The marketing and advertising landscape has changed a lot with the advent of the internet. Let’s face it, the days of putting an advertisement in the local newspaper and getting a lot of calls have ended. Unfortunately, businesses have to do a lot more to get noticed now.
Keeping up with it all isn’t easy, either. New strategies are developed all the time, and trying to stay modern and fresh is a challenge for a lot of small and local businesses. It raises a lot of questions, most notably: how can we feasibly keep up?
For those running businesses in the Chicago, IL area, the answer is simpler than you might expect. If you’re able to figure out what SEO is, how to use it, and you can understand the benefits of it, then you’ll be a step ahead of any competitors. Just keep in mind that some of it is fairly specialized, which is why a lot of local businesses have started to use external SEO services.
How can we find one that’s the “best,” though? Obviously, we’ll be looking locally, since they’ll be the people that know how to optimize search results for the Chicago area. Otherwise, we’ll cover some things to watch for and to prioritize when you’re looking for one!
What Makes for a Good SEO Agency?
There are a few primary traits to look for in an agency before you decide to work with them. Expertise is an obvious one – the person or people behind it should have knowledge in the field of digital marketing and search engine optimization. Look for demonstrations of this on their website, or an “about me” page to get an idea of what they have to offer.
Something else you can watch for are reviews. Whether they’re listed on the agency’s website, or you find them on a search engine, they can give a baseline as far as what you can expect from the services. Naturally, try to find one that has positive reviews.
The final thing we’d like to highlight here is professionalism. This is a rather general category but be sure to study the website closely. Does it look sleek and clean? Is it easy to use and accessible, like this resource demonstrates? These are important factors, since you’ll be trusting an agency to help you overhaul your website so that it brings in more clicks and engagement.
What Services Might You Expect?
Another hesitation that some people have when choosing to work with an SEO agency is what type of services they can expect out of the transaction. This often varies depending on which one you’re hiring, but there are some basics that hold true across most of them. Web design is a critical component of search engine optimization.
Therefore, it’s fair to expect that you’ll get help on this front. This goes not just for the appearance of the site, but also for the content on it. Copy writing and SEO writing can be tricky to get the hang of, as you can see here: https://thewritelife.com/what-is-seo-writing/. Thus, these agencies tend to provide assistance there.
As far as the level of that help is concerned, it’ll probably depend on what you say during your consultation with the agency. If you’re fairly confident in your content, then there may not be that many changes incorporated. Either way, because of the nature of keywords, there will be some adjustments made to the descriptions and other content on your site.
What else can we expect?
Lead generation is another big one, since it’s what most of us businesses are worried about. The methods will vary, of course.
However, as you start to optimize your webpage to boost its ratings on search engines (and thus increase its ranking on the results pages), you’ll notice that you’re getting more clicks and attention. Some agencies will also provide their clients with exclusive calls that provide leads, so that might be something to keep in mind if you’re comparing options.
Generating leads can also come from helping you to develop an e-mail newsletter or other type of list. When a visitor provides their contact information, it’s considered a service qualified lead. These are the best that you can get, since they’ve already taken action in relation to your business’ products or services.
If there’s anything else that you need assistance with beyond what we’ve mentioned or what you’ve seen in the resources we’ve provided, you can always discuss it with the agency you’ve hired. More often than not, they’ll be more than happy to accommodate your needs or customize the services somehow.
Staying on trend doesn’t have to be difficult anymore, as you’ve hopefully learned today. There are resources we can use to improve our websites and incorporate SEO techniques into them, and we don’t have to stress about it on our own, either.
