Hiring an SEO expert or any other type of expert to grow your company online can be a tricky process, so it is important that you do your research and look out for certain things before moving forward with just any SEO. You want to know whether or not the person is right for your business. In this article I will highlight 5 things you should look for.
If the expert has done work in your industry before, this is good sign. If they have worked on other companies that are similar to yours, it's even better. The best would be if their previous clients know them and recommend them. Chances are, if their business grew while they were working with the expert, it will grow further while he/she is working on your company as well.
But don't take my word for granted - do a couple of background checks and make sure to get a list of clients the expert has worked with before so you can contact them and get a general opinion of how the work went.
The more specific knowledge an SEO has on a certain topic, the better he/she will be able to handle the task at hand. For instance, if you need help with a car-selling website and hire someone who has worked with e-commerce stores in the past, you're going to have a hard time finding good results. The expert might know best practices but will not be able to really dive deep into search engine optimization for your field because he/she simply doesn't know it well enough. Here are some topics that an SEO should be knowledgeable about:
Many people fall on the mistake of hiring somebody who promises them the best results in the shortest time possible, regardless of whether or not it's true for their company. You need to know that some activities take longer than others and that what works for one business, might not work as well for another. The best SEOs will focus on your company's needs, not set a strict schedule and present you with a "one size fits all" solution. Flexibility is key when it comes to doing business online and even more so in the case of search engine optimization.
I know that when I hire someone to help me with something, I expect to get a report with the progress so far in the beginning of every month. The best experts will provide you with an extensive monthly or bi-weekly report where they analyze what has been done so far and why it worked. If you are not getting reports, it means that your money is not being invested properly.
A lot of people will promise you instant success with whatever the task at hand might be. That's definitely something to look out for because after a while, if your website traffic or rankings don't increase as they promised, you will be disappointed and feel like you lost your money. It's important to hire somebody who knows how to work with search engines and is interested in growing your company long term. If you want the best results, focus on finding somebody who can create a strategy that guarantees success for many years ahead.
To recap, here are the 5 main things to look for when hiring an SEO expert:
1. Hire somebody who has done work in your industry before
2. Hire somebody with extensive knowledge of your niche/field
3. Hire somebody flexible, not set on a strict schedule
4. Hire somebody who can produce actionable reports that show you what's been done
5. Hire somebody with long term plans for your company's success online
Don't hesitate to contact us if you want help improving SEO for your business! Visit SEMhawaii today & fill out the contact form or email info@semhawaii.com today!
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a difficult process to master, but it has the potential for huge rewards. SEO can help you reach more customers and generate more revenue from your website. This blog post will cover the basics of search engine optimization, as well as both on-page and off-page SEO strategies.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website's visibility in search results. It can help you reach more customers and generate more revenue from your website. There are many aspects to SEO. In this article we will be looking into keyword research, technical optimizations, on-page elements, and off page activities like link building and content marketing.
There is no one way to 100% guarantee that you are optimizing for SEO, but there are a number of best practices that should be followed in order to factor well with search engines.
One of the first steps in optimizing a website's visibility on Google and other search engines is to conduct SEO keyword research. This should be one of the first things done when starting a new site or blog. The best way to come up with keywords for your website is by looking at what other websites in your industry are ranking well on Google and then figuring out what their focus might have been. You may also want to use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Tool to give you more definitive data.
The purpose of the keyword research is to find keywords that will have enough search volume to generate traffic for your site, but not be so competitive as to make it difficult or impossible for you to rank well with those terms. There is a fine line between highly searched terms and keyword difficulty scores.
When it comes to Technical SEO, the most important thing is having a website that is search engine crawler friendly so that you can be found by Google's robots. This usually entails creating good quality content with strong meta tags for each page.
There are three main technical aspects of SEO that should be addressed:
URL structure
The URL structure for a webpage can improve its rankings in the SERPS by using keywords in the URL.
Page load speed
Google looks at the speed of your site. it should take no more than four seconds for a page to load on average; otherwise, this can result in visitors leaving before even reading anything (and search engine crawlers also penalize sites that have slow loading times).
HTML tags
HTML tags (title tag, description tag) should be used in order to provide semantic meaning for the page.
There are some more technical aspects of SEO that can help your rankings, such as schema and sitemaps.
The content you create is one of the most important aspects of your SEO strategy. This is because Google ranks web pages higher based on the content they contain, as well as how it links to other pages within and outside of their site.
The intention with search engine optimization should be for people who are looking for a particular topic online to find you first rather than someone else's website that covers the same topic.
There are a number of things to keep in mind when creating content for SEO purposes:
The title should be relevant, concise and keyword rich. It is recommended to use three or four keywords within the first 50 words of the post as well as repeating these several times throughout your text. You can also include LSI keywords in order to improve your rankings for the particular topic.
The introduction should be created so that it offers enough information about what you're going to talk about, while also including a number of links back to other relevant posts on your site or external sources (i.e., Wikipedia). This can help give Google context and understanding as to the content you're creating.
You should also use images to break up your text and provide more visual interest for readers, as well as help with keyword optimization.
Off-page activities are crucial in order to be seen on Google's SERPs on a regular basis. This often comes in the form of link building. Links from other sites, blogs, and posts provide Google with context as to what your site or blog post is all about. This can result in you being found more often when someone searches for a particular topic that relates to your website's niche.
There are three main categories where links come from:
The more links you have, the higher your page will rank in Google. It is possible that you could get penalized for having too many links coming from one website, as this looks like spam and can result in your site being dropped completely by Google.
In general, it is better to have more links coming from other sites rather than your own, as Google considers this a sign that you are an authoritative source for the topic. The most important thing is to not link out too much - it is recommended to keep the ratio of external site's URLs at no more than 25%. This can be done by linking to other pages on your site, articles, and blog posts elsewhere.
I hope you found this blog post informative and helpful!
The seo title tag is one of the most important factors in your site's search engine optimization. Title tags can be used to attract more visitors, and they are also a great way to incorporate keywords that you want your website to rank for. It may seem like just another small detail, but it could make or break how well your site performs on Google. In this blog post, we'll discuss what title tags are and why they matter, whether length matters, how to incorporate modifier keywords, and how to duplicate main phrase keywords within title tags.
The title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience that is used to briefly and accurately describe the topic and theme of an online document. within the HTML page source, it will look like this:
<title>On Page SEO: The Power of the Title Tag</title>
Now, this is important to know because the title tag is displayed to searchers in two different areas:
If the searcher lands on a specific URL, whether typing in the URL directly, getting there through your site's navigational elements, or finding the URL in Google or Bings Search Results, if you hover over the current tab the URL is searched within with your mouse, you will see the title tag element.
When a searcher searches for a keyword phrase or keyword query, the search engines will display the title tag in their results as a blue clickable element, that will look like this:
When it comes to optimizing your content for search engines, one of the most important factors is the length of your title. In order to get the most bang for your buck, you want to make sure that your title is as long as possible while still being readable and interesting.
There are a few things to keep in mind when writing titles:
If you can hit all three of those marks, you’re guaranteed to see an increase in traffic from search engines.
Modifier keywords refer to the words that modify your main keyword.
For example, if your main keyword is "dog," a possible modifier keyword would be "poodle."
It's a good idea to include the modifier keywords within your title tag that are most relevant to the page you're currently working on. This means if your site is about a certain type of product – let's say it's all about, oh, I don't know – "dog toys," then you would want to include words like ball, rope, squeaky, or treat within your title tag. However, there are those modifier keywords that should always be included, no matter what type of content you're talking about. These include:
1. The main keyword
2. Other important long-tail keywords that describe your page's contents
3. Brand names and product names (if they apply)
4. Names of certain types of content or products (e.g., "news," "tutorial," "comparison chart," "discount," etc.)
There is a lot of debate over whether or not to duplicate the main phrase in your title tag. Some people believe that it will help you rank higher in search engines, while others think that it could hurt your ranking because it looks like you’re trying too hard. Still, others believe that it doesn’t make much of a difference either way.
At the end of the day, it's not something that you want to risk with your SEO if you can avoid it. Duplicating your main phrase is known as keyword stuffing, and Google has said that they may give lower rankings to sites that do this.
There are several instances where duplicating the main phrase within your title tag is part of the natural flow of writing, such as for lyrics. For example, if you go to Google and type in “I want it that way Backstreet Boys” you will get all sorts of sites with this title tag. This makes sense because it follows through on what the searcher is looking for and how they phrased their search.
We generally recommend against duplicating the main phrase in your title tag, but we do realize that there are exceptions to this rule and sometimes you just can’t avoid it. As long as you keep the instances of such minimal, you should be okay.
To learn more about how they can help your site rank better in search engines, check out these additional resources from Google Webmaster Guidelines below:
Google Webmaster Guidelines: The Title Tag Element
Google Webmaster Guidelines: How we Generate Web Page Titles
Your content marketing strategy is critical if you want to rank high for upper-funnel search queries where your industry's audience is searching for informational results. If you do not target upper funnel keywords, your industry will not regard you as trustworthy when they are ready to buy and click on your product or services page. What good is it to rank high for lower-funnel phrases if you're going to have low conversion rates? Traffic is great, but traffic that converts is ultimately what we are all looking for.
We hope this helps, and if you would like to inquire about SEO consulting, please do not hesitate to reach out to SEMhawaii for expert SEO consulting.
