So, you just hired an Austin SEO agency for the first time and you are wondering what steps you need to take before the campaign begins. The first thing you should do is make sure that everything is squared away with the SEO company. You may need to give them some passwords to allow access to your website, your analytics, and your social media accounts. You will probably also have to sign a contract and send the first payment. Before you just give everything over and let them do their own thing though, there are a few things you should be sure to do.
1. Step To Start Austin SEO Agency: Backup Data
First, backup your website. Your SEO agency should do this as well, but you need to do it just in case. Your SEO agency is going to be making some changes to your website, from new title tags to editing metadata to adding keywords. There might be some other changes they will need to make as well. While the SEO agency likely knows exactly what to do, you want to make sure you have a restore point in case something goes away. Just like you would with all the pictures and important documents saved on your computer, backing up your stuff is just a smart move.
2. Step To Start Austin SEO Agency: Target Keywords
Next, you need to establish your baseline rankings. Where is your site currently ranking for each of your keywords? Conduct a search in each of the three major search engines for each of your keywords. Make sure you are searching from a browser that has a fresh browsing history.
Delete all of your cookies and temporary files before conducting these searches. You don’t want your past behaviour to influence what you see in the results. As you do the searches, write down the page and position of each keyword. Let your Austin SEO agency do the job for you, but chances are their numbers will be slightly different than yours. Search results can vary for a lot of reasons.
2. Step To Start Austin SEO Agency: Target Country
You especially need your own baseline point if you are hiring an SEO agency in a different part of the country. You will use these baseline results to occasionally track your search rankings yourself. While your SEO company will be giving you monthly (or hopefully weekly) updates, you want to be able to cross-check what they present to you. Chances are that they won’t lie because they know that you will be able to check for yourself. However, you want to make sure that the search results are improving from your location as well.
Read More: Top 10 Best SEO Content Writing Practics For Beginner 2021
You also want to make general notes about your web traffic and your amount of leads and sales. The more detailed you can get, the better. If you already know exactly how many unique visitors you’ve been getting each week, then make sure you take note of this so you can compare the new information. Knowing how many leads and sales you get each week is even more valuable. This way you will be able to see if those improved rankings and extra visitors are actually leading to more sales. You will also want to make more of an effort to find out where your customers are coming from. If they say they found you on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo etc then you know things are working.
By establishing all of these data points, you will be able to put yourself in a position to know if your SEO campaign is actually working. You should have established goals before you even called any SEO companies, and now you can get a better idea of how long it will take to reach those goals.
How to Know If Your SEO is Working?
Nearly every business owner has heard of search engine optimization, but many don’t understand what it is or whether or not it can help their business. In terms of advertising and marketing, SEO is proven to be one of the most successful and cost-effective ways to help a business grow. Some companies report an ROI of 1000% or more on their SEO investment. This of course can vary a lot. If you are wondering whether or not SEO can help you, then there are a few things you need to consider.
1- Conversion – Signups – Leads
One of the first things you should consider is your number of sales or number of clients. If you are satisfied with the amount of work you have and are not looking to grow, then there really is no need for SEO. Let’s be honest though. There are very few, if any, businesses that are content with their current sales. Everyone is looking to grow. If not, you wouldn’t be in business to begin with.
The next thing you want to consider is how many sales you are getting from your website. If you aren’t tracking your sales or customers, then you need to start. If you provide a service, give your customers a survey that asks, among other things, where they found out about you. An informed business knows where its leads are coming from. You need to put the steps in place to make sure you can figure out where all of your leads are coming from. If you are selling your product exclusively online, then this should be pretty easy to understand your SEO is working because of improved traffic with SEO.
Once you have your web sales figured out, then you need to figure out how those people are getting to your website. Are they mostly direct hits, or are you getting a lot of people from the search engines. If you are only getting direct hits, then you are missing out on a lot of potential traffic. In other words, you are only getting visitors who already know about your site. To expand your business, you need to start leading other visitors to your site.
A good analytics program will show you exactly where your traffic is coming from. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to determine what search terms people are using to find your site, but you will be able to figure out how many people are coming to your site through the search engines.
2- Check Your Keywords By Your Own Search
The final, and possibly the easiest way to determine if you need SEO is through your rankings in the search engine. If you search for your company name, you should show up on time. Chances are unless you are a very established business, people aren’t searching for your company name. Besides, this won’t really bring in new customers. You do want this ranking, but it isn’t your most important ranking.
You need to be more concerned with where you are ranking for the words relevant to your business. If you are selling cell phone cases, then you need to figure out where you are ranking for the search term “cell phone cases,” along with dozens of other keywords. If you aren’t on the first page of Google, then you could use SEO. Even if you are on the first page, you could still probably benefit from Austin SEO agency to help propel you into the top three. After all, the top three is pretty much the only place anyone ever clicks.
Read More: LongTailpro Vs Google Keyword Planner – Which is Best SEO tool?
