What is SEO?
If you want to improve your site’s visibility in search engines (sure, Google, but there are others out there) then you need to look into SEO. That stands for “search engine optimisation”, but a better description would be “optimising the technical delivery of your site, and improving its content and reach in such a way that search engines view it more favourable”.
As you can probably tell from the above, SEO covers a range of things:
- How fast your site is
- Whether it has all the right signals and metadata for search engines
- How the content on it is organised
- The actual content itself, i.e. individual pages’ copy and any images or other media on it
- The structure of the content
- Checking that the site is delivering pages using HTTPS
- If multiple languages are being used correctly for an international site using best practice guidelines for localisation
- Whether you are missing key topics compared to competitors/that your target audience is searching for
- Whether you want all the content to be findable (“indexed”) in search engines
- How the site appears on the search engine results pages (“SERPs”)
- Monitoring changes by looking at rankings and traffic
- Using specialised tools to spy on what is working for competitors
- Crawling your existing site using tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to find and diagnose issues
- Using tools such as Search Console and Google Analytics to analyse content
- How internal pages link to each other
- Advising and/or implementing a strategy that will get more links for your site (naturally) from other sites
If you have time to do all that as a business owner or marketing manager, then good for you! If you’re already doing all that then you probably are an SEO already.
How much does SEO cost?
SEO is often seen as “free” because there’s no ad spend attached to it (unlike PPC/Google Ads), however this isn’t really the case, because you still need someone to do it. Even if you decide to do all the work yourself, it takes expertise and time to succeed at SEO, because if you stop working on it, your competitors will still continue to optimise and plan (and/or, the search engines will change how they like to see things, and then you have to adapt things for them too).
That doesn’t mean it has to break the bank — the key thing is to keep working on SEO consistently, pay attention to the market, follow best practice, and don’t do anything that feels a bit sneaky (because if you think it is, then search engines will almost certainly have a way of spotting it). A word of warning though: anyone saying they can do SEO for less than the cost of a day a month is probably not legit, and in truth 2-5 days of work a month is more likely to generate results, depending on your current situation.
How long does SEO take?
The annoying answer is “it depends on what your objectives are”.
If your goal is to aim for the top of the results for searches from your target audience, then in a sense SEO never ends. This is similar to the idea that if you stop practising a sport, you will find yourself eventually getting worse compared to those around you. As I’ve said, though, if you work consistently and are realistic about your expectations then you can find success for a modest investment per month. One alternative to this is to work with someone who can provide SEO training for you or your in-house team, with a view to eventually replacing themself. If this is of interest, drop me a note below.
On the other hand, if your problem is that you aren’t really being found in search engines at all then a one-off audit may be the answer. I have seen many websites over the years that had the right idea about content from an SEO perspective, but the website was holding them back. I’m not in the business of building websites, but I will do my level best to point out how you can improve an existing one from a technical perspective to improve rankings or fix bigger problems.
To not entirely dodge the question of “how long does SEO take?”, here are some examples:
- A poorly optimised site with poor content and modest expectations in a less competitive niche may see better rankings in 1-3 months if a good strategy is put in place, but these rankings may not be traffic-driving. It could take 6-12 months of work for rankings to result in traffic but a good SEO could work alongside the business to improve things.
- A well optimised site with good content and high expectations that is knocking on the top 10 spots for keywords in a competitive niche may never reach the top unless there’s a concerted effort to outdo competitors that are simply doing more — perhaps those comps have an in-house team, loads of content producers, or (as I have seen a number of times) they have tools or resources for end users that are useful, unique (perhaps proprietary) and pull in links from all over the web. In this case, it may be that the SEO strategy is linked to product strategy in general and needs a much higher level of engagement with the client.
Both the above examples are entirely “finger in the air” attempts to explain how different SEO engagements can take more time and/or more investment. In all cases, I would advise having a chat with an SEO expert before assuming you fall into either category — quite often something can be done, even on a shoestring budget.
SEO services
I can help improve your site’s SEO in a number of ways:
- A one-off, thorough, structured SEO audit that covers how your site is built, its content, and its “backlink profile”, i.e. the links that it currently has coming in (a key factor in success in the search engines).
- Pros: it’s a one off payment of £1000 (may increase if the site is large/complex) and the audit will give you lots of actionable tips
- Cons: you’re on your own after the report!
- A proposal for ongoing work at a level with which you and your budget are comfortable (starting at £500/month)
- Pros: you won’t have to learn all about SEO, because I’ll do all the work (although I’ll lean on your knowledge of your business along the way)
- Cons: we could be here for a while because nothing is guaranteed and honestly, SEO can be a long slog as mentioned above
Please do use the form below if you would like to discuss your requirements. If you came here because you happen to be looking for Royston SEO agencies then I’ll even buy you a coffee if you want to do a face-to-face meeting 🙂