Search engine optimization can benefit many businesses looking to expand their online presence and drive more targeted traffic to their websites. Unfortunately, the SEO industry is not known for its transparency, which can be confusing for businesses as they wonder what exactly they are getting for their investment.

The SEO industry also attracts many cowboys who engage in “black practices” that violate Google and other search engine guidelines. You need to make sure that your search engine optimization is done using ethical “white hat” methods.

Companies that hire SEO experts who use such methods without their knowledge may achieve short-term success until Google discovers the traces left by these methods, in which case they will notice a negative effect on search engine rankings. Black Hat SEO offers quick fixes and is usually long gone by that time!

What is a “black hat”?

The term “black hat” comes from old western movies where the bad guys always wore black hats! Since the good guys wore white hats, you may hear of ethical search engine optimization as “white hat”. Remember, the bad guys always get what they deserve!

What does search engine optimization need to do for your business?

It is important that you know exactly what your search engine optimization will do for you and how it will give you measurable results. Beware of any search engine optimization that offers guaranteed rankings – it is impossible to guarantee rankings on Google or any other search engine!

Any SEO that can guarantee results without even knowing what keywords you want to target is using this as a marketing ploy – how can they guarantee results if you want to compete for Apple, Google or Facebook search terms!

Without researching keywords, it is impossible to determine the likelihood of success of an SEO campaign and how long it will take. Search engine optimization is a continuous process of searching, testing and analyzing. It takes careful planning to identify the best keywords and then develop a solid ranking strategy for those keywords.

Onsite and offsite search engine optimization

Search engine optimization considers both onsite and offsite factors. Onsite SEO involves analyzing your website. Numerous factors are taken into consideration, including the structure of the website, the use of keywords, the content of the website, the page load time, and the HTML and CSS code on which the website is built. Good website search engine optimization benefits the end-user and also helps avoid technical “mistakes” that search engines don’t like, such as duplicate content.

A good SEO specialist will first analyze your website and make recommendations on how to improve and optimize the website for users and search engines. Off-site referencing is about creating relevant backlinks between other websites and your own.

Each backlink is counted as a vote for your website by search engines. Sites are given an authority rating called a page rank. Each time a site links to you, it shares a small portion of its Page Rank with you, with links from high authority sites sharing a larger portion of that Page Rank than links from lower authority sites. Inbound links to a site are called backlinks.

To follow or not to follow

Some links have no authority, many links have a nofollow attribute that tells search engines not to count that link as a vote. Webmasters and bloggers can add this attribute themselves if they don’t want their link to count as a vote for an external site, or it can be added automatically by the platform they use to publish their content. This often happens when a site invites users to add comments or content, and the webmaster has little control over the links created by site members.

Links without a nofollow attribute are referred to as “do follow” and transfer your site’s ranking to the page they link to. There is no dofollow attribute in HTML, dofollow is used by default when the Nofollow attribute is missing. You should never dofollow on internal links, as this would cause any page rank that would have been passed to that link to simply evaporate!

Where did you find these links?

You should ask your SEO expert how they build backlinks. A good SEO professional will work to create a diverse portfolio of backlinks for you. This portfolio should contain high-quality links that are in the main text, such as blog posts. These usually have the highest rankings, but also require the most work, as the SEO expert will need to contact blog owners and often create content themselves.

A good SEO specialist pays more attention to quality than quantity. It is best to avoid those who promise a large number of links. Search engines like to see “natural love links”, a few high-quality links are much more valuable than many low-quality links.

Other link-building strategies include using quality business directories, commenting on blogs and forums, and using social media and bookmarking sites.

It is best to avoid link exchanges as these reciprocal links are not like natural links. Search engines can view the internet as a series of interconnected nodes and easily recognize these unnatural patterns.

Your business, your needs

Your SEO specialist should discuss your business needs and goals with you and try to learn as much as possible about your target group. Otherwise, they are unlikely to choose keywords that will attract and convert the right target group for your business. You need to do thorough keyword research and be able to identify the keywords that generate the right traffic. Traffic is useless if it doesn’t convert!

Added Value

Google SEO specialists should also be able to research your competitors and tell you what keywords they are targeting and how long it will likely take them to compete for the same keywords. They should also be able to develop alternative strategies if those keywords are too competitive for your budget, or to generate traffic while you work to compete for your main keywords.

SEO takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight. Your SEO specialist should be able to provide you with a monthly report showing your progress in the search engine results for your keywords. They should also be able to run online advertising campaigns on your behalf and create content and copy for your website.

Many SEO specialists can also do social media advertising for you and advise you on other internet marketing techniques, such as building mailing lists for email campaigns.

Bottom line

Prices for SEO vary considerably. Some agencies charge more than 1000 euros per month! A small business should be able to find a decent SEO specialist for around 300 per month. It depends on the scope of services you want, but for 300, you should get a good campaign for 5 keywords.

The first month is usually a bit more expensive, as this is when on-site SEO, keyword research, and competitor research is done.

Some SEO companies offer very cheap services like zhanglianlei. You get what you pay for and remember that SEO takes time as it involves a lot of research, analysis, and content creation.