Getting your website to rank higher in search engine results takes more than just hiring the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert for you. It is also about helping the agency beyond paying them and giving them access to your website. It’s about being a good client. After all, a good working environment could boost the efficiency of work. Here’s what you need to do to become an SEO agency’s dream client and give your rankings the best chance of improvement.

Understand the Basics of SEO

No, this doesn’t mean that you should become an SEO expert. Simply, learning the basics of SEO and familiarizing yourself with how it works will enable you to understand its impacts on your business. This is also very efficient to both you and the agency’s part since they won’t have to spend time trying to educate you. Understanding the basics will help you get a grasp of the overall marketing strategy that will be put in place.

Create Realistic Goals

Before starting the marketing strategy, it is important first to set goals. However, you must make sure that these goals are realistic. The problem between SEOs and clients usually stem out from trying to meet unrealistic expectations. As a client, you must be fully aware of the competition that your website is facing, and the difficulty in ranking higher in a short space of time.

Be Involved with the Process

One misconception of clients who hire SEOs is that they can just sit back and watch the agency to do their magic. But the truth of the matter is that the whole process doesn’t work that way. It is very necessary, as a client, to be involved with the marketing efforts. Ranking top doesn’t happen within a day. It takes continued effort to do so. You have to make sure that your social media accounts are active, your post regularly on your blog, and your customers and potential customers are engaged. Ranking first not only relies on the performance of your SEO keywords, rather it takes into consideration many factors that make your site a good source of information and service.

Practice Trust and Patience

An agency’s dream SEO client functions with the right character. It is important that you know how to trust in the agency’s process and to be patient with it. Remember that success doesn’t happen immediately. There are so many foundations that need to be laid and built upon. So if you don’t trust the agency and demand fast results, then you are bound to be disappointed. Putting too much pressure on them will only leave you with a sloppy work ethic which is more harmful to your website.

Be Open to Ideas

Finally, to be a full-on dream client, you must be open-minded. You have to understand that you haven’t figured everything out yet and that there are far more knowledgeable people than you to help out. You should be able to entertain and give the agency’s ideas a chance. Be open to ideas and discuss them with the agency.

One of the most basic elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the keyword. Keywords are the first thing that users type to look for websites in Google and Bing. Knowing what keywords your customers are using and optimizing your website for them is essential to rank highly and generate significant web traffic. Want your business to rank higher? The read this guide on how business owners can complete keyword research.

What is the user intent?

Before you use any tools to start looking for keywords, you have to understand how users are using your website. This will help you to sort through all of the keywords that you find to choose the most appropriate ones. So, do your users come to your website for:

•    Knowledge – Are they coming for information?
•    Research – Are they trying to find something specific?
•    Purchase – Do they want to buy something?

Once you have identified why users visit your website, you should have an idea of the kind of keywords you need to look for. If you have a store, you obviously want buyer-focused keywords. If you offer reviews, you want research-based keywords.

Make A List

Once you know why people are coming to your website, you can start to make a keyword list. The keywords must reflect the most likely search queries of your target users and consumers. Here are ways to look for them:

1. Use the Keyword Planner to find a huge number of potential keywords. While Google’s Keyword Planner is a PPC tool, it is a great way to find relevant keywords. Simply enter a starting keyword, such as running shoes, and then the tool will generate a list of relevant and related keywords.
2. Brainstorm for keywords according to the concerns of your customers. One way is through boards and forums where people usually share information. Alternatively, you can simply ask your customers what they are searching for or how they found your business. Don’t forget to ask them their pain points as well.
3. Google has an autosuggest and related feature in their search box. Use this by typing the start of one of your terms and look through the suggested phrases the search box offers. These suggested terms are usually the most common and popular keywords related to your user’s queries.

Picking Keywords (Long-tailed vs. short)

At this point, you probably have a long list of potential keywords. Of course, you can’t rank for them all. At least not yet. So now you have to choose ones to focus on. We recommend that you use long tail keywords than short. By long tail keywords, we mean keywords that are longer and more specific. So track running shoes for boys instead of running shoes. Picking longer keywords will more likely give you more targeted traffic and higher conversion rates. What’s more, longer tail keywords are known to account for around 70% of searches. They are also less competitive so it is easier to rank.

There you have it. Once you have completed these steps you should have a list of keywords that your customers use and that you can start using to optimize your website.

In the competitive world of Search Engine Optimization, it is important to know how to give your website an edge. One of the most effective ways to do this is through lots of high quality backlinks. Now if you are new to SEO, then you may be wondering what backlinks are and how they could affect your websites’ ranking. Fortunately, you have come to the right place. In this article, we will tell you everything you need to know about backlinks in order to get you to the top of the search engines:

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. They are also called inbound links. They help to determine the popularity, relevance, and importance of your site. This is especially true with Google. The number of good quality backlinks associated with your site shows that your site contains reliable and useful information. The important thing to remember is that it’s not about having tons of backlinks but on having lots of high quality backlinks to your site instead. But before that, let us first discuss how backlinks work.

How do backlinks work in SEO?

One way that Google ranks sites in terms of relevancy for a specific keyword is the amount and quality of backlinks. It is important then to make sure that the sources of the backlinks relate to the content of your site. The higher the relevance of the backlink, the higher the quality of the backlink.

Aside from that, one of the most effective ways to acquire quality backlinks is through using respected and popular directories that Google recognizes as a good quality link. These directories include Yellow Pages, Bing, Microsoft, etc. All you have to do is sign up to be included in their directories.

Links aren’t just good for SEO. Quality inbound links can also be a great source of traffic. When people see a link to your site from another website they are currently visiting, they will be more likely to trust the website that they are going to.

Let’s develop things further. Here are the things you have to remember when trying to generate backlinks to improve SEO rankings:

• Diversity of Domain Rank – What you don’t want to do is to create lots of very poor links. This would give you low domain rank diversity. Instead, by generating links naturally, through outreach, you should develop links from a diverse section of websites that have a wide variety of authority. Google is more likely to trust a diverse set of backlinks.
• Links from different IPs – When building links it may be tempting to buy links or take part in a link wheel (a group of websites linking to each other). This can mean all of your links coming from one or two IPs. This looks unnatural to Google and they can punish your website as a result.
• Diverse Anchor Text – Anchor text is the text that goes with the hyperlink. Usually, this will be “click here” or something like that, but it might be more descriptive. It is through anchor text that site visitors will find out what the site they are about to be redirected is about. As such, it is important to use keywords that are direct and easy to understand. Avoid using too many keywords since this may confuse and discourage users and is frowned upon by Google.

Sending money online.

Paypal is popular when it comes to spending, receiving, and sending money online. It can transfer money, goods, or services and allows fund transfer from one person to another. While Paypal is the obvious choice by many, we can also look for other alternatives.

Here is the list of other alternatives:

• Google Wallet is primarily used in the U.S. today but credits and debit cards coming from other countries. Simply tap to pay in-store with an NFC-enabled android device. There are also a handful of online businesses that accepts Google Wallet. This is strictly for merchants, which means you cannot send money but there are no chargeable fees.
• Skrill (previously known as MoneyBookers) sends and receives money to its users with a debit or credit card. When sending and withdrawing funds from Skrill, each country is charged differently. Their focus is sending money in different currencies anywhere, which makes Skrill a close competitor to the popular Paypal.
• If you are a seller and based in New Zealand or Australia, Paymate is a good choice to get money from buyers in other countries. The two countries can use Ebay Australia and Paymate on their website at a very minimal fee. You may not be able to send money to another user, but Paymate can be a good alternative when it comes to receiving payment.
• Payza (also known as AlertPay) can send and receive money in 21 currencies and 190 plus countries. Although the service is mainly based in the U.S. and Canada, Payza supports certain banks and credit/debit card from countries they recognized. Additional funds can be done via credit card or bank transfer, request money by using invoices, and send money to other Payza users. To create an account with Payza is free but the other services of transferring has a minimal fee which can compete with PayPal. For online merchants, Payza has a good payment service. They will also help you in managing multiple businesses with just one account.
• Payoneer is great when paying your online shopping. When you register you gain access to a prepaid MasterCard which will be delivered to where you are. Having an account is free and you are charged only when you activate the card. Through this, you can load money to your card that comes from other credit cards or banks. Activated card can be used in several countries using different currencies. This requires an annual fee. However, you can buy and withdraw money from a MasterCard
• Stripe is PayPal’s biggest competitors charges a flat fee of only 2.9% and another 30c in every transaction you make. The set-up and use is easy, it has full payment integration, and bank transfers are fast. It has multiple payment options using multiple credit and debit cards. There is no other additional international fees.

There are more rising money transfer alternatives out there. It is good to check them out and try using their services. Who knows, you might end up with a much better deal!