What do SEO companies actually do?

What do SEO companies actually do?

In the past I have ever hired a SEO company do SEO for my sites, it seems not obvious about what they did, they would send you a report of keyword rankings on Google search results.

This sounds a little like a newbie question doesn't it? However, I still want to know some things.

If a website owner goes to an SEO company, the first thing the SEO company would do is look at your website design to improve on-page SEO?
Does the website have a sitemap?
Does the website use friendly URLs that contain keywords?
Are breadcrumbs being used?
Are header tags being using correctly?

Sitemaps are not necessary. Breadcrumbs are wasted links and generally bad for SEO.

If you go to an SEO company and feel they cannot explain what they do, then why in the world would you hire them?

miken said:

What do SEO companies actually do?

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Well, they do SEO. That could be on-page SEO or off-page SEO and that could be straight up link building to SMO/SMN etc.

miken said:

In the past I have ever hired a SEO company do SEO for my sites, it seems not obvious about what they did, they would send you a report of keyword rankings on Google search results.

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Well that doesn't sound legit. The first thing they should do is an on-page SEO appraisal of your site and give you on-page SEO tips to do or they do that for you. Then they find out what keywords you want to rank for, find out what the competition is and put together some sort of plan of attack which you agree to first. This is the usual protocol anyway. Simply sending you a report of keyword rankings is not proof or evidence of work.

miken said:

If a website owner goes to an SEO company, the first thing the SEO company would do is look at your website design to improve on-page SEO?

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Yes as explained above but not always. It depends on the SEO company and what type of SEO they do. Some are good at SEO and provide the full package, some are fly-by-night and simply sell you a bunch of links.

miken said:

Does the website have a sitemap?

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Sitemaps are like 1% of on-page SEO. Every website that has more than 5 pages should have a sitemap. Just like every door you open should have a door handle. They go hand in hand with each other.

miken said:

Does the website use friendly URLs that contain keywords?

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Again this is just a small part of your on-page SEO and having people friendly URLs doesn't guarantee an improvement in ranking alone.

miken said:

Are breadcrumbs being used? Are header tags being using correctly?

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Again as SEOPub has said, breadcrumbs aren't going to have any effect on your on-page SEO only make it easier for your sites users to know where a bounce they are in your site.

As for header tags, Google doesn't even look at them any more so whether you have them or not will make absolutely zero difference to your SERP ranking.

Hi,

SEO companies apply onpage optimizations on your website and take in charge the offpage optimization side as well (Linkbuilding). They might not necessarily modify the design of a website, although we find now web marketing agencies who can do everything from content writing to SEO and webdesign.

In the SEO reports you used to received from that company, did you notice that your rankings were improving for your targeted keywords? If you don't see any improvements for about 3 or 4 months, then you should probably hire another SEO company who can do a better job.

All the best!

SEOPub said:

Completely disagree with this statement. Almost no site on the planet with under 100 pages really will see any benefit from having a sitemap. In fact, if a site with 5-8 pages needs a sitemap, it means the site structure massively sucks and needs to be fixed.

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Okay maybe 5 was a bit low, more like 10-20+ then. After that it can get a bit tricky using menus alone.

But I also disagree with your statement now saying "no site on the planet with under 100 pages really will see any benefit from having a sitemap". Okay, what about a site with 50 pages?

So you don't think that sitemaps have any benefit at all? Even for sites with not that many pages?

Well, as you know there are two types of sitemaps.

There are XML sitemaps and then there are HTML sitemaps.

XML sitemaps let search engines know about your site and all the posts/pages/sub-pages/categories/tags etc so that it can find them better and index them and also lets them know how often you update certain pages etc.

That's why there's XML plugins for WordPress because it's a format that's supported by the major search engines Google, Bing, Ask etc

If you read what it says on sitemaps.org

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

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What is XML?

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format which is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is defined by the W3C's XML 1.0 Specification and by several other related specifications, all of which are free open standards.

What is XML Sitemap?

A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

Where as HTML sitemaps are meant solely for your websites visitors to more easily navigate a website. It would usually contain bullet pointed anchor text links to all your pages, posts etc so visitors can locate a topic or something they are unable to find via a search or via navigating menus.

So therefore, as we can see from this. Sitemaps both in XML and HTML format are INCREDIBLY useful, even for smaller sites with less than say 50 pages/categories etc.

I fully understand what an XML sitemap is.

If your site is 50 pages and needs a sitemap for Google to find all the pages, your site structure is absolute rubbish.

Several Google employees themselves have said that most websites do not need a sitemap.

The only reason you would likely need a sitemap is if you have orphaned webpages. Rarely does it make sense for a site to have an orphaned webpage.

They can be used to prioritize new content, but the Wordpress sitemap plugins generally do a horrible job of that or explaining how or why to do it.

Sitemaps are a lot like meta descriptions. They are one of those buzzwords that crappy SEOs use to make their client think they are doing some kind of work.

Since you had an experience doing SEO before, you can ask them some basic question or try to tell them what you want them to do. Prior to that you can also ask if they have an experience in promoting your product/service niche. And how will they execute several stuffs, try consulting different SEO company to know which one will you hire on promoting your website.

I don't like SEO Companies. They charge way too much. It's best to hire your local SEO expert and pay them something decent than dishing out $1000s with a company. I like hiring ppl who are local (So we can meet every once in a while) and it's like helping ppl in your own community. Plus you pay a fraction of the costs. To find them, just put an ad on craigslist. The best people to hire are the people looking to make a side income while they are working somewhere as a full time SEO. Just in my experience.

miken said:

What do SEO companies actually do?

In the past I have ever hired a SEO company do SEO for my sites, it seems not obvious about what they did, they would send you a report of keyword rankings on Google search results.

This sounds a little like a newbie question doesn't it? However, I still want to know some things.

If a website owner goes to an SEO company, the first thing the SEO company would do is look at your website design to improve on-page SEO?
Does the website have a sitemap?
Does the website use friendly URLs that contain keywords?
Are breadcrumbs being used?
Are header tags being using correctly?

Click to expand...

In my opinion, the first thing a SEO company should do is a keyword analysis.
After this analysis is complete they should modify the content from your website to match the keyword analysis.
If a SEO company doesn`t request access to your website and only promises reports about keyword rankings, backlinks and the one I love the most: "directory submissions", RUN AWAY. You would be better throwing your money in the fire.

Yeah, I removed that part so it didn't sound like I was bragging or something.

Yeah. I get a lot of pages ranking with nothing but directories.

The following are the list of steps SEO companies should perform

Initial research

keyword research
Google analytic
Google web master tool analysis
Link profile analysis
Site audit

Initial optimization

website redesign
link removal

Link building

Link monitoring
competitor search
brand monitoring
reach