St. Louis SEO Company

Our SEO Process

Keyword Research

How do we do SEO at Silverback Web and Digital Marketing? When it comes to search engine optimization the first and most important step is keyword research. For many business owners, their keywords seem obvious to them. At some level, your keywords may seem like common sense – but the idea is not just to go after keywords that you like or that you think represents your business but to target specific keywords that people are actually searching. We need to analyze how we will leverage a variety of the best keywords to get that traffic to your website.

Competitor Analysis

Our next step is to take a deep look at your competitors. We will analyze what’s working for them and why they are showing up on the first page of Google while you are not.

By using a set of powerful SEO tools we are able to analyze, with great insight, any website on the internet. And with that data, we can find out what pages are ranking, what keywords are being used to rank those pages, how many words are on each page, what H1 and H2 tags are being used, how many backlinks are referring traffic to each page, and how powerful those backlinks are.

SEO is a competitive game. We are always competing with 10 businesses that are on the first page of Google. Without competitive research, we have no idea how to beat those businesses that are currently on the first page of Google.

Technical Site Audit

Finding the most important steps to optimize your site for search engine results is called technical SEO. Technical SEO refers to how your site is structured, how many pages you have on the website, how many words are on each page, what are the internal links to those pages, what are the external links, what are the backlinks, is there keyword cannibalization, do you have multiple pages trying to rank for the same keywords, and much much more. Our deep SEO audit often helps us find easy wins, or low-hanging fruit, that can begin to improve your performance just by making changes to your website.

Action Plan

Once we’ve collected all of this data we then begin to create a plan of the pages that we will build for your business using the right keywords with the perfect content structure.

Backlink Building

Finally, we will begin to acquire appropriate and relevant backlinks to all of your most important pages. This will help to optimize your website for Google search engine results because Google has stated that it views backlinks as a major indicator of what sites Google should rank on the first page. Be aware of SEO companies that just build you a bunch of crappy backlinks on websites that have no relevance to your business. We see this all the time. Not only is it a waste of time and money but it will often hurt your overall SEO performance.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting targeted traffic to a website from Google’s organic rankings. Common tasks associated with SEO include creating high-quality content, optimizing it around specific keywords and building backlinks so that your site becomes more visible in Google search results for specific and relevant searches of the services and products that your business offers.

Bottom line: it’s about getting your business on the first page of Google. It’s a competitive game. You are constantly competing with your competitors. When people search for services like roofing near me, or best HVAC companies, SEO is about ensuring that your website and business shows up on the first page of Google.

Surely you can imagine how valuable it would be to your business if you showed up regularly on the first page of organic search results.

Organic Search Results vs. Paid Results – PPC

When you look at a typical Google search engine results page you can quickly tell that it is divided into two sections. The first section is paid advertising and the next section is organic, or natural results.

While there is certainly value in developing a PPC campaign for your business so that you show up on the very tip top of Google search results, it is obvious that there is also an extreme value in showing up naturally on the first page in the organic section. Imagine the revenue your business would earn if your website dominated certain keywords and always showed up on the first page of Google.

How to find the best SEO company.

The digital marketing world can be quite confusing. What is the difference between SEO and local SEO and SEM? If you do not speak the lingo it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by all the data and geek speak around search engine optimization. Worse yet, it’s easy to get bamboozled from a slick salesman who may sound smart but doesn’t actually provide results.

After years in the digital marketing space I’d like to offer you a few tips – a few things to look for – when looking for an SEO expert:

Check the SEO Companies’ SEO

This should be the most obvious first step. If the SEO company itself isn’t being found on Google search then why would you want them to help you get your business on Google search? I’ve often heard people say it’s the tale of the Shoemaker’s kids. Shoemaker’s kids never have any shoes. But the truth is if you know how to optimize a website for SEO why would you not optimize your own site. Especially when you consider just how valuable the first page of Google can be to your business. Unless, of course, they just don’t want to grow. Or maybe they will say that they are too busy to handle any more clients, in which case you wouldn’t want to hire them for your business anyway.

When potential clients call us at Silverback Web I often ask them how they found us. I do that for two reasons. First, I want to keep track of how people are finding us, but mostly I do it to make a point. If they say, “I did a Google search.” Then I’ll say something like, “Well that’s saying something isn’t it?”

Ask who you will be working with

I don’t know about you, but I find it important to know who is going to be behind the work that I am paying for. A question you might ask is, “Who will be managing my account and will I have direct access?”

Many SEO companies that I have run into over the years are national agencies that outsource most, if not all, of their work to foreign countries. The sales rep that you speak to on the phone probably knows just enough to sell the SEO service or back linking product, but the work itself is being done by “faceless people.” If I were spending money on SEO I would want to know who to hold accountable.

At Silverback Web, we pride ourselves in staying small enough to offer a personal touch. We are a niched SEO company that works individually and, most of the time, face-to-face with all of our clients. We work to build a long-term relationship with all of our clients because we see our SEO business as a partner for your business. As your business grows so does ours.

What is the SEO company’s onboarding process?

Ask any potential SEO company if they offer an SEO Audit? Pay attention to what questions they ask to get to know your unique business and needs. I would be alarmed if they do not ask basic questions, like:

* What makes your business and services unique?
* What does your ideal customer look like?
* What specific services do you want to rank for?
* What do you think the main keywords for those services are?
* What marketing channels do you currently utilize?
* Who are 3-5 of your top competitors?

Seo Audit

Any SEO company worth their salt is going to do a deep dive into your current SEO. This will include technical SEO, competitive analysis, backlink analysis, and organic search keyword analysis. There are many SEO tools that are pretty powerful that can do this. SEM rush or aHrefs are a few of our favorites. However, these tools alone will not provide the best picture. One needs to actually do a manual deep dive of your current website, traffic, conversion, and backlink profile. In fact, this audit is so time consuming many SEO companies will charge for it. If your SEO company is charging for a robust SEO audit, that is actually a good sign that they know what they’re doing.

At Silverback Web we offer a very robust SEO audit for $500. At the end of that audit you’ll have specific steps to take to improve your rankings. This audit takes about a week to perform and it will become the marching orders, or the task list for our SEO process, or someone else’s task list if you choose to hire someone else.