An SEO service provider utilizes the practice of search engine optimization to increase the number of visitors to a Web site by obtaining high-ranking placements in the search results page of search engines (SERP).

SEO services can be as simple as a one-time SEO audit, outlining the problems of a website with specific instructions on how to fix the issues, to more comprehensive services like rank monitoring, content development, link outreach, and ongoing SEO consulting services.

Here are some of the things that an SEO agency might be able to provide in the first few weeks or months of a contract: An SEO audit of your site. An analysis of your site’s link profile. Optimized content on your site. Articles with links to your site that are being or have been published on other sites.

But does SEO actually work? … SEO only works when you use current best practices. When you do this, Google and other search engines will increase your website’s ranking, leading to an increase in traffic and, in turn, conversions. But when you do SEO incorrectly, it does not work.

SEO is a long game. And when you’ve started playing the SEO ‘game’, SEO can play a role in helping you achieve your business growth goals. But you can’t just spend a week dedicated to SEO and be done with it for the next three months and expect success.

SEO results don’t happen overnight, but with consistent SEO work, you can see sustained, very positive results. But it’s a lot of work.

If you have little to no experience in web design or coding, SEO can be challenging to accomplish. Because Google and other major search engines use complex algorithms to deliver their search results, it is important to make sure that every ranking factor is taken into account. And there are more than 200 of those for Google alone.

Not every business needs an SEO agency. But, if you have a website, you need traffic, and so you need SEO. SEO generates traffic by making your site more appealing to search engines AND humans. Working with an SEO agency allows you to hand the work off to someone else and focus on what you do best; running your business.

SEO is complex. And it changes all the time. No one has ever learnt everything about ‘how to do’ SEO and no one ever will. What is needed to improve SEO for one website may be very different to what is needed for another.

Pearl Lemon takes each project on as a unique puzzle to be solved. Your site may need on-site improvements to increase speed, or optimise content. You will almost always need an increase in the number of good backlinks feeding into your site. You may need help with content.

There is no set way to ‘do SEO’ except to ensure that those doing it have up to the minute knowledge of current best practices and the skill to execute them.

Some website owners claim to see results in as little as two weeks, while others report it to take as long as six months. However, the length of time it takes depends on a number of factors, such as the age and authority of your site, if you have any penalties, and if you’re aiming for long-term or short term results.

There’s no magic bullet for SEO as it takes time, planning, and readjusting to achieve and maintain the ranking, ROI, and traffic results you want to accomplish. If you’re looking for speedy results, those tactics will end up hurting you in the long run, especially since Google now becomes automatically suspicious of any website that has a sudden increase in ranking, instinctively assuming black hat tactics are being used.

In one Moz case study, a small sample size of 76 links was analyzed to determine how long before a new link can trigger changes in Google rankings. The results indicate that a single backlink takes an average of 10 weeks to push a page to rank higher on Google.

White hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat SEO. Generally, white hat SEO refers to any practice that improves your search rankings on a search engine results page (SERP) while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the search engines’ terms of service.

Black hat SEO  generally focuses only on search engines instead of a human audience. Black hat SEO was used, and still is being used by those who want to gain results quickly but it makes use of tactics search engines do not approve of. Some of these risks of black hat SEO include penalties from Google and other search engines, a drop in rankings, and even, in some cases, the site being banned  from the SERPs altogether. You also risk damaging your brand’s reputation and losing your audience’s trust. Black Hat SEO is never worth the risk, which is why Pearl Lemon does not use it. 

Link development services are an important part of SEO; however, often the quality of the work is poor, which leads to a drop in rankings, penalties or worse. However, if properly performed, link outreach is the process of acquiring links for high value content by bringing the existence of said content to the attention of other web property owners who may benefit from linking out to the content in question.

An internal link refers to links which do not point to an outside domain. For example, a link pointing from example.com/about.html to example.com/contact.html would be an internal link, whereas a link pointing from example.com/about.html to external-resource.com would be an external link.

Good SEO calls for both. Internal links help to guide users and search bots around your site and helps them find the content they are interested in. External links are a valuable way to demonstrate to search engine bots how relevant and valuable your content is as well as a way to enrich your content for users.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of working on improving the search engine friendliness of a website through technical as well as textual improvements in order to gain improve organic (unpaid) search engine rankings. Search engine marketing, also called SEM or PPC (pay per click), is the process of creating and optimizing a paid campaign where the advertisements are placed along relevant search engine results.

SEO and SEM have different roles to play in the marketing efforts of any business. SEO is best suited for long-term strategy for already established businesses, whereas SEM is able to produce quick results for newer businesses, but still requires optimization and monitoring for long-term profitability. Often, a combination of the two produces the best results, especially for SMBs.