Updated on 16/09/2024 & 07/11/2024
It’s fair to say that most people in business have heard of SEO (search engine optimisation) agencies, but not everyone knows what they actually do. If you fall into this category, you’ve come to the right place.
An SEO agency is a digital service employed by business owners to help improve their search engine rankings, drive quality traffic, boost sales and ultimately, increase revenue. There are a wide variety of tactics and strategies that an SEO agency will do in order to boost their client’s visibility on search, such as keyword research and content optimisation.
The process of SEO takes into account what search engines are looking for in a ‘valuable website’, so that these factors can be incorporated into your website and make it rank higher than your competitors.
The ultimate role of an SEO agency is to find out what your customers look for the most, what they like, where they are, and what they do, and to optimise your website in such a way that you become exactly what they need at the right time and place.
So, What Does an SEO Agency Actually Do?
From keyword research and link building to technical fixes, an SEO agency offers a range of strategies and tools to ensure their clients’ website stands out on Google search (or any search engine for that matter). Let’s look at these in more detail…
Here are 7 core things that an SEO agency will do for their clients:
1. Create a Strategy
The first thing an SEO agency will do for their client is analyse their website and come up with an SEO strategy.
This is a detailed plan/document designed typically consisting of numerous SEO tactics, with the intention of improving a website’s organic search rankings and organic traffic.
SEO strategies will look different for every individual client, depending on a number of things such as their industry, target audience and competitors.
Websites that are already performing well on search or those that operate in niche markets with a low competition will also need different strategies. Each case is different.
2. Keyword Research & Implementation
Keywords are arguably the most important and integral part of an SEO campaign and will be the first thing carried out by an SEO agency. Search volume, user intent, and level of competition are a few of the most important qualities that good SEO agencies take into consideration when conducting keyword research.
Once an SEO agency has found all the trending keywords for your website, they will implement them throughout your landing pages. For example, in the meta data (title tag & description), headings, text, alt text & URL.
Understanding how real potential consumers search for your products/services will allow the agency to optimise your website and increase your chances of appearing in the right searches, in front of the right people.
3. Content Creation & Optimisation
Content is everything when it comes to Google’s algorithm, which is driven more so by user experience year on year. Creating and optimising content is therefore essential for a successful SEO campaign, especially blog writing. So, if your website doesn’t already have a blog page, chances are an SEO agency would create one. Learn more about the importance of blog writing for your website, here.
As well as creating new content for your website, an SEO agency may also optimise current or old content to increase its chances of ranking on search engines. This includes editing page copy, blog content, and other site copy to make it more SEO-friendly. Back in the day, this meant keyword cramming, but now it simply means making the content more user friendly and query driven.
SEO related content like meta data will be optimised or, if absent, created from scratch. Meta titles & descriptions are one of the first things search engines see that gives them context about your website, and it is the preview that human users see in search engine results. So getting this part right is crucial.
4. Link Building
To Google, a significant portion of your website’s reputation is based on its backlink profile. What do we mean by this? Well essentially, the more high quality links from high-authority websites that point to your website, the more likely search engines are to recommend your pages to their users.
In order to gain these valuable backlinks, SEO agencies will use a number of different strategies. The first being journo requests, which are requests for information or interviews from journalists. These journalists are typically seeking quotes, or expert insights from a particular individual or organisation, and can be a great way to not only gain valuable backlinks to your site, but also promote your business.
An SEO agency might also use guest posting as a way of gaining backlinks to your website, which involves other websites publishing your content. You can learn more about what guest posts are, here.
5. Technical SEO
Last but certainly not least, SEO agencies will carry out technical SEO, which is all about ensuring there are no broken elements to your website. These might include:
- Broken external or internal links
- Missing metadata
- Missing headings
- Duplicate H1’s and title tags
- More than 1 H1 on a page
- Images over 100KB
All of these technical issues signal to Google that your website is slow at loading or challenging to use, and therefore will rank you down.
6. On-page Optimisation
On-page optimisation is the process of optimising individual webpages with smart keyword targeting, where keywords are threaded naturally throughout content and only mentioned in key elements when necessary. This means that the content reads well while also offering great user experience, as you must ensure you’re satisfying what the user is actually searching for.
On-page optimisation examples include heading optimisation (H1’s, H2’s, H3’s, H4’s etc), metadata optimisation (title tags & meta descriptions), URL structure, alt text optimisation and internal linking.
7. Analytics & Reporting
SEO agencies will typically use a combination of SEO tools, strategies, and reporting techniques to track and analyse a website’s performance, providing insights to their clients on key SEO metrics.
At Lumen SEO, we provide our clients with a monthly report of their results. To do this, we use a combination of SEMrush, Google Search Console & Google Analytics to monitor keyword rankings, track organic traffic, analyse user behavior and basically show how our optimisations have impacted visibility and search engine results.
And that’s it! We hope this has helped you to understand exactly what an SEO agency will do for you and your business.
If you like the sound of working with an agency and looking for some support, we offer free, no obligation SEO audits on business websites. To claim yours, simply pop an email to aled@lumenseo.co.uk with your website URL and we will send it over to you the very same day.
If you’d like to learn more about the SEO services we provide at Lumen SEO, contact us today. Alternatively, you can message us on either our LinkedIn or Instagram pages.
