During our “Ask the Expert” Session on last Thursday, put on by the Charleston Chamber of Commerce and Small Business Council, we had some great questions thrown out regarding search engine optimization. We would love to take this time now to share our answers to some of those questions. Feel free to comment below if you have any more!

1. Black hat vs. White hat:

How do you go about choosing a company to assist with SEO? What factors should we take into consideration that help determine whether or not we can trust them?

Ask the Expert: The important thing to know is that no company can guarantee you the top listing on internet browsers for any keyword. If they do, they’re either 1. using foul practices 2. just paying for an ad…Know that it’s not going to happen in a day. Be wary of companies who reach out to you out of the blue. Ask a lot of questions and make sure that they provide you actionable steps that will insure that they are helping you achieve a higher ranking. Google talks about SEO services on their official blog at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en.

 

2. SEO as a Service

What kind of things do you do to ensure you’re really benefiting the businesses for which you provide these (SEO) services?

Ask the Expert: We ask questions, talk goals over coffee, run reports, etc. We wait 60 days before starting any SEO to make sure we have everything set-up for their success. We also have a complete step-by-step process that achieves results and we go over all of it before we begin.

 

3.  Content Recommendationsseo talk charleston, sc

What do you recommend to your clients as far as making content that is relevant across multiple generations of audiences?

Ask the Expert: Be yourself, focus on your target audience and deliver the content specific to your product or service. If you products appeal to all ages, focus on common interests. Content is everything when it comes to SEO. Do’t be afraid of SEO as it is just content; it’s what you would say to someone if you were face-to-face.

 

4. Blogs

Does the content on your blog count towards optimizing your website’s ranking?

Ask the Expert: Yes, as long as you use the same domain as your website. For example blog.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/blog.

 

5. Show me the Numbers!

Can you provide statistics of how increasing website traffic directly directly relate to an increase in favorable actions visitors take on a given website?

Ask the Expert: Yes! We have statistics of what we have done for past clients and we show you in Google. Bottom line…are you going to look at something on the second page of Google?

 

6. Get my Boss to Understand

How do you show your boss the fruit/value of your SEO efforts?

Ask the Expert: Measure the amount of traffic to your site. Use UTM codes to track specific campaigns and use Google Analtics to pull it all it and segment.

 

7. Other Media

Do YouTube videos have any effect on the SEO of your website? What about social media?

Ask the Expert: When you put a video up, put keywords in title, description, link back to website site. Make it relevant.