Raleigh SEO Company

Great SEO starts with great user experience. We redesign (or develop from scratch) your current website.  When users arrive, they find what they’re looking for and stay there.

To get discovered by search engines, your top keywords should be strategically placed throughout your website — in a way that makes sense to both users and the search engine AI.

Images need to be light enough to load quickly and properly labeled so search engine web crawlers can interpret them. Because search engine ability to interpret the content of your images is in the early stages, it has never been more important for your imagery to be both high-quality and relevant.

“Content” is all about what users can see. Alt text is content that only the search engines can see. Metadata is the first content your users will see on the search engine results page (SERP). Most companies neglect their alt text.  That’s a major missed opportunity to build relevance for your keywords!

Backlinks are links to your website from other websites. Backlinks from authoritative websites build your domain authority like nothing else can. On the other hand, bad backlinks can do far more harm than good, so placement on other websites has to be done correctly.

Guest-blogging and other forms of exposure on other sites … These are not only a great source of authoritative backlinks, but they are also an opportunity for your site to be discovered by potential customers and build authority in their eyes.

Your company’s social presence needs to align with your website. When the message and branding of your social media assets are reflected on the new website, it can become a powerful source of discovery and work hand-in-glove with SEO.

Slow loading pages don’t just cause visitors to “bounce” off your page quickly — search engine web crawlers can actually tell how fast your site is and rank you accordingly. As such, getting your site “up to speed” is priority #1 for technical SEO.

Search engine web crawlers can only evaluate your site if it can find every corner of your site. This means using tools like sensible internal linking or an XML sitemap to tell web crawlers where to look for some of the deeper (but still important) pages in your site index.

Search engine web crawlers can also tell if your website is properly optimized to load on mobile browsers. Google even uses a “mobile-first” protocol, analyzing your mobile site first. Getting your mobile game on point is essential to good technical SEO.

At the code level, structured data tells the search engine what your page is about and how to interpret it. It’s a special computer language designed to speak directly to the search engine AI.

The local search map is a major source of discovery for search engine users who are looking for new businesses. Most businesses just create their map listing and forget about it, but careful optimization can put your brand in front of a huge local Raleigh audience.

Search engines have separate local algorithms that search for mentions of your business in directories across the internet. These citations are like the backlinks of local SEO and, as with backlinks, there’s a right and wrong way to do that. Surprisingly, most companies neglect this important opportunity altogether.

Even if you have a national brand, you can still benefit from local search algorithms. Just create localized pages in your target markets, with their own map listings and local SEO.

Peeking into the keywords your competitors use can be a useful source of information — both for learning what to do and what not to do. You can even identify gaps in your competitors’ offerings that you can exploit.

 Picking the right keywords is about more than just following the traffic — a good keyword has to demonstrate intent on the part of the user to become a customer of a company like yours. A less-popular keyword is more valuable if it indicates more purchase intent.

These are your core keywords — one, two, or three words that cut to the heart of your product or service offering. They tend to be hard to rank for, since every competitor uses them … but if you do get that ranking, and you win big.

These longer, often full-sentence keywords tend to be easier to rank for because you can get more specific and have less competition. They can also demonstrate more purchase intent because they drill down to searchers who know exactly what they want.

Producing content is all about getting your message in front of a new audience. Most consumers won’t even contact a salesperson before they have seen several pieces of your content.  By producing content, you’re encouraging your audience to enter a pool of willing buyers.

Content is about more than just articulating a brand message — it also shows that you have expertise in your field. Produce enough relevant, accurate content, and your prospects will return to you again and again as an authoritative source.

Sheer size is a big part of SEO — the bigger your index, the more authority the web crawlers attribute to you. Content marketing is an ideal way to expand your site index and give it some heft in the eyes of the search engines.

Content not only expands your website it also keeps it current. Search engine web crawlers look for signs that a website is in active use, an indication of an authoritative and relevant brand. Ongoing content updates accomplish this for you.