SEO Preston: We’ll Increase Your Sales, Making Your Business More Profitable!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• Do All Websites Need SEO?

  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is almost as old as the public internet. Although the techniques used in the 1990s and early 2000s seem primitive and, in many cases, are frowned upon today by Google and the other major search engines, the principle behind the concept persists as strongly as ever. SEO is indispensable if you want to perform well against the millions of sites competing for attention and business.
  
  However, there is a little more complexity to it. The purpose of SEO is to raise your online visibility and make it to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). But just as crucial is the conversion rate from search results to visitors and from visitors to sales.
  
  If your business is geographically limited, visitors from other countries will be worthless. Equally, a search ranking won't tell you how many of those visitors are casual browsers and how many are looking to make a purchase. Pay-per-click, social media, Google Ads, and Facebook advertising should all be considered part of your overall digital marketing strategy. These channels can work in tandem with SEO and give you an element of control.
  
  None of this should be taken as suggesting that SEO is any less important than it was 30 years ago. It is clear that unethical SEO agencies offering you the moon for the price of a night out are promising you something they can no longer deliver. SEO has become increasingly more sophisticated. It has taken years to get here, but today the focus is where it should always have been, on content. Traditional techniques will still drive your website up the organic rankings, but answering your ideal customer's questions, engaging with your target audience by producing authoritative content is what will convert visits into sales. In an ultra-competitive marketplace, you need to ensure that your website adds value, enhances your brand, explains your offer and keeps you on that crucial first page.

• How SEO Works for Business

  Businesses are too often at the mercy of SEO agencies who make impressive claims about the search ranking results they can deliver, mainly because they are understandably unfamiliar with the way the demands of SEO have changed over the years. Suppose we discount the unethical practices of Black Hat SEO, which achieve visibility in the short term but aren't long-lasting as their services often fall foul of algorithmic updates or accrue penalties. In that case, many unethical SEO agencies will promise outcomes that never materialise. Even those who can present honest, accurate evidence of their successes are not entirely forthcoming because they often relate only to numbers of visitors, not increased business.
  
  Genuinely effective SEO relies on a vast range of factors - Google claims the number of contributing ranking factors is in excess of 200 - but there are four essential areas on which any business should focus to get the most out of their SEO campaign.
  
  The architecture of a site is crucial. It helps determine whether Google's crawlers can find and index not only the homepage of your website but also the internal pages. This matters because when users conduct a search, Google does not trawl through the entire internet - it consults its own index. This is built from information such as domain name, keywords, URLs, meta information, internal linking, backlinks, responsiveness and loading speeds, to name but a few. Sitemaps are beneficial to this process but are only part of the solution. Everything and anything that gets you indexed is worthwhile.
  
  The challenge then becomes maintaining your prominent positions in Google and the other major search engines, and in this sense, SEO is self-feeding. If you publish high-quality content, following the instructive abbreviation EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trust) not only will you build a loyal, engaged following and encourage backlinks from other sites, you will continue to convince Google that you deserve your place in their index precisely because of the value that you provide to visitors of your website.
  
  So, it's possible to plot very clear connections between the initial design and construction of a site, the quality of its content, inclusion in Google's index, increased traffic plus - importantly - engagement, and the continued recognition by Google (and other engines) of the site's significance.

• Does Social Media Affect SEO?

  The simple answer is that there is no direct connection between SEO and social media activity. However, there is a strong indirect relationship. If your social media accounts are properly linked to your site, so that every post leads there and the site itself persuades users to view your social media channels, the effect on your SEO campaign can be significant.
  
  The network you create allows you to distribute your content widely, it extends the life and relevance of your posts, it raises your online profile and increases traffic, it enhances the recognition and reputation of your brand and, where appropriate, can improve the performance of your website. Search engines aren't blind to your social media posts, and the links you create from LinkedIn or Facebook back to your site won't register as backlinks. However, the likes, comments, and shares your posts receive can alert people to your content and has the potential to organically generate backlinks to your domain, which is a ranking factor within Google and the other search engines.
  
  This indirect relationship works because Google and other search engines are focused on finding the right metrics, not just the noisiest ones. Your engagement via social media with readers and potential customers through the value offered by your content generates increasing interest and commitment. This prompts your visitors to quote, share and recommend. They become your advocates, and each voice raises the awareness of your website.
  
  Content comes in many forms - blog posts, podcasts, infographics, videos - and it pays to make use of all of them on your site. It is also essential to provide easy pathways to them for potential customers, and that is where social media is particularly effective. With a couple of clicks, visitors are moving between your site and the various social media platforms, listening, reading, watching, learning, disseminating and helping you grow.
  
  So Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and all the others can be enormously useful as part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, which will build your business profile and allow you to connect with your target audience and increase sales.

• Is Hiring an SEO Expert Worth it?

  SEO is not the only tool in the marketing kit. Conventional advertising, PR, mailshots and direct email are as effective as they have ever been. But these forms of promotion all have a cost attached. Advertising and PR agencies charge for their expertise and imagination, while even direct mail campaigns need design and copywriting skills, even before calculating the cost of production and distribution. Any extensive email marketing programme will need to employ some kind of digital service like Mailchimp or WebCRM. If SEO is as important as most people claim, why wouldn't it also need to be paid for?
  
  There is a perception that because there are no measurable costs in SEO - no ad rates or printing costs, no databases to purchase - it is something that can be conducted on the DIY principle. This is wrong for many reasons, and one of them is that SEO arguable depends more on ingenuity than any other medium. Buying an advertising slot during Coronation Street can be done by anyone with enough money. Making a great ad simply means employing talented writers and filmmakers. Email marketing means hitting a few buttons.
  
  That's an over-simplification, but it does highlight the unique nature of SEO, which requires experience, intuition, technical knowledge, creative ability and the power of lateral thinking. An entrepreneur or a marketing manager can devour books on SEO and have a pretty good stab at it, but it is a very specialised skill, and its application needs to be consistent and ongoing. While a business may not need a full-time SEO expert, it would be unwise to imagine it can simply be added to the job description of someone who already has a full-time role. It needs focus and prioritisation as well as extensive experience and knowledge. It requires a practitioner who remains up to date with every shift of best practice in what is a constantly and rapidly evolving sub-sector.
  
  An SEO agency or freelancer, even if not engaged when websites are constructed, can carry out a comprehensive audit of your site and diagnostic test of its structure, research and improve keyword selection and placement, analyse traffic and attendant data, establish valuable links with external websites, directories and industry bodies, create or commission content, manage social media interfaces, and give general advice on the overall technical development and strategy.
  
  SEO can actually be the most precisely targeted marketing strategy available, with measurable results and the facility to respond instantaneously to changing trends and practices. Agile, versatile, practical, swift and effective - these skills have to be something worth paying for.

• How Much Does an SEO Specialist Cost?

  It is quite common for SEO agencies to be slightly coy about the question of cost. This is probably because they feel it is important to convince potential clients beyond any doubt that help with SEO is essential at any price. Maybe they still believe that charging for SEO feels like a cost too far for the average business.
  
  There really isn't any need for this. Yes, it's essential to explain the value of SEO thoroughly, and yes, it is an integral part of any marketing strategy. But at any price? No. So let's talk about costs.
  
  Our SEO campaigns begin at £400 plus VAT per month. We price monthly because SEO takes time to build, develop, and adjust to be truly effective SEO. Ideally, it needs to be maintained at its healthiest level in perpetuity, although our contracts do stop short of that stipulation. All pricing is itemised and transparent.
  
  Contracts are fulfilled on a rolling monthly basis with a notice period of just 30 days. In the highly unlikely event that you do not see the results you expected, then we'll go our separate ways. However, we are entirely confident of forming a valuable and productive relationship with your company, providing both instant fixes and a bespoke long-term strategy that will exceed your expectations.