There are a number of SEO companies who will never lay out their SEO services like we’re about to.

Either because they practice shady black hat tactics and are afraid to be transparent with their clients, or because they’re scared about their competition copying them.

One of our core values at Clicks From Search as an SEO agency is to be transparent.

We’re not afraid to show our clients the work we do and the links we build because we’ve built systems and processes that enable us to service our clients in the safest way possible and get their business websites ranked on page one.

The SEO services we deliver are simple and easy to understand – even for clients with little technical knowledge.

We break everything down to it’s most simplest form.

There are 4 key segments of SEO that you need to be aware of.

These segments are keyword research, technical SEO, on page SEO and off page SEO.

We’ll be covering each of these 4 segments in more detail and give you an overview of how we approach these 4 vital aspects of SEO.

Keyword Research

Firstly, what is a keyword?

A keyword is a phrase, question or word that your potential customers may type into Google to find your business.

The very first step we focus on here at Clicks From Search when we bring on a new client is uncovering the keywords that we believe will generate the biggest return.

In Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people, the author puts forward the idea that effective people begin with the end in mind.

Begin with the end in mind means that you want to know what the ultimate end point is and what you want to achieve before you begin.

This helps you take the right steps to arrive at your end goal.

For example, if our end goal as an SEO agency is to rank for a keyword like London SEO services, we’re now able to take a step back and reverse engineer exactly how we can achieve that goal.

Depending on the business that we’re working with and the industry that they’re in, we may have to dive even deeper and uncover keywords with low competition but high search volume.

In most cases, when we know the main keyword we want to go after, all the long tail keywords associated with it become easier to uncover.

Keyword research for a local business can take anywhere from half a day all the way up to two.

However, for a national or international business, keyword research may take up to a week or sometimes a couple months depending on the size of the business.

Overall, keyword research is the process of uncovering potential search phrases that your target customers are searching for.

It’s really that simple.

We help businesses find the phrases or questions that their target market are searching for and then we help them move up to the first page where they can be seen.

The foundation to any SEO campaign is keyword research.

Without taking the time to do this bit of initial research to understand your market and your customers, you have next to no chance of making the most of your SEO efforts and maximising the free traffic that is flowing to your website on a monthly basis.

There are many keyword research tools out there.

Because we’ve tested the majority of all the good free keyword research tools and paid keyword research tools out there, we’ve been able to cut down the time it takes to do keyword research and get our SEO campaigns foundation built as quickly as possible.

Learning how to do keyword research is much like any other skill in life, practice makes perfect.

One of the best keyword research tools out there is the Google planner.

This keyword data is given to you directly from Google which is why it can be an extremely powerful free keyword research tool to use.

There are also many keyword generators out there that will output long tail keywords once you give it a keyword like “basketball”.

Some long tail keywords for “basketball” might be “basketball players”, “basketball teams”, “basketball league table” etc

Now that we’ve talked about the importance of keyword research to any SEO strategy, let’s talk about the next piece of SEO that we focus on.

Technical SEO

With keyword research, the spotlight is pointed at your target audience and their needs.

However, technical SEO is the process of optimizing your business website for the crawling and indexing phase.

By implementing technical SEO changes, you’re focusing your attention on helping search engines access, crawl, interpret and index your website without any problems.

Your technical SEO efforts will ensure that the results you produce from your on page and off page efforts are maximised.

Here’s a brief checklist of what you can expect from technical SEO:

Increased website load speed
Increase website functionality and usability
A more user friendly website

When you implement tech SEO fixes, you’re not only helping search engines navigate around your site with more ease but you’re also helping your users.

Technical SEO falls right under the category of “two birds with one stone”.

Let’s dive deeper into the importance of having a user friendly website.

Have you ever visited a website that took forever to load?

And by forever what we mean is longer than 3 or 4 seconds?

The internet has conditioned us to expect fast and speedy, and users nowadays expect nothing less than the quickest and the fastest browsing experience.

If your website takes even 2.5 seconds to load, you could be missing out on around 20-40% of visitors who are simply clicking away before they even land on your site.

Visitors leaving your website before even landing on it increases your websites bounce rate.

This is the official definition of bounce rate: the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

The higher your bounce rate, the less search engines like your website.

If your bounce rate is high, it means that users are not pleased with the experience that your website is providing them with.

Search engines make their money by selling ads on the search result pages.

The only way they can continue to make money is if more and more people use their search engine over their competitors.

If users are consistently let down by the results they’re given on the first page, they will switch to another search engine that is able to provide more relevant search results with a better user experience.

This means that the search engine will lose money to it’s competitors and this is a big no-no.

So when a search engine like Google sees that your bounce rate is extremely high, they will punish you by sending your website to page 2, 3 or beyond.

The lower your bounce rate, the more Google and other search engines will promote your website because users are having a good experience by being on your website.

So if your website isn’t loading in 1 second or less, that’s something you need to fix.

There are many other factors which contribute to a users experience along with your websites load speed, but for now, we hope you understand the importance of providing a good user experience for your website visitors.

Now, let’s move onto another fundamental piece of SEO.

On Page SEO

On page get’s a lot of attention from many SEO service providers and experts.

Rightly so.

After all, content is king as they say.

But on page SEO is more than just the words on the page, it’s also about everything that comes before it.

You can write the most expertly put together article on the planet, but unless you also pay attention to some of these on page SEO fundamentals that we’re going to discuss – you’ll just end up wasting your time.

Remember how we talked about keyword research earlier?

This is where the research we did at the beginning of our SEO campaign comes into play.

The title of your blog post or piece of content should be geared towards targeting a particular keyword.

For example, if your keyword is SEO services, you’ll want to have that keyword as close to the beginning of your title as possible.

You can see from this page alone that we practice what we preach. We started off our title for this page with search engine optimization services to make sure that the search engines crawling out site know that this page is about the SEO services we offer.

We also ensured that our title is wrapped in a H1 tag, which indicates that it’s the main headline for this page.

Another best practice for on page SEO is to include the keyword you’re going after within your URL just like we have with ours.

Internal links can also be used within your content to boost relevance within your own website.

Hopefully some of the points we’ve covered has shown you that on page SEO is not just about the fancy article you write, but is also reliant upon other important on page factors.

Last but not least, our favourite and most SEO agencies least favourite part about SEO.

Off Page SEO

As an SEO agency, link building can be the most dreaded task.

This is why the majority of white hat agencies who sell SEO services focus on keyword research, technical SEO and on page.

The first 3 pieces that make the SEO puzzle are the easiest to control.

What makes white hat link building difficult is that you often have to rely on someone else to control your destiny.

Let’s take a look at what we mean by this.

Unlike black hat strategies where you can manipulate the link building process and game the algorithms – with white hat SEO you can’t.

Most of white hat SEO link building involves building relationships with people and websites who you want a link from.

Because human beings can’t be controlled and building a relationship is a process that cannot be rushed, building links at scale in a white hat manner takes more time, more skill and a lot more patience.

However, just because it’s more difficult, doesn’t mean it’s not doable.

This is the part of SEO where we believe that Clicks From Search and our SEO agency really outshines our competition.

Because we know the levels of output it takes to build white hat links at scale, we’re able to take the necessary actions to get the needle moving for our clients.

Even though our systems and processes for white hat link building are proven and have helped us and our clients over take our competitors on the first page, we still know that we need extreme levels and patience and work ethic with every single link building campaign.

Out of the 4 puzzle peices which make up SEO, link building at this moment in time is the most important factor – and it’s why we focus so heavily on it.

All the elements that make up SEO are important, but nothing moves up unless links are built.

Maybe the way the algorithm works will change some day (it definitely will) but for now, it’s about who can build the most links quality links at the fastest pace and that’s what we pride our SEO services on.

The ability to embrace the difficulties of white hat link building and still push forward and deliver results for our clients.