SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” which is the enhancement of web pages and their online profile so as to improve your site’s ranking in the Search Engine results pages (SERPS) for groups of keyword phrases. Click here to read more from Google about why SEO is important.

Search engines have two major functions: crawling and building an index, and providing search users with a ranked list of the websites they’ve determined are the most relevant. Search engines are constantly changing how they rank webpages. The 4 main elements of positive search results depend on Keywords, Website Architecture, Creating Original & Engaging Content and a profile of beneficial internal & external links and proper link building.

To a search engine, relevance means more than finding a page with the right words. In the early days of the web, search engines didn’t go much further than this simplistic step, and search results were of limited value. Over the years, smart engineers have devised better ways to match results to searchers’ queries. Today, hundreds of factors influence relevance, and we’ll discuss the most important of these in this guide.

Search engines typically assume that the more popular a site, page, or document, the more valuable the information it contains must be. This assumption has proven fairly successful in terms of user satisfaction with search results.

Popularity and relevance aren’t determined manually. Instead, the engines employ mathematical equations (algorithms) to sort the wheat from the chaff (relevance), and then to rank the wheat in order of quality (popularity).

These algorithms often comprise hundreds of variables. In the search marketing field, we refer to them as “ranking factors.” Moz crafted a resource specifically on this subject: Search Engine Ranking Factors.

SERP is an acronym that stands for “search engine results page.” Essentially this means any list of Google (or Bing) results that displays a list of websites and relevant search results.

The Sitemap or Sitemap.XML file is an index of all the pages on your site. The purpose of this file is to be used as a reference for search engines of content that you want indexed.

A common misconception is that the XML sitemap helps get your pages indexed. The first thing we’ve got to get straight is this: Google does not index your pages just because you asked nicely. Google indexes pages because (a) they found them and crawled them, and (b) they consider them good enough quality to be worth indexing. Pointing Google at a page and asking them to index it doesn’t really factor into it.

It is important to note that by submitting an XML sitemap to Google Search Console, you’re giving Google a clue that you consider the pages in the XML sitemap to be good-quality search landing pages, worthy of indexation.

SEO is not recommended to be a short term solution. Typically SEO is done for the life of the site to stay competitive in a clients designated industry. With so many changing parts, such as link degradation, evolving search engine algorithms, outdated content, and competition from other companies in your industry, SEO requires an ongoing commitment. Despite that, SEO offers a better ROI than most traditional marketing.

Yes, social media has become an integral part of SEO. Websites that create high quality shareable content tend to receive more shares and tweets on Social media sites, which leads to backlinks that are more natural. Search engines see this as a sign of quality content and pay close attention to the volume of these social signals.

The cost of SEO comes down to a variety of factors such as:

• The industry you’re competing in
• Size of your company
• Age of your Company
• Architecture of your Website
• Current Online Presence
• Your desired traffic goals

There also may be a number of other factors into consideration as well such as previous SEO done to your website. There are times when other SEO companies have made it an easy transition to come in and start working. We’ve also encountered SEO companies that have previously done more damage to the client than benefiting the client and this process can take awhile to overcome and replace with a positive impact. Every client is different and every project is truly unique.

Think about this analogy: a billboard in Times Square Manhattan vs a park bench add in Charlotte, NC. One of them might cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, the other one will probably cost a few hundred dollars. The difference is both the location of the ad and the demographic exposure.

One of the unique factors is that at the Eight Three Eight Agency we do not believe in traditional contracts that can generally leave a customer locked into an agreement even if the results aren’t beneficial. We believe in an old school mentality based on transparency and building trust between our company and our clients. All SEO projects are done on a month to month basis, where once a month we meet with each of our clients to discuss the results and how things are functioning. We believe in educating business owners on how traffic is driven to their site and the functionality that it takes to have a leading online presence.