What Does an SEO Company Do ?

A site's rank in prominent search engines like Google or Yahoo is dependent on how well it has been optimized. Numerous business ventures and executives are usually not well-versed with adequate methods that could accordingly improve their SEO ranking. This is where SEO strategists come into play. Experience, roles and effectiveness are culminated to give their business clients a new world of visibility.

A peek into their general tasks [Brief overview]

• Clear comprehension of client desires
• User experience - Navigation, URL structure and page layout for more organic traffic
• XML sitemap inclusion
• Tech help
• Quantitative and qualitative content review
• Knowledge of SEO-friendly keywords
• Providing backlinks to increase the chances of being referred 
  7.1 How to build effective backlinks 
  7.2 Competitors Backlinks vs. Client Backlinks 
  
• Ranking ladder awareness in a competitive zone
  8.1 Website size

Now let's turn this overview into a list of steps. An SEO strategist usually follows the order of these steps to provide quality content.

Step 1 - Communicate with the client to understand clearly and objectively their requirements leaving no stone unturned. Common milestones that are required to be met are better SEO ranking of client's website, increasing organic traffic and methods to achieve the same, increasing online visibility and subsequent sales, and popularizing brand and company's name to the virtual masses. Turning these wants to devisable techniques and executing them is the number one job of SEO strategists.

Step 2 - Attack the navigation, URL structure and graphic design. Why? Imagine entering a website overloaded with content that is mashed together with a complicated URL and designs that are aesthetically confusing. To increase the comfort of a visitor, the web designer has to ensure a level of ease in the website menu, keeping it simple and aesthetically pleasing.

Step 3 - Using sitemaps, preferably XML. Unlike HTML sitemaps, XML's are more specific, allowing the viewer to access specific pages of importance in order of relevance. The added privilege of knowing the last updated date of a website's content is also available. SEO companies provide the website with relevant sitemaps to improve visibility by beating SEO ranks of competitors.

Step 4 - A website's loading speed, friendliness with other devices, plug-ins, extensions and cookies are collectively crucial to user experience. SEO strategists value user experience since their main agenda is to provide the owner with a higher percentage of potential online customers. Also, technical issues hinder the true potential of a website by slowing it down. Hence, a strategist must ensure that all technical bars are taken care of.

Step 5 - We have finally arrived at the most prominent element of a website—its content. Users visit websites to access its content and if that is lacking, then it's better to bid them farewell. Managing content by reviewing its amount and number of pages (higher content and pages are preferred) as well as the relevance of content according to the websites’ motives and its connection across pages are additionally evaluated by the team of an SEO company, along with technical factors.

Step 6 - Using the right words. Some keywords are SEO-friendly. How do you boil down to a narrow set of right keywords? SEO strategists must have foundational knowledge about keywords that are high in volume or those words that are largely searched by web users. Molding text usage according to its redundancy i.e. avoiding repetitive word usage must also be controlled.

Step 7 - Backlinks act as important reference points for websites. Earning backlinks on multiple web platforms can increase one's web relevance.

7.1 Building good quality backlinks - How does one infer the reliability of the backlink included in a website? It's simple. Listing backlinks from credible and known websites ensure this while also improving content quality.

7.2 Client vs. competitor backlinks - SEO companies would work towards increasing the application of a customer's website backlink on as many platforms as possible, and Google's algorithm of SEO ranking most definitely favours this. SEO companies though, resort to manipulative methods of attempting to increase backlink inclusion, which may violate Google's policies.

Step 8 - Being aware of the competition and competitors - The earlier saying of a larger page size holds true and using competitor website's page size as a threshold, motivates SEO agencies to create a well-driven strategy to create their own client's pages. Better the awareness, better the execution.

KEEP THESE IN MIND WHEN HIRING AN SEO AGENCY:

Relatively better knowledge and experience, return on investments, higher traffic and visibility are all the reasons for a businessman to hire an SEO agent. Yet, it is best when the best is brought out by the best. Quality-driven SEO companies with relatively larger offers of all the services mentioned above are in demand. Here are a few key points to keep in mind when hiring an SEO agency:

• Openness - Their level of transparency with their clients is the key. Every plan, every step and every technique must be discussed amongst each other to ensure the two parties are on the same page.
• Sticking to the rules - Google has provided certain regulations to follow in its guidelines so that optimization is done ethically. Customers have to ensure their agents are well aware of these guidelines and abide by it through every procedure.
• Experience with content - A website owner rules his content and the same content rules his success. It is therefore essential to not doubt the experience of one's SEO agent, since they may manipulate and alter the content to improve it. Only professionals with adequate experience and command over the language must be given this task.
• Affordable rates - Finally, the entire process boils down to one intention—profit. A client would most certainly not want to spend his profits, driven by web success, on his agent.
• Asset ownership - Web owners must remember that the content and the website structure belongs to them and while SEO agents might take the upper hand while working with them, they are being paid to do so and in no form are credited for the content. Ownership and credit at all times belong to the website owners.

SEO is an inevitable process if the client seeks visibility in a market-driven world. If perfectly done, it would benefit him or her, but if his agent performs the job shabbily or even worse, fails to abide by Google's SEO guidelines, then the final cost will find its way to the owner of the content and the web page. 

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