It’s no surprise that Houston is named one of the best cities to start a business year after year (and the statistics can prove it)! Did you know that 97% of Houston businesses have less than 100 employees? Described as diverse, growing, and thriving, Houston is a great city to consider if you want to start a successful company.
Starting a business is no easy task, though. Especially in the extremely competitive market Houston has to offer. With all the effort put into this venture, ensuring your company does its best is no question. One of the key aspects of guaranteeing success is your marketing approach. What techniques are you using to get your business in front of as many people as possible? How are you cutting through the clutter and rising above the competition? Are you using a Houston SEO company?
At one point, billboards, direct mail, or radio promotions were enough to reach your target audience, but times have changed. As life becomes increasingly digital, your marketing approach should expand beyond traditional means and extend into digital marketing. Digital marketing refers to all marketing efforts that occur on the internet, and it can include lead generation, website design, or the most essential, SEO.
As a Houston business owner, the value of hiring a Houston SEO company is unmatched and will ensure that you show up when and where your customers need you. But, where do you start?
What is SEO, and Why Do I Need It?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In simple terms, when your website is optimized for SEO, it is improved to increase its visibility in search engines. For example, some of these improvements focus on refining page and image titles, adding content, and making your site easy for Google to crawl.
People ask A LOT of questions (5.6 billion each day, to be exact), and to answer these queries, search engines like Google or Bing crawl billions of sites each day collecting information. The information collected from the web pages is then put into an index to be analyzed for different factors and used to create the list of links we’re used to seeing when we search for something. However, it’s important to note that this list isn’t in just any random order. It was put together in an attempt to get you the most relevant information for the search you performed. How do you get your website to the top? Here is where a company’s SEO technique comes into play.
Google’s goal is to answer questions, and your goal as a business owner should be the same. Research shows that the first five organic results (meaning not paid ads) on page one of a Google search account for over 67% of the page’s clicks. You want to be receiving those clicks! Unfortunately, showing up on the first page of a search query does not come with just luck. Without an effective SEO strategy in place, you’re decreasing your odds of showing up for a potential customer needing your product or service.
If you’re unsure about whether you may need SEO services, ask yourself the following questions:
- When your customers or potential customers ask questions, are you on the first page of the search results?
- Have you experienced low traffic on your website? Or, if you do have sufficient traffic, is it converting into leads?
- Do you know what keywords your website is ranking for? How about what keywords you should be ranking for?
- Do you know your website’s authority score?
If you answered “No” to any of these questions, you could benefit from search engine optimization. SEO is something any business owner can do themselves, but taking on the DIY approach can be an incredibly daunting task if you’re not utilizing the right techniques and comes with a hefty learning curve for someone unfamiliar with the ins and outs of websites and digital strategy. Hiring an experienced SEO company or Digital Marketing Agency can help increase your website visibility and improve your rankings within search engines.
DIY SEO vs. Hiring a Local SEO Company
A lot goes into SEO. Keyword research, competitor analyses, website optimization, and content creation are just a few of the tactics you can use. This can be a lot to take on in addition to the already busy workday of a business owner. Hiring a local SEO company can take the work off your hands with an added guarantee that you will see improvement in your rankings.
Any good SEO company can produce the results you want, though. As we learned, there’s a science behind each search result. But the ability for an SEO expert to clearly explain to you what SEO is, why you need it, and what results you should be looking for can make all the difference when choosing a company to work with. That’s where Marketing Refresh shines.
Marketing Refresh’s SEO Services
Marketing Refresh is a Houston-based, woman-owned digital marketing agency with a talented SEO team. Our Vice President of Digital Marketing, Aaron Eaves, was named one of the top SEOs in Texas this year (which we’re incredibly proud of), and it’s easy to see why he’s earned the title. We have a proven track record of helping businesses grow their number of leads and conversions. You can trust our SEO team of experts to get your website to where you want it to be so you can get your business where you need it to be.
SEO is not easy, and we don’t want to pretend like it is. Open communication is the core of our business. We understand the value of ensuring that our clients thoroughly understand what is happening and why it’s happening, making Marketing Refresh special. We do so by establishing clear thresholds across many metrics so you know what the SEO goal should be and if we’re exceeding or falling behind. SEO services are an investment, and we want you to feel confident when you trust us to do this work for you.
SEO comes in various forms, and each service can help lead your business down the right path. If you’re in a highly competitive market, a competitor analysis with keyword research would be beneficial. Suppose your website authority score is low; a website audit and onsite SEO can put you on track. If your leads are not converting, a buyer’s journey can help you identify whom to target with ads and put you in front of those who actually need your business.
At Marketing Refresh, we offer a variety of SEO services. Some of our favorites include:
- Website Audit: During a website audit, we analyze your digital platforms, including website performance, existing keyword performance, social media, and email platforms.
- SEO content strategy with competitor analysis: This service includes keyword research and compares the findings to the keywords of your top four competitors. Additionally, we’ll identify opportunities for improvement and provide clear key targets. This service also includes keyword mapping and a 90-day content recommendation to help you kickstart SEO-focused content creation.
- Buyer’s Journey: The buyer’s journey is the path a customer would take before purchasing your service or product. The decision to buy a product is not instantaneous, and there are questions, concerns, and steps a customer takes before making the final decision. A buyer’s journey will help you identify your key personas and their likely search terms. The buyer’s Journey will help us discover what keywords people are searching for at each point of the journey. The goal? Show up in the results when they’re searching at each step because people are more likely to buy from a company they recognize.
- Onsite SEO: With onsite SEO services, we optimize your website to ensure the various components of the site like photos, page titles, and meta descriptions are set up in a manner that allows Google’s bots to crawl your site and gather information easily. This service also includes keyword research and mapping. We’re able to do this for all website sizes, whether you have ten pages or 60+!
- Ads: Ads can help you get in front of the customers you want with different targeting methods. We offer this service for Google, Bing, and all social media platforms. With this, we’ll research a target audience, configure the campaigns, create a bidding strategy, and write the ad copy. We’ll regularly monitor these ads and make recommendations when they’re not performing up to our standards.
Contact Us Today for SEO Services
You put a tremendous amount of effort into starting your business. Don’t let it go to waste. SEO is an integral part of nurturing your business to ensure it grows and continues to succeed. If you’re tired of unfit leads, low website traffic, or not showing up in the search results, our Houston SEO company can help.
Our SEO services will help your local business identify all the areas of your website and current marketing strategy that need improvement to help you gain traction in search results. When you’re ready to take this next step, contact us to discuss getting started with a strategic approach to SEO for your company.
