How to become the best SEO provider at a digital marketing agency

While search engine optimization is a skill all digital marketing agencies claim to have nailed down, it is still a very tricky asset to understand how to actually use it to benefit your clients.

You may be an SEO whiz or you may have worked with a number of SEOs over the years. Or maybe your agency is considering expanding its service offerings to include this important aspect of digital marketing. Either way, if you are trying to get a better understanding of how to become the best SEO, keep reading.

Some marketers are cautious of hiring an SEO, citing an inability to measure direct results or a lack of understanding. Others see it as just another item on the long list of digital marketing services they need to purchase. However, this shouldn’t be seen as an either/or proposition since so much of your current website traffic originates from organic search.

Table of Contents:

To help you become the best SEO, we’ve included some must-read resources, tactics to focus on, and challenges you’ll likely face. By following the information that we lay ahead, you can begin to separate yourself from the competition — all while improving your agency’s bottom line.

  1. State of Digital lists four steps you should take prior to hiring an SEO. While they’re written with a B2C marketing mindset, the recommendations are useful even if you’re new to running an SEO campaign for your agency.
  2. Moz suggests that you should “always have a plan of action” for meeting with clients, writing up proposals, and implementing solutions. With this in mind, it’s worth using some of the content ideas below to help you accomplish this.
  3. Knowing that your time is finite, PPC Hero reminds marketing professionals that they’ll have to “pick and choose where to focus” when it comes to SEO. In short, you should stick with what works best for your customers as well as the goals of your company as a whole.
  4. Focus on “increasing organic traffic” as well as “increasing conversions” (or leads).

5. Using the following tools to track how good you’re going will help you further:

  • Google Analytics – A way to measure traffic and conversions, this tool will show you what search terms are bringing people to your site, how long they’re staying, their location, etc.
  • Google Webmaster Tools – A free tool from Google, this can show you key information related to your website’s SEO.
  • Ahrefs – Another competitive analysis tool, this one is known for its “density of keywords.”
  • SEMrush – This tool uses a database of 10+ trillion keywords.
  • Google Search Console – Use this tool to access search queries that are driving traffic to your site (and which ones aren’t performing well). You can also see your high-value pages and monitor crawl errors.

6. Focus on keywords that are relevant to your business while keeping in mind the intention behind the search (e.g. navigational searches vs educational searches). While this is imperative for any industry, it’s especially useful when optimizing for B2B niches.

Now What?

Understand how search engines work

In order to become a great SEO, you need to have a strong grasp of how things work behind the scenes. The more familiar you are with the algorithms and ranking factors, the better your services will be.

What to do (and Not to do)

While you’re studying up on SEO, keep in mind what you shouldn’t do when working to rank your agency website. First and foremost, avoid black hat tactics like buying links or spamming social media profiles with unrelated content. Second, don’t rely exclusively on one strategy for boosting your rankings. The best SEOs use a few different techniques to maximize their impact.

Here is a video on how to ace your SEO game:

 

Tactics to focus on while running an SEO campaign

Now that you understand the fundamentals, check out the tactics below that you should focus on when running an SEO campaign (and which you can pass along to your client).

  • Make your site mobile friendly
  • Improve loading speed by using a content delivery network (CDN). Broadly speaking, it’s “used to distribute web content so that users receive information faster.” For example, here’s more information about using Akamai.
  • Use Schema.org – This markup language makes it easier for search engines to understand the data on your website (e.g. contact information, products, reviews). According to Moz, “it can increase your CTR by 55% and positively impact ranking.”
  • Link out to like-minded websites – By linking back to other relevant content on your site, search engines will have a better idea of the context in which it exists. Here’s more information from Search Engine Land.
  • Improve user experience – At its core, this means providing a greater number of high-quality pages that link back to your main website. In addition, you should make sure all forms are working properly and that you’re taking advantage of social media and other third-party platforms. For more details, check out this tutorial from HubSpot.
  • Add your NAP information to all assets – This ensures that search engines have the most accurate contact information for your organization. In an ideal world, this will help increase your return on investment (ROI).
  • Think about what search engines can’t see – While it’s important to focus on design, content and other features that are visible to the naked eye, keep in mind what search engines can’t detect. For example, you should think about your landing pages (or 404s), localization, speed, and site architecture when planning your strategy.
  • Optimize your images – This not only makes it easier for search engines to understand what’s being shown on the page, but it can also increase the time spent on your site by 7%. 

Conclusion

Thus, in order to lead SEO at a digital marketing agency, you need to concentrate on making use of links from other relevant sites, improving UX by creating high-quality pages that link back to your main website, and rectifying any lost or broken links.

The following tutorial teaches you all you need to know about using internal linking to rank higher in Google:

You should also keep a record of all of your NAP information across the internet and utilize images on your website to enhance conversion rates and time spent on your site.

 

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster can help you identify what keywords are driving traffic and those that aren’t, as well as monitor crawl errors. You should also make sure that all of the free tools that you use are updated. And the final word, keep in mind what search engines can’t see and focus on design, content, and other features that are visible to the naked eye for your clients’ websites.

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