How much does SEO cost?

Marketing managers in charge of a company’s online presence may wonder how much SEO will cost them.

Well, the answer to that question is not an easy one because it depends on a few factors.

Let’s explore this topic in more detail below and see what we can find out about SEO pricing for small businesses.

Further questions can be anything but the most common are below:

Where should I start with SEO?

What budget should I be looking to spend?

How do I know if I find the right SEO provider?

How do I know what a good deal is?

There is a good chance you will have heard the term SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing or just Digital Marketing.

Either way, most businesses today will have some element of digital strategy in place to gain leads or sales online.

If they don’t, then they certainly need to get one and quick!

What should SEO services cost?

This is a really tough question, and we’ll revert to a favourite SEO saying “it depends”!

The cost of organic search depends on a number of factors, competition level in your industry, level of searches completed in your industry, your sites existing situation etc.

If your site is in a relatively non competitive niche, already has a good base of links pointing to the site and the search volumes are good you could see great returns from a relatively entry level SEO retainer.

If on the other hand you are working in a very competitive environment, say Financial Services.

There’s a number of things you will need to overcome and have specialists to help.

Here the level of competition is very high, then factor in the fact it’s a regulated service and you need real specialists to work on a winning campaign.

It can also take a lot of investment and a good length of time to gain the results you will want to see.

SEO is very much an investment in the future prosperity of your businessDoes Tao have experience in using another SEO agency?

Back in the day, when our MD Matt Tomkin had his first business, online marketing wasn’t such a must as it is today.

However, his sportswear company was his first foray into using an SEO agency to gain better visibility and rankings within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The first thing he questioned was the level of investment required to gain the results of page one of Google.

It actually turned out to be a great investment as the business gained top spot for keyword after keyword from about month 12 onwards.

Great terms such as “custom football kits” were amongst the most lucrative.

This was also a number of years ago when the SERP’s were slightly easier to rank in.

How much does SEO cost per month?

Our work is predominantly in the UK, although we do have clients in Australia now, and so the average will vary depending on the part of the world you are in.

Bearing in mind that the UK is a very competitive landscape for a lot of industries due to the open nature of the market.

Our SEO services begin at £1,500 per month but we have clients paying £10,000 per month.

A lot will depend on the initial research, how fast the company wants results and the competition already on page one.

We do know of SEO agencies with retainers in place of £30k per month upwards.

We’re not there yet as a business but we’ll keep reaching!

How much does Google charge for SEO?

When we talk about SEO and the SERP, Google is usually the search engine that is being referred to.

Of course, there are other search engines available, but with Google having over 3.5 billion searches per day (statistics here), it is obvious why we use Google as our main tool when considering SEO.

As it stands, Google does not charge for SEO. To rank within Google, agencies are set up to help website owners and businesses to gain better results in search engines.

This is where your money will be spent, rather than going to Google itself.

It is getting increasingly harder to rank highly within Google and on other SE’s, but the need for high rankings is now more crucial than ever due to industry competitiveness increasing.

Agency SEO services are now vital for business and website owners who want to succeed.

Google does have some free services of its own that are key in helping to improve your websites rankings.

Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads Keyword Planner and Google Trends are all brilliant tools that can help you to track your business’s online presence and site performance and see what you could be ranking for.

This is all of course, better off being used by a professional in SEO who can utilise this data to perform best for you and your business.

Looking for help with generating more sales leads?

Speak to one of our team today about our SEO services

The cost of SEO can be affected by the Adwords cost

When looking at the cost of SEO it would be daft not to think about the cost you would pay per click when using Google Ads or Microsoft Ads.

If you are trying to rank your website for a national search term it will take a much larger amount of work, therefore cost to achieve than if you were looking at ranking for a local search term.

Having said that there is now a lot more competition in the local search results as Google gets smarter with the intent behind every search.

A good analysis of the existing situation is key

It can be very difficult to determine what work needs to be done to help improve a website’s rankings without first looking at the current situation.

Questions that should be asked are:

Where does the site currently rank for the desired keyword/phrase?

What are the objectives of the business? What position is the dream?

How fast are the results wanted?

Quality has to be the first thought with any SEO agency

Some companies will suggest they can do a website’s SEO for as little as £35 per month.

How much time could actually be spent working on a website for £35 per month? What type of marketing could be done for that little?

This type of service is either not actually doing anything for that money every month or they are using some form of marketing which has to be against the Google Guidelines.

What’s the worst that could happen? Well, Google could give you a manual penalty. Trust me, you don’t want one of these on your site.

The main thing to do is use your common sense when looking at SEO services. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!

So how much does SEO cost then?

You should be looking at between £50 and £200 per hour for SEO services within the UK.

As SEO is an ongoing process of continual improvement you should be looking at a monthly retainer that includes all elements of SEO.

Onsite Optimisation, SEO content and Link Acquisition.

Moz carried out a survey back in 2015 based on US agencies and the results for the main ‘What do you charge for SEO?’ are below-

Survey Question: For those clients you service with ongoing/multi-month contracts, what is the average client’s monthly billing?

10% — less than $500
27% — $500-1,000
29% — $1,000-2,500
20% — $2,500-5,000
15% — $5,000-10,000

To see the study for yourself, here it is.

How much does SEO cost in the UK?

Sadly the information above does not cover the UK, which is of course where we mainly work, but knowing the industry and understanding the environment the below is my insights into the UK costs.

£50 – £150 per month: Low value SEO (Or very low competition)

£150 – £500 per month: Small-sized business SEO

£500 – £1000 per month: National Small business with higher level of competition

£1000 – £2000 per month: High Quality SEO for competitive industries

£2000 – £10000 per month: This all depends on the value level of the business. A High end value led client with multiple locations or multi-national SEO requirements. This becomes a high quality content marketing led approach.

Upwards of £10k per month is not uncommon these days with the level of competition increasing for the top spots.

What are your goals from an SEO campaign?

The first thing to ask yourself when thinking about an SEO campaign would be to think about what the end goals are.

Many a time we speak to prospective clients who are not happy with their existing agency and want to look at moving.

The main thing I find here is that it might not be that the agency isn’t producing the results they are aiming for, but more that the agency and the client goals are not directly aligned to each other.

Before you start any marketing campaign, you need to make sure you have the goals in mind and keep these at the forefront of anything you do, including SEO.

What is your target market/industry sector and how competitive is the SERP?

The competitiveness of your industry or market sector is one of the main areas to focus on when doing initial research into an SEO campaign.

This will have a major bearing on the costs to gain the results you’re looking for.

As an example, the Photocopier leasing industry is highly competitive. To rank in position 1 for this term would take a large budget for both organic SERP position and the Pay per click rankings.

Largely due to the fact the customer lifetime value is so high for a photocopier lease.

Not only do you get the client to buy a photocopier but the supplier would normally be able to sign the client into a managed print service which would bring further revenues.

Contrast that to a local cafe that is looking to get customers to visit from the surrounding areas.

The competitiveness in the local area may be a bit easier. This is not that it is easy to rank but that normally the owners of local cafes might not be in a position to pay an SEO agency and also not have the time to research the techniques they need to implement.

Are SEO services worth it?

Will I get a good ROI on an investment in SEO?

If done right there should be no reason why you won’t see a highly positive return.

The main thing is to find the right partner for your search engine optimisation requirements.

Research suggests that 81% of shopper conduct research online first.

Obviously, this means that if you are not one of the sites found in the search results, you’re missing out on forming part of that buyer’s journey and becoming one of the trusted sources of information before purchase.

To help gain more buyers a good SEO campaign would not only look at the ‘Intent credit card in hand’ phase of the sales funnel but need to be there when the buyer is in the ‘awareness phase’ or top of the sales funnel and then produce the relevant content right through the traditional sales funnel.

This way the buyer will build an affinity with your product and brand as you have helped them find the solution to the problem they have.

Cheap or guaranteed SEO is never a good idea!

With SEO so vital to companies now and the search engines being such a huge driver behind a large number of businesses, it surely makes no sense at all to use these cheap £35 per month SEO services.

I mean, it begs the question, how much work can they actually do for that each month?

Guaranteed SEO services are not real either, how can anyone guarantee something on a platform that is continually changing the goal posts?

Done right, SEO can be a huge driver towards your business goals and your future business success. Done wrong and it could end up costing your business dearly.

In Summary

SEO can help you generate more leads for your business. But it must be done right and you must make sure you’re getting the value for the money you are spending.

When building your company’s marketing plan, SEO must be a part of it.

The estimates are that 61% of all organic clicks are on the Top 3 search engine result positions there is a vast amount of business to be had by getting your Search marketing right.

The key is finding the right company who you trust and know has the relevant skills to realise your organic search goals.

Looking for help with generating more sales leads?

Speak to one of our team today about our SEO services

Speak to Us Today

Do Company Reviews Help With SEO?

I recently produced a video on the this topic and thought it would be a good idea to put together a blog post to follow on the subject.

In short, having reviews for your company and products will help your search engine rankings improve. It helps build trust with the users of the search engines and this will therefore mean Google and the other search engines will appreciate you’re a trusted supplier.

If your customers trust you enough to leave you a review then why would a search engine not take this into consideration when building better search results.

The more detailed view…

In order to gain a boost in the search engine rankings from using a reviews platform, there are a few things you need to make sure you have in place.

Google Verified Reviews provider:

Believe it or not, reviews on your Google My Business page don’t count as verified reviews in the search giant’s eyes.

Getting reviews on your Local Google listing is very important as these will be seen by your customers and prospects from time to time, but these alone won’t help you rank in the normal search results any higher.

You do in fact need a verified provider of reviews to gain the real benefits.

There a few of them out there and I’m sure you’ve heard of them all. The platform we suggest to use is reviews.co.uk.

We’re an official partner agency so give us a shout if you’d like more information.

Rich Snippets on important pages:

Rich snippets are bits of schema.org markup which sit in the pages code and help search engine crawlers better understand elements of your website pages.

Things like pricing, address whether something is in-stock or not are usual use cases for schema but reviews is also a massive one. You should look into how to do this if you haven’t already.

If you have ever searched for something and seen a website listed with Gold stars under the listing, these have been pulled through from the rich snippet review schema.

How does it help with SEO?

There are a few areas we think that help to contribute to your Organic Search Rankings. Below are the ones we see as the most important but as ever with Google there’s so many other factors that could come into play.

Improved click through rate:

With Google and other search engines looking more towards user metrics than ever before, the percentage of people who click through to your website from the search result over the next one should naturally help provide assurances that yours is the better result.

With Google, things are very rarely confirmed as ranking factors; but thinking about some of the studies that have been carried out you can see a clear trend in where a site ranks to how high the Click Through Rate is.

Building trust:

The E.A.T algorithm (as it’s been named) update by Google in August 2018, which continues to be rolled out, means that trustworthiness is now very important and has meant a new surge in demand for trust signals.

Standing for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness; the E.A.T update has changed the game for many sites out there. If you don’t have the relevant certifications, reviews and proof that you know your stuff within your market then you could see a drop in search engine traffic.

Having reviews for your company and sharing them with Google helps them see that you are in fact a good website to put in front of a searcher.

Company reviews can help with more than just SEO

Of course, gaining better search results should help you and your business gain more clients, but another reason why it’s good to gain reviews is just based on plain old straight forward marketing principles.

The more a prospect can see about how you go about your service offering, the more trust they naturally build up with your brand.

Reviews are now seen as a way of justifying a purchase. “91% of consumers think reviews are important enough to sway their purchasing decision when considering a new business”, a State of Online Reviews study found.

Should you be using company reviews then?

Yes, you absolutely should. And not just for the benefits from an organic search point of view, but from a general reputation management standpoint.

The more HONEST reviews your business gets the better chance you have of showing higher in the search results but also converting more prospects into sales.

Your Domain name doesn’t matter for SEO

The domain name that you use doesn’t matter when it comes to search engine optimisation or acquiring organic search traffic.

When thinking about a domain name, you don’t need to worry about what that domain name ends in. Whether its a .com, an .xyz or org.uk, it really doesn’t matter.

It really doesn’t matter anymore. Google’s job is to provide the most relevant search results, and to do that, all the information and content on your page has to be relevant to that search.

You also need your off-site metrics to be absolutely bang-on, too, so your ‘domain rating‘, or the ‘domain authority’, is very important. This is calculated by where your backlinks are coming from and how relevant and trusted they are.

All that needs to be taken into account when you’re thinking about what domain name you want to buy is whether you like it!

Is A .com Better Than A .co.uk Or .guru?

When it comes to what your domain name ends in, or as we call it, the top level domain, it really doesn’t matter.

All you need to think about is what it looks like to the user. Up until very recently, a lot of people wouldn’t really have seen many websites ending with a .io TLD. Now, every technology company that’s worth they’re weight have a website that ends in .io – they’re everywhere.

Nowadays it’s more and more common that you’ll find in the search results a website that ends with a .london, or another type of top level domain.

When it comes to search engine optimisation, there are three crucial areas that you need to address, rather than what the domain name is.

The three pillars of search engine optimisation

There’s three areas of website optimisation you’ll want to focus on.

Technical

So, this is the technical side of SEO. Can Google access your website properly? Can it understand the page content?

Do you have a single Heading 1, then Heading 2s and 3s throughout the page? Is the page fast enough when it loads? Is it mobile responsive? Is the text big enough on mobile? Are all the clickable elements big enough to click on mobile, and don’t conflict with anything else?

There’s a vast number of things that you need to think about. The best way to do this is to get a full technical SEO audit done for your website. Click here for more information.

Content Marketing

The next thing to consider is the content on your website. Google is getting better and better at understanding the intent behind a search and whether your website is relevant to that search. Your content has to be better than your competitors if you want to rank for a search term.

When we talk about better content, we don’t necessarily mean just the amount of words. Whilst there is proof out there that the amount of words in an article does correlate to where a page ranks within the search results, if your content is written in a way that it’s just stuffing information in there, it’s not best for the user. Google’s artificial intelligence will be able to pick up on that, meaning your rankings will start to drop.

Digital PR

The third thing then is your off-site optimisation. Is your website an authority? If so, you are going to have backlinks from some of the bigger websites in your industry.

If you provide telephone systems, for example, you will want to be getting not only links from telecoms industry publications, but you’ll also be getting links back from small business magazines and other large outlets.

The more visibility your website has online, the better your rankings are going to be, as long as the other two pillars are in place.

Which domain registrar would we recommend?

At Tao Digital Marketing, we use three domain registrars:

Namecheap are our preference. We just like the interface that they use and we like the pricing, along with the ability to just jump on and register a domain name. Within minutes you can start making changes, and it’s really easy to use. We also use GoDaddy for .co.uk domain names.

TSO Host are another domain name registrar that we have used in the past. They are a UK-based company, so we like the fact that we can just pick up the phone to the support team if we do have any issues.

But in our minds, Namecheap is the one that we would suggest using over any other.

DITTSI – Does It Target The Searchers Intent?

In an industry full of acronyms we thought we’d add another one into the mix to help you create better content and gain unreal results from your content marketing efforts.

We use the method “DITTSI” to find opportunities for our clients to rank high in the Google Search Results.

We’re talking about searcher intent or more importantly what Google sees as the search intent behind a keyword or phrase typed into the search box.

When we talk about the DITTSI method of finding search ranking opportunities we’re looking at a number of things that we see as forming the search results Google brings back.

Keyword intent, search intent and user intent are combined by the Google machine to produce results that will fulfil the searchers desire.

For example, when searching a key phrase like “asbestos survey” Google will bring back a list of results. Those results will normally return a host of survey providers. But, if you look closely enough, there will also be sites that have created an article about why you might need one and even content surrounding “does the user need an asbestos survey”.

Using the DITTSI method we have managed to create content that ranks for some really competitive terms. Understanding the searchers intent and, more importantly, what Google sees as the search intent behind the keyword. This is what DITTSI is all about.

Wordstream do a really good job of putting together the 3 types of Search Query intent.

Informational, a searcher is looking for content to help understand something or find the answer to a question
Navigational, the user knows where they want to go and uses a brand name or place to find the relevant website.
Transactional, a user is wanting to buy a product or service. This can include researching a type of product or service and it could be that they know what they want to buy and go ahead and purchase

How do we understand the searchers intent?

This isn’t an article that will detail all the ways we would use in order to define the intent behind a search. But, there is one way which is unbelievably easy to help you understand it.

Just Google it! Seriously, Google do all the hard work for you!

The whole company has been set-up to complete one job; to provide the most relevant results to a query typed into its search box.

By spending some time looking at the type of content that Google has on its first page, you should be able to understand the type of intent that they see behind the search.

Then go ahead and create the same type of content, just bigger, better and more informative!

And, if you don’t have the time, give us a call and we’ll do it for you!

What is keyword intent?

The keywords somebody types into a search engine will have the most impact as to what results will be returned.

Google will use the keywords alongside both search intent and user intent to establish what’s being searched, why it’s being searched and the overall context of the search.

These keywords are generally split into two categories; high intent and low intent keywords.

Targeting high-intent commercial keywords can be used to great effect for both organic and paid searches. These keywords and phrases will feature clear buying signals and produce relevant, transaction focused, results.

Searches including words like “buy”, “discount”, “deal” and many more can all be classed as high-intent searches. Product keyword searches including branded, specific products and product category searches, also fall into high-intent commercial keyword searches.

Low-intent keywords on the other hand are more likely to yield navigational and informational search results, with less focus on selling immediately and more focus on providing education on the subject in question.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent boils down to the reason behind somebody typing a query into Google. What’s that person trying to achieve?

Do they want to learn new information? Perhaps they want to find a specific website? Or maybe they’re looking to make an online purchase?

If you’re able to understand someone’s search intent, you’ll be in a great position to better utilise the keyword intent we spoke about earlier.

For example, someone looking for information might search “which athletes do Nike sponsor”. They might want to learn about what trainers their favourite runner wears, perhaps.

A simple example of a navigational search would be if somebody types “Nike UK” into Google. They’d probably do this if they wanted details of Nike’s UK arm but thought Nike.com would take them to the corporate US site.

If somebody wanted to buy something they’d complete a transactional search. They might type a long-tail keyword search such as “Where sells Nike trainers near me” or they might want to purchase online and search something like “Buy Nike trainers with free delivery”

These are some basic examples, however we’ll go into more detail about informational, navigational and transactional searches, along with how to use them properly, a little later.

What is User Intent?

User intent is when a search engine interprets context with the keywords somebody uses. This means more accurate search results are obtained depending on what the user is searching for.

For a very basic example, let’s look at what happens if a user types “Apple” or “Apples” into Google.

If you type “Apple” in, the search is interpreted that you’re looking for details about electronic Apple products. The search results centre around the various Apple websites and the first images that are shown will be pictures of the Apple logo and Apple devices.

If on the other hand you type “Apples” into Google, you’ll still get some results for Apple electronic products, however you’ll also get a lot of information presented about the fruit, apple-based recipes and pictures of the fruit too.

Just the simple addition of the letter ‘S’ in this case alters the search engine’s interpretation of what the user intent will be defined as. By doing this, the search engine is delivering what it perceives to be the most relevant results.

Informational Search Queries

These searches are performed by people craving information. They’re in the learning phase about something. The chances of these searches delivering cold, hard, cash, are minimal. That’s not to say you should neglect this type of searching and deem it unimportant, though.

Over time and done properly, informational searches can be used effectively as part of your online sales funnel. If you build trust and become an authoritative voice on a subject, it’s highly likely the person searching will remember you when the time comes to put their hand in their pocket. Your useful, detailed, information might even get shared among several people who, in the future, could turn from prospect to customer.

This one’s a slow burner, but keep at it and you’ll reap the rewards. Your organic search ranking will continue to blossom too.

Navigational Search Queries

This is the search people perform when they already know the site they want to end up on. Maybe typing the full site URL into the address bar at the top of the browser is too much like hard work. Maybe they have Google open in front of them and it just seems easier to put it through the search.

It could also be to do with the UX/UI on the site they’re visiting. Maybe it’s more straightforward to put the website name and page they’re after into a search engine rather than try and navigate to that page on the actual site.

Transactional Search Queries

Take time to get your intent keywords right and you could be on to a winner. People performing transactional searches are highly likely to have their credit card in hand. They’ve probably already done an informational or product search months ago, perhaps something along the lines of “best gaming laptops”, for example.

Now they have the readies available. They’re on Google and searching for things like “gaming laptop deals”, “discount gaming laptops”, “buy gaming laptops” and “gaming laptops with free shipping”. These keywords show a clear indication that a purchase could well be made imminently.

The trick is to be the website highest up the search rankings so that you’re in pole position to be the first site they choose to look at when they hit enter on the search.

How Will SEO Help My Business?

One of the questions that is asked every time we meet a potential new client is ‘how will SEO help my business?’. There are many ways that a business can benefit from SEO including brand awareness, site visitors and lead generation/sales. Before we delve into the specifics, it’s important to define what SEO actually is.

What does SEO stand for?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of improving the visibility of a website in the search engine results. It should help position the site as the most relevant answer to the searchers query, making sure the site is indexable by the search engines.

How Does SEO work?

Every search engine uses different algorithms in order to present millions of search results based on what a person types in the search bar. SEO is the process of keeping up to date with a search engine’s complex algorithm by using various methods. There are three main pillars to SEO: technical onsite, link building and content marketing. If executed correctly, SEO can help move your business up the search rankings and towards the holy grail; Page one and position one.

With this in mind, it becomes fairly obvious that SEO would help a business in a number of ways.

Brand Awareness

SEO is the perfect accompaniment to a branding campaign. The sheer volume of searches made on the internet each day, 40,000 searches per second according to Internet Live Stats, means that no matter what product or service you offer, someone will be searching for it.

Therefore, being at the top of the search results for the product or service you offer will help your be best placed to take advantage of the intent of the searcher and potentially create a new lead or sale.

Qualified visitors to your site

When we talk about ‘qualified visitors’ to your site we mean they have explicitly searched for something that you have an expertise in and can help them in some way to find the answer to their query.

A good SEO campaign will help position you and your site to become an authority on your subject and have your site visible when a searcher types in anything to do with your business.

A great example of how this would work:

Say you are the owner of a small business and thinking about purchasing a new phone system.

The first place you are likely to look is a search engine, 94% of B2B purchasers do some form of research online. The results will show a number of sites designed and written to help understand what phone system is right, potential functions that will be available and what the latest technology is currently on the market.

Most people will buy once they have a good level of understanding of the product or service. And a buyer will more than likely by from a company they know, like and trust. By creating the type of content that helps a searcher learn, rather than just selling will help build trust.

Quotonga.com do a really good job of trying to help the searcher for hosted phone systems with this ‘guide to the benefits of hosted phone systems’. Have a read and see what we mean.

A qualified visitor therefore is someone who is somewhere within the ‘content marketing funnel’ as described by Moz.com. The above example is great for the top of funnel part, but you could easily create content for the middle and bottom of the marketing funnel.

Find out about our SEO Audits

Get in touch with us today

More sales leads or sales through your site

It’s fairly simple to understand why, with more search engine traffic you would see more leads or sales coming through your website.

If you have a site at the moment that is converting at lets say 3%, with 1,000 visitors per month you would be getting roughly 30 leads or sales. We then add another 1,000 visitors per month through the use of clever SEO, even if the conversion rate of the site dropped to 2.5% you would be gaining 50 leads rather than the 30 you were previously.

This doesn’t factor in any competitors who might engage in an ongoing SEO campaign either. Done right they will end up taking your traffic if you’re just standing still.

How has SEO helped small businesses?

‘We’ve enjoyed great success working with Tao Digital Marketing over the past year or so, our organic traffic has more than doubled. We’ve even been able to slow down our paid marketing and still continue to gain a great number of leads for our business.’ Dave Thornton, Founder & Director of Thornton & Lowe.

We also have had SEO success with a Wheel Refurbishment company in Bolton. We were tasked to get them to rank on page 1 on google for keywords specific to their industry. In no more than 4 months, we were able to get them to the first page of google for “alloy wheel refurbishment bolton” and “alloy wheel repair bolton”. You can read more about our case studies on our case study page.

Why is SEO important?

SEO should be considered a critical component of any digital marketing strategy. If your business has a website then it needs to get seen, visited and taken action on. Great SEO can be the difference between being ahead of your competitors or them overtaking you. If two websites happen to be selling the exact same product, the website with the higher search ranking can expect to generate more sales.

SEO isn’t just about appearing higher on google. It’s about creating a great user experience for your customers. If your website has terrible usability and user experience then it can have a negative impact on how people perceive your business/brand.

SEO agency or in-house

This question is posed by many business owners looking to gain from the masses of search engine traffic. We’re an SEO agency and so we’re probably a little biased in the way of an SEO agency rather than in-house.

We do find however that working alongside an in-house marketing team adds real depth to the overall marketing piece. Things can work together and gain more traction.

Most business owners are very busy, keeping track of all the updates, changes and requirements of SEO is a very time consuming job. It’s sometimes better to buy into someone’s knowledge and someone who is keeping up with everything to do with SEO because they need to for other clients.

One of the main areas that businesses can fall down when hiring an SEO company is when they have not done enough research. Make sure that the SEO agency you are looking to engage has the knowledge and understanding required. Speak to some of their existing clients to find out how they are getting on with them.

Bad SEO can do more damage than good for your website, be careful not to fall into this trap.

Summary

In summary, SEO is great for any type of business, no matter what industry, size or location. Done right it can drive significant increases in visitors to your website.

The key is to make sure that it is done correctly.

Check out our article on the cost of SEO.

Keyword Hero – How good is it? Here’s our review

Awesome! Pure and simple.

We were that impressed with the results, we thought we’d write up a quick review on the software.

What is Keyword Hero?

Keyword Hero promises to get rid of the dreaded ‘not provided’ information in your Google Analytics for any given website.

Match keyword to session in GA, get rid of (not provided), is the site strapline.

Does it work?

I’ve been using it now on taodigitalmarketing.com for over 2 weeks. It’s great. Although the website is still in its infancy it is seeing some organic search.

Search phrases such as ‘seo agency Bolton’, ‘digital marketing Bolton’ ‘SEO cost‘ and ‘bolton SEO’ are just a few of the phrases that I don’t see in my normal analytics view or in our Google Search Console account.

For bigger sites this could be priceless in terms of the information it is passing. Allowing for the technical SEO team to make sure that the site and any pages are being optimised to take advantage of the keyword driving traffic.

Connecting the conversion dots

The even better thing I think that you could use Keyword Hero for is to understand what keywords drive more of your conversions. What are the people who are making contact or purchasing from your website typing into Google?

This could then be used in a number of different areas to help improve the overall number of conversions.

Setting it up

It takes 2 minutes to set-up. You simply allow them access into your Google Analytics & Google Search Console accounts via the online tool they provide. And there you have it.

Keyword hero will set-up a new view within your Google Analytics account under the property you have selected.

Keyword Hero - 2 minute installation

Will we be using it?

100% yes, we’re just speaking to the team to see what we can do in terms of getting a deal in place for all of our clients. Even if we don’t manage it we’ll be making sure we recommend it to all of our clients.

It makes our job so much easier!

Google Search Console for your SEO strategy

For me, Google Search Console is one of the most underrated services out there. I mean where else will Google tell you about what they rank your website or if they have any worries about your site, how quick the site is downloaded by Googlebot and so on. All of this for FREE! Yes, nothing! Nada!

So, what is Google Search Console?

A no-charge service provided by Google as a web service for website owners, known as webmasters. It provides webmasters with the ability to check the status of their websites within the Google Index.

Previously known as Google Webmaster tools it became Google Search Console in May of 2015.

Why do you need GSC (Google Search Console) for your SEO projects?

You’re not really going to get the results you want without using this tool. Yes, there is a host of other software providers who can provide information on how your site ranks, an audit of your site’s health, missing keywords, backlink information for you, but they aren’t Google!

If you are looking for a great tool to help alongside GSC however, I can recommend Serpstat.

But, back to the reason, you’re here! GSC for SEO. The information I use most out of GSC is below, although I’ll be going into detail about all of the tools further into the article.

1. Search analytics report

The Search analytics report is where you will find the keyword information that Google is ranking your site for in the SERP (Search engine results page). This is really important as finding the ‘low hanging fruit’ is really easy when you have the information to hand.

Plus, although it is not all of the data that they are ranking you for, they don’t give you the keys to the castle sadly, but it is a great indicator of what they see you as being the authority on or not.

Example: Let’s say you had a blog, which I do, that reviews Dashboard Cameras. When looking in the search engine results report you can see that you rank and are gaining traffic from Google for one of your target keywords.

Such as Nextbase 412GW review which is one of our primary keywords for one of our reviews. The report will show you, what the average position in the results are, how many clicks for this keyword/phrase and also the number of times your site has been shown in the search results.

N.b it’s not a site we’ve done too much with just in case you do search it! 😉

2. Crawl stats

As SEO’s we know that page speed is massively important to where Google ranks us in the search results.

Within the GSC console, it tells you how long it took for Google to download the website and shows you a great graph from the last 3 months to see if there have been any issues server-side or anything to worry about.

We had a client recently, we moved the website to our dedicated server and they went from page 2 to page one for their main keyword within a month.

3. Fetch as Google

If like us and most of our clients, you’re not a news publication or a site which is constantly being updated by the minute, it might be some time before Googlebot crawls your site and finds the new content you spent hours producing and writing.

Fetch as Google allows you to ask Googlebot to come and crawl your site again. Even ask them to index the site too. There is a limit of doing this and crawling all URL’s of 10 per month so be smart.

The other tools provided by GSC are below.

I have added my thoughts on why these are critical to your website SEO too.

Submit and check a sitemap.

Well, how does Google know about your site without submitting it? Don’t wait till Google finds your site! Tell them using this tool!

Robots.txt tester

This tool basically tells you what pages are blocked to the search bots. By writing a robots.txt file you can help make sure Google knows exactly what pages you don’t want them to index on your site. Example being the wp-admin area of a WordPress website.

Links to your site

Google gives you information on the websites that link to your site. They list both internal and external pages that link to the pages on your site. You can use this information to complete a link audit and disavow any links that are potentially harming your rankings.

One of the most important ranking factors for Google is still Pagerank. Although they don’t give you this information anymore you need to make sure that the sites linking to you are Authoritative, Relevant and not Spammy.

Crawl Errors report

Ever wondered why that page you wrote which contains so much information Google should have it in position 0 on the SERP? Well, Google will tell you if they’re having difficulty crawling a page on your site and list any links that they can’t get to properly.

This information is gold dust if you are trying to rank a page but not having much look. They tell you what the potential issue is so you can just go a fix it!

Set a preferred domain

When you look at the SERP you might have noticed that there are sites listed that start with www. and others that start with non-www. This is due to the webmaster of the site setting this within Google.

This can be really important as if you don’t set this, Google find it harder to decide which version to rank in the SERP. Believe it or not www. And non.www are classed as 2 separate sites and can therefore potentially look like duplicated content on your site.

Make sure you set the right version in GSC.

Structured data report

The structured data section of GSC allows you to see what Schema.org markup your website has on it. And whether there are any errors with how your markup is configured.

The data highlighter tool also provides a really easy way of telling Google what you want them to use as your structured data.

We’ve used this to great effect for a client who provides bid writing courses. By highlighting the area of the site for each course Google can now show the course dates, times, locations etc. within the search results if anyone searches specifically for a bid writing training course in a location they have one booked in.

Disavow links tool

If for any reason you have links that you really don’t want Google to take into account when determining your site relevancy for a search term you can upload a list of them to Google and ask them to Disavow them using this tool.

Manual Penalty notifications

The one thing no webmaster wants to ever see in GSC. A manual action notification. If Google deems you have broken the guidelines for any reason they will let you know through this tool of any manual actions they have given you. Enough said on that one!!

Rich Cards

With the ever-increasing use of Mobile to browse the internet and search Google with, they have given you the option to highlight any important information on your site to help build ‘rich cards’ on the SERP for mobile devices. They do also show sometimes on the Desktop SERP so well worth investing the time in these.

In summary

One of the main things to consider when using GSC for SEO is how much information Google will give you for free! SEO is simple in reality, make sure your page is optimised to the best possible level in the eyes of the search engines and then get people shouting about you all over the internet in the form of backlinks, social mentions, social shares etc.

Now, we’re not the only ones who think using GSC for SEO is a great idea! Below are a number of resources that I’ve learned from over the years as a search engine optimiser.

Do let us know if we’ve missed any out and if you think I’ve missed something vital from the above article.