My guest, Grant Kantsios has been working in the web and digital marketing space for over 6 years. He has worked in a number of industries and focuses on helping companies improve their organic website traffic. One of his main focuses is driving traffic to websites through organic SEO methods and strategies. The ultimate goal is always to help increase the number of leads that the business is generating online.
Here’s what we spoke about :
What is SEO?
SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is a complex process that helps to increase your website’s ranking in the search engine results pages and to also increase qualified traffic to your website.
SEO helps to improve your website’s visibility in the search engine results pages, which in turn allows you to gain more traffic to your site. Get Your SEO Audit Here
Is SEO better than Social Media?
I would never dismiss or say anything bad about social media. It is a very powerful tool that can be used to connect to your audience – and it should be. It is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and to also connect with them on a more personal level.
Better still it should be defined by the type of business and industry that you are in. To me, it varies so much from company to company and industry to industry that I would never place a blanket statement on it.
Can I use both?
Yes, and I usually recommend this. I think that it is important to be present on the various social outlets and to have an omni channel marketing approach. You should be consistent across all marketing mediums.
Using social media and SEO together helps to amplify the effectiveness of both. “Social signals” are common buzzwords used in the SEO industry. This most commonly refers to the number of “likes & shares” that you receive on social media. Google can tell the popularity of your brand and website by using these types of metrics.
What is an SEO optimized website?
This term is used loosely in the industry. However, to me it is when you have taken the necessary steps to position your website to rank well in search engines and to receive as much qualified traffic as possible.
Typically when I start working with someone, I will do an SEO audit that reviews their entire website to see if it was setup properly. The types of things I am looking for are:
- Does each page have a unique title
- Are there internal links to other pages within the website
- Are they properly using heading (h1, h2, etc.) tags on their website
- How fast does the site load
Just to name a few. The audits are very extensive and help to cover a variety of aspects for the website.After I review this, I will put the items in order from most important to least important. For me, the foundational elements are always the technical SEO elements – such as the items listed above.
Once you have gotten those items correct, you can move on to more advanced SEO techniques.
Why do I need SEO?
SEO allows people to find you and your business online. It is meant to help provide answers to people’s problems, questions, etc. If you set up your website properly and are targeting the proper audience, then you need to be the solution for those clients.
How long does it take to see results from SEO?
I let people know that SEO is a long-term process that will produce results for your company for years to come. There is no “quick and easy” way to do organic SEO (as opposed to paid search). There are a lot of steps to getting a successful campaign off the ground and you may not see results for a few months.
Once you start seeing results, however, you are able to more actively track them to see improvement, measure goals and other KPI’s. Key Performance Indicators:
- Sessions
- Page views
- Bounce rate, etc
How much does SEO cost?
This is a very tough and open ended question. I rarely ever tell anyone what it cost for SEO just based off the question, because it takes a lot of variables into consideration:
- How long has their website been around?
- What type of content has been created for their website?
- Are they providing good solutions for their clients, patients, customers, etc.
- Have they done SEO before?
- If so, was it quality SEO?