume and less competitive keywords – a quicker process overall

• Your chosen SEO company is carrying out SEO work that will benefit your rankings most


• You are getting value for money i.e. the budget should reflect the amount of work and time allocated to your SEO campaign

If you’re asking yourself this question, you probably know the answer…

There are a couple of key questions we like to ask people who already have an “SEO expert” working on their website:

1. Do you get a monthly report and proof of the work carried out?
One of the first questions we like to ask potential clients after conducting their website audit is, do you currently have an SEO company and if so, what are they doing for you?

Unfortunately, a huge number of these companies tell us that they’re not sure what their current SEO company is doing and don’t receive a monthly SEO report detailing the work done, and any progress it has led to – leaving businesses in the dark about their SEO campaigns.

No matter the reason why, this indicates there is an issue. Here at Paramount Digital, we outline the work we are going to complete for your budget at the start of every month and explain how this is going to benefit your organic rankings. Then, at the end of the month, we send a monthly SEO report, showing the work we have done and how this has impacted rankings, traffic, and conversions.

2. Do you have Google Analytics set up?
This is the foundation of any digital marketing campaign – you need to have your Google Analytics set up so that you can track the effectiveness of your work.

It’s all well and good driving traffic to a website, but if this traffic isn’t relevant there is no value in the SEO service. Plus, if your Google Analytics isn’t set up, it’s a big indicator that your SEO agency isn’t doing the job you are paying for.

3. Are you seeing an improvement in rankings?
One of the most important factors in any SEO campaign is rankings – with no ranking, your website will receive no traffic.

As an SEO agency, we track over 20,000 keywords across all our clients, giving us a greater understanding of how your website is performing in search engines. We can find out which keywords have improved, and which pages have not seen an improvement – and target our SEO work to specific pages.

As well as this, we can also quickly see the impact of a Google algorithm update, so we can react as fast as possible.

If you’re taking this back to basics, search engines are there to find you the most relevant results for your search query. Google, and all other search engines, simply want to give users the best possible experience on their search engine.

But why? Put simply, if the user has a poor experience on Google, then they will search for their information elsewhere, for example on Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Here is what gives a positive user experience on a search engine:

Usability
The website that people are landing on must be user-friendly with fast page loading speeds. If the site loads slowly, then it will have a poor user experience, as they will have to wait a longer period to see the information they requested.

Similarly, it’s good to know if the website is mobile-friendly. If the website isn’t, that will lead to poor user experience as they will find it difficult to read the information on a mobile screen. This is especially important in the current age in which more and more people are browsing on their mobile as opposed to their desktop PCs.

Relevance
As a search engine, Google wants to display relevant information, so if someone searches for ‘Head tennis racquets’, for example, the search engine displays a variety of companies selling this brand of racquets. They deem a page relevant based on its contents, which include page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, bulk text, alt tags, and much more.

Authority
This is how much Google trusts your website. Google is a search engine and doesn’t know your business, so you need to make sure your digital footprint makes this as clear as possible. Trust is built with Google in many ways including, domain age, backlinks, and how frequently the website is updated.