With more and more businesses trying to bump up their online presence, the concept of SEO is becoming increasingly popular. After all, doing well in SEO can mean the difference between being found on the first page of Google search results, to being buried somewhere beyond it. However, how exactly can an SEO content agency help you?
Before we find out, let’s take a quick look at what SEO really is.
What is SEO?
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimisation, is a branch of marketing which focuses on increasing visibility on organic search results.
When your website or webpage does well in SEO, it can generate high quantity and quality traffic. Sounds great for your business, doesn’t it? Because more traffic means more leads, and more leads equals more customers.
Now, let’s find out how an SEO content agency can help with your SEO.
What an SEO content agency does
An SEO agency handles the many aspects of SEO for your business. This can range from creating content that’s SEO-friendly, to researching your competitor’s SEO.
When you work with such an agency, they’ll usually enquire on the following:
- The nature of your business
- Who your main competitors are
- Any key search terms you want to rank well for
We’ll now dive into the nitty gritty of what an SEO agency can do for you.
1. Perform keyword research
This is basically a process where the SEO agency helps you discover relevant and high-value search keywords that can potentially bring high online traffic to your business.
While that may sound simple, finding the right keywords to target can take up a lot of time and effort. This is because there are tons of keywords that can be associated with any particular business.
Nonetheless, there are crucial factors that can indicate whether a keyword is worth targeting. This includes:
- The keyword’s search volume
- Level of competition for the keyword
- The search intent of users when they are searching the keyword
Read more about how to find the right keywords with Google here.
2. Research your competitors’ SEO activity and performance
As a business owner, you should already know who your industry competitors are. Furthermore, you always want to be aware of what they’re up to so you can catch up or stay ahead.
The same goes for SEO.
With the help of advanced SEO software, an SEO content agency can find out what your competitors are doing for their SEO and how they’re performing.
Here are some examples of competitor information an SEO agency can share with you:
- The keywords your competitors are ranking well for
- The keyword gaps to close with your competitors
- Their top performing content in terms of traffic
- Existing backlinks to your competitors
With such information, the agency can share actionable SEO insights or strategies that can help you catch up with or even outdo your competitors.
3. Creating SEO-friendly content
Since an SEO writing agency will be familiar with SEO best practices, they can help you to create SEO-friendly content.
This can include blog articles and webpage content such as landing pages and company profiles.
The content will be centred around keywords you wish to rank well for, and crafted to ensure usefulness and relevance for your target audience.
The SEO agency will also incorporate best practices like adding quality links and images, as well as ensuring a reader-friendly content structure.
4. Optimise existing content for better SEO
Perhaps your website already has a good amount of content, and you want to make sure they’re really pulling their weight in terms of SEO.
An SEO agency can enhance the content to make them more SEO-friendly.
Here are some examples of how an SEO agency can upgrade the content on your website:
- Improve the targeting of keywords or relook at targeted keywords
- Create better content structures
- Adjust or beef up the content to make it more useful and relevant
5. Improve your site’s structure
A messy or uncoordinated site can deter users from spending more time on your site, which sends a negative signal to Google, affecting your SEO. For your website to have good SEO, the navigation should be natural and intuitive for users.
In addition, when your site has a good navigational structure, search engine crawlers can easily get an idea of your site’s structure and its most important content.
An SEO content agency is well-equipped to audit your site’s structure and recommend ways to improve it. For example, the agency might recommend a more optimal content categorisation for your blog.
It can also make sure that each URL on your site points to content, redirects to another piece of content, or leads to a 404 page.
In very extreme cases, redesigning of your website may have to be carried out before any SEO work can begin. For example, this can happen if the website is outdated or has poor code. This might also be recommended if the overall cost of redesigning your website might be lower than fixing existing issues.
6. Assist with link building
Building backlinks from quality sources is essential for a successful SEO strategy, and is significantly correlated with high search engine rankings.
Apart from letting you generate more traffic from these backlinks, links from reputable and high-quality websites signal to Google that your website is of a comparable quality.
This also tells Google that your website is relevant and should be featured well in its search results.
An SEO agency can help to identify authoritative sites, quality directories, and other sources that are feasible options for backlinking to your site.
7. Monitor and report SEO results
At the end of the day, you want to know whether all the SEO efforts are paying off. An SEO content agency can monitor and report the relevant results to you.
They may use a range of tools and platforms such as Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics to monitor aspects such as search rankings, traffic, and Click-through Rate (CTR).
Depending on your specific SEO goals, the agency may provide the results based on the following performance indicators:
| Performance indicator | What it is |
| Organic traffic | The number of visitors who go to your website through organic search results |
| Search visibility | How often your page is shown in search results for keywords it’s ranking for |
| Search rankings | The search positions for your target keywords |
| Branded traffic | Traffic from people who search for terms that contain your company name |
| Bounce rate | Percentage of site visitors who bounce from your site without taking action. This number should vary between 40% and 60% depending on your industry. |
| Average session duration | The amount of time your visitors spend on a particular page |
| Organic Cost Per Click (CPC) | How much you pay for each visit from organic search results. This can be calculated using the following formula: SEO budget / site traffic SEO budget refers to how much you spend on all things SEO-related. This includes paying SEO experts, expenses for SEO tools, and the cost of generating SEO content. Your CPC should decrease every month if your SEO strategy is working. |
| Links | The quantity and quality of your backlinks. |
| Organic CTR | The ratio of clicks into a search result to the number of users who viewed the search result |
Monitoring and reporting of results is crucial as it helps to confirm whether the applied SEO strategies have been working. It also sheds light on what steps might have to be taken for greater improvement.
In summary
To sum things up, the search engine landscape is extremely dynamic. Businesses are continuously putting out fresh content and optimising them.
At the same time, search engines periodically change how they evaluate content and how high to rank them in search results. This might explain why SEO content agencies are becoming more and more popular.