Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
We focus on getting websites ranked high in Google search.
The art and science of getting your website ranked higher for a Google search is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. Frankly the effort it takes to get a website ranked very high in Google search is non-trivial – it can be as much work or more than the effort to build your website in the first place.
To understand this, you must first realize what Google (and other search engines) are trying to do. You type in one, two or maybe three words into a search bar e.g. dental cabinet manufacturers.
Or perhaps you type in a slightly longer phrase (called a long-tail keyword in the SEO business) such as ‘custom dental cabinet manufacturers’. Google then ranks from 1 to n (where ‘n’ can literally be hundreds of thousands if not millions) all the websites that it thinks are relevant to the one, two, three or more words you have typed into the search bar.
And generally speaking, Google usually gives you what you want. If you are like most people you will click on the first link that comes up (in the organic search results), or maybe the second. The odd time you click on the third or the fourth result but you seldom ever go off of page one of the search results. In fact, less than 3% of all searches result from search results that are NOT on page one!
The rewards of the effort to do proper SEO can also be tremendous – typically the number one ranked website gets about 48% of the search traffic while the number two ranked website gets 12%. Therefore, if your website moves up the ranking from number two to number one you can expect that the number of people who come and visit your website will increase by approximately FOUR TIMES! This is huge. And the increase is even more dramatic if you are moving up from a lower ranking than number two.
And as we alluded to earlier, if you are not on page 1 of search results you are getting next to NO traffic from organic search. Your website is basically a business card and if you aren’t ranking at least somewhere on page 1 you need to be doing something else to drive traffic to your site (paid ads, etc).
No one can guarantee you a first place ranking on Google so be leery if someone offers you that kind of guarantee. That said, we’ve had very good success in getting websites ranked well for Google search. Very good success indeed and can provide proof of that. We have many, many clients with multiple #1 rankings for the search terms that are important to them.
We do search engine optimization for a variety of clients including clients looking to rank for search terms locally and including clients who want to rank nationally either in Canada or the U.S or both. We have clients in Canada and the U.S. that rely on us to help them achieve high search engine rankings for the keywords that are important to them.
Return on Investment (ROI) of SEO
At its highest level, the return on investment for doing Search Engine Optimization is quite straight forward and is governed by this simple equation:
Where:
$ means the money you make from your website (use ‘gross profit’ to determine the value of SEO to you)
T = the organic traffic of your website
CR = the conversion rate of your website, meaning the percentage of people who buy your product or service after visiting your website.
The cost of Search Engine Optimization is worthwhile if you can increase the amount of profit you generate from your website more than the cost of the SEO services.
What this looks like will be somewhat specific to your products and/or services and your current traffic profile. We do know that for some customers, SEO services are almost a no brainer! Real estate agents come to mind. The commission from just one extra customer will more than pay for SEO services for over one year.
For other customers, more than one sale will be required to cover the cost of SEO e.g. wedding dress shops (and we do provide SEO services for a number of those). We can help you work out what that break-even cost would be and how much increase in traffic would be required to achieve it.
For help in determining if SEO is likely to beneficial to you, just get in touch with us and we’ll work with you to figure it out. If it’s worthwhile to you, fantastic. If it doesn’t make sense, then you will know that too and perhaps there are some other ways we can think of that will help you amplify your business.
Please note that we only provide SEO services to ONE vertical market in a given location. This is because we cannot compete with our own customers.
FREE WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AUDIT
If you’d like a free, no hassle, no obligation audit, fill in this form and we’ll get a detailed analysis off to you with some suggestion on how you can improve your rankings.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) FAQ’s
What is Search Engine Optimization?
In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization is work done to have your website show up high, idealy first, in search results. This means when someone uses Google or Bing or other search tool to look for something of relevance to your business, you want your site to come up first. The site that comes up first gets the most traffic in almost all cases. Search Engine Optimization involves both work on the website itself, which is called “On-page SEO” and off the website, referred to as “Off-page SEO”.
Why is Search Engine Optimization important?
If you sing in the forest and no one is around to hear…your website is a lot like that. Unless you are actively driving traffic to your website (via pay per click ads, or social engagement or outbound marketing, etc) or if it does not rank high in search results, then your website is merely an online business card…meaning, the only people that will go there are the ones that already know about it.
For short term traffice results, pay per click ads can be very effective. The downside of them, though, is once you stop the ads, your traffic dries up.
For long term traffic results, we believe an investment in solid search engine optimization is the way to go!
That’s what we do!
Is Search Engine Optimization expensive?
Search Engine Optimization is relatively expensive but assuming the results meet the objectives, it’s also of very high value. Our SEO Return On Investment Calculator can help you determine if an investment in SEO makes sense for you. Alternatively, if you reach out to us, we’ll help you figure it out! If it makes sense and you want to work with us, great. If it doesn’t make sense, then it doesn’t make sense and you’ll walk away knowing you are better investing your marketing dollars somewhere else. By the way, we work without any long term committment. Our SEO is done on a month by month basis. A typical budget for SEO is $500 to $1000 a month.
SEO work is time consuming (labour intensive) and the tools associated with tracking SEO results, doing technical audits and determining what work needs to be done are expensive. Here are some examples of SEO tools and their monthly pricing.
Mastering Apple Maps SEO: Your Key to Dominating Local Search and Boosting Business Visibility!
A mapping software application called Apple Maps is pre-installed on all Apple devices. Many businesses are well aware of the importance of having a Google Business Place (formally known as Google My Business) listing so that their business shows up in the local...
The Future of SEO: Voice Search Optimization
Hello, digital entrepreneurs! In the current scenario, technology is constantly evolving, and it is crucial for us to utilize these technological changes and take advantage of these new technologies as rapidly as possible. Therefore, in today's blog you'll learn...
Best SEO Practices According to ChatGPT
I asked the AI program ChatGPT the following:Research the top Search Engine Optimization practices for 2023 and include references. Here's what it came back with! I'm sorry, but I am not able to browse the web, so I cannot research current SEO practices for you....
The Most Important Thing for Local SEO
What is the most important thing for local SEO? The most important thing for local SEO is Google My Business (GMB). And yet, most local businesses we deal with seem much more focused on various social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest (which...
The ROI of SEO
Let's look at the ROI of SEO i.e. the return on investment of spending money on SEO. As a business owner you may have thought about investing in Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, but weren’t sure if it really made good business sense. This post can help...
What is SEO?
What is SEO? This is a question we often get from customers who don't know what SEO is and often aren't even sure what it stands for. That's the easy part! SEO is an acronym for "Search Engine Optimization". After explaining this, I still generally get blank...
Let’s get started
Get in touch
If you need any of these marketing services, feel free to get in touch to see if we can help!
If you need a new website
If you are looking for website hosting and maintenance
If you want your website to rank higher in search (SEO)
If you want to do Facebook pay per click ads
If you want help with email marketing
If you need other marketing services
StoneHouseMarketing Solutions, Inc is located in Belleville, Ontario. We proudly serve many local customers in the Belleville, Quinte West (Trenton), Picton, Tweed, Madoc, Brighton, Cobourg, Port Hope, Napanee, and Prince Edward County area. We also have customers in Toronto, Ottawa and other parts of Canada. We have US based customers in Illinois, Washington, Florida, Virginia and South Carolina.