SEO National’s FAQs

SEO is a bit like building a house. If a contractor told you they could construct your dream home in a month, would you trust them?

Like housebuilding, SEO is a long game, and you don’t want to cut corners on the foundational steps. These steps include:

Researching Keywords (1 to 3 weeks)

We research the market, the competition, and your ideal customer, then come up with strategic keywords that align with customer intent. Without this due diligence, you could waste a lot of money targeting keywords that 1) your ideal customer isn’t searching for or 2) are already too saturated to rank.

Creating Targeted Content (3 to 5 weeks)

If Google can’t read it, you can’t rank for it. That’s why content is such a high priority. And it has to be good content that bridges the gap between your customers’ needs/pain points and the solution your product provides. If your content strategy misses the mark by an inch, SEO can be thrown off by a mile.

We research and map out six to twelve months of content ideas that maximize your target keywords while aligning with the intent of your ideal buyer.

Building a Firm SEO Foundation (5 to 10 weeks)

No matter how good your content is, if your website isn’t search engine-friendly, you’ll fall flat. We start with an audit to find the weak spots. Is your site mobile-friendly? Fast-loading? Easy to navigate? Does it have broken links or dead pages that need to be removed or fixed? Does historical content need to be beefed up before it can rank?

Building Credibility (recurring)

Search engine algorithms exist to give internet users what they need. If you want their love, you need to help them do their job by continuing to create consistent, quality content. You do this one piece of high-quality content at a time…and you stay the course. Because even if you’re making big leaps, the money doesn’t start rolling in until you hit page 1. Remember that 90% of Google traffic comes from page 1 results.

There’s no shortcutting good SEO, but good SEO is worth the wait. It can get you to the top of search engine rankings and keep you there, where you can enjoy a steady stream of traffic that is primed for conversion.

We advise you to wait until you have a bigger financial runway so that SEO can work its magic. Few things can boost a business more than a well-executed SEO strategy, but in most cases, SEO takes at least a year.

It takes time to audit your website to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Then, it takes time to optimize your site by beefing up thin content, decreasing loading speed, making sure it is mobile-friendly, and removing dead pages and broken links.

It takes time to research your ideal buyer and find out which keywords this buyer is searching for. Next, it takes time to create engaging content that maximizes keyword exposure and provides the answers your ideal customer is searching for.

It takes time to keep feeding that content to search engines. (Google rewards sites that regularly release high-quality content that answers users’ search questions.) And it’s worth paying the price in time and consistency to reach page 1 rankings because only about 10% of traffic even sees anything lower than page 1.

Once a solid SEO foundation drives your site to page 1 rankings, it can become a money machine driving steady streams of ready-to-convert traffic to your website. SEO is worth the wait, but there are no shortcuts to good SEO.

You’ll get monthly reports to show how your keyword rankings are increasing across different search engines. We can also set up custom reports within Google Analytics that can be accesses 24/7 to show traffic progress, as well as conversion tracking when online conversions are available.

So you’ve achieved page 1 rankings. Why not quit while you’re ahead?

The problem is that Google awards consistent content. You can stop creating new content, but your competition won’t stop, allowing them to close the gap. They’ll keep generating new blogs, videos, etc., that will catch Google’s eye, even as you fall out of sight and out of mind. (Remember that the first three listings on the search engine page get 70% of the clicks. Anything lower on the page is left to fight for the remaining 30%.)

There’s no standing still when it comes to SEO. Either you’re forging ahead or you’re falling behind.

Once you fall behind, reclaiming your former rankings won’t be easy. Google favors companies that have held top rankings over time. They’ve proven themselves. The longer you wait, the harder it is to dethrone the current king of the hill.

In our experience, when clients pause SEO, they see a 3X delay when they start things up again.

• 1 month SEO stop = 3 month delay in progress
• 6 month SEO stop = 18 month delay in progress

When you stay the course, you can experience the SEO equivalent of compounding bank account interest. Each new win will build on the last one for compounding SEO gains.

A lot of people think that hiring an employee to do SEO in-house will save money, but that’s often not true. Consider this comparison based on average costs:

SEO Agency: $36,000 (general annual fee)

In-house SEO: $61,000 (annual salary of $50,000 PLUS taxes, health insurance, computer, software, workstation, etc.)

There’s also an opportunity cost. Chances are, a reasonably priced in-house SEO isn’t going to have the depth of experience that an agency has. After all, an agency can hire experts in just about everything—website development, content creation, link building, etc.

Unless your in-house SEO is a highly experienced jack of all trades, you’re going to be paying them to learn on the job. And while they’re learning, the competition can be ascending the rankings and hunkering down in those page 1 positions.

When it comes to SEO, time is money, and an SEO company can usually help you get to the “money spots” quicker.

When another website includes a hyperlink to your site, it’s called a backlink, and backlinks are one factor that determines your search engine ranking. In the past, people went crazy with backlinks, leveraging spammy links to boost their search engine rankings.

Google got wise to this strategy and released the Penguin algorithm update in 2012. Suddenly, Google was not rewarding but punishing websites with a lot of low quality backlinks.

So, how many backlinks do you need in SEO? Here are a couple of things to remember about backlinks:

They’re Just One Part of the Ranking Strategy

A website with a lot of backlinks will not rank well if that website doesn’t have 1) a strong SEO foundation (fast loading speed, mobile-friendliness, ease of navigation, etc.) and 2) consistent, high-quality content that aligns with user intent.

On the other hand, good optimization and content can often do more for your website rankings than backlinks.

You May Not Need a Lot of Them

Your industry and competition help determine how many backlinks your website will need to stand out. If you’re in a crowded industry where your competitors’ websites are loaded with backlinks, you may need a heavier focus on backlinks. If you’re in a niche industry with a localized target audience, you may only need a couple of high–quality backlinks, if any.

Quality Trumps Quantity

Links need to be relevant (your financial website should not be pointing to a page with ads for weight loss drugs). They should also link to quality websites.

Backlinks are a balancing act. You want a linking strategy that’s aggressive enough to distinguish your site from the competition but not so aggressive that you get penalized by Google. Our SEO firm can help you understand what your website needs and help you build links that will help, not hurt, your rankings.

Once you hire SEO National, we’ll be doing the heavy lifting, but if you want to multiply our efforts, you’ll want to stay engaged.

Share Feedback

We have an excellent content team that will get smart on your industry and brand in a hurry, but you can speed that process up by sharing any information to educate them and giving feedback on their work.

Expect to be more hands-on for the first few months while we learn the ins and outs of your company. When you take time to make sure we get things right from the start, we can work more independently and require less of your time moving forward.

Respond Quickly

We’ll create your content but reach out to you for approval. Google loves consistency, so we want to keep the content machine in high gear. If you drag your feet on approvals, you’ll have a harder time dominating Google.

Communicate Via One Point Person

Streamline communications by picking one main person to interact with SEO National. If multiple people are giving input and granting permissions, lines can get crossed and progress can get bogged down.

Trust in Expertise

We are happy to defer to client preference, but we will let you know if something is going to hurt your SEO.

Don’t Get Lost in the Details

Voltaire said it best: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” We’ve seen clients get so lost in inconsequential details that we lose momentum and SEO footing. They may go back and forth over things like their logo being a little too far to the right on the home page or whether to use the word “create” or “develop” in paragraph two of the latest blog.

Keep the big picture in mind so you don’t waste time and energy on details that don’t matter in the big picture.

Stay the Course

SEO is a long game with each new gain building on the next. If you cut ties too quickly, you’ll waste the momentum you’ve already built. But if you stay the course, your compounding gains can lead you to page 1 rankings and a solid stream of traffic that wants what you’re selling.

Watch out for SEO guarantees. They sound nice, but are usually covering up low quality work. Instead, your search engine optimization company should be able to communicate averages, and set realistic expectations on the following SEO variables.

How Competitive Is Your Industry?

Ranking in more competitive industries requires more time.

What Are Your Geographical Targets?

Are you catering to a small local audience or a global one? The bigger the audience, the more competition you’re up against, the longer it will take to rank.

What’s Your Website Like to Start With?

Some websites need a complete overhaul; others only need small tweaks. Or maybe you don’t even have a website yet. Your time to rank will be influenced by how much time it takes to get your website SEO-ready.

What Are the Algorithms Doing?

Google changes its algorithms hundreds—even thousands—of times per year. Trying to outguess Google is like trying to outguess the stock market. What works today on Google may not work tomorrow.

You can find companies that use black hat techniques to try to game Google’s newest algorithm and guarantee quick results, but shortcuts often end up getting penalized by the next big algorithm update.

High-quality, ethical SEO will keep you in Google’s good graces. It will get you where you want to go—but not overnight. Instead, it will position you to withstand the ups and downs of algorithm changes and gradually ascend to page 1 rankings.

Say you sell vegetable seeds and write a blog on raised bed gardening. When people search for how to put in one of these gardens, your blog shows up on Google. If that blog is filled with sales vomit about how great your veggie seeds are, you’ll drive users away. They don’t want a sales pitch; they want help with their garden.

On the other hand, if your blog answers all of their questions about raised bed gardening, they’ll view your company as a trusted source, and trust converts customers. If they’re ready to buy, there’s a higher chance that they’ll buy from you than your competitors. If they’re not ready to buy, they’ll be more likely to buy from you when they are ready (or to tell their friends to buy from you).

Don’t confuse online content with hard sell-style paid ads. When the goal of your content is to help your users and answer their questions, you set yourself up to make loyal customers out of your target audience.

Rankings are one piece of the big picture, but what if you reach page 1 for every keyword in your campaign…but your keywords don’t align with what your ideal buyer is searching for? Or what if you reach page 1 but your site isn’t set up to efficiently close a sale? (Maybe it’s hard to navigate, slow-loading, or not user-friendly.)

A good SEO agency will build your campaign on sound research to make sure you’re ranking for keywords that will draw in the right buyer (the one that wants your products). They will make sure that your website appears trustworthy and is easy to navigate.

One easy way to look at paid ads vs. SEO is that paid ads are like renting a car, but SEO is like owning one.

Paid ads disappear as soon as you stop dumping money into your campaign. On the other hand, SEO gives you assets you can hang onto—like a fully optimized website that continues to increase in value as you build content, attract backlinks, and get recognized by Google as a trustworthy source. Each new gain compounds on the last as you continue to ascend the rankings and attract an increasing stream of targeted traffic.

SEO is widely considered more cost-effective than ads, largely because it drives more traffic. People are more likely to ignore “above the fold” advertising on search pages in favor of organic search results, which are considered more trustworthy. According to HubSpot, SEO brings in 27% of traffic as compared to paid search, which brings in just 9%.

With PPC, you can target certain demographics, but it’s hard to hone in on buyer intent. On the other hand, SEO also allows you to target what your buyers want. For example, let’s say you sell tomato seeds. Your blog about growing the perfect tomato plant pops up for a novice gardener. The would-be gardener learns a lot from your blog and begins to see you as a trustworthy source that they will want to buy tomato seeds from (more trustworthy than the seed company with the pop-up ad that flashes, uninvited, on their screen).

Some people opt to supplement their SEO with paid ad campaigns, which can be a good strategy. But for a cost-effective gateway to a high volume of targeted traffic and compounding gains that don’t go away the second you stop paying for ads, SEO is essential.