15 Common SEO Questions

Digital marketing is not rocket science, but the ins-and-outs of SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media are intricate and always changing. However, marketers and business owners interested in visibility on search engines like Google should know the basics of these digital marketing strategies.

In this piece, we’ll dive into 15 common SEO questions. Each question includes a brief explanation and a linked resource for further study.

SEO is the systematic process of improving a website’s visibility on major search engines like Google. Search engine visibility is achieved by ranking well for search queries. A query – or keyword, as you may hear in the industry – is simply the word or group of words a user searches.

The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page Google returns when that keyword is entered.

In the image, my search query is highlighted, and the SERP results appear within the red box. Most individuals are well acquainted with both these features. The purpose of search engine visibility is to draw high-quality website traffic. As SEO moves your pages into prominent positions in the SERP, relevant searchers are more likely to see your listings and click through to your website. 

To read more about the depths of search engine optimization, I recommend this article in particular, investigating SEO services. 

At RivalMind, we hold to two primary SEO strategies that drive digital visibility: the inside-out strategy and the outside-in strategy.

• The inside-out strategy includes defining goals, developing a keyword strategy, performing optimizations on a website, and backlink prospecting.
• The outside-in strategy includes identifying and prioritizing SEO work and performing technical fixes to a website’s structure.

SEO requires both strategies with testing, reporting, and repeating.

RivalMind aims to be an excellent resource for all things digital marketing, and we wrote an article on what are SEO services. Again, I highly recommend reading and bookmarking this article.

Before investing in a particular marketing strategy, business owners should be confident their marketing dollars are well spent. If you invest in SEO for your company, is the return going to be worth it? Quite frankly, yes.

Search engine optimization has a consistently remarkable ROI, often producing business-altering results. Check out some of our client testimonials for additional insight into the effectiveness of SEO.

SEO is a long-term marketing strategy designed to drive ongoing results, even after the campaigns have ended. Technically, SEO is free to do, besides the cost of tools and time. PPC drives leads quickly for as long as the campaign is running, and every click is paid for.

Both marketing channels are effective tools you can use to achieve different goals, and we often recommend running both simultaneously. For example, PPC could drive traffic to your website during the first months of SEO.

Read more about how SEO and PPC complement each other in our holistic digital strategy blog.

Consider your budget, time constraints, and expertise.

• Does your budget allow for marketing? If not, it should! Businesses should spend a minimum of 5% of sales revenue on marketing. If your budget does allow for marketing, SEO is an excellent digital marketing channel to pursue. Technically, however, SEO is free for you to do yourself.

• Consider your time constraints. Thought DIY SEO may not cost you anything financially, it will cost time. SEO should be detailed, strategic, and consistent. If you do not have the time to perform SEO tasks well, it may cost less in the long run to hire someone.

• Finally, evaluate your expertise. SEO can be learned! But SEO must also continue being learned, as the field changes regularly. Once again, many business owners opt for hiring SEO experts, because they simply do not have the time to keep up.
  

Once again, it depends!

Besides the cost of tools and time, DIY SEO is technically free. Hiring a full-time SEO expert onto your team generates typical employee expenses, including training costs, salary, and benefits. Hiring an outsourced digital marketing agency vary, ranging from about $500 to $15,000 for month-to-month retainers.

Check out our blog on the cost of SEO for all the variables that can impact your SEO bill – as well as some “cheap SEO” red flags to avoid.

Not only does a mobile-friendly website enhance your SEO efforts, a mobile-friendly website is essential for successful SEO efforts. How can we say this? Because Google said it first, years ago. Google boosts mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. This is important, because over 52% of all website traffic worldwide is comprised of mobile traffic.

At RivalMind, every website we build is responsive across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Mobile usability is vital for any website looking for long-term success in the digital space.

Read more about the importance of website design on our blog or check out the resource from Google linked above.

Keyword research is the process of identifying the best keywords to target for a particular company. At RivalMind, our keyword research process is multi-faceted. We consider what the client deems most important to rank for, use SEO tools to identify thousands of variant phrases and selecting the best ones, and – most importantly – perform competitive research.

Competitive research often uncovers hundreds of opportunity keywords, phrases your competition may be ranking well for that you’re missing out on.

Keyword research is a fundamental SEO task. Done properly, it will drive and define your digital marketing strategy, especially in content creation.

We highly recommend Moz’s guide on keyword research for continued education. 

Yes! In fact, most digital marketing agencies, including RivalMind, incorporate backlink acquisition into their SEO services.

Why are backlinks so important? Backlinks are a vote of confidence from one website to another. If a relevant, authoritative website links to a blog you wrote, Google takes note. That piece of content was valuable enough for another website to link to.

However, not every backlink is valuable. For example, links from spammy websites can hurt your reputation with Google. We chat about this and more in our blog about the importance of backlinks for SEO. 

Reviews are especially important for local SEO (SEO intended for businesses with customers in their surrounding locale).

Reviews demonstrate to Google and to prospective customers that your businesses is trustworthy and reputable. Most businesses owners we talk to agree with this statement – speaking of positive reviews. But what about negative ones? Are less-than-dazzling reviews beneficial for your digital marketing image? They can be!

Dissatisfied customers provide opportunity for positive impact. How? First, responding to a negative review well speaks to the trustworthiness of your business, just as much as a positive review. Respectful, kind responses to disgruntled reviewers demonstrate professionalism.

Second, dissatisfied customers may highlight areas for product or service improvement. In these cases, the negative perspective can drive positive change.

Are you interested in diving deeper into SEO? Here are a few great resources we read and recommend:

• The Moz Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Land
• The RivalMind Team (See Below)