SEO Setup

This document serves as a reference guide to walk you through the SEO setup steps. If at any point you or your client have any questions about the work completed during the first month, please refer to the various sections throughout this guide to gain a better understanding.

Both of these tools are crucial for SEO success. Analytics allows us to track and measure all data regarding your website and the users that visit it. Likewise, the Search Console allows you to track impressions, clicks, and rankings. It also is the fastest way to upload and index new content to ensure that your SEO optimizations start working for you as soon as possible.

If you do not currently have these accounts for your business, no problem! As long as you indicate this in your onboarding, our SEO team will begin creating the appropriate accounts for you right away.

If you have accounts that you would like to use, you will need to grant permissions, so that our team can utilize the data within your account. You can learn how to do this by following the links below:

Providing Access to Google Analytics

Providing Access to Google Search Console

Along with Analytics, our team utilizes a variety of professional SEO tools which allow us to research and track keyword usage. Our goal is to help your website rank for your chosen keywords, while also discovering alternate ways to help your site rank.

It’s also important for us to research where your direct local competitors rank for the same keywords. If we can overtake a competitor in a particular keyword ranking, you can view and track that progress month to month. Alternatively, if the keyword competition is too strong, we will likely recommend alternatives to provide you with an easier pathway to higher rankings.

After we select the best keywords, we will add them for you into your Analytics app. There, you'll be able to keep track of your monthly rankings at any time. You can learn more about this here.

Keep in mind that while it’s not impossible to improve your ranking with competitive keywords, it is a process that takes time. Competitors are likely exploring similar strategies to help themselves outrank your business. The only way to guarantee success is through continuous, regular optimizations, along with new content additions, to your website.

A variety of factors have a great impact on your SEO aside from keywords. By performing this initial website audit during setup, you will receive a full report detailing your overall site health, existing errors, and recommended fixes for each. You will be able to compare this initial audit to your monthly report after we begin implementing fixes and optimizations.

Here are some examples of things that our SEO audit will scan your site for:

Upon receiving your audit, your SEO expert will explain the recommended changes and how they will improve your SEO and overall site health. We will be able to correct nearly every issue affecting your website with our sophisticated tools.

Examples of issues we would pass on to you and your client for correction are duplicate content, low text-to-HTML ratio, or poorly structured content on a given page. We currently only provide content marketing for blogs and will not be able to create new content for the front end of your website. We may also recommend creating new pages to focus on target keywords or locations.

NAP simply stands for “Name, address, phone number.” Search engines regularly cross-reference all existing NAP data for your business. You can quickly run into problems if this information is not consistent across all platforms. It is not uncommon, for example, to forget about an old directory listing that still shows an old business address or outdated business hours.

Because you get the Listings Manager service with your SEO subscription, we will ensure that the NAP information on your website is consistent across your directory listings. You should also update this information anywhere else it exists online such as social media profiles.

Remember - We can only optimize your Google Business listing if you provide us access. Improving your SEO and regularly updating this listing can help improve your discoverability in areas such as the local map pack greatly.

A Robots.txt file provides your SEO experts with the ability to control what pages of your website a search engine can crawl. A crawler is a program that constantly searches the web to accurately index web pages. This is effectively what allows you to get the best information immediately at the top of search results.

The Robots.txt file allows us to do the following:

Robots.txt can prove useful in a variety of scenarios. Excluding unnecessary or problematic pages from the crawler can prevent the site from reaching the “crawl rate limit.” Think of this as the number of pages Google wants to crawl. If you have numerous pages with duplicate content, meta errors, and slow load times, the crawler won’t prioritize indexing your website pages in Google.

Finally, the XML sitemap will help your SEO by greatly boosting the discoverability of all website pages. This is especially important if your website has pages that do not have any type of internal linking that allows you to easily find them.

The XML Sitemap will essentially explain the website structure to Google. This will allow it to have an easier time locating and crawling every page of your website. With the help of Google Search Console, your website will always be up to date and easy to discover, which will improve your SEO overall.

Our team performs all of these services as part of your initial setup. You will be able to quickly identify what your site health looks like before implementing these services, as well as how it improves after the fact. As we make changes to further improve your SEO, or as new pages are added, we will continue using these tools to optimize and index your website within Google and other search engines.