Why is Keyword Research so Important?

December 20, 2021 by Audrey Bachman Leave a Comment

Why Is Keyword Research so Important?

When looking for home service, using a basic online word search is one of the primary ways to find what you are looking for. If you use the right words in your search, within a few clicks you can have exactly what you want. As a service provider, you want what you offer to be on the other side of that search.

Keyword research will help bring your products and services to the top of the search list. Establishing the right keywords for your brand acts as bait for potential clients. As much as possible, you want to generate attention from those who are best suited for your home services.

If you are looking for a way to increase traffic to your website and generate more revenue, keyword research is a great tool. Most successful businesses have a marketing strategy. To learn more about how to use keyword research as a part of your home services marketing strategy, keep reading.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a process of examining and clarifying the words that attract your target audience with the end goal of increasing revenue. While keyword research establishes what you are known for, it also is a process of discovering what words customers connect with your services. It’s easy to think that keyword research only impacts your search engine optimization (SEO). However, the language connected to your brand goes far beyond a basic word search.

We live in an age where you can find anything on the internet, which has become our primary source of information. Over half of the world has access to and uses the internet for informational purposes. Having precise and relevant information related to your home services is crucial when it comes to digital marketing. You want to make sure you are attracting those you are targeting.

There are several types of digital marketing, including but not limited to search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, and more. It is important to recognize the broad reach that your brand’s keywords could have. When searching for a product or service, most people will use the same words across platforms.

You want to ensure that the expertise you offer is marketed in a way that is broad, clear, and relevant. You want to target words that are meaningful to your intended audience. Again, the end goal is more customers. Keyword research allows you to cast a wider net and increase your conversion rate.

How to Perform Keyword Research

Performing keyword research is not as complicated as you may think or as it may sound. There are some great analytic tools available that will make your research quick and easy! It’s so easy that you can begin your research right now. Below are some steps to help get you started.

Find Relevant Words That Generate High Volume

You want to ensure you are using keywords that people are looking for often. You want to use words that are worth your time and effort. High-volume keywords are words that are searched at a high rate. The value of using high-volume keywords is simple: it increases the likelihood that people will see and engage with your products and services. It’s important to know and understand what words are currently popular.

To find the average monthly volume (AMV) of a word, you can use a resource like Google Keyword Planner. To help cast your keyword net wider, try to come up with more than one high-volume word that is related to the home services you provide. You will want to check the AMV regularly to ensure that your keywords are continuing to attract potential clients.

Little Competition Is Ideal

The goal of keyword research is to highlight your brand and services. Decreasing the competition is a great strategy to up your chances of being seen. Websites such as Semrush allow you to see what other businesses use keywords like yours.

You want to refine your keywords so you won’t have many other high-quality competitors using similar keywords as you. You can also use Google Keyword Planner to find out how competitive a keyword is. Google’s competition rating uses a scale of low, medium, and high. You want to try and use keywords that have low to medium competition.

Keyword Difficulty

You want to be sure that you are gathering enough information to provide you with a well-rounded picture. Regardless of the competition or the use of high-volume words, some words are considered too difficult to be effective for SEO. You can use a website like Moz to score your keyword difficulty.

Moz uses Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) to rank the viability of your web page being seen. In short, the rating system takes the quality, trustworthiness, and exposure of domain pages using the same keywords into account. Although you may have chosen words that have little to moderate competition, PA and DA intuitively predict how often someone will see and click on your page.

Conversion Is Key

When researching your keywords, you want to ensure you are using long-tail words. These words or short phrases have a greater level of precision in describing what you offer. Consider, for example, the difference between home security and home security for an apartment. These terms could have two different meanings. You may have a greater probability of capturing the attention of your target audience by using terms or phrases that are more precise.

Remember, the end goal of keyword research is to increase traffic to your site and generate more revenue. Your long-tail keywords should be specific enough to convert a browser into a customer. You want to ensure that you are targeting the purpose of someone’s search.

Know What You Are Up Against

At this point in the process, you have taken the time to find keywords that have a mixture of low competition and high search volume. Now you want to know who and what your competition is. Researching your competition is important because it may give you ideas on how to gain a creative edge over your competitors.

Knowing this information may support you in determining the best keywords to use to increase traffic to your page over your competitors. Again, the language you use is vital in speaking to your ideal client. If you are having difficulty determining what words to use to drive traffic to your page, you have the option to search your competitor’s URLs to find out what keywords they use.

In addition, taking time to learn about the businesses that use the same keywords as you will allow you to have a better understanding of what they offer and what type of customers they are targeting. Knowing this type of information may give you further insight into how to maximize your marketing strategy. Believe it or not, your competition can inspire you to up your game!

Practical Steps on How to Begin Now

Quality home services marketing is important because home services are important. The goal is to create a marketing strategy that is sustainable and adaptable. As time progresses, so do people and their behaviors. It is important to remain up to date with your target audience and what is relevant to them related to home services. The better you know your customers, the better you will be able to provide them with what they need. Some useful ways to begin using keyword research in your marketing are:

Take some time to determine words that describe your brand and are relevant to the services you offer. These words will be a good list to start with when establishing your keywords.
Find synonyms to use. Once you create a list of words that describe your brand, create a list of similar words. This will expand the possibility of finding words that will rank high in SERPs.
Use a tool like Google Keyword Planner and begin to look at keywords similar to yours. Begin to incorporate those words into your blog posts, web copy, and other content you produce. Once you do that, track your webpage analytics and see whether it makes a difference in your traffic.
Research your keywords at least once per quarter. This will allow you to get into a routine of consistency when it comes to tracking analytics and paying greater attention to what words you use to describe your home services.

Getting started in keyword research is a breeze. You can begin today! In just a few easy steps, you can increase the visibility of your brand and the home services you offer. Should you desire more detailed information on how to take your digital marketing to the next level, you can reach out to one of our qualified specialists by clicking here or calling us directly at (281) 940-7463.

Understanding Clickthrough Rate and How It Affects Your Bottom Line

August 10, 2021 by David Cherry Leave a Comment

Understanding Clickthrough Rate and How It Affects Your Bottom Line

We don’t expect you to understand every aspect of what we do as home services marketers. But, the more knowledge that you can equip yourself with, the better suited you will be to effectively track the performance of your marketing campaigns.

There are certain elements that you as a business owner and client of a marketing agency deem important and use as a gauge to measure the efficacy of your marketing. Much the same, Google has metrics and components that they measure to hold us accountable as well.

Yes…we get it from both ends!

One of those elements that both you and Google should (and hopefully are) keeping an eye on is the clickthrough rate of your company’s listings on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

This goes for both paid ads and organic results.

Let’s take a step towards understanding this metric a little better…

What is Clickthrough Rate?

Google defines clickthrough rate as a ratio showing how often people who see your ad or free listing end up clicking it. Clickthrough rate (CTR) can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads, and free listings, are performing.

Ultimately, CTR is the number of times users click on your ad or listing versus the number of times the ad or listing was shown.

For example, if your ad or listing was seen 250 times, and received 25 clicks, your clickthrough rate would be 10%.

The higher your clickthrough rate, the better your ad or listing is performing.

On the contrary, a low clickthrough rate is often a good indication that your ad or listing isn’t persuasive enough to entice the user to click to learn more.

A low clickthrough rate can most often be cured by tailoring the words of your ad or listing to speak more specifically to the issues that your target audience is experiencing.

What is a Good Clickthrough Rate?

Determining a good CTR is totally dependent upon your industry and the keywords being targeted with your ad or listing.

You may be shocked to know that, according to Hubspot, the average clickthrough rate across all industries is 1.91% for Google search ads.

And according to respondents from a survey conducted by Databox, the average CTR for organic search results (Search Engine Optimization) is between 3-5%.

Understanding the industry averages helps to make your expectations as a business owner a little more realistic.

How Does CTR Impact Search Performance?

So this is where I was telling you that Google also keeps an eye on how our campaigns for companies like yours are performing.

If you think of Google as a business (which they are) and the people who search on Google as their customers (which they are) then you can understand why it’s important for Google to provide the best search results possible.

If they notice that a particular ad or search result is being shown often but never gets clicked, they consider that result to be irrelevant and will show it far less often which ultimately means worse placement for you.

It is crucial that your paid ads and organic search results are;

Showing up for the correct search terms
Persuasive enough to convince the user to click and learn more

If your results show up for incorrect search terms, one of two things will happen. The user will either not click on the ad, or they will click on the ad and learn that it has nothing to do with what they are searching for when they get to your website or landing page, resulting in them leaving immediately.

If you don’t get the click…bad. If they get to your site and leave immediately…also bad.

One of our goals as your marketing partner is to target the exact audience who is in need of your services and craft the perfectly worded search results to entice them to click, and in the end, convert into a lead for your business.

It’s Beneficial to Understand for Yourself and to Partner with a Pro

Knowing how to judge the success of your home services company’s marketing campaigns is necessary if you want to have your finger on the pulse of your business.

That being said, knowing how to understand your campaigns is a totally different animal than being able to actually commit the time and execute the campaigns yourself.

It’s important to partner with a marketing agency that you can trust and rely on.

Visibly Connected has been partnering with home services companies like yours for over 11 years and we have literally made it our business to create successful marketing campaigns in the industry.

We’re always happy to help if you have any marketing questions and are available to chat if you want to learn more about how we can help you become more effective online.

SEO, PPC, ROI, KPI – what the hell does it all mean and what should you be paying attention to?

July 13, 2021 by Andrew Bachman Leave a Comment

SEO, PPC, ROI, KPI – what the hell does it all mean and what should you be paying attention to?

There are so many digital marketing acronyms that It almost seems pretentious to some degree.

As a marketer, keeping up with all of the acronyms and their importance is just part of the job. But, as an outsider, it can seem very confusing. Let’s break some of these items down to see exactly what they mean, how important they are, and which ones you should be paying attention to.

Common Digital Marketing Acronyms

Here’s a quick explanation of the most basic understanding of the acronyms that we are focusing on in this article;

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

Pay-per-click (PPC)
an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines.

Return on Investment (ROI)
the contribution to profit attributable to marketing, divided by the marketing ‘invested’ or risked.

Key Performance Indicator(s) (KPI)
A way of measuring the effectiveness of a marketing agency and its progress towards achieving your goals.

But anybody can search Google to find a few definitions.

This article is about exploring those definitions a little further to understand how these terms are important to your home services business and it’s marketing.

So let’s do just that.

Understanding SEO and PPC, and how they fit into your business.

Most of the time that we are approached by a prospective client, they don’t know which particular form of marketing they want or need – they only know that they ultimately want to generate more service calls.

It is our job to analyze your goals and come up with a roadmap of the most effective ways to reach those goals.

Let’s start with search engine optimization.

SEO is what we consider to be the foundation for any successful home services marketing campaign.

Search engines are becoming more and more geographically aware of their users’ intent when searching for particular home services such as “HVAC repair” or “Plumbers near me”. This is why search engine optimization is so powerful for service companies with a service area of let’s say a 20-mile radius.

You want to make sure that your local map listing as well as the relevant pages on your website are completely optimized and are showing up when those users in your service area are searching for your services.

The great thing about SEO is that your results aren’t determined by how much money you are willing to spend each month. Your results are based on the effectiveness of our work as your marketing agency month in and month out.

The only caveats to local SEO are the amount of time it takes and that a local home services company will have a hard time targeting a particular neighborhood that is 50 miles away because there are simply too many service providers between your physical location and that of the user in that neighborhood.

Pay-per-click, on the other hand, is able to do exactly that.

PPC marketing is a great way to target specific geographic areas with laser-like precision. You have the ability to say when you want your ads to show up, what search terms you want to trigger them, where you want them to be displayed, and how much you’re willing to pay for the clicks.

This kind of granular control over your marketing is very powerful when it comes to expanding your business in a hurry and even testing potential service areas.

You just better be prepared to have a budget that matches your goals because search engines don’t run ads for free.

Let’s dig a little deeper to understand in what scenarios these marketing tactics work best, what type of ROI to expect, and how to track a successful campaign with the proper KPIs.

When does SEO make sense and how will I know it’s working?

I’ll be honest – there really isn’t a scenario that we wouldn’t recommend local SEO to a home services client.

As I mentioned before, it is the foundation of any successful home services company out there when it comes to digital marketing.

It is highly effective for a new home services business that is looking to establish a foothold in their territory.

SEO can take a word-of-mouth company and expose them to a segment of customers that they would have never had the chance to access before.

And SEO, done right, is a breath of fresh air for the home services company that has been burned by less than effective marketing agencies in the past.

You’ll know search engine optimization is working when your local map listing and website start showing up in the first-page search results for relevant search terms in your service area. This is known as keyword rankings and is a major KPI, or key performance indicator, when it comes to SEO.

But let’s be honest – that’s kind of a lame KPI. While it’s important, first-page Google rankings don’t necessarily translate to more service calls.

We take things much further than keyword rankings when it comes to SEO that we provide our home service clients.

Some major KPIs that we track as your marketing agency are;

Keyword rankings – what position your local map listing and/or website rank for specific keywords.
Monthly website traffic – how many organic users are driven to your website each month, specifically from our efforts.
Website bounce rate – how often users reach your website and immediately leave or close the window.
Average time spent on page – well…how long users spend on a specific page on average, obviously.
Pages visited per session – how many pages a user clicks through to on your website in a single visit.
Average session duration – how much time a user spends on your website in a single visit overall.
Users’ geographical location – where users are accessing your website from.
Conversion rate – the percentage of users who are either calling or filling out a form.

Let’s understand why some of these metrics are important…

We want to know how many users we send to your website each month because it lets us know how effective the title and description of your pages are which is what shows up in the search results. If we notice that you are showing up in search results often but nobody is visiting your site, that tells us that we need to improve the quality of your title and description to persuade the user to click on your website.

Your bounce rate and average time spent on page go hand-in-hand. If all of the traffic we send to your website is spending less than 30 seconds on the page and not calling you, then we know we are sending the wrong traffic to your website and we need to correct that.

A user’s geographical location is important because let’s be honest, someone in India isn’t going to bring a whole lot of value to your local home services company located in Texas.

Where Visibly Connected really comes in clutch is with your conversion rate. We analyze the number of people who visit your website versus the number of phone calls and web forms you get each month. If that number is low, we make changes to the user experience of your website to help improve those numbers.

Search engine optimization is a long game and nothing really happens fast in terms of results. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible about that with our clients.

But the thing is – the payoff is huge.

When we are able to consistently put forth the effort to rank your local map listing and website on the first page of search results, analyze the traffic, and make necessary adjustments to maximize the potential of that traffic, all you have to do is answer the phone, reply to emails, and run service calls.

So why would I run PPC ads and what kind of return should I expect?

There are a couple of scenarios that PPC or pay-per-click marketing is most effective.

For one, PPC is a great way to stimulate your revenue while SEO is in its early stages and the results aren’t as glorious as you would like.

Another scenario where pay-per-click advertising would be best utilized is if you are trying to grow a particular service in a hurry such as AC Installation or Roof Replacement.

Where PPC really shines is its ability to allow your home services business to scale.

You are able to segment your marketing budget to really understand where you are getting the most return on your investment in terms of services provided and the geographical market.

By knowing if you spend $3,000 per month to get an additional 20 service routes in a specific city, you can hire additional service techs without the burden of wondering where the next customer is going to come from.

You also have the ability to easily reach out and target communities that may otherwise be a pipedream with organic marketing methods.

Another thing to consider is saturation.

Search engine optimization is great to establish dominance in your local service area, but eventually, you will saturate the market and just maintain that dominance.

With PPC, you can extend your reach and grow as a home services company to eventually TAKE OVER THE WORLD *lightning crash*.

Or at least the major metropolitan area if that’s what you’re into.

Some KPIs that go into determining a successful PPC campaign include;

Impressions – how often your ad is being seen.
Click-through rate – the percentage of users who click your ad.
Cost per click – the average dollar amount a search engine charges per click on your ad.
Conversions – users that either call or submit their information after having clicked on your ad.
Cost per conversion – the average dollar amount spent to achieve either a phone call or form submission.
Conversion rate – the percentage of users who call or submit their information after having clicked on your ad.
Overall cost – the overall dollar amount spent on your ads campaign.

Let’s look at how some of these metrics affect the overall quality of your ads campaign…

While we look at the overall picture, the main metrics that we analyze when running a PPC ads campaign are the click-through rate, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

We want to maintain a high click-through rate because that determines how many people actually see your landing page and offer, such as “New System Financing”. Without people clicking on your ads, nobody will see your offer, and that means no service calls.

Once a user reaches your landing page, we are able to track how many of them convert into a lead by either calling or submitting their information on a form. This percentage is your conversion rate. Our goal is to convert as many users as possible into leads for your home services business.

Lastly, we want to really focus on the overall cost per conversion. This is important because it helps us really understand your ROI or return on investment.

One of the most common misconceptions that we run into with potential home services marketing clients is that a business running PPC ads is going to make money hand over fist with a modest investment.

That’s just not the case no matter who you are working with.

PPC advertising is an effective way to grow your business and target specific services and geographical locations but depending on the industry, can require a considerable budget.

Understanding the investment is the most important part of running PPC ads. If you know your margins and comprehend the value of a lead based on the frequency at which you are turning those leads into service calls, then you should be set up for a successful ads campaign.

The concept isn’t very complicated.

Once you understand the basic terminology and know what to look for, the concept of digital marketing isn’t very complicated.

The difficult part is being able to adapt and recognize all of the nuances that go along with maintaining multiple digital marketing campaigns.

As long as you equip yourself with enough information to make the appropriate decisions, you should experience success with your home services marketing.

Visibly Connected has been a marketing partner for home services companies for over 10 years and we love to be a resource of information for anyone in the industry. Feel free to reach out if you have questions!

Local SEO for Home Services – Answers to Your Questions

March 18, 2021 by Audrey Bachman Leave a Comment

Local SEO for Home Services

There are tons of options and multiple approaches that a local home services company can take when it comes to digital marketing. But the most important one, by far, is search engine optimization (SEO).

Your goal is to be found when someone in your community is searching for your services.

Local SEO for Home Services will help you accomplish that goal.

But it’s not enough to just be told that – let’s dig a little deeper to find out why by answering some of the questions we get asked the most by business owners like you…

What is Local SEO for Home Services?
Does Local SEO only cover the city or town that my business is located in?
What can I do as a business owner to help my search engine rankings?
What is Visibly Connected’s process for Local SEO for Home Services companies?
Is Local SEO ever complete? Is there a certain length of time that you spend on it?
How long does Local SEO take?
How come “Insert Generic Marketing Company Name Here” reached out and offered me first page Google rankings in the first month?

Q. What is Local SEO for Home Services?

A. Local SEO for home services is the process in which a digital marketing company, such as Visibly Connected, completes tasks and objectives to help your local business rank better in both organic search results and the local map pack on Google.

These tasks and objectives include a number of processes including website optimization, citation management such as Google My Business, content creation, link building and management, and more.

Q. Does Local SEO only cover the city or town that my business is located in?

A. Not necessarily. Local SEO is more of a radius-based service meaning it is most effective within the first 15 to 20-mile radius of your location.

Google is constantly making changes to their search algorithms and it is becoming increasingly difficult to rank higher the further you get from your physical location. The reason for this is because Google wants to serve the most relevant results to its users – that being the closest business to the person searching.

This generally works out well for home services companies because the typical service area aligns pretty well with the 20-mile radius.

Q. What can I do as a business owner to help my search engine rankings?

A. As a business owner, the most important step you can take to having a positive impact on your search engine rankings is encouraging your customers to leave reviews of their experience with your company on your Google My Business listing.

The more that Google sees your business interacting with the community, the more likely they are to “recommend” you to other users within the community. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is by getting consistent, positive reviews and replying to those reviews with a simple response such as “Thank you for your business and your kind words!”.

Q. What is Visibly Connected’s process for Local SEO for Home Services companies?

A. Our approach is relatively straightforward. Upfront, we conduct an in-depth audit to discover exactly where your business currently stands with rankings, what existing content you may have that can be utilized, and what your competitors are doing that we should be paying attention to.

Next, we map out a plan for your search engine success. We take the information we gathered in our audit and have a discussion with your company to discover what your ultimate goals are.

From there we begin the work of optimizing your site and online presence to yield the best results. This is constant work that continues to improve over the life of your local SEO campaign.

You can read more about our Local SEO for Homes Services process here.

Q. Is Local SEO ever complete? Is there a certain length of time that you spend on it?

A. If there were a blueprint for Local SEO that laid out the exact steps needed in order to rank #1 – we wouldn’t have jobs as digital marketers. It’s not as simple as getting a set number of tasks accomplished and being done with it.

Google and other popular search engines are constantly changing their method of measurement when it comes to their judgment of a first-page worthy website. For this reason, Local SEO is an ongoing process that takes an expert with their finger on the pulse of the industry to understand what and when things need to happen in order to render the best results.

Surprisingly, getting you to the first page of search results in your service area isn’t the hardest part of Local SEO – keeping you there is.

Q. How long does Local SEO take?

A. This is such a difficult question, however, it is the most asked. How long does it take for what exactly?

To start ranking? That depends on the keywords you are wanting to rank for as well as the competition in your market. We like to approach less competitive keywords first in order to establish some credibility with Google. Once we rank well for those, the more sought-after keywords will come easier.

To start seeing results? You will begin seeing results relatively quickly. We do a great job of keeping you informed on a regular basis regarding your keyword positioning as well as the traffic and behavior to which that positioning contributes to. Most of our clients see results from our efforts within the first couple of months.

To start seeing a return on your investment? We like to be completely transparent – in all reality, it will most likely take you between 8 to 12 months to start seeing a significant return on your investment. There is some serious groundwork that needs to be done in order to start getting to the good stuff.

The beautiful part is, once you do start seeing results, it only gets better from there. Local SEO is so impactful because you aren’t paying per click like you would with PPC marketing. This means that the better we do and the longer we do it for, the more money you make and the bigger your ROI becomes.

Q. How come “Insert Generic Marketing Company Name Here” reached out and offered me first page Google rankings in the first month?

A. Just like any industry, there exists a certain subculture of digital marketers who employ less than ethical tactics to get quick results. This may sound great to you as a business owner looking for the magic bullet to marketing, but I can assure you, it will completely devastate your online presence. Utilizing spammy and illegitimate marketing tactics for Local SEO isn’t new, and it isn’t smart.

Your first encounters with Google will be on an automated basis as they are with any newcomer looking to rank on their platform and these tactics will look very promising.

However, Google will start to put human eyes and advanced machine learning on your website and directory listings across the web and soon find out that you aren’t playing by their rules. This means big trouble for your company. Google can essentially blacklist your company website from the Internet for using these tactics.

So to answer the question – they offered you a too-good-to-be-true package and while it may yield surprising results at first, it will result in much bigger surprises later.

Understanding What You are Investing In

Entering into an agreement with a marketing company can be uncertain. Couple that with the confusion that comes from not knowing what or how they are supposed to accomplish your goals and it can become a frustrating situation.

We do everything in our power to educate professionals in the home services industry on the different aspects of digital marketing, how different services are best utilized, and what kind of results to realistically expect.

Feel free to contact us today to learn more about how Visibly Connected can help your home services company achieve growth through digital marketing.

(SEO) How Long Does It Take To Get Results?

January 31, 2020 by Audrey Bachman Leave a Comment

(SEO) How Long Does It Take To Get Results?

Quick Answer: When starting the process of SEO, the general time frame to begin seeing gains is around the 6-month mark. However, there are many factors that may speed up or delay the process. Keep reading to learn more!

The SEO Timeline & All That Factors In

If you’ve done any research at all on digital marketing tactics, then surely you’ve come across the term search engine optimization (SEO) and it’s peaked your interests, as it should.
For a business to make an investment, the usual concern is how long it takes to get results (return on investment), and do I really need it?

But there is a real problem with this way of thinking when it comes to SEO. Search engine optimization is not an immediate “plug it in and your problems are solved” kind of solution.

If you want real results that last and fuel the life of your online business, you will absolutely need SEO, there’s no doubt about it. But, you will also need to understand how it works and how to appreciate the process in order to reap it’s rewards to the fullest.

SEO is the love language of the internet, and if you are trying to build an online business, you’re going to need to know how to speak that language. Or, at least find someone who does to bring on to your team.

It’s important to understand that SEO is truly an investment in your business. And rarely do business investments worth having yield instant gratification. SEO takes a lot of tedious and continuous maintenance to keep up with your competitors as well as search engine standards.

In this article, we are going to be discussing the timeline of SEO results, what to expect, and how the timing of results may differ depending on your situation.

What Affects The SEO Result Timeline?

The Age of Your Website (Domain Authority)

The age/domain authority of your website when you begin SEO is one of the largest factors associated with the results timeline.
Domain Authority is the determination of how relevant, accurate, or useful your business page is for a search engine’s audience in comparison to what they already have indexed by other companies competing for a spot in the same industry.

For a new website, developing authority takes time, after all, you have to remember that there are many before you that may have spent years optimizing their online business to earn a reputable spot in search results.

Does this mean it will take you years to benefit from SEO? Absolutely not. All this means is that you will have to put in the time and effort it takes to develop a competition-worthy domain. With the right SEO team, this could happen in as little as 8 months to a year for your business depending on your service area and competition.

Design of Your Website (Mobile, Structure, Site Speed, Etc)

Let’s make one thing very clear, Google is a stickler for mobile-friendliness, site speed, structure, content quality, etc.

If your site is riddled with issues causing slow load times or poor navigation, you best believe Google has a better site to send their users too, and they will.

At the end of the day, Google is a business and they became popular by keeping their searchers happy and on the right track for the best internet experiences available. That being said, quality comes first.

With an SEO team, your site gets constant maintenance and improvements so that it can keep up with Google and remain in view of your customers. You should also know that Google releases updates and changes to their algorithm and requirements constantly, which means the work is never done.

SEO is an endless race, but never to the finish line, only to stay ahead.

All that being said, depending on the quality of your web pages in regards to structure, speed, and user experience, your site can either get quickly left behind or move full speed ahead with SEO.

Content & Keyword Strategy

Content and keyword strategies are the backbone of search engine optimization. Search engines like google use your site’s content layout and use of keywords to understand who you are as a company, what kind of value you offer a searcher, and where to place you in search results.

When your webpages are optimized using proper industry-related keywords and valuable content (all used in the right places of course with the right coding), your chances of being moved to the front page of search results rise quickly!

Content and keywords are how search engines index your site in comparison to your competitors. It’s also how Google knows which search queries to match with your services/products. Without content and keyword organization you’ll never reach your target audience.

Now that you understand the importance of content creation and keyword strategies, you should also know that it takes time to develop and optimize.

If you already have good content, optimizing it may not take long and your results may come along much sooner. If content needs to be created or completely reworked, you should expect results accordingly. After all, it can take up to a month or so just for Google to fully index and place a new piece of content in its proper ranking status.

Competition

Competition is another large factor that affects the timeline of SEO results.

For example- If you are looking to rank nationally in a saturated industry, you should expect SEO results to take time and a lot of work. After all, your competition is large.

If you are looking to rank locally for that same industry, you may see results much faster do to a lower volume of competition trying to rank ahead of you.

When fighting the crowd in search results, there is a lot that factors in, for instance:

Is your goal to rank locally or internationally?
Is your site new or have you been around for a while and just need some optimization techniques applied?
What do you offer in comparison to your competitors? What makes your site worth a good ranking status?
What is your customer service like in comparison to your competitors? Reviews are everything in the world of digital marketing.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of things you have to consider when trying to gage a timeline for SEO results. The more work that needs to be done, the longer you can expect it to take to see results.

Why Choose Visibly Connected for your Search Engine Optimization

At Visibly Connected, no matter your starting point in the SEO process, we have the skill and experience to get you where you’re needing to go.

The question is, are you prepared to invest in real results? And do you have the patience to get them in a way that yes, takes time, but will fuel your online business for years to come?

If you are in fact ready to take those steps, give us a call today and set up a consultation. We will go over your existing online presence and offer you realistic goals as well as proven strategies to get you where you need to be.

When it comes to SEO, there’s no sugar-coating it, you either put in the work to get the results you want, or you don’t. The time frame is all circumstantial.

7 Benefits of Partnering with an SEO Company

August 12, 2019 by Audrey Bachman Leave a Comment

7 Benefits of Partnering with an SEO Company

(SEO) stands for search engine optimization. In other words, “One ring to rule them all.” –Just a little corny Lord of the Rings joke for you.

But seriously, search engine optimization is a pretty big deal! No matter what service or product you are selling, I can almost guarantee there is a person somewhere out there needing to get to you.

Lucky for us, phonebooks aren’t the way to go anymore. I mean, what a bore right? Almost everyone in today’s market (and I do mean everyone) searches for the products and services they need online through search engines like Google and Bing.

These algorithms, over time, have developed some pretty advanced web-indexing technology! What do I mean by this?

Well, when someone pulls up a search engine and types in something like “Women’s cat t-shirts made of cotton” (because they are allergic to polyester of course) the search engine will quickly scan the entire web. All possibly related websites along with their content and lists out in order from best to worst the most likely web-page options to contain precisely what that person is looking for.

You may now be asking yourself, “What do cat t-shirts have to do with my business?” and the answer to that, is nothing! However, SEO is what fuels search engines to lead searchers to a potential conversion, and THAT my friend has everything to do with your business.

What Exactly is SEO?

SEO is the process of using mapped out marketing tools like keywords, focused content writing, and analytics, all in efforts to make your online business visible and show up when people search for related goods and services.

Without SEO, your online business goes completely unnoticed with every possible competitor being shown as an option instead.

7 Major Benefits an SEO Company Offers Your Online Business

SEO traffic Converts!
SEO is your best salesperson, working day and night tirelessly to get your online business noticed and provides you the leads you’ve been looking for. When you partner with an SEO company, you’ve taken on an entire team of today’s most important business building blocks. After all, nearly everything is digital now. Storefront marketing and sales associates are wonderful, but they simply aren’t enough anymore for real growth. SEO solves this problem in leaps and bounds.
SEO is Evergreen
One of the most significant perks to using an SEO company is that SEO is evergreen! What this means is, once the keywords and the focused content are all in place and optimized on your webpage, it will always be there. Search engine optimization will be in your corner 24/7 tirelessly working to bring you sales and lasting customers. With a visible online business optimized by an SEO company, people are always able to reach out to you for your services in one way or another.
SEO Builds Brand Awareness
When it comes to building a successful business that lasts for generations to come, brand awareness is truly key. After all, you will always have innovative competitors who want to rule the market just as much as you do, sometimes even more. That is exactly why having an SEO company build your brand awareness is so important. With the old ways of marketing, you can only reach so many people, and often not always the right people. Search engine optimization is the only tool that markets to “the right people” at all times without you even lifting a finger. With SEO keeping you on the front lines in search engines, your brand awareness has endless possibilities and staying power. In today’s market, a business needs that backing to survive.
SEO is a Trackable Measurable Science
Search engine optimization is a very technical process. An SEO company brings in the skill and know-how it takes to run the show. Search engine optimization uses a lot of trackable analytics and specialized marketing techniques (like Google Analytics) to bring you 24/7 digital marketing, perfectly customized to your online business needs.
SEO Improves user Experience
When you hire an SEO company to optimize your site, one of the very first things done is to navigate through your webpages to get a feel for its user-friendliness.Today’s society has become used to ease and convenience. If your site is outdated, slow to load, clunky to operate, and hard to navigate, customers aren’t going to stick around or convert to what you’re offering. Obviously, that is bad for business. An SEO company will quickly come in and provide the necessary updates required to make your online business as user-friendly as possible. When this happens, your customers not only love your services but also love the ease of access it provides. Unlike an in-person storefront, your web pages “user-friendliness” IS your customer service.
SEO Targets and Attracts your Exact Customer
When you partner with an SEO company, you install a business magnet into the back end of your webpage. Search engine optimization is a master at continually sending you the exact customers you’re looking for by showing off your business to anyone and everyone who searches for your services. Being readily available, convenient, and in full view at all times is how you gain and retain a loyal customer base.
SEO Boost’s Your Market-Share
Market-share is where you fall in line between your customers and all of your competitors. If you are lost somewhere in the middle or back of the line for search engines, your business will have a very hard time taking ownership of your desired market share. When you take advantage of an SEO company and their services, you instantly gain a stronghold in your market share, with an entire team that knows exactly how to get you to the front of the line!

Ready to add an SEO Company to your team?

If you are ready to get ahead of your business’s competitors and bridge the digital gap between you and your customer base, call Visibly Connected today at 281-940-7463! With over 45 years of combined SEO experience, Visibly connected has exactly what you need to get ahead of the game and stay there!

How to Improve Your Online Reputation

September 6, 2018 by Visibly Connected Leave a Comment

Improve Your Online Reputation

Smart business owners know that online reputation is vital in today’s business climate.

Research shows that 97% of consumers looked online for local businesses in 2017, and 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation!

What does this mean to you?

It means that online reputation matters. Not every customer is always going to be happy with your product or service.

Therefore, it is important to know how to improve your online reputation.

Consider Reviews

Ask for Reviews

Reviews not only let other consumers know about your product or service. Reviews give you an opportunity to build your online reputation.

What people say about your brand affects how others will view it. How you react to what people are saying will do just as much to build your brand, though.

By actively soliciting reviews, your satisfied and dissatisfied clients or customers will see that you value their opinions and are striving to improve your products or service.

How to Respond to Positive Reviews

While positive reviews are already complimenting your brand, you can still respond to them. Showing that you can take a few seconds to thank a customer for their time and review shows that each customer is important to you.

Your online reputation will only improve.

Make sure the responses are genuine and not repetitive, to whatever extent that is possible. The people who take the time to leave positive reviews will only have a better view of your brand knowing that you value their business and their opinion.

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

Negative reviews present a challenge for businesses, but they can also present a great opportunity.

Some customers will leave a negative review without even reaching out to the company. If you receive such a review, you have the opportunity to stand by your product or service.

Respond to the review by offering to get in touch with the customer directly to make things right.

Ask the customer to call and ask for the appropriate party or send a direct message.

Make the comment public so when other consumers see the review, they also see that you were concerned and attempted to rectify the situation.

Many consumers will go back and edit their original review when their particular concern is successfully addressed.

If your customer leaves the review after a failure of customer service, a “customer is always right” attitude in your response can speak volumes to your brand expectations.

An apology for a poor experience is a great start.

Going an extra step and assuring that is not up to your service standards goes even further. Potential customers who see your response are more likely to overlook a poor review when you go the extra step to assure an unsatisfied customer that you will keep working until it is resolved.

Again, your online reputation can improve, even though you’ve had a negative review.

The most vital part of responding to negative reviews is to take responsibility when you are at fault.

If you are not at fault, you can still sincerely apologize for the experience and work to satisfy your customer.

Always responding sincerely will clearly show your current and potential customers that you are working hard to earn your good online reputation.

Be Proactive with Content

Reviews are not the only things that determine your online reputation. Negative content can be posted online, whether it is true or not.

It can come from any of the following sources:

disgruntled employees
dishonest product comparisons from paid affiliates of competitors
competitors spreading false claims
news items that may involve one of your employees that are unfavorable and mention your company in passing
any number of other sources

The best way to be proactive about protecting your online reputation (preferably before any of the above is even an issue) is to produce quality content.

This content should be optimized for search.

This strategy will put your best content forward in online searches.

Often with an abundance of positive quality content, negative content (which honestly is typically lower quality) is pushed down in search results.

Most savvy consumers, if they ever get to that content to review it, will recognize there is a reason it is lower in result rankings.

What is quality content?

There are many ways you can produce quality content for your brand. The key is to produce various forms of content and to publish it using various channels.

Content marketing done right will always help your online reputation. Some ideas of content that can help build your online reputation are these:

White papers
Blog entries
Case studies
Video testimonials
Video product demonstrations
Comments and answers to questions in online forums
Infographics

Using the appropriate channels to publish your content will help spread the reach of your brand.

Furthermore, it will give you the optimization you need to keep your online reputation positive and growing.

In conclusion, using online reviews as a platform to further your brand message and producing quality content are the best ways to improve your online reputation.

Monitor your search results and social media profiles.

It is important to address all reviews and consistently update your content.

Taking these steps will help your online reputation continue to improve.

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