In 2019, the average American small business owner spends $497.16 per month on SEO services. Also, small business owners spend considerably more with SEO agencies than freelance SEO providers.
As expected, many argued for or against the above-cited portion of the 2019 SEO Service Report. However, it has strengthened the resolve of relatively small SEO companies in the United Kingdom to not just offer web solutions but be on top of the industry as well.
In this article, I am going to provide you 6 surefire tips in choosing the top SEO agency in the UK.
This write-up expands upon, so here is a speedy index for you to leap around if you wish:
• Solid Grounds for Engaging with the Top SEO Company in UK
• MOV No. 1: Usability
• MOV No. 2: Keywords
• MOV No. 3: Content
• MOV No. 4: Link building
• MOV No. 5: Analytics
• MOV No. 6: Social Media
All is set? Let’s sprint.
Solid Grounds for Engaging with the Top SEO Company in UK
But wait, what’s in it for small, medium, and large business owners to avail the services of a leading SEO firm in the United Kingdom?
The Business Website of the Queensland Government, Australia, posits:
“Reliability should be another key consideration for choosing suppliers. Reliable suppliers deliver the right goods or services on time, as described. Large suppliers are generally reliable because they have enough resources and systems in place to make sure they can still deliver if anything goes wrong”.
Hence, your business is in good hands if you transact with top SEO companies in UK as they:
• Have an online reputation to protect
Knowing that the above-quoted report finds that “74% of business owners consider an SEO provider’s reputation “very” or “extremely” important,” established top SEO agencies know that their online reputation hinges on their high-quality search engine optimization services. Towards this end, they think strategically as they know very well that reputation management strategies need to be installed before a crisis occurs. Moreover, as they are aware that their supply chain can bring their business down, they are more than willing to offer after-sales services. Further, as they know that compliance is not enough, they take full responsibility for the products and services they supplied.
• Help you access new customers
Having been aware that 84% of the respondents of the above-cited study stated that SEO providers should be able to help them “access new customers” and that 61% of business owners cite “increasing brand awareness” as important to them, leading UK SEO companies
help you put your website at the center of your marketing strategy by transforming it into a true lead generation engine that helps you get more traffic from organic searches and eventually grow your customer base and bottom line.
• Make their location known to you
Since 78% of US-based small business owners consider their provider’s location a “very” or “extremely” important consideration, a top-notch SEO company in UK makes its business address known to everybody. This single act by the agency owner or project managers exudes commitment and goodwill on their part, that they truly mean business with you and that they can be trusted to respond to your concerns whenever anything goes wrong with the engagement.
Makes sense?
Well, before we dive into the meat of this article which sounds too technical for the laypersons, I think I owe you an explanation of what Search Engine Optimization is all about.
Simply referred to as SEO for brevity, it is the process of affecting the visibility, or the degree to which something can be seen, of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results. It is also known as natural, earned, or organic search results.
Contrary to the ads campaign through pay-per-click, which appears on top of the screen when you search for a keyword, it appears in the middle of the screen.
Generally, the earlier or higher ranked on the search results page, and more repeatedly a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors or traffic it will receive from the search engine’s users. These visitors are your business leads who can be converted into customers.
There are three major search engines on the web comprising Google, Yahoo, and Bing which is formerly known as MSN.
Sounds mind-boggling, right?
Let me say it simply.
The search engine process operates like stops on a city subway. The web page content is the unique stops on the subway, with their unique links. Search engines crawl around the city and find all the stops- or links- that are the best paths available. That linking structure is like a subway track, without it, trains are stuck, unable to move or crawl.
Links bind together all of the web pages to form a subway network and are critical for the flow of information. Using those links, search engines use automated robots, so-called crawlers or spiders, to reach interconnected documents.
Once search engine crawlers or spiders find those pages, they:
• Collect code from the web page content and store parts of the pages on hard drives or index;
• Recall information from billions of pages stored in data centers worldwide, often in a fraction of a second, when users have a query. The information recall process is called relevancy calculation;
• Return relevant results or produce results.
Ultimately, the end goal is to use online content to build search engine page rank for appropriate search terms.
The Impact of SEO on your business
When it comes to business, SEO is critical as we want our information to be found by our target audience and prospective customers. But, local SEO which is also known as local search marketing, is the best way to market your local business online.
Say, for example, a business owner wants to find businesses offering lead generation services in the United Kingdom. He or she types “lead generation uk” for brevity in the Google search engine.
Take a look at the screenshot below:
Going through the red texts that I inserted, the business owner performed the search query on August 31, 2020. SERP data shows that about 987 million results were found for the search term in just 0.39 seconds. Understandably, the Google ads which are most probably created by PPC management companies specializing in search engine marketing like Odyssey New Media, occupy the top spot in the inorganic search results. And, the number 1 web page in the organic search list is the product of SEO being done on that particular page.
But what profits a webpage that lands on the number 1 of the organic search list?
The new Google survey results conducted by moz.com reveal that:
“The vast majority of searchers prefer clicking on organic results to clicking on advertisements. 72 percent of respondents stated that they either click only on organic results, or on organic results the majority of the time”.
According to Franco Valentino, Founder of Narrative SEO:
“Let’s say that you had the good fortune of owning a website that has a keyword listed as the first result on Google. On average, you’re getting 32.5% of all of the traffic for that keyword.
Given that keywords can be considered high-volume and extremely relevant to some users, there may be a little money behind those keywords for you. Even if you don’t have a #1 Google listing, 51 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search, which means it should have a pretty big impact on your bottom line.
As a matter of fact, 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic.
Think about that for a moment – – 40% of the dollars that hit your bank account should come from some type of organic search result. If not, your website is leaking customers.”
So there you are!
Having been enlightened on the relevance of SEO on your bottom line, are you now ready to dive into the flesh of this article?
6 Verifiable Means to Picking the Top SEO Company in UK
For the sake of clarity, I prefer to use means of verification (MOV) for you to determine if your prospect firm is the top SEO company in the UK.
MOV No. 1: Usability.
While SEO is about enticing visitors to your site in the first place by ensuring that it appears in search queries, usability is about people’s behavior after they landed on your site, with the main goal being to increase the conversion rate as an offshoot of conversion rate optimisation campaigns.
Usability is among the favorites of RankBrain, which is a machine learning-based search engine algorithm considered as the first of 3 factors, along with content and links, that influence Google search ranking but touted to be the most influential among the three.
First and foremost, you need to ask from the SEO manager or project manager of your prospect SEO company on the web design agency or web design company that they engaged in and the web design or web designing tools that they are using. Further, you inquire if they partnered with a web development agency in London inclusive of their network of web developers. Furthermore, determine the number of web designers and developers involved in the design and development of their website or if they have an in-house web developer.
Moreover, determine the app development agencies in London or apps development agencies in the United Kingdom that they networked with. Also, ask for the mobile app development companies in the UK that they were able to partner in the past and the mobile app being produced out of the engagement.
Finally, test the online visibility of the company website. Ask from them on the specific page of their website that lands on the first page, meaning top 10, of the SERP. Inquire on the target keyword that they are using and input it as a search query on Google. If you feel the urge to click on their web page as listed on the SERP, and enjoy reading over its content then they can be trusted to also make your site usable in the real sense of the word.
MOV No. 2: Keywords.
Keywords are topics, terms, or ideas carefully sprinkled on your online content which are relevant to what people are searching for with the end goal of increasing the probability for such content to be found in search results.
Since keywords are the backbone of SEO, you need to know from the SEO agency on the keyword research method that they are applying, the tool that they are using, and the keyword utilization strategy that they are employing during the content development stage.
Further, you inquire from them on the number of times that their agency is nominated to the UK Search Awards and the specific search award that they had received if any.
But the best proof of their ability to find the appropriate keywords, using the Google adwords keyword planner or any other tool for that, is their web page content that lands on the first page of the SERP. Go over it and see how they put keywords in its strategic areas. Any incident of keyword stuffing is a red flag that the agency is employing unscrupulous means to land a top spot on the SERP.
MOV No. 3: Content.
SEO Content, which is the second and most important of the 3 Google ranking factors, refers to any web page content created through careful planning and application of appropriate optimizing techniques with the primary goal of ranking in search engines. Keyword strategy, site structure, and SEO copywriting are the key components of the great content tripod.
Towards this end, you need to talk to the SEO writing specialist of the agency and inquire about his or her content performance average and require evidence thereof. A content performance of lower than 90% is a cause of concern on your part given the very stiff competition in the SERP game nowadays.
MOV No. 4: Link building.
Inbound links, which are also known as backlinks or external links and dubbed as the third of the 3 Google ranking factors, are HTML hyperlinks that point one webpage into another be it from within the same website or from and to another site. Simply put, links in websites are equal to referral for humans. The more links from authority sites, the greater the authority of the receiving website.
You need to ask from the project manager of the SEO company on the specific website URL that a particular web page needs to link to. If he or she cannot answer point-blank, you need to be alarmed as they might be engaging in trial and error in their link building strategy.
MOV No. 5: Analytics.
SEO analytics is the process of collecting inside data relative to acquiring engaged organic traffic and utilize it to enhance SEO strategies resulting in increased organic leads.
Relative thereto, you need to ask your prospect SEO agency on how they tracked and analyzed data on lead conversion rates and other metrics. Also, ask them whether it is part of their SEO strategy to come up with a strategic plan based on the data analysis results.
Any semblance of uncertainty on that aspect is a cause of your alarm. Chances are high that the data analysis results of your website would just remain as cold statistics without any tangible result coming out of it. Moreover, their credibility to conduct SEO audits using various SEO audit parameters as a basis in offering SEO packages and other SEO management services would be put into serious question.
MOV No. 6: Social Media.
Social Media campaign is an outcome of the strategic planning process which forms part of the SEO analytics component.
You need to determine from the SEO service company representative on how they implemented their content marketing campaigns; the way they maximized the potentials of video production materials in their internet marketing initiatives; the online marketing agency they worked with; the online marketing strategy being adhered to, and the online marketers involved in the campaign.
Further, ask them on the number of social media marketing campaigns they are doing and the social media platforms that they are tapping. Furthermore, you extract information on the marketing agency or marketing company that they tapped and the marketing strategy or marketing strategies they are implementing. Moreover, you need to investigate the marketing solution or marketing solutions that they offer and the pool of marketing experts that they have.
On the other hand, inquire from them if they were able to partner with the Brighton-based business consulting and marketing consultancy firm Boost Marketing Limited and availed their lead conversion optimization, lead management software, manager software, and marketing automation services.
In like manner, inquire from them if there was any instance that they hired the services of a digital marketing company or digital marketing agency based in London UK, with or without branch offices in Los Angeles or San Francisco, CA like the Tag Digital Ltd or the Bird Marketing Digital Agency. Ask whether they have been told by the mentioned agencies in the UK about their digital strategies or had availed of the digital marketing solutions, digital strategy mentorship, ads management, PPC management, and search engine optimisation services they are offering.
Conclusion
RankBrain together with content and links are undoubtedly the influencing factors in Google search result ranking. Content lies at the core of the 6-point SEO strategy. It is the greatest equalizer among established and newbie sites. While the former has a network of inbound links to back up its claim for authority, the latter has the means to establish the authority of its own through great content. RankBrain tends to favor content that serves a purpose. The firm that can provide you with the tried, tested, and proven excellent content performance deserves the distinction as the top SEO company in UK.
Go for it? Let’s talk.
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