So that you make the right choice, both in the NYC SEO strategy and in the choice of the provider who will support you in a major act – one of the main ones for your activity to tell the truth – we bring you in this page a whole series of tips, starting with defining what SEO is. We thought the subject was obvious, but in view of the requests for quotes made, we raised a confusion between SEO and optimization; you will see the scope of this confusion in the next lines, it is very important.
If you prefer to know his skills, the supports he will use, and more generally his profession: your SEO consultant. You will see that his actions are very close to content marketing, and that he is a master in project management with plural tasks. His efforts tend towards qualifying traffic with a very important work around Data – data.
After having defined it in this advice sheet, it will be easy to understand that no one can speak of optimization without going through the audit stage: what it consists of and what is its scope, why it is essential for your activity? We also address the mistakes not to be made, especially in your quote requests (and why…) in a bonus at the end of the article.
With this understanding of the content of the mission, you will have many elements to choose the best freelance with which to sign a contract. At this stage, we will refine in a few lines the profile of a real specialist in the field, so that you can better identify the SEO NYC specialist you need.
When you have all this in mind (the profile and the scope of the mission), there will be questions of time and price. There too, it is necessary to bring elements of reflections, because the SEO audit being a major part in the development of your activity on Internet, you must not go wrong with provider. However, if your values are those of the speed of the audit (some requests take 7 days to complete …) to quickly move on to something else, and to the cheapest possible invoicing, you will experience problems, much like if your car was running on unleaded fuel and you wanted to use diesel because it is cheaper: no one can drive very far, and you must call the convenience store.
What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym of the English expression Search Engine Optimization, even if the objective is to facilitate the ranking of a site in Google. The difference is significant: the entire intervention of the SEO consultant is On Site , on the site therefore, and not since the creation of inbound links, community management actions, etc.
The gap between SEO optimization and SEO is huge if you want to take a closer look:
- The consultant intervenes only once to propel a site in SERPS, while the SEO must act several times a week and for consecutive months
- Optimization makes it possible to position main keywords as well as long tail queries, while netlinking mainly targets the anchor-carrying expression
- A well-worked SEO allows you to reference not only main pages, but also deep pages, while a classic SEO campaign targets mainly main pages, or the equivalent of a landing page .
- An optimization does not target a few keywords but an unlimited set of queries, while a SEO will work on a few expressions in particular
- The SEO expert must know web development, whether in PHP or from a CMS – integrations are possible on the first and not on the others for example), while to do netlinking it is not essential to know what is running behind a site
- Very good optimization promotes the conversion rate on an e-commerce site, while SEO only targets traffic
- In the event of a Google penalty, SEO can solve the problem while making inbound links, or providing simple editorial content, will not change anything.
- There are a lot of levers to check in SEO, while for traditional SEO, only 2 levers are important
- Etc.
Why would an audit be necessary?
The question makes sense, because a person not seasoned with SEO requirements could simply ask how much it costs to optimize their site, and wait for providers to list the work to be done and cost it. There is nothing wrong with this approach, if you want to consider that the audit is fast: a simple look at the site by someone who is used to it and we already know what We have to do ; it remains only to ask a price. Except that the quality of the expertise cannot go this way.
The type of audit that is useless
Some blogs run by people who have the speech but not experience, as well as responses from SEOs who are not really experienced, claim that it is enough to work on the following points:
- optimize meta tags, including the description tag in addition to the titles
- develop cross linking
- work on URLs
- put Hn tags, and if possible in order
- add a robot.txt file
- integrate a sitemap.xml
- customize page 404
- and for WordPress websites, make sure that all the Yoast module lights are green
The reasons for the approach error
Let’s take back point by point the reasons why this approach leads to nothing positive in terms of SEO:
- For several years, the description tag has not counted in SEO! It must be treated since it is used to describe to the user what he will find on the web page by clicking on the link, from the results page e Google, but that’s it.
- The Title tag (the title of a web page) is important since it must evoke to the Internet user a summary of what is going to be said on the page, and if we can indeed integrate a keywords, it must absolutely remain natural, cannot be over-optimized, and it can be duplicate content with other title tags. We are convinced that few people know that duplicate content on a title is not penalizing (as long as it does not exceed a certain percentage), and yet it is true! It is mostly logical, but we do not lose the thread of our discussion; we will not give any further explanation on the subject. Ultimately, if it can be worked, but not too much to give it its natural appearance and guarantee it an absence of over-optimization (it is that there are only a few words), this does not make it a major element. SEO.
- Cross linking will not propel a website in the results if you have breaches of Google rules … You must first resolve them!
- Working on URLs can be a good thing, except that the impact is minor in terms of NYC SEO. In addition, we put our customers on the first page of search engines without necessarily working on URLS: this is therefore not a crucial element.
- Hn tags are very important, but they must remain natural, and be worked in a certain way. In no case it is essential to have tags in order (H2 after H1 and H3 after H2, etc.), and the fact of having systematically H1, H2 and H3 markup does not provide added value: you may very well have no H3 or no H2, as your ranking will not move by one position!
- adding a robot.txt file is possible, but it’s not the solution that makes you move in the SERPs
- Integrating a sitemap.xml is very important, yes.
- so is customizing page 404.
- As for the Yoast module , you will see for yourself that even with all the elements of the module green, your site will not be more well positioned; Ha, well, how is that done ?! It is especially that the SEO parameters taken into account are not major.
Ultimately, on the entire starting list, you see that there are only 2 crucial elements left. However, it is far from sufficient. And you could give all of these changes to a developer, that your NYC SEO might hover a little for 1 week or 2 (and nothing great either), then everything would go back to the way it was before.
If these things don’t change anything, or not much for the best of times, what should you do?
The audit that must be carried out
In addition to the above elements which should not be avoided either despite their minor impact for the most part, here is what constitutes good NYC SEO practices and which should be audited:
- Technical audit of the site to report all blocking factors and / or violations with Google algorithms
- Site editorial audit
- Competitive and environmental analysis
- Definition of the guiding strategy, targets, objectives
- Help in choosing keywords and defining how requests are built, long tail
- Editorial proposal: content, media, semantic silos , etc.
- Look for duplicate content, especially if there are product files and offer personalized solutions
- Study the current positioning and analyze it in depth (draw the relevant conclusions)
- Compare your offer with the expectations of your audience
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your digital ecosystem
- Redefine the directional axes if necessary according to your own strategic challenges (setting up a site on the first page is not enough!)
- Etc.
Note in passing that all the content specified in the paragraph The type of audit which is useless represents in the work to be carried out only a part of the line dedicated to the technical audit of the site. This is why you must consider the seriousness of an SEO consultant to detail his concrete proposal.
It is also easy now to understand why such an audit can only be carried out manually already (especially since it is necessary to cross data that the best software does not, because too complex to measure outside the eye human!), and that it can only be conceived over several weeks. Especially since we should not provide a stereotypical answer (what software does), but write personalized recommendations, especially on the issue of semantic silos.
The NYC SEO strategy must follow specific steps if you want the pages of your site to stand out in a relevant way when people type a question into Google. Because today they no longer just enter a keyword to do with information that comes close to their question without answering it 100%. What the Internet user wants: a precise answer to a precise question. Of course, the editor is fully involved in this strategy, but the semantic silos, the editorial line and the navigation structure of your site are just as much!
The profile of a good SEO consultant
It’s easy to call yourself an NYC SEO consultant, but exercise is another matter! Our agency knows very well that some colleagues use software that runs at night or for a few hours during the day, depending on the programming of the web service, because the software does nothing strictly speaking, it is only the web service that recovers scrawled data… The reports are generated automatically and the service provider has finally done nothing but fill in the URL of your website and click on a button to launch an automated audit. Sometimes these same web services do no work on your site, they just collect information from the various Google consoles (if you don’t have an account open for all Google services, the report does not return all the elements no more).
We could summarize his profile as follows:
- Being able to analyze and improve the adequacy of your content with your strategic challenges
- Be able to rationalize your ecosystem regardless of the number of pages on the site
- Analyze statistics, follow them (attendance, positions)
- Work methodically
- Being able to show measurable results
- Always be up to date with new trends and strategic changes in search engines
- Being able to rework the hierarchical structure of your site
- Propose a concrete strategy
- Have knowledge of e-commerce if it is an online store, and so on depending on the type of site to optimize
- Being able to prove your experience in SEO
- Being able to provide a personalized solution to all problems encountered on the site
- Being able to get a site out of a penalty if it is due to SEO
- Advise a company in the implementation of its digital strategy through its commercial challenges
- Bring a real reflection on the site, the product and the possibilities to arrive at the desired result (which differs from the previous line!)
- Manage the NYC SEO strategies (from recommendation to acceptance)
- Write and detail specific SEO elements
- Support you in prioritizing these elements
- Coordinate if necessary the returns of different providers (web development, netlinker, etc.)
- Have dual skills in project management and advice
- Be autonomous, facilitator, enthusiastic, and above all have a sense of commitment!
Frequently Asked Questions about the Mission Of An SEO Consultant
This section is a bonus that the web agency adds to the file on NYC SEO Company: each situation is the result of real problems expressed by project leaders looking for quotes. Our objective is obviously not carried by criticism, but by the wish to illustrate concretely some of the wrong directions among the most common, which should also help you to choose the right options, to make the right choices and to have the good reflexes.