Category: Search Optimization (SEO)

In this competitive market, small businesses are always looking for strategies that can give them an edge with search engines. Many believe that social signals are a secret weapon in this fight for search engine superiority.

What are SEO social signals? And what is the importance of social media in SEO?

Here’s what you need to know about social signals for SEO, what search engines have to say about SEO social signals, and how social media helps SEO.

What Are Social Signals in SEO?

Put simply, social signals are indicators that tell search engines when a piece of content is engaged in a certain way on social media platforms. This engagement generally takes the form of likes, shares, comments, and retweets, thus showing that the corresponding page contains valuable, high-quality information.

How Does Social Media Help SEO?

Determining social media impact on SEO is an equation many marketers are still trying to figure out. Frankly, most marketing experts don’t explicitly know how social media helps SEO rankings.

Like most SEO factors, major search engines have not revealed exactly how closely social media and SEO are tied together. In 2014, Matt Cutts (a Google representative at the time) explained that Social Signals were not a signal in Google’s ranking algorithm, but their ability to incorporate social signals for SEO may change in the future.

Despite the apparent ambivalence towards social signals, several case studies have been conducted that suggest there may be more to how social signals affect search rankings than Google is telling us. Some of the conclusions drawn from these studies include:

• Tweets from high-authority Twitter users produce short but powerful ranking boosts.
• Google disproportionately rewards pages with high numbers of +1s on Google+. This type of social signal tends to produce longer-term ranking benefits.
• Facebook likes and shares have a positive impact on page rank for relevant keywords.

Taking this research one step further, an experiment conducted using six brand-new websites offered some quantifiable insights into the amount of impact social signals could have. Based on that experiment, 300 Google +1s improved page ranks by 9.4 percent, while 100 Google Plus followers had an impressive 14.6 percent beneficial impact.

Facebook had slightly lower effects, with 70 shares and 50 likes producing a ranking boost of 6.9 percent. Twitter placed last, with 50 retweets yielding only a 2.9 percent ranking improvement.

Finally, one of the most in-depth experiments done to date (by Cognitive SEO) looked at 300,000 pieces of content, coming from 34,000 randomly chosen keywords that ranked on Google in positions 1 to 10 between May and June of 2016.

The following two findings resulted from the research.

Strong Presence on Social Networks Is Correlated with Better Rankings

The cognitive SEO report indicates that “on average, presence on social networking sites (which includes likes, shares, and comments on Facebook, plus shares on Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest) is negatively associated with site rank, and the relationship is close to linear (and perfectly linear for the first 5 ranks). This means that, in general, the smaller the rank number is (so, the higher up the website), the higher the chances are that the average presence on a social network is larger.”

Higher Rankings are Correlated with Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn High Shares Altogether

In addition to social media presence, the report states that “Facebook (overall activity, including likes, shares, and comments) and Google+ are the closest to a perfectly linear relationship, each with 2 “deviations” from the expected values. LinkedIn’s relation to site rank is decidedly less linear, although the overall trend still holds true.”

Social Signals Are an Indirect Factor for SEO

It’s important to note that these studies, experiments, and reports indicate a correlation, not a cause and effect relationship. Regardless of whether Google explicitly tells us that social signals are a direct factor in SEO rankings, we know that they can be an indirect factor.

We know that references and citations, usually in the form of links, play into Google’s algorithm. We can be fairly certain that while social media links may not count the same as links from authoritative sources, they are counted, and a high number of social signal links should have a positive impact on your rankings.

Also, creating engagement with your website through the savvy use of social media can increase traffic, lower your bounce rate, lead to longer dwell-time on your website, and more repeat visits. All these factors are important in how Google and other search engines view your website and ultimately where it should be returned in search results.

Using Social Media for SEO

Unlike some aspects of SEO, it is relatively easy for businesses to begin using social signals to get traffic to their sites. The first step is to create pages for your business on every major social media platform, being sure to use your focus keywords in your page name and description. Next, you need to begin posting.

Depending on the size of your following, you should post anywhere from several times per month to twice per day. The volume of posts should increase with the size of your following.

Finally, you should equip pages on your website with “share” buttons for the major social media platforms to make it easier for visitors to share your site with their friends.

All this posting will also give you the opportunity to drive traffic directly to blog posts, offer pages and email sign-ups on your site from social media platforms. The better the content that you share and the more active you are on social media, the more traffic that you can drive to your website.

In addition, a larger social media following can also help you build a targeted audience for your remarketing efforts. Ultimately, knowing how to use social media for SEO begins with mastering the basics.

Your Take-Away About Social Media and SEO

Knowing how to use social media for SEO will allow you to generate visitors, leads, and ultimately revenue from your website. And in theory it’s simple; you post engaging posts on your business social media profiles, people share it, and you generate more traffic and higher rankings for your website. Social signals SEO isn’t hard to execute, it just takes dedication and focus.

The difficulty for many small to mid-sized businesses comes from planning and executing the social media SEO strategy that will be necessary to generate content that is truly shareable.

In addition to creating the content, managing multiple social media profiles can be a very time-consuming endeavor and can often lead to a failure to launch for your content marketing and social media marketing plans.

If you’re interested in launching an effective social media SEO strategy for your business, but don’t have the internal resources or time to manage it in-house, we highly recommend that you consider working with MARION. We’re a full-service marketing agency that offers highly rated SEO services for your websites, ensuring that customers find you organically. Based in Houston, we have decades of experience creating beautiful experiences.

Contact us today so we can focus on optimizing your social media and SEO to generate relevant leads.

It’s no great secret that a good content marketing strategy will set you apart from the competition and entice your audience to stick around for future content.  From lead generation to customer engagement, creating relevant and useful content consistently can have amazing benefits for your business blog.  

If your business blog doesn’t have a content strategy set in place, you’re already behind the curve. And even if you’ve laid the ground work for an effective strategy, you’ll still need a way to stay organized. That’s where a content marketing calendar comes into play.

What is an editorial calendar?

A content calendar (or editorial calendar) is a schedule of content you plan to create and publish for your audience to consume through reading, watching or listening. A content marketing calendar will keep you on track and ensure your content continues to flow without interruption.

Often, you’ll need a content calendar for two aspects of your business blog — blog posts and social media. With that being said, let’s dive into creating editorial calendars for both.

Creating a blog editorial calendar

Your blog is often where you’ll create the lion’s share of your content. High-quality blog posts draw in your audience and keep them coming back for more. Let’s examine the process of setting up your blog content calendar.

1. Brainstorm blog post ideas

One of the worst times to come up with a blog post idea is when you’re pressed by a deadline. Therefore you should draft up your blog posts early. You should aim for ten blog posts every time you sit down for a brainstorming session. Don’t hold yourself back during this process. Jot down anything and everything that comes to mind. You can tweak the details later.

2. Identify your audience

This one isn’t hard to figure out. Your customer is your audience, plain and simple. Before you begin writing your first blog post you should know exactly who you’re targeting. If you’re targeting CEOs in the greater Houston area, your writing should be professional and business savvy to remain effective at business to business marketing in Houston, TX. If you’re targeting young teens, using fun language and writing with a relaxed and humorous voice may be the way to go. Often your audience will determine your writing style for a particular post.

3. Determine your posting schedule

Figure out how often you should post to your blog. You can post as often as once a day or as little as once a month. The key here is to stay consistent. It’s better to post once or twice a month on a consistent basis as opposed to randomly posting whenever you feel like it. There are plenty of examples out there of successful blogs that post only once or twice a month. However, they do so consistently month after month and provide immense value with each post.

4. Creating a content calendar

Knowing how to make a content calendar to keep you on track with your content marketing schedule is the most crucial step in the process. Now you have to find the right program to schedule your posts. There are many great programs out there that will allow you to build your blog editorial calendar easily.

Asana is one of the best project management websites out there. You can easily load up the calendar with your blog posts and get email notifications when the due dates approach. It even comes with an app so you can stay organized while you’re on the go!

SEMrush has also recently created a new marketing calendar feature within their suite of SEO and content marketing tools. The marketing calendar allows you to share internal calendars with you team, create and track tasks for team members, and customize certain aspects of your calendar presentation. Any Houston SEO firm will tell you that SEMrush is a highly useful and widely used tool, so including their new calendar in your content marketing process is an easy decision.

Google calendar is also an excellent choice for creating any number of editorial calendars. Simply fill out the fields on the desired due dates and you’ll be able to stay on track for all future blog posts. These are just three of many project management tools that you can repurpose for content calendar creation.

Creating a social media editorial calendar

Scheduling your blog posts is just one part of the equation. You’ll also have to schedule your social media posts. The concepts between the two are very similar, but the process can slightly differ while creating an editorial calendar for social media.

1. Find what content resonates with your audience

When it comes to social media, your audience will let you know what they like and what they don’t like by the amount of engagement you get on a particular post. Therefore, you should scour the popular social media accounts in your niche and find the blog posts that get the most likes and shares. From there you can model your own posts based on the most shared content on social media from comparable accounts.

2. Figure out how often you should post

There are so many social media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) out there it can be challenging to keep track of how often you can post on each one. Furthermore, the posting frequency of your social media campaigns is often influenced by your audience, your campaign, your business and much more.

Avoid spamming your social media accounts with endless posts. The fastest way to lose followers is to spam your accounts. Also, ensure that your posts are relevant to your audience. The more relevant and engaging your posts are, the more positively they will impact your social signals for SEO.

Learning how frequently you should plan to publish posts within your social media marketing content calendar can be difficult. Here are some rules of thumb for how often you should post:

Pinterest: 5-10 per day

Facebook: 3-10 times per week

LinkedIn: 2 – 5 per week

Google+: 3-10 times per week

Twitter: At least five times a days

3. Create or borrow content to share

The beauty of social media is that all parties involved benefit when you share someone else’s work. For example, sharing an excellent blog post on how to grow your social media following doesn’t only bring more awareness to the author of the original post, but it also allows you to meet your own content goals. Furthermore, your audience gets to read great, relevant content. Everyone wins. So don’t be shy to share articles outside of your own site. Of course, don’t forget to give credit if your borrowed content doesn’t have a link.

4. Creating a social media calendar

As mentioned earlier, SEMrush and Google calendar are excellent choices for organizing your blog content. However, one of the best tools for posting to social media is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is an all-in-one tool that allows you to post to all of your social media platforms, which can be very convenient if you don’t want to go through having to post to all of your separate social media accounts individually.

Hootsuite supports Linkedin, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and WordPress blogs. It’s an excellent tool that allows you to pre-schedule posts in advance, eliminating the stress of having to post manually on a daily basis. Hootsuite is one among many social media scheduling tools out there, so do your research to find what best suits you.

Creating a content marketing calendar is essential for your business blog

If there’s one takeaway you can glean from this article it’s this — consistency is key. The devil is certainly in the details as you’re planning out your content strategy, but posting on a consistent basis will be what truly keeps your readers coming back for more.

Looking to eliminate the hassle of marketing your own content? At Marion, our Houston marketing agency offers specialized content marketing services that help increase traffic to your blog and reach more prospects on through your social media marketing channels.

Interested in working with our top-rated team? Contact MARION today and let’s meet your content marketing goals together.

We’ve all heard it before, SEO (search engine optimization) is essential for your business. If you optimize your website according to local SEO best practices, you’re more likely to rank well in Google. Better rankings will drive more traffic to your website and subsequently through the front doors of your business.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a strategic way to market your business online. Local search engine optimization helps businesses promote products and services to local area customers when they search for them. Every day, millions of potential customers conduct searches to find nearby businesses whose services they need.

When it comes to local search engine optimization you must narrow your focus. The core of a thriving local business SEO campaign is optimizing your online presence so that local customers can easily find you.

The Benefits of Local SEO

The advantage local search engine optimization holds over “regular” SEO is that it’s easier to rank in a certain city or region if you have a physical address in that location. Understanding the importance of local SEO for your business can ultimately help you generate more leads from potential clients in your locality.

Contact MARION today to learn how our Houston SEO company can help you achieve the growth you’re looking for.

How to Do Local SEO

Now that you understand the benefits, let’s take an in-depth look at a few Local SEO best practices so that you can figure out how to do local SEO for your business properly.

Offline Optimization

Local SEO marketing extends even into the offline realm. Traditional marketing can be a great approach to establishing an online presence for your business. For example, let’s say you send direct mail to several neighborhoods promoting your business. At the bottom of your promotion, you append your social media (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.). As a result of your direct mail campaign, your social media following may increase substantially. If you add your website URL to the promotion you may see a boost in website traffic.

Applying local SEO best practices to billboards, radio ads, and TV commercials can also enhance relevant website traffic. Posting your website and social media handles in your traditional marketing campaigns can have a very real effect on your local SEO due to the potential online traffic that may result.

Good Content Marketing

As with all SEO, good content is still king. Creating high-quality articles will drive traffic and encourage your followers to share your posts. You can improve your local rankings by writing numerous articles with targeted local keywords.  For example, your content marketing efforts can include an article about “6 strategies for marketing your small business in Houston, TX.” Such an article is perfect for targeting the location-specific keywords you need to rank well for your local area.

To figure out where to start with your content, do an SEO marketing analysis. Use the results to drive your strategy.

Add Service and Location Pages

Adding service and location pages allows you to add additional, targeted content for search engines to crawl and rank. For example, let’s say you run a bakery in Houston. You can create a page on your website titled “Best bakery in Houston!” You can then add some content about the community that includes pictures of local projects and so on. Don’t forget to add a call to action to the bottom of the page!

Include Your NAP

NAP stands for “Name, Address, and Phone Number” and you’ll want to have this information in the footer of every page on your website. This helps search engines tie each page back to your location and is another excellent way to boost your SEO for local visibility. This will also help potential customers easily find your contact information and is more evidence of the importance of local SEO.

Fix Your Online Listings

There’s a good chance that your website, along with your NAP, is listed on dozens, if not hundreds, of sites online. These sites include directories, review sites, social media platforms and so on. Therefore, you should hunt for inconsistencies and inaccuracies regarding your business NAP.

Even the smallest inconsistency can cause issues. For example, let’s say a listing claims you’re located at “1234 Westheimer Rd. Houston, TX” on five directory sites. However, let’s say another five sites lists your address as “1234 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX.” Even this small and seemingly meaningless inconsistency (“Rd.” vs. “Road”) can be detrimental to your local search engine optimization.

There are hundreds of directories that list business information all over the internet.  To effectively manage this, MARION became Yext Certified Partners.  The partnership with Yext allows us to efficiently and effectively ensure all business citations across the internet have the correct business information.

Ask for Reviews

In today’s digital world, your online reputation is more important than ever before. Reviews help to spread your reputation. Thus, you should incorporate a system into your online marketing process that allows you to gather as many reviews as you can.

As a local business, here are a few questions you should ask yourself as you’re attempting to gather reviews from your customers:

• Do you have a feedback system that actively gathers reviews from your customers?
• Does that system generate a steady flow of online reviews?
• Do you leverage the hard work you put in every day to turn your customers into raving fans so that they loyally refer your business to their friends and family?
• Do you promote your great reputation in your marketing efforts?
• Are you monitoring what people are saying about your business?

Typically speaking, the more reviews you receive amongst various sources (social media, review sites, etc.) the more significant the impact on your local SEO. For the best results, learn how to ask for a Google review.

Optimize Your “Google My Business” Listing

Out of all the search engines in the world today, most of your organic traffic will come from Google. Google My Business allows business owners to list their companies on Google. It’s crucial that you completely fill out your profile and add high-quality photos. To amplify your local SEO marketing, every listing and citation that you have online should match your “Google My Business” listing exactly.

Enable and Encourage Social Sharing

Your SEO always receives a boost when people share your links around the internet. When people share your content, they create backlinks that send traffic back to your site. The more quality backlinks you have, the more likely you’ll rank higher in Google.

You should make it as easy as possible for your visitors to share your content. Adding social media icons that easily allow a reader to share your content with a click of a button is one of the best link-building strategies to make this happen. Double check that your NAP data is consistent across all of your social media profiles to avoid any inconsistencies.

Local Business SEO Takes Time

Local SEO marketing takes time, patience, and work. Local business SEO doesn’t succeed overnight. Don’t be surprised if it takes six months or more to rank well in the search engine results. If you stick with it and don’t give up, the benefit to your business can be monumental. SEO for local visibility can generate more leads, increase sales and grow your business exponentially.

Thus, local business SEO is a culmination of many factors that help you drive customers to your business in a variety of ways. If you approach your local SEO strategy properly, you’ll see a significant improvement in revenue.

For a Local SEO quote from a trusted marketing firm in Houston, please contact MARION today!

Whether you are conducting research or would like to perform a technical SEO audit of your website, there are advanced search methods that you can use for better results. The following Google search tips can improve the specificity of your results, and help you get the answers you need without searching through 20 pages to find what you’re looking for.

What Are Google Advanced Search Operators?

Google advanced search options are currently available to help support the growth and success of your online business. By understanding how to conduct more precise web searches, you can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your current site.

Google is highly effective when it comes to delivering relevant results. In fact, their original mission statement was to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” However, there are times where you could benefit from greater control — especially when you are searching for something highly specific. To achieve this, you can utilize advanced Google search commands (sometimes referred to as Google search operators).

These “Google search operators” are specific character strings that allow you to enhance the potential of a regular text search. The goal is to more quickly find answers that are relevant to what you need.

As you learn to give Google additional pieces of information, you will narrow your search results to only what you need.
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From an SEO perspective, Google search operators can help you:

• perform a technical website analysis
• find targeted sites in regards to backlink prospects
• locate specific content

If you don’t have the time to manage your own website, find a good SEO company to improve your visibility in organic search.
Contact MARION today! Our digital marketing company can help you attract relevant customers and improve your bottom line.

Benefits of Google Search Commands

Although advanced search commands may seem daunting at first, they can help you become much more efficient. Not only will you be able to better understand the efficacy of your site, but you’ll also be able to perform a more targeted competitor analysis.

Considering that Google accounts for nearly 92 percent of all search traffic (resulting in more than 3.5 billion searches daily), leveraging the support of search operators is an excellent way to optimize your competitive advantage. In a nutshell, using advanced search operators will allow you to filter out irrelevant or unwanted results while getting your intended results faster.

By leveraging Google advanced search options, you will be able to:

1. Modify and refine your search with ease.
2. Get the best possible results (using search operators independently or in combination with one another).
3. Discover specific information that will allow you to drive your business forward.
4. Save a significant amount of time by increasing productivity.

11 Google Search Operators

Use these Google search tips to support your efforts. Here are examples of both basic and advanced Google search operators. The 11 items in this Google search operators list will help you see the true potential of a more specific, targeted search.

1. Quotations – “Search phrase”

By using quotations, any term or phrase can be used to return results with an exact match of your phrase. This is ideal when you’re not finding the type of results you want, or your search is too ambiguous.

For example, imagine you are researching John A. Smith, the owner of a competing company. You search for John Smith and keep getting results for John B. Smith, John F. Smith, and John Z. Smith. If you adjust your result to “John A. Smith” you will only see pages that are associated specifically with John A. Smith.

2. OR

The OR Google operator will yield results for a given search term OR a term that is equivalent. In turn, you will broaden your search in regards to synonyms. For example, searching for marketing OR advertising would combine the results you would receive from searching for marketing and advertising separately.

3. – (and +)

This operator is helpful when you would like to remove specific pages that include a specific search term or phrase (or force Google to include common terms that may have otherwise been discarded). For example, if you are planning to visit the city of Liverpool but are not interested in results about the city’s football team (Liverpool F.C.), you could search: Liverpool – F.C.

4. Site:

This operator will let you Google search specific websites. Maybe you’re researching a vendor, but don’t know how to contact them. If their website is vendor.com, you could search for their contact page by typing in site:vendor.com “contact us”. This would return pages specifically from this vendor’s site that include “contact us” somewhere in the body or meta-data.

5. Link:

This operator used to be helpful when aiming to determine a sample of backlinks in relation to a specific URL. For example, link:example.com would turn up a list of websites that link to example.com.

This Google search tip comes with two major caveats:

1. This advanced Google search command would even return pages with internal links, so you’d have to pair it with -site:example.com to only see external links
2. This Google search operator has been deprecated, and the resulting information is no longer accurate.

6. Filetype: (now Ext:)

Sometimes you want to search for a specific type of file, such as a PDF. To access files from a known source, you can combine the Google search filetype command with the previous operator (“site:”) to narrow your search even further.

Note: Try using ext: to get the filetype results you need as an alternative.

7. Related:

If you’re wondering how to find similar sites in Google, know that this can be easily achieved using the “related:” command. This approach can help you better determine your top competitors and expand your blogger outreach campaign.

8. Location:

This will yield results from pages that are in a specific place. You can even search for a more specific type of place within that location’s vicinity. To start, you can search countries, US state abbreviations, and cities. When doing so, searching “location:NY marketing companies” will search for New York-based marketing companies, even if you’re located somewhere else.

One of the more advanced Google search tips I can offer is to try using the location operator to research local competitors. You can combine Location: with the Related: Google search command to figure out who the closest organic competitors of a business are. You can then implement local SEO best practices based on the new insights you’ve picked up from neighbors who are already leveraging search engine optimization.

9. Define:

If you are unsure about a word and want to know more about its meaning, simply conduct a search to obtain definitions from varying websites. For example, define:tertiary will return a definition rich snippet describing what tertiary means.

10. Intitle:

Using this Google search parameter with a keyword search will give you a list of results that include your keyword in the title. For example, conducting a search for “intitle:marion” would return the top ranked pages that include “marion” in their page title.

11. Inurl:

Using this Google search syntax will let you search for pages with a specific word in their URL. So if you were to search for “inurl:blog how to refine my search results” you’d likely end up with a list of blog posts about how to do an advanced search on Google.

Whether you would like to better understand your business or dive deeper into a competitor’s website, Google search modifiers (in the form of operators) can help you achieve your goals. If you are aiming to increase your online presence to further push your company’s long-term growth, you can also access a wide range of Austin and Houston internet marketing services.

Contact MARION today for more information on how our Houston SEO services can improve your business marketing, and grow your revenue stream.
 

As a small business owner, marketing may not be one of your core competencies. Sure, you’ve read up on some of the best small business marketing strategies that work for the other players in your industry, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready to do your own marketing. One complicated but highly effective strategy you’ve probably heard of is search engine optimization (SEO).

If you’ve done your homework, you already understand that doing your own SEO requires a substantial amount of time and expertise. Unfortunately, as a business owner, your time is already being stretched to the limits. For this reason, many small business owners leverage the expertise of an SEO company.

Learning how to find the best SEO company for your needs is your first course of action, but that’s more difficult than it seems. There are a lot of subjective layers to search engine optimization due to the closed algorithms of the major search engines. Knowing about the latest correlative studies and best practices still doesn’t guarantee that an SEO agency will be worth your investment.

To make sure that you realize a healthy ROI from your SEO firm, use these tips to find a reliable SEO company.

5 Tips for Choosing a Trustworthy SEO Company

The following five tips will help you separate the SEO wheat from the chaff. I recommend that you evaluate several marketing agencies before making a decision.

1. Realistic Offerings

Most SEO agencies have a value proposition that you can discover on their website, or during your initial discovery call about using their services. Make sure their offerings align with your small business goals.

While choosing an SEO company, take note of whether or not the prospective agency representative asks you about your goals. If they start rattling off a list of what they can do for you without first checking to see what you need, you can expect further assumptions and miscommunications in the future.

The value proposition should sound realistic. Guaranteed SEO results and first page rankings should be an immediate red flag. There are no guarantees in the world of search engine optimization, and deliverables that sound too good to be true probably are.

2. Experience

You’re paying for expertise, so make sure your SEO agency is, in fact, an expert at what they do. How long has their firm been providing SEO services? Have they won any related awards for their work?

Don’t let time and awards be your only measurement of experience. SEO evolves at a rapid pace, and a new provider could easily outperform a veteran that hasn’t kept up with the latest industry developments. Because there are no hard and fast rules for executing SEO strategies, it’s best to measure competency and experience by results.

This brings us to the next pointer on how to find a good SEO company – case studies.

3. Case Studies

A search engine optimization agency may be presenting realistic offerings and have a lot of experience, but don’t simply take their word for it. To really see how effective they are, look at the results they’ve driven for other companies.

Reputable SEO companies can show you their previous successes. Getting pushback about client confidentiality is reasonable, but an experienced company will usually have a good enough relationship with at least one current of former client that is willing to stand witness to the agency’s competency.

You can typically research this on your own before any sales calls by sorting through client testimonials or the firm’s portfolio page, then cross-referencing those clients with their SEO progress. You can use a tool like SEMrush to see if the agency drove significant ranking improvements for their other clients.

4. Certifications

What is the best SEO company doing to set itself apart from the others? One approach could be through acquiring certifications. There are several relevant certifications from HubSpot or SEMrush that your agency might have. If your agency also offers pay-per-click services, it might have Google Partner certifications as well.

I personally wouldn’t recommend placing a tremendous amount of weight on certifications. Because of the continuous algorithm changes in the search engine marketing industry, even a certification from 8 months ago could be some somewhat obsolete. However, certifications show that the talent at any given agency is taking measures to improve, which should benefit you in the long run.

5. White Hat Practices

A trustworthy SEO company uses “white hat,” or what I like to call “future-proof,” SEO techniques. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for firms to use manipulative practices that are easy to identify, and are against most search engine guidelines. While learning how to find a good SEO company, ask the following questions to make sure your firm uses future-proof strategies.

What SEO Process Do You Use and Why?

Each prospective agency should be willing to outline their process to some extent. They might not get into the nitty gritty details, because at the end of the day, that’s what you’re paying them for. That being said, an overview of their process will help you determine whether or not they’re using honest techniques that will keep your site healthy for the long haul.

Look out for terms like “proprietary method,” while trying to find a good SEO company, as this can sometimes equate to gaming the system through deceptive practices that the agency doesn’t want you to know about. You might think that wasting some of your money on a bad agency is the worst that can happen, but you’d be wrong. An agency that uses deceptive, or “black hat,” techniques could accidentally get your site completely removed from the Google or Bing index.

Reporting and Communication Process

Once you hire an SEO agency, how will you know if they’re delivering? Reporting will help gauge the success of the firm you decide to use.

Ask them about their reporting methods. Do they use automatic or manual reporting? What online marketing metrics are they measuring? Make sure that what you deem important is something that your prospective agencies measure and report on.

Learn about the communication patterns of each potential SEO agency as well. Do they schedule weekly or monthly calls to go over progress reports and discuss issues? How quickly do they typically respond to client questions? These matters of communication will affect you throughout your partnership, so make sure your expectations are reasonable.

What Is Expected of You, The Client

It’s easy to view an online marketing agency as a vendor because you’re paying a fee for services rendered, but this is a mistake. The best SEO companies for small businesses will take on the role of a partner. Will your agency be creating content, or are the expecting you to do it based on their research? How much access to your online profiles will they need?

Your firm will be making your message visible to your target market, so make sure they understand the pain points of both you and your customers. To avoid a vendor-vendee relationship, communicate your message and concerns clearly to your agency, but keep in mind that they are experts at what they do.

If an SEO agency does everything exactly as you say, it severely limits their ability to add value on a tactical level. Search engine optimization heavily involves keywords, so your message may need adjusted if you want to achieve the best results.

3 Things to Avoid While Choosing a Good SEO Company

You know what to seek out while learning how to find a good SEO company, but you should also be aware of the following red flags during your search.

1. Don’t Choose Highest Ranking Result

The best SEO companies for small business growth might not always be at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). It seems like a logical starting point – if you want them to help your web pages rank well, they should be able to achieve high rankings with their own web pages.

Ranking highly in the competitive SEO landscape requires a huge investment of resources. However, busy agencies with a lot of happy clients are probably flooded with referral business, and investing in rankings for SEO-related search phrases with their own website would be a poor use of money. The best SEO agency could very well be operating on word-of-mouth business alone.

2. Don’t Blindly Trust Ranked Lists

Be careful when conducting a Google search for, “best SEO companies in [your city],” and then sorting through lists of the “best” marketing companies. It’s a common business model for business listings websites to rank highly for these terms, only to make agencies pay for inclusion. You might visit this page thinking you’re looking at a list of the best SEO companies, when really you’re looking at a list of companies that have the budget to buy your trust under false pretenses.

3. Don’t Trust Secret Tricks

There are no secrets in white hat search engine optimization. Search engines are aiming to provide you with the best results for your query, and tricks will not stand the test of time. If your agency isn’t using honest practices, your results, if any, will be short lived. Avoid agencies that mention using secret tactics to improve your rankings.

Formula for Deciding on the Best SEO Company to Use

Now that you know what to look for while choosing a good SEO company, you should know how to weight your decision. The following formula is a good rule of thumb for calculating which candidate is truly your best match.

Trust + Referrals + Cultural Match + Contract Details

You will discover a trustworthy SEO company through conversations about their process. If an agency was referred by one of your business or personal contacts, that is another great sign of quality.

Through discussions and meetings with each company, pay attention to how you feel after meetings. If you find it difficult to communicate, or if you feel your agency representatives aren’t transparent about how they operate (e.g. they’re simply a SEO white label agency ), you may end up being a bad cultural fit or paying a higher price for services.

You might be asking yourself – how much does SEO cost? Getting quotes from several companies will help you determine an average, but keep in mind that you get what you pay for when it comes to SEO services. Make sure contract length and pricing are something that you’re comfortable with while searching for reputable SEO companies in Houston.

For more information about MARION’s SEO services, contact us today!