What is SEO, and should you invest in SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, SEO is all about improving your website, the content on your website (called on-page optimization), the technical code behind your website, and potential off-page strategies to help you and your business get more traffic from search engines without paying for advertising.
Sometimes you might hear people talking about a distinction between organic search results and paid search results.
The difference is quite simple, when you pay for something, like advertising, and someone arrives on your website, it is a paid visitor. However, organic search results are earned and can’t be bought.
Yes, you have to invest in quality content and other relevant items that Sherlock can help you with, but after that, all organic traffic is free.
As a result, a well-thought-off SEO strategy will bring you traffic long after you stop investing in it, compared to paid traffic which will run dry the moment you stop paying for your ads.
SEO experts like the ones at Sherlock SEO are the people who work in the niche of search marketing.
Although we depend on search engine algorithms such as Google, Bing, and other search engines (from which we don’t know the exact inner workings), we have a good idea of what search engines look for when ranking pages.
Do you want to sell products and services to people who are looking for information? The power of SEO lies in the concept that users have a search intent; people go search online and type in what they are looking for. Things like:
- recipes for everyday or special events
- video’s from current events or documentaries
- learning a new skill
- understanding how something works and eventually do a great makeover, rebuild, or whatever (spa, garden renovation, porch, hammock, …)
- buying new products or services
Almost anything you can think of is searched daily.
Scoring in Google with Search Engine Marketing
Almost every purchase today starts with a search on the Internet. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aims to rank your website higher in the search engine.
A professional SEO approach ensures sustainable organic business results. Everything starts with the right technical basis, so your qualitative and relevant content comes into its own.
As icing on the cake, organic promotion maximizes your online visibility. Before you can get started, you need an SEO audit and an SEO strategy.
An SEO plan will enable you to achieve your SEO goals. The Sherlock SEO specialists maximize your visibility in an organic way. If you are a company that cares about quality, you will appreciate the Sherlock SEO approach.
SEO Auditing
There are many SEO audit tools on the market. An SEO specialist extracts the priorities from all the data and shows you which actions contribute most to SEO success in the short term.
An SEO audit is always customized. As SEO specialists, we have several standard SEO audit tools at our disposal, but the emphasis we place on them depends on a whole range of parameters. Some examples of audits we regularly conduct:
technical SEO audit
On-page SEO audit
link building audit
competitive analysis
gap analysis
Keyword audit
Would you like a complete study? We can do that too, if you are looking for a digital strategy. Before we proceed with an SEO audit, we have a lot of questions for you.
You need no quick fixes but structural solutions. Investing in SEO is something that pays off in the long run. Start today with a thorough SEO audit.
SEO Strategy
If you are looking for a complete and thorough digital marketing strategy, we recommend that you have a comprehensive SEO audit done. Technical SEO is the basis of this audit, but you need more data to build a solid strategy. A thorough market research is necessary.
A good online strategy considers your competitors, the online advertising market, and social media. Positioning, branding, and UX/UI also influence your SEO. Contact Sherlock SEO for your digital strategy.
Strategic SEO is the sauce between SEO and digital marketing (Social, content, development, customer success, etc.). With SEOPOLY®, Sherlock SEO Agency developed a unique approach to involve your entire organization in your online marketing strategy.
Technical SEO
Most people are aware that SEO revolves around the content on your website. Content is king. That king also needs a castle, and that is technical SEO. Technical SEO depends on whether Google can visit your website and whether your content will be read optimally by Google and thus rank high in the results list.
Developers do have strong technical knowledge but often lack the background in how search engines work. Marketing and communication specialists often lack technical knowledge. The SEO specialist Sits right in between those two.
Is your website optimally accessible for both Google and visitors? Do you have an ideal website structure? How optimally do your internal links drive link value to your most important pages? What is the state of your robots.txt, sitemaps, and canonicals, …
Feeling overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Call the Sherlock inspectors for a technical SEO audit or 24/7 monitoring.
Onpage SEO
Onpage SEO is about the elements that you can adjust on your page as a function of your website optimization. This involves things like URLs, titles, and headers. Of course, it is also about search terms.
If you have never worked on your SEO, on-page SEO optimization is often easy to implement and has a fairly quick effect. Onpage SEO, like technical SEO, is important for the overall health of your website.
Many people are familiar with the term content marketing. But what is content marketing without good on-page SEO? Search terms are at the heart of the Google algorithm and are indispensable for your on-page SEO, but it’s a shame to neglect your on-page SEO if you invest a lot of time, money, and effort into your content.
The content of your website ensures relevance. By taking advantage of all the optimization opportunities available in On-Page SEO, you ensure that Google understands your page content in the best possible way.
SEO copywriting
When you think of SEO copywriting, do you think of an SEO copywriter who sprinkles a magic sauce of letters over your texts, maybe just adds some relevant keywords, and is done?
A professional SEO copywriter knows the search intent of your target audience and places your SEO texts in the right place on your website.
Internal links are an indispensable part of a well-written piece of content. A good SEO text does what it needs to do. And text is more than just words: headers, listings, images…. Have you ever compared your page to other pages that rank for the same topic?
Optimal SEO copy is so much more than just words. We have an internal team with years of experience, but even if you already have copywriters on staff, Sherlock SEO can create the briefings and guidelines to ensure they can take their SEO copywriting to the next level.
Search terms underlie the Google algorithm and are indispensable for good SEO rankings, but these days it takes more than doing keyword research and adding relevant keywords to your content. Entities, topics, schema, and a different search engine results page for each user doesn’t make SEO copywriting any easier. The content of your website ensures relevance.
With optimal SEO copy, you make sure Google understands your page content as best as possible.
Linkbuilding
Link building is also called off-page SEO. Link building is the building of links. These links are not on your own website but external links or inbound links, hence the name off-site SEO.
Other names for link building are digital PR or organic promotion. Google says you should not do link building, but links are important in ranking high in competitive niches.
And if you’re not allowed to build or buy links, you have to earn them!
Building links to your website is quite an art. Google punishes websites with a “penalty” if they find that you abuse links. The penalty? They will remove you from their index!
This doesn’t mean you should be fearful of building links, quite the opposite. Every business with a personality has different opportunities to collect links.
Sherlock helps you identify your opportunities and helps you to build links in a way that isn’t being penalized.
Contact us for a creative link-building campaign.
Local SEO
Are you a business that relies on customers from your neighborhood, area, or town?
Businesses that depend on customers from the immediate region need local SEO. Local SEO usually results in a three-pack in the search results.
This three-pack is a Google Maps integration with three business locations.
With the advent of the internet, opportunities have been added for local businesses to generate more visibility, but at the same time, there are still many SMEs and small independents who are making much too little use of local SEO.
The background and initial successes of Sherlock SEO are largely based on local SEO. Sherlock is happy to help you build your local business listings and promote your business to attract customers in local search.
Online Reputation Management
Your reputation is worth its weight in gold, both online and offline. Reputation is not something done in one day. There is the age-old saying that reputation comes by foot and leaves on horseback for a reason.
As a result, giving online reputation management the attention deserves is something that has to be part of your business DNA.
After all, before people even think of contacting you, they use the Internet to find out whether you can be trusted.
To generate more trust online, you can do several things. The most important thing to address is customer references.
Great places to start are places like your Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) and your Facebook page. Of course, there are several review platforms, and each niche has specific websites that are necessary to increase your online reputation.
Sherlock can help set up the systems for your business to ensure that your trust is growing from day one we start working together.
