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SEO FAQ

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of organically ranking a website’s pages in search engine results such as Google. SEO, is just one crucial part of a successful digital marketing strategy.

A successful SEO marketing campaign is an ongoing process that consists of a number of individual components, such as keyword research, creating optimized content, mobile friendly web design, logical site structuring, citation and link building.

Do I Really Need SEO?

Yes, of course you do!.

The average website needs at least 50% of its traffic coming from search engines such as Google.

Search engines allow website visitors to find your website for the first time. As new search users discover your website from search engines, you’ll start to see other traffic channels like social media, referral, and email, increase as well.

Without SEO on your business website, customers and search engines cannot find it

Do I Need to Hire Someone to Do SEO for Me?

Yes, unless you want to risk losing out on business. 

As with almost any other profession, you can do it yourself, but you will see he best results when you hire an SEO expert to help. Like doing your own taxes, if you do not hire a professional, you take a chance with getting audited which could end up costing you in the long run. SEO is very similar. If you do not optimize your website correctly, Google could penalize your website and search engine users will not be able to find your website.

If your business has a small marketing budget, say less than a two hundred dollars a month, then taking the DIY approach to SEO may be the best way to go.. Any “SEO expert” charging less than a two hundred dollars per month is going to cost you more in lost business in the long run. Especially if they get your site in trouble with Google.

For those who would rather hire a professional, explore our SEO services to see how we would help you to scale your business today.

How much does SEO cost?

Our suggested budgets are based on your company’s goals, market and how aggressive you want to be. We work with competitive businesses of various sizes, and customize strategies based on how much business you’re seeking.

Do you want a onetime SEO the website or a monthly retainer to keep maintaining the website and building back links.

Do you want to be a leader in you industry and have 12 new blogs per month or just keep the content stagnant?

So How Much Should I pay for SEO for my business?

In short if you are a Plumber, Electrician, Lawyer, Medical Practices, Roofers, Real Estate Agents, Home Renovation, Restaurants, etc, you should be paying a minimum of $600 – $2000 a month in fairly large cities. Anything less than $300 is just wasting your money and we would not take your business.

Small local businesses such as Hair Salon, Bakery, Accountant, Florist in a small city $299 a month will help your business see results.

If you’re ready to get started, get in touch with us today.

And if you’d like to know more about our SEO, read on for answers to common questions.

Are cheap SEO packages for $199 or $299 a month worth it?

Unless you have a less competitive business in a smaller geography, cheap SEO packages usually do not work. They are normally cookie cutter packages or come from overseas firms that do not understand your business or market and do little to nothing to help your website in the search engines. We’ve even seen this over and over where these SEO packages actually hurt your SEO costing you more to have your online business restored.

How long does SEO take?

This is a hard question to answer because there are so many factors involved.

It’s much like working out. It takes some time, but the more you put into it the quicker you see results. The minute you stop working out, you start losing it. Each person’s body type is different and the results people are looking to get are different. Some may work out hard and see some immediate results, while others work out a little less and see results in 6 months or so.

SEO is very similar. Some businesses may see some SEO results within a few days, things like increase in website traffic and calls. Most will need time to compete with similar businesses that have been using SEO services for years. In that case it may take 6 months or more to start ranking for your keywords or converting visitors into calls.

Building a well-optimized website and establishing your business as an authority can take time. Especially if it is out of date or needs to be fixed because of previous SEO services

Generally speaking, it takes about 6+ months for a brand new website to start seeing results on Google. If you have an established website it may take 3+ months to see results. Remember, SEO is a marathon not a race.  If you are interested in immediate results you may be interested in PPC marketing.

Why won’t my website rank?

If you’ve worked with an SEO company before and have had trouble getting results it could be for a number of reasons. One could be due to getting hit by a Google penalty, which most people will never know even happened to their website. Another could be due to an extremely competitive market such as Realtors, Electricians, Home Repair, Etc. There are hundreds of these businesses in your immediate town and some are spending thousands of dollars a month to make sure they out rank you. .

What is a Google Penalty?

A Google penalty can be placed on your website if Google thinks your website violates its guidelines. This usually comes in the form of an Algorithm change and could be as a result of thin or spammy content which does not offer visitors any value, duplicate content on the site, poor quality backlinks to your website, etc. but could be manually applied by a Google employee who has deemed your website spammy.

Some of the most talked about penalties within the SEO world are Penguin and Panda. Penguin had to do with websites having spammy backlinks, and Panda was related to on-page factors such as low-quality content.

Think your website was hit a Google penalty? It’s not easy, but you can overcome them.

Why is Verdict Digital Marketing so good at SEO, when so many other companies fail at it?

The short answer is we love what we do. We are one of the few SEO companies run by an SEO expert. Many companies are started by salesman. Yes by a sales guy!

SEO is really hard. So how can a SEO salesman run and hire SEO specialists when they do not know the ins and outs of performing the tasks? Google takes into account over 200 factors when they rank your website, but they do not let the public know how much weight given to each factor. In addition, Google makes constant changes to their algorithm that need to be deciphered to protect your website.

Verdict Digital Marketing has stayed in business because we are passionate about the SEO industry and think outside the box when others companies have not. We love the challenge Google presents to us because it forces us to improve and stay one step ahead of the competition.

My Website Used to Get Twice as Many Visitors from Google. What Happened?

Most likely your website has been hit by a Google Penalty or even a suspended business listing. Google updates their search algorithm often to improve their searchers experience. If your you don’t stay on top of these changes your business is losing a lot of money!

Two examples of major algorithm penalties websites were hit with, that could be hurting your search rankings: Penguin and Panda.

Penguin was a series of updates to Google’s algorithm designed to eliminate spammy websites that would be keyword stuff content or getting links from a lot of low-quality websites.

Googles Panda Algorithm updates were implemented to penalize websites that contained “thin” content. These would be short pages that contained 100-200 words or content that was scraped sites. The Good news is your website can recover from these issues.

Give us a Call and we’ll help you identify exactly what happened to your site.

What is the ROI of SEO?

While there is no simple answer to this question SEO provides the best ROI over the long run. The ROI of SEO varies by industry and how valuable each customer is to your business. These customers will find you 24/7/365 and its business you do not have to solicit. Its much like the stock market, over the long run you will make a lot of money, but in the short term there will be ups and downs depending on market conditions.

Let’s say 1100 people search for the exact phrase “Electrician in New Jersey” every month plus variation such as “Electrician in NJ”.

If you are the first result on Google this could bring 350 people to your website every month that are actively searching for an electrician in New Jersey, most of which have never heard of your company. Now let’s say that 0.5% of those people hired your business, this one search term ALONE would bring you about 21 new customers every year. What if that electrician charges $400/per customer on average or a plumber at $600/per customer? That $8,400 – $12,600 per year just from your website!

Ready to start growing your business? Call us or Fill out our form and we’ll tell you what you need to do to get started.