How to Improve Search Engine Rankings

Let’s face it, not every website will have its pages ranked on page one in the search results. But, that doesn’t mean you should give up. Since SEO is a long-term strategy, I believe persistence can indeed payoff. At the very least, you may improve your search engine rankings even if you don’t get on page one. For some, perhaps they’ve lost some of their high rankings following a Google algorithm update. Whatever the case may be, it’s imperative that you have a baseline from which you can determine whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off.

There are many tools out there for professional SEOs that can help you assess your organic positions for keywords and those of your competitors. Spyfu , MOZ, SEMrush to name a few. MOZ, for example, has their own predictive scoring methodologies called Domain Authority and Page Authority. These tools can be extremely helpful to SEO professionals in understanding where their clients’ websites stand today relative to their competition and then gauge progress from their efforts from there.

That said, I will break this topic up into several parts. Here is part 1:

Keyword Research, Analysis, Selection

If you’re doing SEO for a local business’ website, let’s say XYZ Personal Injury Lawyer in Aspen, CO, researching, analyzing and then selecting the keywords which people actually search for when looking for a personal injury lawyer in Aspen, CO is crucial. Therefore, which would likely be the best keyword to target in the above example?

a. Lawyers
b. Lawyers Colorado
c. Lawyers Aspen CO
d. Personal Injury Lawyers Aspen CO

If you picked “d”, you would be correct. Seems obvious, but why? First, there is much less competition when you select keywords that are long tail. Second, that long tail keyword is more specific and closer to the actual keyword search that someone who lives in Aspen, CO would do.

What if you determined that XYZ Personal Injury Lawyer is one of the few PI attorneys in Aspen who focuses on dog bite injury cases which generates some sizeable settlement dollars? You could then target “dog bite lawyer aspen co”. So, although there may be fewer searches for this keyword phrase, there would also be much less competition in the search results and therefore, be easier for XYZ Personal Injury Lawyer to rank AND that keyword phrase is for a much more specific type of personal injury making it more relevant to the person who has suffered a dog bite injury, lives in Aspen, CO and is searching for an attorney to specifically handle that type of personal injury case.

SEO Case Study

We have a client, The Beekeeper Total Bee Control who wanted to rank for Bee Removal Anthem AZ. So, we implemented an off page SEO strategy of inbound link building and content creation that improved their Domain Authority and Page Authority. This in turn improved organic search ranking for related keywords such as Bee Removal Anthem AZ, Bee Removal Anthem, Anthem AZ Bee Removal, etc.

Another client of ours is North Texas Luxury Lawns and Greens. This Dallas Artificial Lawns installation company wanted a long-term organic ranking strategy and that’s where we came in. We were able to do both on- page and off-page SEO to focus on building a solid and ongoing foundation. Suffice to say that their organic search results have been steadily improving over time as a result.

Should I Hire a SEO Company?

That’s a question I get asked almost every single day.

Let’s be honest. It wouldn’t be practical for you to run your business while trying to learn how to successfully Search Engine Optimize your website. To become an SEO expert requires a full-time, long term commitment to learning what works and what doesn’t. In fact, learning to successfully do SEO, like any valuable skill, takes many years of doing it, day in and day out. Remember when you first started learning how to do your job? How much did you learn several years later? Night and day difference.

When it comes to ranking well within the search engine results, Google is the most difficult. What makes search engine optimization your website pages for Google even more daunting is that Google’s search algorithm changes (both significant and minor) occur on an ongoing basis. That’s why it’s essential to have a professional SEO company doing your search engine optimization for you. Would you rather hire us to do repair your car, or your local car dealer or mechanic?

Up to the Summer of 2015, most of the changes in Google search algorithms were minor and for the most part limited as well as unnoticeable to most people. However, now that most people are using their mobile devices to search the web and view all types of content and media, these changes are creating new challenges for website owners. By now most of us know that Google favors mobile-friendly websites. And websites that are non-mobile friendly may have suffered a significant drop in ranking, as stated by Google.

So as a business owner that relies on organic search engine traffic you need to be prepared. Having a mobile friendly website is not enough, you’ll need a professional SEO company that will keep up with all the recent changes and continually identifiy and measure how these ongoing algorithmic changes affect your website pages’ search engine results.

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