• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.


        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.


        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.


        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.


        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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Why Site Owners Should Know How SEO Works

Do you know how SEO works? While many site owners know that having a presence in search is important, most don’t know what it takes to increase search visibility. SEO has changed a lot over the years, but the basics and foundations of search have stayed relatively unchanged. It’s essential for all site owners to have a basic understanding of how SEO works to ensure that their site is optimized correctly.

Not all who claim to be experts in SEO are. In fact, a lot of the business we get is from site owners or companies that were unfortunately taken advantage of previously. But just because there are a few bad apples out there doesn’t mean the industry is corrupt. When done correctly, SEO can help website owners drive targeted visitors to their site who are looking to act.

Many have claimed over the years that SEO and search would soon be on their way out. But nothing could be further from the truth. Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise, and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly. (Source: MarketDive, 2016)

Search continues to be one of the top activities users do online. This means companies and site owners need to invest in SEO to increase the site’s organic visibility. While some will venture out and will optimize their website, most will hire out help. But just outsourcing your SEO without any understanding can lead to terrible results. Therefore, I firmly believe that all site owners should have a basic understanding of how search engines work and why SEO is important.

A Basic Understanding of Search

For this article, we are going to focus on Google. The reason is that Google is by far the most popular search engine in the U.S. and it’s where you will most likely generate a majority of your site’s organic traffic.

Search engines are very complex systems that are designed to index or store information hosted on the internet. Google has created a very nice site, https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/, that talks about how their search engine works. It is broken down into three main categories; Crawling and Indexing, Algorithms and Responses.

Crawling and Indexing

Google and other major search engines have “spiders” that crawl the internet looking for sites and content. As the spiders crawl websites, the search engines are learning what content those sites contain. Then they save the information in the index. The index is very similar to a library, but instead of books, it is millions and millions of web pages.

Algorithms

Algorithms are complex programs that analyze the data in the search index to better understand the context. When you perform a search, multiple algorithms take your query and analyze the sites in the index to deliver the best possible answer in as few a clicks as possible.

Here are some of the ways Google uses Search algorithms to return useful information from the web:

  • Analyzing your words
  • Matching your search
  • Ranking useful pages
  • Considering context
  • Returning the best results

Responses

The goal of every search engine is to deliver the most relevant information to a user in the shortest amount of time possible. This is why Google changes their algorithm as well as the results page often. In the past, the typical search results page was just a few blue links. Today search results can have videos, images, maps, suggestions, pricing information and more. These elements have been added to enhance the end user’s experience. They can also greatly benefit the websites which are awarded these stand out listings.

Where SEO Fits In

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of making one’s website easy for both a user and a search engine to find and engage. Typically, SEO divides into two types of work, on-site SEO, and off-site SEO.

On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO deals with the elements that are within your website. This means optimizing your content, site structure, code, speed, user-experience and so on. On-Site SEO is an essential aspect of SEO because your website is the foundation for all of your other online marketing activities. Having a site that is easy for a search engine to crawl and understand is key to ensuring that it is indexed properly.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO refers to all the work you do “off” of your main website. This typically means any link building activities, directory listings, social accounts, and other publishing platforms. According to Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, high-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search. (Source: Search Engine Watch, 2016)

A good SEO strategy includes an understanding of how search engines work and how to use both On-Site and Off-Site optimization to increase a site’s overall search visibility. SEO is a powerful long-term strategy that can lead to consistent growth over time if you know how to execute.

While you don’t need to have a full understanding of LSI Keywords or schema markup, having a basic knowledge of how SEO works can help ensure you hire the right person for the job. If you want to learn more about SEO, I have created a course specially designed for site owners and marketers who want to get more out of search. Check out the details at Simplified Search.

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