SEO FAQs

Local SEO is the process in both indexing and ranking businesses on various online Map Platforms, such as Google My Business ( Places and Maps) , Apple Maps and Bing My Business.

Quite often people;e are looking for businesses from Mobile devices, and many times, places of business have a specific address in one or more locations.

Similar to regular SEO, businesses typically want to rank above their competition on any Map listings and have their business listing PINNED on the Map.

In many cases, only the top 3 listings are displayed when someone searches for a specific type of business. This makes it very critical to rank in the top 3, or people won’t see you.

The process of getting ranked in these situations involved making sure your business is listed on the various map platforms, actually Claiming your listing, from Google etc., and then optimizing your listing so you can rank above the competition.

We use a wide variety of Local SEO techniques to ensure our SEO clients rank high in these scenarios.

If you are a business or service and offer your products specifically in your community it’s probably important.

If you have competition, it’s important.

How important would depend on how big your service area or community is, and how many competitors you have.

My community with a population of about 150K is medium-sized. However even in a medium-sized community, like Cambridge, Ontario, we have 4 distinct business districts.

We have some clients, that serve only this area, but have dozens and dozens of competitors. So SEO is important to them.

Additionally, many businesses work regionally,  In our case, the Waterloo region has 3 large cities and many surrounding towns and villages. So that makes it more challenging. But challenges can be overcome. That’s where we come in. It’s what we do.

We also have clients that provide products and services internationally, so they have hundreds of competitors. Good SEO is essential for them to be discovered in a crowded marketplace.

Usually the larger the service area, the more competition there is, and the more important it is.

However we do have some clients that only serve Cambridge, but they still have many dozens of competitors, so it’s important to them too.

Feel free to Contact Us to discuss your specific challenges.

Obviously, at this point, we don’t know what market or niche your business or organization works in.
However, it’s hard to consider a market that SEO / Search Engine Optimization doesn’t apply to. No matter what sector your business or organization is in, you tend to want to have your website discovered and found by people looking for your product or service.
And a great ongoing cost-effective method of having your business or service discovered is through a well-constructed SEO program.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consists of 7 main components.
They are:

• Most SEO projects should start with a thorough SEO Website Audit to determine what is required.
• Following the audit, and based on its results, an overall website optimization, speed, and cleanup should take place to give your website a solid foundation.
• Keyword research and On-Page Optimization should be then conducted on all of the website pages and posts. I.E. The optimization on specific pages of your website for specific keywords.
• Next, Off-Page Optimization should commence. I.E. The number of web links, citations, or online business directories that point back to your website, and the consistency of that information.
• At any stage of the project for many businesses, Local SEO should commence.  For most businesses, a properly constructed and optimized Google My Business and Maps listing, Bing My Business Listing, and Apple Maps listing.
• Finally, for Local SEO, the company should generate consistent Citations and Web directory listings on a number of platforms and social media. I.E. Yelp, Foursquare, etc.
• Whereas we wouldn’t quite call it SEO, and it’s entirely optional, but all companies should have a few social media accounts as well, such as a Facebook account, a LinkedIn Company Page and a Twitter account

Far be it from being dead, SEO is ever-evolving

Certainly, there are other ways, such as paid advertising to bring people to see your website or business. But SEO continues to have a strong value proposition.

As for it being dead. No, Google has thousands of employees working on SEO. It is a core part of their business, and we feel, should be an important part of any business.

We have clients that have saved 10’s of thousands of dollars form their marketing budget because we were able to get them ranked first, or high on page one in the search engines.

We’ve long said, it doesn’t do a lot of good to have a beautiful website if hardly anyone ever sees it. Unfortunately, too many businesses, especially new ones, forget that.

If you feel you need some help on SEO, simply send us a message or contact us here.

Yes. More than half of all web searches are from mobile devices, such as phones and tablets.
As a result, Google has announced that it will index using mobile enablement a core SEO ranking criteria.

All websites we build are mobile-enabled, and we can help you with this if it is a challenge for your business.

We’ve even managed to make old static HTML based website mobile-friendly, some of them are ranked in the search engines above all of their competition

That’s a really good question. And naturally, it’s not a cut and dried answer.

However, normally there is a lot of upfront work to get a website ranking high in the search engines, and then after a period of time, a lesser amount on a regular and ongoing basis.

This is because the search engines change their search algorithms frequently, and also because your competition typically isn’t standing still. They improve their SEO too, so it’s always best to stay a few steps ahead.

We like fixed price agreements and we think our clients do too.

Billing for SEO can be somewhat complicated but we make it simple.

There typically is an initial charge for all of the work needed to be undertaken in the first month, as well as an ongoing subscription for our monthly services.

Our services are truly customized for each client, so we don’t just sell packages on our website, and there is usually quite a bit of research to undertake.

Each client’s needs, marketplace, competition, and service areas differ, which makes some projects much more time consuming and extensive than others.

So as a result, when we are asked how we bill and what we charge for a project, after some detailed research, we present our client our pricing for their service. This way we can adjust our pricing to bill only for what we need, and not inflate our prices the way some pre-defined bundled packages seem to be.

Once we have done this estimate, if the client wishes to proceed, we take a deposit, ( the first month’s fee) and get started.
The rest is billed as an ongoing monthly subscription.

Every month on an ongoing basis, we deliver an updated Search Engine Ranking Report to show the improvements we have accomplished in the previous month and from the project initiation