Website SEO - Archive - SEO Houston Experts & Search Engine Optimization Consultants

Why Website Management Is Important?

April 23, 2023 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

6 Reasons To Manage Your Website

Website management is the process of ensuring that your website runs smoothly. This includes adding products, updating content, checking for errors on the site, and ensuring that customers can access it.

This is very important for your business because customers can judge you by the quality of your website. Without proper management, this can lead to a negative reputation for your company.

1. Displaying Your Product Nicely

Displaying your product is one of the best ways to attract and captivate shoppers. A well-designed display can help increase your sales by a few percentage points and leave your competitors scratching their heads. It also demonstrates that you care about your customers and their needs. The best displays feature interactive touch screens and a myriad of informational touchpoints. It is the product of careful planning and execution that will keep your customers coming back for more. The most memorable display will be a combination of eye-catching visuals, intelligently chosen interactive touchpoints, and smart shopping cart software. The best way to go about this is to use a top-notch eCommerce provider to ensure you have the most up-to-date technology and the highest quality customer service.

2. Keeping Your Website Organized

The main reason why keeping your website organized is important is because it creates a user-friendly experience for visitors. This is especially important if you want to increase visitor engagement and convert them into customers.

When visitors encounter a cluttered, unorganized website, they get frustrated and leave. This means that they may never come back to your site.

Another major reason why organizing your content is important is that it ensures your website is search engine friendly. When your website is well-organized, search engines can easily understand what your most important content is and prioritize it accordingly.

A good way to organize your website content is to create a hierarchy and group like-minded pieces of information together. For example, if your site has categories for products and services, then group each product category into its own section on the website.

However, keep in mind that your organization method doesn’t necessarily need to reflect your own assumptions about how people use your website. For instance, you might believe that wrenches and hammers should be located next to each other on the aisle for tools, but your actual users might consider them separate items.

You can try card sorting as a tool to help you find out how your stakeholders think content should be grouped. Using index cards, ask each stakeholder to put each page on your website onto a card and then sort it into logical stacks that represent the hierarchy of your navigation.

3. Keeping All Tabs & Links Functional

Keeping all tabs & links functional is a vital part of a website’s management. It makes it easier for users to navigate through site content, as well as helps them understand where they are and how they can go. It also prevents confusion among users, who may not be able to navigate through the site due to mobility issues or repetitive stress injuries.

Tabs are a great metaphor for navigation on the web, as they look like real-world tab dividers in files or folders in a filing cabinet. They are also a good way to visually communicate the different sections of content that are arranged on a page.

In addition, the use of tabs is an excellent metaphor for user interfaces (UI) in general. It’s important for sites to utilize tabs as much as possible, as they help reinforce a user’s pre-conceptions about the way tabs work and behave online.

Make sure that the tab order matches the visual order of your page: This is especially important for keyboard-only users, as they use a tab key to click on links. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that the active tab is clearly visible and readable.

Keep the labels of each tab simple and plain, consisting of 1 or 2 words. This will help users to easily scan through the page and select the right tab without making any errors.

4. Keep Your Content Up-to-date

When it comes to website management, keeping your content up-to-date is one of the most important things you can do. This ensures that your visitors are always getting the latest information and that they feel comfortable visiting your site again and again.

Whether you are using blog posts or other static pages, you need to make sure that the information is up-to-date. This will help you build trust between your customers and increase sales.

It is also a good idea to update older blog posts if you can because it helps to keep them fresh and relevant. For example, if you have an accountant blog and a few years ago you wrote a post about filling out a tax form, you should go back and tweak the content to reflect changes in the tax law.

This will keep the post relevant and interesting to your audience while saving you time and energy. You can even re-share the post on social media or other online platforms to increase its exposure.

Whether you have a small or large business, you need to keep your website up-to-date in order to attract new visitors and increase conversions. When you have outdated information, broken links, or low quality content, it can negatively impact your website’s traffic and sales.

5. Listening To Your Customer & Provide Feedback

Customer feedback is vital to a company’s success. It helps you improve product development, marketing, and operations. It also can help you build a loyal base of customers.

One of the best ways to listen to your customers is by asking for feedback in focus sessions, surveys, and other forms of customer input. This will make your customers feel valued and will likely result in them coming back for more.

When you take the time to truly hear what your customers have to say, you’re showing that you care about them and are interested in them as people. This builds a relationship with them that lasts.

It can also be a great way to identify any potential problems before they become big issues. This can save you a lot of hassle, money, and stress.

You can even use feedback to help collect testimonials for your website and social media. These will show that your brand is a trusted and reliable source of products and services.

In the long run, this can help you stay ahead of your competition and boost sales. Plus, it can also create a loyal base of brand ambassadors who will continue to tell their friends and family about your business.

6. Keeping Your Website Secure

One of the most important parts of Website Management is Keeping Your Website Secure. Unless you have a strong security platform in place, your website could get hacked or suffer from other vulnerabilities that will cost you money and time to repair.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to keep your website secure, from updating the software used on your site to ensuring that you have a good backup system in place. Having multiple backup solutions is essential, and they should be stored off-site so that they are not vulnerable to attacks from hackers or hardware failures.

Another crucial security step is changing the default passwords of your website and users. Using insecure passwords can make it easy for hackers to access your server and gain control of your site. Change your passwords today, and you’ll be able to avoid these issues in the future!

Also, be sure to check for any vulnerabilities on your website and fix them immediately. This includes SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other security threats that can affect your site’s performance and customer experience.

One of the most effective ways to keep your website safe is to use a web application firewall. These are cloud-based services that set between your website server and the data connection, and block all incoming hacking attempts. They also filter out other types of traffic, such as spammers and malicious bots.

Contact us or call us today for any help you need with managing your website! We’re always ready to help! Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best Digital Marketing!

The Importance Of High-Quality Website Content

May 16, 2022 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

What Is High-Quality Website Content?

There are different forms of website content. High-quality content is important to attract potential visitors to your website and convert them to paying customers. Here are different forms of web content:

Blog posts
Images
Case studies
Infographics
Press releases
Whitepapers
Video
Testimonials and reviews

Even though anyone can create content, high-quality content should be well-researched, planned out, and strategically created. It should be relevant to what the user searches for and motivate the visitor to stay longer on your site. You should aim to create the type of content that answers the queries of your visitor. The best way to create user-friendly content is to know your user’s pain points and answer them. High-quality content plays a crucial role in content marketing. In fact, content marketing goes hand in hand with search engine optimization or SEO. Your SEO efforts won’t reach their fullest potential without great content.

Search Engine Optimization Or SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of increasing the traffic flow to a website by optimizing the website for search engines including on-page, technical, and off-page SEO. Your SEO and content strategy should be planned together by appraising three important elements such as keywords, backlinks, and the quality of the piece of content you create.

The Importance Of High-Quality Website Content

The creation of high-quality content should be the cornerstone of the structure of your website. Make sure you strategically use relevant key phrases across all forms of content. It will help attract the right audience to your website, engage them, and make them take the right action on your site. If the user thinks that your content is valuable, he or she is more likely to share it. In fact, high-quality content not only benefits the visitor but the ranking of your site in the search engines.

Quality content helps generate high CTRs or click-through rates as well as backlinks. The more visitors come to your website and click on your content, the better for your site. Google will definitely notice this and increase the rankings of your site. In fact, user engagement is a ranking factor with Google. On the other hand, content that’s designed to answer the questions of the visitor is beneficial for backlinking. It improves your website’s overall performance in SERPs. Creating backlinks to external sites will help the user get a better idea of the topic that you intend to cover.

The Benefits Of High-Quality Content For SEO

People should easily find your content in order for it to be effective and get the desired results. Content cannot be found without effective search engine optimization. SEO includes the use of relevant keywords, internet & external links, alt text, and more. Here are some of the benefits of high-quality content for SEO:

Improved site scores
Finding your content easily
Good rankings for your site
Improved user experience
Reach the right target audience

Get in touch with one of our SEO experts and get started with your SEO campaign to dominate your market! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

How Crucial Is Houston SEO For Your Digital Marketing?

May 9, 2020 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

8 Reasons You Need SEO For Your Website In Houston Pt2

4. It Can Improve Your Ability To Target Traffic

Believe it or not, but SEO can actually help drive targeted traffic to your site as they are actively seeking what you are offering. Because of how commonplace it has become for consumers to search for what they are interested in to find more information about things prior to making a purchasing decision, you can probably see how big of an opportunity it presents. In fact, 62 percent of consumers end up looking towards search engines first and foremost when they are trying to find more information about a business, service, or product that they are interested in. Likewise, 41 percent of them use it when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.

5. It Can Increase Your Authority & Credibility

The Internet has changed the entire typical sales process from start to finish. This is primarily due to the fact that consumers have so much information and resources they can use to learn about different options prior to even speaking with a sales representative. With SEO, you are able to make your business apart of this consumer learning process. This is very true when you are able to combine your SEO efforts with an effective content marketing strategy focused on branding yourself as an authority within your industry of operation. By creating high-quality and valuable content, you will have the opportunity to boost consumer trust and increase your credibility within the marketplace during this critical research phase.

6. It Can Position You Ahead Of Your Competition

During the process of optimizing your website, you aren’t only looking to boost your rankings on the results. Instead, you are looking to boost your website ahead of your competition. After all, the first result on a given page is going to drive an average of 20.5 percent of the leads. Whereas, the second place in the search engine results only gets 13.32 percent. Likewise, the third-place gets 13.14 percent. Meaning, as you are able to get your website ranking higher and higher, you will be able to better position your website to drive the most clicks for relevant and targeted keywords within your niche. This can help you beat out your competition.

7. Improve The End User’s Experience

The ultimate goal Google has is to provide an excellent experience for its own users. Because of this, a lot of the updates they make to their algorithms ensure that their users are greeted with high-quality, well-optimized, and relevant content. Because of this, various technical factors including a site’s responsiveness and speed can play a critical role in search engine rankings.

8. It’s Measurable

Lastly, one of the most crucial benefits it has over a lot of the other marketing strategies is the ability to measure every aspect of your efforts. Unlike a lot of the traditional advertising and marketing strategies you can implement, you will be able to see direct numbers from your SEO efforts. This will give you the ability to see what’s working and what isn’t. You can use various tools like Google Analytics in order to monitor which keywords are performing the best, which keywords are converting the best, and more. Having all of this information ready and available to you at all times can make it a strategy with a significant return on investment potential.

All of the above ideas can have a positive impact on your site’s ability to be indexed fast, and the list is by no means exhaustive. Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO! Click here for the first article in this series.

How Crucial Is Houston SEO For Your Digital Marketing?

May 2, 2020 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

8 Reasons You Need SEO For Your Website In Houston Pt1

Nowadays, consumers typically use their favorite search engines in order to find various things from restaurants they should frequent to reviews on software providers. Therefore, no matter what your business is selling, the audience you are targeting is probably using a search engine to find it. Thus, if you are looking to bring them to your website, you will need to leverage search engine optimization. However, you likely know all of this if you have spent any time looking at digital marketing strategies. However, further down, we will be discussing exactly what makes SEO such a crucial component for a comprehensive digital marketing mix and we will be going over some of the top techniques and tools that you can use to enhance your visibility online.

Nowadays, SEO is an integral component of any effective digital marketing strategy. However, to really get across its importance, we will discuss some of the reasons you should be investing heavily in your SEO efforts.

1. Good For Brand Building

While branding is typically considered more of a traditional strategy and SEO usually falls under the digital marketing moniker, they both require very similar processes. After all, to build a brand effectively you need to look at not only what you are providing, but also what the market is saying about it. Whereas, when you are looking at the process involved with getting a site optimized, the factors are very similar. You need to craft the right content that fits in line with your target audience’s wants and needs. Then, you need to look for ways to maximize links to the content you created from various other sites. If you look to be mindful of this relationship as you are developing your SEO strategy, you will be able to use the right keywords and craft content that is completely in-line with the kind of brand image you are looking to portray.

2. You Get More Traffic With Optimization

While the surface-level goal of implementing SEO is to increase your site’s rankings within the organic search engine results, there is a purpose greater than that. The end goal is to generate more traffic to your website. Even more than that, it is to generate traffic that converts into leads and customers for your business. If you were wondering, it really works. Throughout the entire course of 365 days, this new site’s traffic was able to increase from 0 to 100,000 visitors using only SEO. If you are looking to drive more traffic to your site without paying for it, SEO is the best way to approach the situation.

3. You Don’t Have To Pay For Ad Space

One of the major benefits that come from SEO is the ability to get high rankings without having to pay for the privilege. When you look at a traditional advertising campaign, you can see how advantageous it would be. For a traditional paid ad, you look for a channel you want your ad to appear and you pay for the placement of it. Whether you pay for a specified period of time or per click or impression, you are still paying for it. Instead, consider that you are appearing all of the time for those searching for relevant keywords within the search engine results. While the top portion of the listings is paid to advertise, the remainder is organic. These paid ads are pay-per-click or PPC ads. Being able to earn one of these spots on the search engines for various keywords requires you to ‘bid’ on the keyword and pay every time someone clicks on it with the intent to purchase something or not.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO! Click here for the second article in this series.

Learning The Importance Of Houston SEO For All Businesses

March 10, 2020 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Why SEO Is So Important For Every Business In Houston

Is SEO really important for every business, or is it just a select few businesses that can benefit from it? Is it actually worth to invest in search engine optimization, or will your business manage just fine without it?

If these are the kinds of questions running through your mind, then you have found the right site. Considering our experience and expertise in the field of SEO, we can tell you for sure that the success of your business online is highly dependent on your SEO. Read on to find out the importance of SEO, and what kinds of businesses can benefit from it. We will also provide some resources to help you learn more about the topic.

We’ll start by explaining how SEO works, and how it can improve the rankings of your website, to begin with.

How SEO works?

SEO entails various strategies, steps, and best practices, whose ultimate objective is to enhance your website’s rankings in the search engines. This is why it is referred to as “search engine optimization.”

There are two types of SEO: Off-page and On-page SEO. On-page SEO involves elements such as site speed, header text, keyword presence, and anything else that you can control in your own website in order to enhance your rankings. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, involves the steps taken on other sites that help to affect your rankings. This normally refers to links specifically.

In order to achieve a well-optimized site for higher rankings, it requires extensive knowledge of SEO, the proper implementation of the preferred on-page and off-page SEO factors, and more importantly, you have to give it time. Your site will achieve a top ranking in case the combined power of your site or the SEO of an individual page of your site is more powerful than all the other sites, in terms of a specific query.

Since SEO entails a lot of ranking factors, a #1 ranking site can be compared to winning something like a triathlon. When it comes to a real triathlon, the one who wins the running part isn’t automatically the winner of the whole race – the same applies to SEO. Just having the highest number of links, pages, or visitors doesn’t automatically make your site the number 1 site. What really matters when it comes to the rankings is the overall performance.

Why is SEO Crucial?

Google utilizes SEO to determine which site is more deserving of a higher ranking for every query submitted in its search engine. Thanks to modern SEO, it is now almost impossible to manipulate the search results so that that the site that has the highest number of links or pages, all of which can be generated by software, rank #1 consistently.

SEO is essential as it ensures that the search engine results are justified. It helps to minimize the possibility of search results manipulation and it ensures that the sites that appear for every search got the top rankings because they deserve it. High search engine rankings are associated with extra effort and an appealing website. Therefore, when your site is up to this criteria, then you can expect a significant improvement in your rankings.

People naturally trust search engines, and when you achieve a top spot in the results, users get the impression that your site has the search engines stamp of approval. With a higher ranking, your site will generate more clicks and traffic. In addition, SEO makes your site more user-friendly, which means that thanks to great user experience, customers will be more likely to visit your site.

SEO is also cost-effective. Businesses in industries that are highly competitive can invest hefty amounts of cash on paid website traffic. Obviously, you have the option to purchase ad space, however, in case you have a tight budget, SEO is one of the most effective ways of driving quality traffic to your website without having to directly pay for it.

Is SEO Essential For All Kinds Of Businesses?

If you have found this article, then you might have been wondering if SEO is worth your time and money. Your business may be in an industry where the competition is minimal, as a result, you might already be having that coveted number one spot. Or you may also be having a hard time trying to rank at all and you might be seeking other alternatives to SEO to increase your site’s visibility.

Regardless of your situation, SEO is essential if your company has a website. Be it new or old, big or small, successful or stressful, SEO is important for the success of your business online. Actually, SEO is still essential even if you are the only business in your industry.

The following are some examples of the industries and businesses that might need SEO:

HVAC
Home services
Retail
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Others

Why is this so? This all boils down to one crucial reason: You can control your site’s SEO.

Let’s face it, there are a number of things about your business that you aren’t in control of, for example, new competitors entering the market, how well your new products are received by your customers or your quarterly profits.

However, if there is one thing that you can control, it is your rankings. This is possible with proper SEO. To some degree, you are able to control the number of visitors that your site gets, and this has a direct impact on the number of sales or leads that you get, and this affects the amount of revenue that you gain from having an online presence.

When you invest in your site’s SEO, you are directly investing in your online visibility and profitability. Therefore, regardless of what might happen later, if you have consistent SEO, your business will continue to grow and prosper as you will continue to be visible.

This is the reason why SEO is very important for all kinds of businesses. Also, according to the way search engines are progressing, it is highly likely that SEO will continue being a dominant force in the online scene for a long time.

Does SEO Hold More Significance For Some Businesses Than Others?

You might be questioning whether SEO is of much importance to your site. And is search engine optimization more important to some industries and businesses than others?

Each website has varying requirements in regards to SEO. However, rarely do the businesses or industries determine these requirements. It is normally factors such as:

The keywords that the business wants to rank for
The stage in which the website is in its growth
If SEO has ever been performed on the site or not
If the site is facing any type of Google penalty
The level of competition for the keywords the business wants to rank for
The visitor’s reaction to the website

Can I Stop My SEO Activities After Being Successful Online?

For instance, your business realizes significant success online after some years. You are now earning links easily, seeing a steady increase of customers to your site, and experiencing a high number of sales. So should you stop focusing on SEO once things start looking up?

Definitely Not! Regardless of how much success you are seeing online, the process of optimizing your site should never stop. Keep in mind that even the most established companies still utilize some kind of SEO. But due to their level of success, they might have adjusted the amount of time and resources dedicated to every SEO tactic.

By that we mean that: in case your website is fresh, and you are trying to increase your authority, you might endeavor to build links to it. But after some years, you will realize that you are getting a high number of links naturally. This doesn’t outrightly mean that you can cease building links completely. However, you can consider reducing the amount of time you dedicate to manual outreach.

However, when dealing with SEO, you can never be too sure. At the moment, Google is emphasizing on the number, quality, and relevance of the links to your site. But in a few weeks, it might announce that links do not hold much value and that your rankings will be more dependent on the amount of content.

Finding the Right SEO Firm In Houston

The field of SEO is ever-changing, and it is important to keep abreast of the most recent trends so as to retain your search results rankings.

It is important to have a reliable and credible SEO partner that understands your business needs and is dedicated to implementing SEO solutions customized to enable you to reach out to a wider audience and generate more revenue online.

When it comes to choosing an SEO firm for your business, it is crucial to consider the following factors.

Past Performance

Professional SEO service providers will post portfolios and client reviews on their site. This enables you to evaluate their previous work and determine if the firm is suitable for your business.

Make sure that you go to an SEO firm that is trustworthy. By reviewing the firm’s track record, you will have more confidence in the decision you make.

Area Of Expertise

Another factor to take into account is the area of expertise of the firm.

For instance, you have to first establish what you want to enhance with your online presence and go for a firm whose specialty is that area. Is the firm’s area of expertise SEO or is it email marketing?

This allows you to choose a firm that will enable you to meet your business goals.

Pricing

When choosing an SEO partner, price shouldn’t be your only consideration.

Even though your budget won’t allow you to splurge when hiring an SEO firm, you have to keep in mind that when it comes to SEO firms, you usually get what you pay for. When a firm is offering cheap SEO services, it is highly likely that the quality is wanting.

Professional SEO firms should offer personalized, reasonably priced and high-quality services that enable you to maximize your SEO campaigns.

You can contact us or call us to get in touch with one of our SEO experts and get started with your SEO campaign to dominate your market! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

The Importance Of SEO To Your Houston Business Website

December 13, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

SEO In Houston: Top 5 Reasons Why Your Business Website Needs This Strategy

Search engine optimization, or commonly referred to as SEO is considered to be one of the most widely practiced online marketing strategies. Not only it’s effective, but there is also a wide range of benefits, and we’ve listed below the top 5 advantages below.

Drives Website Traffic

When done properly, your website could end up being the top result in searches. This simply means that if you’ve ranked in some good search queries, you’ll receive the majority of those clicks and traffic to your website. Getting top rankings will significantly help your site with driving traffic. Additionally, SEO is all about making sure that you’re using the right keywords, meta descriptions, as well as title and page tags for your website to end up in search results. By making sure that your descriptions and tags are SEO-optimized, there are greater chances that your click-through rate will improve, which means that you’ve done the hard part, which is bringing traffic to your website.

Return Of Investment

Unlike other online marketing strategies, search engine optimization is none like others because it helps you build trackable and quantifiable results. It doesn’t matter what kind of site you’re promoting – whether you have an e-commerce website or a service page, you can take advantage of this and you can track almost everything in this strategy. This means that you can use the data that you’ve gathered to improve your keywords, descriptions and even perform other strategies to improve your rankings and traffic conversions.

As a matter of fact, comprehensive analytics will also give you more information that’s helpful when building traffic. Information such as demographics, engagement metrics, and other website activities can be traced, which you can use to improve your strategy. The right SEO agency can easily track the paths that the visitors have taken before they end up going to your site. This is very helpful for e-commerce websites as they can help you find the keyword they have searched even before they hit that purchase button. If you own a non-e-commerce website, you can also check these values by checking the path they took before they hit the “contact us” link. Using this information can help you assess and evaluate your SEO strategies, so you can further improve and change whatever needs changing based on the data that you have generated.

Cost-Effective

Contrary to popular belief, SEO isn’t expensive. In fact, it is considered to be one of the most cost-effective means of marketing a business online. When you’re doing SEO as your main strategy, this means that you’re targeting the market who are actively searching for your products and/or services. Regardless of the industry, you’re in, SEO can help save businesses money if compared to outbound strategies such as sending out cold e-mails and calls. While we still believe that cold-calling can still generate money for the business, it may cost 61% more than SEO. Additionally, since you’re targeting the right market who are actively searching for products or services you’re offering, there are chances that they’re more qualified to convert into sales as opposed to other marketing strategies, which means your company can save a lot of budget on this when done right.

Improved Site Usability

If you’re aiming for search engine rankings, one of the benefits of using SEO as your main marketing strategy is that you are forced to make sure that your website is easy to navigate to. A website with great navigation doesn’t just make it easier for your users, but it also makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand how your website works. This means that if you’re planning on using SEO as your strategy, you have to make sure that your site’s overall architecture is well-arranged, which contains other links to other pages for easier navigation. Doing this alone makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and give you better rankings, and at the same time, makes it faster for your users to find what they’ve been looking for from your site.

Increased Brand Awareness

When you have top rankings, this also means that your website will start generating more traffic, which simply means more traffic and exposure to your website. What happens when more people land on your site? That’s right – people will start to recognize and remember your brand. Also, when you’re on the first page of results for your targeted keywords, users will remember and associate yours through the keywords that they’ve typed. Aside from making it easier for them to remember who you are, this strategy also helps you gain trust for your companies as you’re perceived to be trustworthy and reliable. The more pages that you have on the first page for various keywords, the higher the chances that more people will visit your site, which equally means that more people will recognize associate these keywords with your brand.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO!

Sure Benefits Of Houston SEO For Small Businesses

June 17, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

A Basic Overview Of the 5 Benefits Of SEO Houston For Small Business

Search Engine Optimization is a science and art that allows small business owners to craft fast, robust and engaging websites that will rank well with the search engines. When this is achieved, the small business can count on a steady stream of high-value customers which will have a higher propensity for becoming paying customers.

SEO offers many other benefits on the path to web site supremacy. For example, brand awareness increases on your way up. This is because customers begin associating your name with the top-ranking options and this brings with it some prestige.

Following are the top 5 KEY benefits SEO offers small businesses:

1. User-Friendly Websites

One of the goals of an SEO campaign will be to create a fun, fast and engaging user experience. Even though the traditional goals were to improve the experience for search engines, it is essential that your visitors will have everything they need to make a successful well-informed decision when they arrive on your site.

A website that is fast-operating, well-organized and visually compelling will interest your visitor to come and find expert solutions to their problems. Your impeccable organized website should then be supported with top-quality engaging content that provides solutions to the issues your specific audience might be facing. This quality content will keep them coming back for more and will contribute to your authority in your niche.

2. Attract More Customers

While websites have many different uses the real reason any serious business has a website is to help them get a leg up on the competition. Why else will a successful website often be the product of $1000s of dollars of top-quality SEO work? Businesses who have better SEO than there competition soon begin to overtake their competitors and widen the gap between them.

One of the best things about SEO is that it is a marketing plan that can be selected for the precise needs of the company at the moment and then is expanded as greater profits allow for more functions and services.

3. Better Conversion Rates

Websites that have had search engine optimization work will load faster, provide better user-experience and perform the same no matter which device or browser they are being displayed on. The way the webpage performs is crucially important to brand image as online customers are looking for small clues to decide the reliability of an online provider. So SEO leads to loyal customers, returning visitors and more subscribers.

4. Build Brand Awareness

Perhaps the greatest advantage of being perched on the lofty pinnacle of 1st place SERPs is the great brand awareness that you can enjoy. For better or worse, shoppers believe that those companies featured on these choice positions are those offering the best quality, customer service, prices, etc. This means you gain a lot of credibility with potential customers.

Whether they actually click on your business or not, they will soon be back to shop again and next time they will see your options listed again the trust barrier will have been breached. This is why small business needs to take the time to list high in the search terms for the goods and services they are providing.

5. Bypass Competition

Let’s take an example of two competing business offering the same products at the same prices to the same audience. One of them has neglected SEO for alternative marketing options, while the other has spearheaded their digital-marketing campaign with a formidable SEO.

Considering that is the only difference, which business will be generating more customers from local searches? Which will begin making more money from those customers? Which business will have a faster track to their goals and objectives?

SEO is a powerful tool in experienced hands. If your competition has already started their SEO project they can have a considerable head start by now. It could be time to ask yourself what an experienced SEO expert could do for your online presence.

Please feel free to get in touch with the best SEO agency in Houston by contacting us today or giving us a call now! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

Building Your Houston SEO Campaign With These 4 Pillars

June 13, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

The 4 Major Pillars To An Effective SEO Strategy In Houston

If you do a quick search on “SEO ranking factors” that will provide you with numerous answers. There is so much information that is available these days. In reality, although there are probably hundreds of different variables that work together to determine final rankings a lot of information that is offered is only guesswork. And every ranking factor is definitely not relevant for every single business.

Website owners need to seriously consider the following four key pillars of SEO:

Technical SEO: The extent to which your content is able to be crawled as well as indexed effectively.
Content: Having the best and most relevant answers to the questions that prospects have.
On-site SEO: Optimizing your HTML and content
Off-site SEO: Building authority for your website to make sure the deck is stacked in your favor by Google

1. Technical SEO

Although technical SEO might appear to be daunting at first, we are simply talking about making sure that search engines are able to read the content and explore your website. A lot of this will be handled by the content management system that you use, as well as tools such as Deep Crawl and Screaming Frog that can scan your website and highlight any technical problems that it might have.

The major areas that should be considered are the following:

Crawl: Are search engines able to explore your website?
Index: Is it completely clear which of the pages on your site should be indexed and returned by the search engines?
Mobile: Does your website adapt well the mobile users?
Speed: To keep visitors happy it is critical to have fast page load times.
Technical: Is your website using search engine friendly CMS or technology?
Hierarchy: How is the content on your website structured?

If you have a small business website that uses WordPress, then you should be able to check technical SEO off of your list fairly quickly. However, if you have a big custom website that has millions of pages on it, then the technical SEO process is a lot more important.

A lot of what is considered to be “technical SEO” actually is part of your website’s development and design. The key here is to make sure that your developer has a good understanding of the interplay between SEO, development, and website design and how to get a mobile-optimized and very fast website built.

2. On-site SEO Optimization

You need to ensure that your website is optimized at both the individual page level and also as a whole. There is some crossover with technical SEO here, and you should start by making sure your website has a content hierarchy that is well-structured.

One you have a well-structured website, it is a fairly straightforward process to apply sensible optimization. The following are the key areas to focus on:

Keyword research: Understanding your target audience’s language.
Descriptive URLs: Make sure each of your URLs is descriptive and simple.
Page title: Naturally use keywords in your page titles.
Meta descriptions: Create meta descriptions as f they were ad copy for driving clicks to your site.
Content optimization: Use keywords along with their variations in a sensible way in your copy.
Good user experience (UX): Make sure your website is enjoyable to navigate and use.
Strong calls to action: Be sure to make thing easy for your visitors so they know what action to take.
Structured data markup: To improve your click-through rates, tap into the most recent SERP features.

When you are optimizing your website, make sure that your customers are considered. If you run a local business, then using local SEO will be the most important, and your location and address will be critical points to optimize.

3. Content

Content is the king. Isn’t that how the saying goes? In a way, it is true. Your website is actually just a wrapper to store your content in. It is your content that tells prospects what things you do, where and how you do them, who have done things for in the past, and why somebody would want to use your business. If you are savvy, then your content will go beyond those obvious elements and help prospective customers accomplish their goals.

For businesses that provide services, there are three main categories that we will divide your content into:
Service content. What services you provide and where you offer them.
Credibility content. Why should a prospect do business with your company?
Marketing content. Content to help position your company as the expert and place your business in front of your prospects at an earlier point in the buying cycle.

It is very important to understand that SEO is essential for all of these types of content, but quite often is only considered with service-type content. When it comes to case studies, testimonials, reviews and other forms of credibility content, SEO is usually forgotten.

Make sure that all your marketing content is optimized, including testimonials, portfolio entries, and case studies – and not only the obvious service pages on your website.

A solid SEO and content marketing strategy is the most scalable way for you to promote your business to a larger audience as well. It usually has the highest ROI, since there is no cost per click involved – so you can scale your marketing without scaling your costs directly. This type of SEO strategy is not the best for every business, however, it is practically unbeatable when it’s a good fit.

The following are key takeaways:

Optimize your content across the complete customer journey.
Decide whether content marketing is a good fit for you via organic search.
There are still far too many SEO methods that take a paint-by-numbers approach, where local businesses pay agencies to pump blog posts out that are not a good strategic fit for them. Make sure that your content is all optimized, and make sure content marketing is a good fit for the marketing techniques you are using before doing it.

4. Off-site Authority Building

All SEO comes to the same spot eventually: authority building. To a major extent, building authority involves link building. It is true that links are a critical component still in building strong organic rankings for your website. However, links can be the most difficult part of SEO to really get right.

It is very important to make sure you have your link philosophy clarified before starting on the process. That can make or break the link-building efforts that you do. Although link building is a very deep topic that can’t be covered in depth in this article, if you get a positive link-building philosophy developed, then you will at least be ahead of most of your competitors already.

Key Takeaways:

Be sure to build the type of real links that actually make sense out in the real world so that you don’t upset the qualitative aspects of the algorithm, as well as its punitive side.
Make sure you have content on your website that actually deserves to be linked to and rank well.

Summary

It isn’t necessary for SEO to be really complicated. SEO has four key areas that need to be considered, and there is a methodical and structured process you can follow in order to optimize your website.

Is Hiring A Houston SEO Company Worth It In 2019?

June 11, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

The Great Worth Of SEO Services In Houston In 2019

Is investing in SEO worth it in 2019? Does it pay to invest time and money in ranking high naturally given that Google’s algorithms keep changing and paid advertising yields much quicker results? There are numerous advertisers that have claimed that SEO is on its deathbed if it is not already dead. However, to determine whether SEO is still worth it, you should consider what it is that you are trying to achieve with SEO.

SEO, for the most, is a misunderstood product. It is not static nor is it a magical answer to all your marketing needs or problems. In many regards, SEO is a science and an art that continuously evolves. It requires SEO continuously study and notice the trends, patterns, and potential changes.

With this in mind, this read will help you determine whether SEO is worth the time and money. There are 3 main qualitative elements to consider in order to determine if SEO is, indeed a worthy investment.

What Can SEO Do & Achieve For Your Business?

You must have heard that SEO will help shore up your bottom-line. That is true, but only when all the stars align well. It is important to note that SEO is a direct factor in increasing your business’ revenue; sales are the direct cause of bottom line improvement. SEO is nor the end-all-be-all. Instead, it is a strong indirect factor that can shore up your revenue opportunities.

So, What Will SEO Do For You?

SEO will improve your overall ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), thereby increasing the organic traffic you get, and improve the experience you give your traffic. User experience has long been an important ranking factor. However, it is increasing in importance given Google’s recent direction of making speed a ranking factor.

For your SEO effort to improve your overall profitability, your website should handle the organic traffic efficiently and funnel them to a sale effectively. No contact information displayed? No call to action? SEO will do very little to help your bottom-line.

SEO simply sends organic free-of-charge traffic to your website.

Which Is Better – Organic Or Paid Traffic?

First things first, you need to define “better”. There are people who consider quicker traffic as better. Other business owners consider quality traffic as better. Other business owners classify cheaper traffic as better.

As such, it all boils down to 3 categories:

Speed of the traffic to your site (sooner = better)
The quality of traffic (more conversions = better)
The cost of traffic (cheaper = better)

SEO = Slower Traffic Than PPC Traffic

If you are prioritizing the speed of result – essentially how fast you can generate traffic, then SEO is not a good marketing route to go. SEO is slow to mature and yield results. Performing SEO is basically trying to earn your website popularity. When your website goes online, it is one in a million websites to be launched that very same day! As such, SEO is slow to yield traffic

If speed is of the essence, you are better of going the PPC route.

SEO Delivers Higher-Quality Traffic Than PPC

The vast majority of search engine users do not trust ads. Ad-blindness is a real phenomenon and an ever-growing one for that matter judging by the growing list of ad blockers. People are fed up with the ads. You cannot even go to a local fast-food drive through without being lied to. How many times can you recall your burger look like anything like the pictures? See what I mean.

Over 70% of search engines users will scroll right past the ads section and go to the organic traffic section. They perceive the organic results to be more trustworthy and better. As such, when you rank higher, the visitors know that you earned your ranking rather than buying it.

As such, as long you target high-quality keywords and provide high-quality valuable content for your visitors, your conversions will be higher from organic ranking than PPC.

In this regard, if you are after quality visitors, you need to convey a sense of trust. You need to leverage SEO.

SEO Is More Cost-Effective Than PPC

PPC stands for “Pay Per Click” and is indicative of the form of acquisition you get from it. You pay for every click on your link. When you run an ad on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, and someone clicks your ad, you have to pay for the click. The CPC – cost-per-click – will vary depending on the quality of your ad and the completion in your space.

You might spend $0.50 per click or $70 per click when you use PPC.

SEO, on the other hand, is not a per-click marketing model. Once you are ranked on the first page/top 10 on Google, you will continuously receive organic clicks. Importantly, you do not have to pay for every click.

SEO can eventually allow you to get the amount of traffic you get from your PPC budget, say $3,000, all for free.

As such, in the case of SEO, it delivers lower cost-per-acquisition in the long run. If you are interested in lower long-term costs, SEO is perfect for you.

How Much Will SEO Cost?

For you to get the proper picture, it is far better to consider SEO as an investment in your business rather than a cost. When you pay for SEO services, you are building an asset that involves building a website and creating content that will last as long as you need them to. Every dollar you invest in SEO will deliver results that stick with your business. As for PPC, you gain leads fasters but your leads disappear the moment you stop running the ads.

SEO Is A Long-term Investment.

So, now the question becomes, how much is the appropriate amount to invest in SEO?

The amount you invest in SEO will depend on the agency you use given that agency cost vary. It will also depend on your industry. However, you can expect to pay anything from $300 to $500 for local, low-competition SEO services involving a single location.

On the other hand, for national and multi-location with stronger competition, SEO will cost you anything from $1000 to $6000 per month. As such, the appropriate investment for your business will depend on your business goals, the lifetime value of your customers, and your budget.

Is SEO Worth It From A Time & Money Investment Point Of View?

If you have the budget for it, you should begin doing SEO as soon as possible. In SEO, time is a valuable asset. The longer you delay in investing in SEO, the longer it will take to get traction on SERPs ranking and the longer it will take to get the free traffic.

This is the case in one-person shops. In fact, investing in SEO makes more sense for small business operations. You can even take the DIY route rather than hiring an agency.

If you are interested in doing SEO as a DIY project, here are the 4 most important SEO tasks to do!

In a nutshell, SEO is a valuable investment. It is a worthy investment. Given that you are building assets for your company, SEO is an investment with long-term benefits.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Tell us what you think in the comment section. Do you feel SEO is worth it? Has SEO reduced your customer acquisition? Has SEO improved or lowered the quality of traffic you get?

You can go a step further by getting a personalized digital marketing plan to see the benefits you stand to get from SEO.

Please feel free to get in touch with the best SEO agency in Houston by contacting us today or giving us a call now! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

Addressing The Estimated Time Of Success For Your Houston SEO Campaign

May 13, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

SEO In Houston: How Long Does It Take To Work?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an absolute necessity in today’s online world, and admittedly it’s not the simplest of exercises. Any major provider of digital leads or online services has fielded the question “How long does it take to rank in Google?” or some variation thereof. Chances are this question comes up with virtually every new client. While it makes sense as something a business owner wants to know, the problem is that there’s no simple answer. There are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is the ever-changing world and even the very nature of SEO.

Ranking #1 or even ranking at the top of page one involves many different factors, and it isn’t as simple as it used to be as Google has introduced things like maps, snippets, above fold ads, related queries, and more. Whether wanting to know how to rank for #1 specifically or just top half of page one of Google, trying to put a timeline on things is really impractical.

Houston SEO Now vs SEO Then

There is an absolutely huge difference between how SEO used to be and how it is now, and that doesn’t help the confusion around the time issue. There was a time where simply identifying major keywords, writing some content repeating the keywords, and getting/making/buying backlinks and that would be it. There wasn’t much competition. There would be 5-10 main keywords, and they would be the big winners.

That was how things used to be. Normally when we find a client who talks about being #1 for a specific keyword or for just 2-3 keywords, it’s clear they have an idea of the old way of doing things. While this might have worked at one point, to be blunt nowadays this strategy is wrong. The truly big keywords are dominated by 20-year-old websites from established brands. In addition to this, Google’s data shows that most traffic comes from new keyword searches, longtail keyword searches, and most high traffic sites get hundreds or thousands of different searches making up that traffic.

In other words, if you’re completely focused on a small number of generic keywords you’re not likely to rank for anyway, that’s a losing old school strategy.

Modern SEO that is done well will have a very different focus. Between the expectation of getting very specific information to the use of mobile devices for search, to natural language searches due to vocal software, the overwhelming amount of traffic comes from natural phrases, questions, and keyword queries that are three words or way more.

Since searches are becoming more and more detailed for better more precise results, this actually opens up a lot of opportunities. Whereas the “top traffic” general keywords are often near impossible to rank for, there are thousands or tens of thousands of terms out there which have little competition, very few (or no sites) optimized for them, and this allows blog posts with dozens of these related terms to be used and ranked for quite easily.

This is great news. The traffic numbers might be smaller, but when combined they can add up quickly. In addition to this since the focus includes more detail that means your ranking pages will be more relevant, the traffic will convert at a much higher rate, and the end result means more visits, more followers, and more customers.

That true bottom line benefit should be your focus on modern SEO.

Do Rankings Still Really Matter?

Sure, rankings matter to an extent. You have to be found for your website to work for you. That being said, chances are that individual keyword rankings don’t matter as much as you think they do, and contrary to instinct, that isn’t the main measurement you should focus your attention on.

While higher keyword rankings are definitely a good sign, the end result you want isn’t a bunch of #1 rankings, but more leads and more paying customers. That outcome is what you should be focusing on above all else: the bottom line results.

After all, would you rather want five #1 rankings that bring only 3-4 new customers a month, or many middles of the page longtail keyword rankings that don’t look impressive but bring in 25-50 new customers a month?

That should be an easy question to answer.

How Long Does SEO In Houston Take To Work?

Understanding the real intent behind this question is leads, sales, and business and not just top keyword rankings, then understand that the answer is “It depends.” That might not be a gratifying answer, but it is the only honest one. We understand this can be frustrating, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

There are many different factors that go into how likely a website is to rank in a niche. Just a very short list includes:

How old your website is
If your website has ever been penalized
How competitive is your niche
Are you local, regional, national, or internationally based?
How many backlinks do you have?
How clean the coding is
How much good content exists
Does Google see you as trustworthy
Does Google see you as an authority
Is the past of your domain name (URL) clean or dirty?

These are just some of the many factors involved and no two situations are the same, even among websites competing against each other in the same market.

The SEO Process Timeline

One thing that we can give you is a general timeline of our SEO process to get the process going for every single one of our clients.

First Month

Full niche research, SEO audit of your website, figuring out an effective keyword strategy and planning the long-term customized plan that will work specifically for your site and your situation.

Second Month

We begin the technical SEO work based on our findings during the audit. This is important and we’ll take the necessary time to do it right since this sets the foundation for everything to follow. Some changes are quick, some can take months. Generally, technical SEO doesn’t lead to any noticeable changes or surges – but these are crucial to getting those bursts of traffic in the future. If appropriate, we may start adding quality content or building links during this time.

Third Month

This is when the all-important step of content creation really gets attention. This not only includes articles and blogging, but also white papers, filling out website informational pages, and more. Many times the first signs of benefit can be seen by the end of a month, but the large jump from consistently great content takes place further down the line.

Fourth Month

Continuing with the long-term content creation plan, finishing up any technical SEO at this point, and taking care of your site’s backlinks. This means disavowing damaging links, cleaning up low-quality links, and searching for opportunities for high-quality links. Many companies start seeing some good signs of life here, but this will be a trickle compared to another 6 or 12 months down the line.

Fifth Month

Add in social media management, more content-based outreach, as well as PR & media outreach for branding and getting attention from Google for more trust and authority. This often leads to direct SEO benefit, as well.

Sixth Month

If traffic is at 5,000+ a month, conversion rate optimization is looked at to test and really make sure you’re getting the most possible out of every visitor. If not, the earlier steps continue as long-term content and outreach will pay off over time, though that time frame will vary based on niche, area, and competition.

Generally speaking, most SEO specialists will give 4-6 months as to how long it takes to start seeing early results. Most of the time that’s fairly accurate as a rule of thumb, but SEO is a slow burn that becomes an explosion. The slow early results tend to happen in this time frame, but the work already done will continue to pay off months in the future. If you stay with it, then continued SEO efforts will eventually multiply. That’s especially true a year after starting SEO efforts and many companies see a second surge at 18 or 24 months, at which point steady growth based on effort is the norm.

You MUST Commit Long Term

Too many business owners want to make minimum investment for a minimum amount of time. That might have worked in some cases 15 years ago, but those days are gone. Far too many companies badly underestimate how much time, budget, and effort it takes to see the full-scale success that comes with a good SEO campaign. Often times even when companies start out with a healthy budget and taking the right steps, they cancel far too early because they don’t see results early enough.

SEO isn’t something you start at the beginning of a quarter and judge at the end of it. You don’t see major results at 3 months no matter how good the effort, or the budget. At a minimum budget 6 months and honestly, best results come from those willing to put in at least a full year – at which point you should definitely be seeing multiple signs that the campaign is working and delivering rankings, traffic, and customers to your site.

SEO builds on itself, and you won’t see the same results doing it piece-mail as you will with a concentrated and extended optimization campaign.

Your #1 Houston SEO Specialists

We know how to make a long-term SEO plan that will work for you and your business. No more losing to the competition, no more giving up the fight to bigger competitors at the start. There are opportunities out there that skilled SEO specialists can take advantage of and we are here to do that on behalf of your company against your competition.

These are plans that are built around bottom line results: not large lists of non-money making keywords that look good but don’t deliver. We enact SEO plans that get you rankings, but rankings not for the sake of rankings. Rankings which will get you qualified visitors looking for your services, your products, and who become buyers who help your bottom line.

Please feel free to get in touch with the best SEO agency in Houston by contacting us today or giving us a call now! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!