SEO san antonio is a keyword that gets a little over 700 searches per month. If your business were to get let’s say 10% of those people to visit your website, then that is about 70 new leads per month. Even if you were to close just a fraction of those 70 leads, how much would that change your business?
Think about it, we are talking about:
- Predictable number of leads per month
- Spend less in pay-per-click ads
- rely less on word of mouth
- Increase your monthly sales
- Dominate your industry
As a business owner I am sure if you could achieve the above, you would rest easy at night. So why haven’t you done it already?
Some of the big obstacles we see most business owners face when talking about digital marketing strategies and specifically search engine optimization are:
- you don’t really know how it works
- You don’t know who to trust
- A good SEO strategy takes time and you don’t have that luxury
- You have been burned in the past by other online marketing agencies in San Antonio Tx and saw little to no results
- Like all internet marketing campaigns, you are scared of investing when you can’t guarantee results
- You have no idea how much it costs.
- You don’t know if it will really make a difference with your online presence
In this article we are going to break down search engine optimization in simple terms and how it relates to our San Antonio Texas market and if it is worth pursuing for your business.
Also, you will have a better idea of what to expect when talking to another digital marketing agency about their San Antonio SEO services.
How does SEO work?
SEO is the long game and it is true that this takes time. This is because it takes time for Google’s algorithm to notice what changes on the internet. Google goes through a lot of data which it analyzes as time goes on to make decisions on what websites to bring up first in the search results.
Google’s job is to present the people who use their services with the most relevant results when they are searching for something. That is their business model and SEO simply leverages that in hopes of showing Google that one website has more relevant information than the other for a certain keyword.
For example, when a search engine indexes your website it will see that you are talking about “SEO in San Antonio Texas” based on the text and images so now it knows that your page is relevant for that keyword.
But how does it know which website is more relevant than another to decide the rankings?
The most important thing for search engines is to provide their users with the best possible service.
To accomplish this, it looks at two things:
- Everything on the website itself. (otherwise known as on-page SEO)
- Everything out on the internet that links back to your website. (Also known as off-page SEO)
When referring to your website design, it takes into consideration to main aspects: the content and the user experience.
1. The content
When talking about the content, search engines will go through the entire website, read all the text, examine all the images, video production, and follow all the links.
The text is what has more weight since it potentially has the information a person might be looking for. A good amount of text(about 2,000 words) that includes the target keywords will demonstrate to search engines the relevancy for a certain subject.
Content marketing and social media marketing containing those keywords can also offer information that can entice people to click through to your website.
The image name and descriptions can contain words related to the target keywords.
Furthermore, search engines will follow all the links on the website that are either pointing to another internal page on the same site or to external pages on other sites to determine if those links offer further information that is relevant.
2. User experience
Search engines will also take great consideration to the web design and pay close attention to see if it is properly structured, that has a secure connection, are mobile responsive, and have fast loading pages. This is so it can provide the best possible experience for the people using its services.
Think about it… Waiting for a webpage to load 8 seconds in today’s market is an eternity and someone looking to buy will probably not wait that long. Additionally, if they do stick around and wait for the page to load, if they don’t find the information they need, then they will bounce and immediately close that site to go to the next result.
So search engines want to avoid users having to spend too much time looking for something and show them the most relevant results so they can find what they’re are looking for as soon as possible.
Now let’s talk about off-page SEO and everything that links back to your website
Search engines will crawl through all the websites that are online and as described above, they will follow all the links to see where they go and if those pages have information that is relevant to the keyword the user initially looked for. It will also take into consideration the location so it can present options based on the local SEO results.
For example, let’s say we offer search engine optimization services for San Antonio. All of our content meaning sites on our pages and off on other sites will have text and images talking about SEO and related topics.
Now regarding links, we can have internal links that go to perhaps a relevant blog post to help provide more information and then links that are going to external sites that also talk about SEO experts or related topics. Search engines will see all of this and conclude that our page is very relevant for that keyword because overall all the content and information is centered around that topic.
However, if we have an external link that is going to a website that talks about cars, it has nothing to do with SEO and this will hurt our website rankings for that keyword since we are linking to a website that is not relevant for that topic.
The more links we have connecting from relevant high authority websites back to ours, the more important our page becomes for that keyword and search engines will start displaying it for its users in the search results.
So to summarize what work needs to be done in order to have a successful SEO campaign: we need to optimize the website itself(on page SEO), and then generate as many links as we can back to our website(off page SEO).
The latter is what takes time because we must find the correct websites, then create content in hopes to obtain a guest post so we can publish on other websites and get a link back to ours. And we would do this every month so we can build authority and trust so search engines will see all the changes and rank us accordingly.
So how does this apply to your business?
Now think about your website. Are your pages built and optimized for certain keywords? If the answer is NO, then do you even know which keywords to target?
Remember, you shouldn’t spend resources on something that will not give you a return on investment. In this case, if you spend all this time and energy building a page for a keyword that only has 10 searches a month, then it might not be worth all the work.
So how do you know which keywords are worth targeting? There are many online tools that you can use to have an idea of the search volume but do you really have the time to do all that work?
Say you do and you find the keywords that are worth targeting. Now you have to modify your website to include a page that will contain the content for your target keyword.
You also have to ensure it loads fast, has a secure connection, it is mobile responsive and has a good structure. And that is just one piece of the puzzle. Then if you really want to make progress, you have to create as much content as you can every month so you can start looking for relevant websites that can potentially publish your articles and link back to your site.
It is a lot of work and you might not do a very good job. So why waste resources when this is something that you are clearly better off outsourcing. SEO is the golden goose if done right and once you are on top it will be all worth it.
If you still want more information before proceeding, you can always look at what others are doing, specifically what is your competition doing.
Competitor analysis
One fundamental piece of information when talking about your digital marketing is to know what your competitors are doing. One look at your competition to see what they are ranking for.
A lot of business owners have told us that they don’t really pay attention to their competitors and they just focus on their business and provide quality service. Although they do provide a great service to their customer base, how are other people outside of their circle going to know?
SEO will give more people the opportunity to find your business and this is why knowing your competition is key so you can start a campaign targeting their weaknesses and one up them or out do them so you can get the leads that are currently going to their website to go to yours.
Does SEO really work in San Antonio Texas market?
The answer is yes it does work. Once you figure out which keywords you want to target and who is currently ranking on the first page for those keywords, you can based on numbers decide if it is worth it or not.
For example, if the average customer is worth $500 to you, and they often buy more than once then we can say that their lifetime value is $1,000. If you close one of those clients a month, how much would that change your business? Now let’s say that people are searching for your keywords about 500 times a month, and you are on the first page, you can get a good amount of those people to click on your website and potentially become a lead and then client.
In our experience, being on the first page means that about 10%-20% of people searching for products or services will click on your website. Out of that percentage, about 3%-4% actually become clients. So from 500 searches means that you can have about 50 leads and about 2-3 new clients per month.
Would that predictable number of leads and new business each month help you sleep better at night? How would that change your business?
A lot of companies don’t take advantage of SEO in our market so there is a lot of room to occupy those top spots on the first page. You just have to want it and do the work.
Once you are on top, the work doesn’t stop. You have to work hard to stay on top so your competitors don’t overtake you and believe me, they will come and they will try. Don’t let your competition take those leads from you when there is a clear path to success for your business. Why them and not you?
As far as timeline goes, usually the first couple of months is spent optimizing everything on the website itself once we have the plan established and the keywords selected. Then, we proceed to create a content strategy so we can start doing outreach and get more links back to your site. This is ongoing work that needs to add up every month so Google can see the changes as time goes by and make your website climb in the rankings until you get to that coveted first page.
Think about it. No one goes to that second page when looking for something. Of course, when researching for something we want to do our due diligence, so we click on all the available pages on that first page so we feel like we have done our homework. And then we make a decision based on that, but we never go beyond that first page.
So if your website is on page 2, or page 3 of Google, you are still losing a lot of business because no one will click on your website and they will never know you exist.
It is up to you to change that.