SEO in Houston

SEO - Houston - Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a discipline of marketing that focuses upon the enhanced visibility of organic results returned by search engines. SEO comprises of both the creative as well as technical aspects of improving overall rankings, increasing search engine awareness and driving traffic to a website.

SEO is a lot more than just building websites that are friendly towards search engines. It deals with everything on a website including the text, backlinks, theme and overall structure. In simpler words, it is all about structuring your website in a way that is completely understandable by search engines.

How does it work?

A website normally gets most of its traffic driven from different search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Although social media platforms also pay a notable role in getting traffic to a website, different types of search engines still play the primary navigation role for majority of the users. This holds true for websites providing all kinds of data including information, products, services and content.

The unique thing about search engine driven traffic, is that, it is targeted. In other words, they are looking for exactly what you are offering on your website. In case your website does not feature search engine optimization, it would be deprived of a massive amount of traffic and you would be missing out on incredible opportunities.

It is a known fact that search engine driven traffic is what makes or breaks the success of a website. If you succeed in driving targeted traffic to your website, you are exposed to countless opportunities of revenue, publicity and highly effective marketing channels.

What are the benefits?

Some of the benefits associated with carrying out SEO on a website include:

Low cost solution

In comparison to SEO, other means of getting web traffic include, PPC and AdWords, which are paid services. These solutions require you to make payments per impressive or click, on keywords you are trying to rank for. SEO on the other hand has no such obligation. You can try to learn how to do SEO yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you.

Increase in organic traffic

Websites that feature SEO are likely to get lots of organic traffic on a consistent basis. It might be slow in the beginning, but with steady effort it would eventually result in more traffic.

Higher credibility

People trust major search engines, especially, Google. So when your website starts appearing in the initial ranks of a web search, the overall credibility of your brand should increase.

Better return on investment

Unlike paid services, organic traffic is more likely to buy stuff from your website. For instance, if you get 1,000 hits from SEO driven organic traffic, there is a good chance that four percent or more might end up making a purchase from your site or take some call to action.

How to choose a SEO specialist?

Before you hire an SEO specialist to work on your website, it is strongly recommended to keep the following things under consideration.

Go through a list of their clients

Reputable SEO specialists are usually open about sharing samples of their work. When you go through a list containing the existing as well as former clients of the specialist, you get an idea about how good they are with their business. This gives you an idea about the exact capabilities of the specialist before committing to a contract.

Ask them how they’ll improve your rankings

Ask the potential SEO specialist about what approach are they planning on deploying on your website. Having a list of questions ready prior to your conversation. This would give you an idea if you are talking to the right person or not.

Ask if they can guarantee your website getting to the first page, ranking in the number one spot?

If the SEO specialist says yes to this question, it is strongly recommended not to hire them. As it is nearly impossible to get you on the number one spot of Google, appearing on the first page! It usually takes 12 to 18 months of SEO to start seeing really good results.

Ask about their experience with local search results

SEO specialists having expertise in local search results have a better chance to make your website optimized for search engines.