The Best Local SEO Company For Your Small-To-Medium-Size Business
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A Simple SEO Metaphor
Imagine you're searching in an area filled with countless available vehicles that all seem to blend in together, as you attempt to find one that's right for you. With so many choices, how do you tell one from the next?
Consider how much easier and more likely it might be to locate the right vehicle for you if it stands apart from the rest, catching your eye and your attention. You notice it, read its reviews, drive it, and determine it's the best match for you and your needs.
Your website and business blend in without good SEO
Your website and business stand out with good SEO
Of course, that area is the Internet, and those vehicles are businesses like yours, competing for customers in search results. Your website and your business stand out from the rest and catch people's attention by using Google-friendly SEO that improves their online ranking and visibility.
SEO Ranking Factors
Simply put, SEO is the practice of optimizing your website ─ and other online listings of your business ─ to appear higher in search results by properly utilizing "SEO ranking factors".
Google uses hundreds of SEO ranking factors to determine where your website appears in search results. Some of the most important include:
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Content: The quality, quantity, relevancy, and originality of your site's written words (referred to simply as "content"). The better your content, the greater the SEO reward.
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Title Tags: Each of your site's pages must have a unique title tag that adheres to specific rules and guidelines, and should include the most important keywords on that page.
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Mobile Friendliness: How your site looks ─ and how easy it is to use ─ on smartphones, to provide mobile device visitors with a friendly user interface (UI) and a pleasant user experience (UX).
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Page Load Speed: How quickly your site's pages load. This is a function of numerous factors, including your web host, how "clean" your site's code is, and the file sizes of your site's images.
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Backlinks (aka Inbound Links): The SEO value of links pointing to your site from other sites is measured by three of the same criteria used in evaluating content: quality, quantity, and relevancy.
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Outbound Links: Links pointing to other sites from your site. Using more outbound links can boost your site's SEO, as they're indicators of sharing, which Google encourages and rewards.
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Internal Links: Links pointing to locations within your site from other locations within your site. Whereas properly-functioning internal links don't improve SEO, your site can be penalized for broken internal links (i.e., internal links that don't function properly).
Better Content = Better SEO
QUALITY
How well-written is your content? Even if writing isn’t one of your strongest talents, do the best you can. If you use AI-assisted writing (which we strongly encourage you NOT to do), try improving it as much as possible. The better (i.e., higher-quality) your content, the better for your SEO and your business.
QUANTITY
How much content does your site have? Most sites place too much emphasis on graphics, and not enough on content (i.e., the written word). Google rewards the effort required to write high-quality, relevant, original content that includes plenty of useful information.
GOOD SEO CONTENT
How well does your site's content measure up in these four areas?
RELEVANCY
How relevant is your content to the intended purpose of its page? If a page is supposed to be about red tomatoes, does its content focus too much on other fruits and vegetables? The more relevant the content, the better for your SEO. (You can write more about those other fruits & veggies elsewhere on your site.)
ORIGINALITY
How original is your content? Is it similar to the content included on numerous other sites? Is it simply repeating the same information that can be found in many other online locations? Or is it fresh and unique? Google rewards originality, so write with that in mind for maximum SEO benefit.
Google places more emphasis on good content than on anything else, because writing good content requires the greatest amount of effort, and good content is of the greatest value to your site's users.
As you might be aware, artificial intelligence (AI) produces generic ─ and mistake-filled ─ results that don't meet Google's (or anyone's) criteria for good content. We're not proponents of AI, which ─ even more importantly than its myriad other faults and flaws ─ "dumbs people down". We don't use AI for content writing or for anything else, and we strongly encourage you not to use it for anything, as well.
Examine the content on any SEO company's website. Does it exhibit excellent writing skills and unique, insightful information? Or does it display poor writing, errors of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and misused words? Is it accurate and helpful? Or is it more of a self-serving sales pitch that looks and sounds similar to practically every other SEO company's site? (Hello, AI.)
If an SEO company doesn't have good content on its own site, how well do you suppose it can improve your site's content?
Incidentally, the simple multicolor table above demonstrates one method of providing useful, visually-appealing content, while also improving SEO. Instead of including it as a graphic element, which would limit its SEO potential, it's entirely text-based, providing Google with almost 300 additional words of good content. And because text loads much faster than graphics, it yields even greater SEO benefit by also improving page load speed.
"Search Engine Optimization" vs. "Website Optimization"
An important consideration to keep in mind is that SEO stands for "search engine optimization", not merely "website optimization". Exceptional SEO optimizes every aspect of your online presence for Google and other search engines.
Everywhere your business appears online ─ from your website, to your Google Business Profile, to your Yelp Business Listing, and more (including your YouTube videos) ─ can be improved with good SEO for better search results.
Local citations are good candidates for off-site SEO. A local citation is any listing or other online source that includes the name, address, and phone (NAP) of your business. Examples of local citations include your Google Business Profile and Yelp Business Listing, both of which can be improved for greater SEO benefit.
Good SEO = Higher Search Rankings and More Exposure for Your Business
Optimizing your website and other aspects of your online presence helps your business appear higher on the search engine results pages (SERP) in Google search results. And optimizing your Yelp Business Listing not only helps it appear higher on the SERP in Yelp's own search results, it also improves the likelihood that a Google search produces a Yelp result that specifically mentions your business, which provides extra exposure.
Good SEO can do more than anything else to improve the online presence, visibility, and reputation of your business. That's why most companies consider it essential and invaluable, and why you should, too.
A Few of Good SEO's Most Important Elements:
In considering any SEO company:
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Check their Google and Yelp reviews. And look for fake reviews and paid reviews (fake reviews and paid reviews are abundant, and tend to have certain characteristics in common, including sounding more like sales pitches than legitimate reviews).
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If their website says they're the #1 SEO company (as many of them like to falsely claim), ask them what that really means. How or where are they ranked #1, and where can you go online to see an honest, unbiased, impartial, unpaid, unsponsored, independent list of SEO company rankings that shows they're #1? (Hint: There is no list, and there is no #1 SEO company.)
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Ask tough questions (nicely, of course) and request straight, honest, direct, meaningful answers. Perhaps the most important question you can ask is, "What PRECISELY do you do for the money I pay you?" If they answer in ambiguous vaguaries, such as, "We get your site onto page one of Google," don't be shy about telling them that's not what you're asking. SPECIFICALLY, what do they do for the money you pay them? If they can't tell you, or refuse to tell you, or dance around your questions, that's a big bright red flag warning you not to deal with them, and to look elsewhere.
These few paragraphs just begin to scratch the surface. As you might expect, there's much more to SEO. Some of its elements are quite involved, complex, and labor-intensive, requiring the highest levels of specialized knowledge and expertise. Feel free to browse this site and learn more.
Call SEOzone today for a complimentary in-depth evaluation of your website and the online presence of your business, with no obligation and no sales pitch.
