Keyword Research
One of the most important steps in any SEO campaign is choosing what searches you want to rank for. Let’s say you’re an electrician. If you ranked no.1 in Mauritius for “electrician”, you might get a lot of traffic, but how many of those visitors would actually want to engage an electrician. They might simply be trying to understand how to become an electrician. Or they might be looking for information about how to do something on their own? (although very dangerous i might say) Would you be better off ranking for “electrician”? Or something entirely different.
At The SEO Lab, we consider the estimated search volume, competitiveness and intent of the most relevant keywords. Then we use our proprietary Phrase Potential Calculator to estimate the traffic and revenue potential for those keywords, based on your current average conversion rate and value. And finally, once we’re sure we’ve chosen the most profitable keywords, we develop a targeting strategy, so if someone’s searching for your target phrases, they end up on your site.
It’s tempting to think your web developer has your technical SEO covered. But this is rarely the case. Most developers know the basics of SEO, but because it’s not just a technical discipline, and because developers have all they can do to keep up with constantly changing programming languages and browser technologies, they’re generally only too happy to get some guidance.
We provide comprehensive technical SEO guidelines and will also work with your developer to ensure you get the best possible performance from your website. (Don’t have a developer? No problem. We can engage our own experts to perform the updates required to get your site in perfect SEO shape.)
Link Buliding
Although the search engines consider many things when determining their search results, the number of ‘quality’ links to your site is still the single most important factor (of those you can influence, anyway). So strategic link building is an essential part of any successful SEO campaign. The first thing we do is perform a risk assessment on your existing links, to ensure you’re not already violating Google’s best practice guidelines and being unknowingly penalised.
Then we benchmark your site’s current performance, so you know exactly what impact our work has. After that, we set about making your content so good that people will want to blog about it, and share it with their friends and colleagues. Natural linking based on editorial discretion is exactly what Google likes to see. So that’s what you get, as a SEO Lab customer. No link farms, no content farms, no article spinning, no black hat SEO, no grey hat SEO. Just quality-driven SEO that steadily builds rankings, traffic, engagement and profits. And retains them over the long haul. So you don’t have to worry every time Google updates its ranking algorithms.
SEO isn’t a one-off activity. Nor is it ‘set and forget’. It takes many months to achieve your objectives, and often this will mean adjusting our course as we go. And even when we’ve achieved your goals, there’s still work to do. The last thing you want is to slide back to where you were before you started. No matter what SEO package you choose, you get comprehensive ongoing care. We closely monitor your progress and search environment, to ensure everything’s going according to plan. This includes implementation of SEO-friendly marketing, ongoing link building, risk assessment and monitoring, detailed monthly reporting and team training. From time to time, we’ll also uncover something new about your market, or Google will change its search algorithm. These changes are opportunities, not inconveniences. We’ll recognise them quickly and act immediately. Your competitors may not.
Done properly, SEO is part of a unified digital marketing strategy. And just as SEO has evolved, so have we. Link building and ranking will obviously always be important, but they’re no longer the ‘be-all-and-end-all’ they once were. We think of them more as critical offerings in a broader, holistic service with one simple goal: To make your business more profitable. SEO now touches on virtually every other marketing discipline. Design, public relations, conversion, content strategy and advertising. That’s why, with every SEO Lab package, you get professional service from people who take the time to understand your products and services and who are always on the look-out for ways to improve your bottom-line, even beyond SEO. We act as a strategic partner for your business and can liaise with a dedicated marketing contact or multiple departments to synchronise your marketing activities and ensure everyone’s working towards the same goals.