Tired of Chasing Down Leads? We’re Your Trusted Full-Service Scottsdale SEO Firm
SEO in Scottsdale is an absolutely vital part of your business’ digital marketing strategy as we enter 2019 in such a crowded marketplace. To keep it simple, if you are not ranking on the 1st page of Google for search results for targeted keywords, you are NOT getting any of those valuable online leads that the competition is grabbing.
The following source from a recent study shows that approximately 95% of all search results performed in Google go to the 1st page only.
What Key Metrics Should You Track When Working With a Scottsdale SEO Business?
Results matter – don’t accept anything less than exceptional-quality and high-integrity SEO work when engaging with a business to help in this space. Every firm out there promises great customer service and great results but knowing the difference between key metrics empowers you and your business to see what is actually going on. The following list breaks down some key metrics that should absolutely be sure your SEO firm is providing on a frequent basis:
SEO METRIC 1: PAGE SPEED
People seem to be terrified of Google’s algorithm updates, but when your team of SEO experts do things the right way, algorithm updates will not impact your rankings. The main purpose of algorithm changes are to punish the companies out there that may be using shady tactics that take advantages of loopholes.
First, let’s discuss page speed. This can be tested with the following link here known as GT Metrix. This is a completely free tool that breaks down exactly how your page speed is running. Below is a screenshot using the example of a pizza place named Craft64’s website that shows the quick breakdown:
The general rule of thumb is to look for speeds around 2 seconds or less. Anything above 4 seconds is going to damage your rankings with Google. The reason for this is that Google aims to consistently deliver high-value content and create an amazing user experience for those that use their search engine. It’s in Google’s best interest to punish those with slow-loading websites as this can cause a headache for the user.
What do you do if the speeds are higher than 4 seconds and this concerns you? At Norba Design, we always offer free consultations to anyone who reaches out to provide a detailed plan (whether you work with us or not) of how you can go ahead and fix those issues that are holding your website back.
SEO METRIC 2: BACKLINKS
Let’s start with the basics – what exactly is a backlink and how does that impact SEO rankings and what’s the whole purpose of this metric?
A backlink is anytime another website out there links back to either your homepage or a subpage/blog on your domain. For example, let’s say you published a blog about a study you did that shows that 65% of individuals preferred vanilla ice cream to chocolate. If a food blogger is writing an article and finds your post and they link back to it, there’s a backlink.
What’s the whole purpose of this though? Simple – Google wants to promote websites that are frequently linked by other sites and punish those that are not.
It’s not just the number of backlinks that you have though, quality is huge in this regard. There’s a large difference if the NYTimes official website links to your site vs. a random blogger who gets no traffic to his page.
Want to check to see what backlinks your website currently has? You can click the following link here to see for yourself. Using the same pizza place, here’s a quick example of what this tool will look like to show domain rating (later discussed) and the backlinks:
SEO METRIC 3: REGULARLY-POSTED CONTENT
It’s no secret that consistently posting (whether that’s daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) will help your website rank much better with Google, as they want to promote those who are producing high-quality content for their audience.
However, if done incorrectly, it could result in yourself and your team putting in a lot of work to publish content that doesn’t actually make a huge impact on your search engine optimization rankings with Google. What are the best practices for posting content?
First, it’s key to ensure you’re strategic about the titles of your posts so that it directly answers frequently asked questions that your targeted audience may have. For example, if you’re a web design company that works with plumbers, you want to do your homework about typical questions you hear from clients.
If prospects are constantly asking about the website page builders such as Wix and Squarespace, you’d want to post an article to give detailed feedback around what they may search for, such as “Should You Use Squarespace for Your Plumbing Business?” Another title may be a header that includes “Best Web Design Company in New York City” as those are popular search terms.
SEO METRIC 4: SSL CERTIFICATE
Did you notice that your website all of a sudden has an obnoxious “NOT SECURE” box next to the URL?
Due to a recent algorithm change by Google in 2018, they announced that they are now flagging and punishing websites that do not have an SSL certificate. The simple way to check if you have one is to see if your website domain starts with https (means the SSL certificate is set up and working) or if it starts with http (or says “NOT SECURE”).
The following article here goes deeper into exactly why Google decided to punish websites without SSL certificates, but the main takeaway that you need to know is that there are plenty of free tools out there to set up an SSL certificate on your website (some of the larger hosting companies will try to charge an excessive amount for them). Attached below is a screenshot that shows in the top-left corner that the website for Craft64 does not have an SSL certificate set up and Google Chrome displays the “NOT SECURE” tag:
A personalized and custom SSL certificate (such as from GoDaddy) will cost a few hundred dollars every 2 years and may be worth it if you will be collecting payment and/or other sensitive information on your site to assure your customers that their data is safe and to not have to worry about a data breach.
SEO METRIC 5: DOMAIN AUTHORITY RATING
As included in the screenshot in the previous section around backlinks, you’ll notice a score that says “Domain Rating: 25”. This is a metric that Google uses to rank the rating of your website on a logarithmic scale from 0-100. The below screenshot below shows the same test done on NYTimes.com:
As it’s a logarithmic scale, if for example, NYTimes gave you a backlink to your website, that would transfer over a very high-value amount of domain authority to your site as that tells Google that a very trusted site is publishing your content and comfortable linking back to your website.
A common tactic by SEO firms in Scottsdale is to spam your website across hundreds, if not thousands of low-value websites and then present to you how great it is that you have so many backlinks now. This is very far from the truth.
Real search engine optimization firms work to get you quality backlinks on a consistent basis that will continually raise the domain authority rating of your website to get long-lasting results and not short-term and temporary wins.
Conclusion – Where To Go From Here?
Have any questions about this SEO information that we’ve posted? Feel free to comment below or to send us a quick email/phone call to the following contact info for your free SEO audit:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (973) 922-0049
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