All Forum Posts by: Aaron Cote

@Jason Hopkins

 I run an SEO consultancy, so I may be able to offer some advice.

- Keywords vary by location. Not only for the obvious geo modifiers (like city/town names), but some areas may use different terms altogether. For example someone "how to sell my house in Los Angeles" may get 100 searches/month, but "home buyers in Los Angeles" may only get 10 searches/month, whereas it could be swapped in a different area/region. It all depends on what the keyword research yields.

- I use a plethora of online tools. My main tools are Ahrefs, CognitiveSEO, Semrush, Google Search Console, and Majestic. It depends on what phase of SEO I'm on.

- @Jim Pellerin is correct on time. SEO does take time. I've gotten results for my clients in as little as 1.5 months, but not much earlier than that. I'd agree that 3-6 months is a good average.

- SEO might seem like a slower approach than targeted ads, but the best part about SEO is that after you've got an established website and become a local authority, you've got a well-oiled machine that should help provide leads whenever someone searches the keywords you've optimized for.

- I recommend outsourcing SEO to people in the same time-zone (communication is very difficult/slow when outsourcing to countries that are waking up as you go to sleep) as you and to those who can speak the language you're going to want to optimize your website for fluently.

Feel free to ask any specific questions and I'll be glad to answer!

Good morning Jason,

I am a search engine optimizer, but I also specialize in social media marketing and website development. There are many options for websites. You can use squarespsace, wordpress, wordpress.com, weebly, etc. I only build Wordpress sites due to the level of customizability as well as the SEO benefit (and the plugins). Google's ranking algorithm is continuing to rank UX (user experience) higher than some other SEO values, which is helping non-Wordpress sites in terms of ranking on Google , but it's pretty minuscule right now. If you'd like to know more about websites (or SEO) in general, I'd love to discuss it further. 

Aaron

Hi Taylor,

I may be a little bias in this regard since I started off as a freelancer and then to an in-house SEO position for a company (not an agency)- but, I don't care much for agencies and don't recommend any. I never cared much for them because of how many clients they typically have, and how they balance their time between clients. It's easy to feel like a second priority to them. 

When I took the in-house position that I currently have, I had to work with the agency that my company was using previously and long story short it was awful. It was difficult to get in touch with them when I needed something and scary to know that we have to tiptoe around them because they essentially hold the keys to our kingdom (all of our website resources) and they reserved the right in their contract to basically do anything they want with our site. 

I would suggest hiring an individual that you know can dedicate enough time for you and your company and has a proven track record. That's just my two cents. If you are deadset on an agency, remember that you get what you pay for about 1/2 times. Some agencies undercharge and some overcharge, so it can be hard to determine the quality of their work based on their price points. I would do a little digging to find out their clients and contact them to get honest reviews of the agencies, if I were you.

Best of luck,

Aaron Cote