In order for an SEO campaign to be successful, you need to carry out keyword research. You need to do this whether it’s for local or national SEO. We use some of the best tools for this, for example, we are big fans of Moz Pro and Ahrefs.

We use these tools, as well as Google Search Console to analyse which keywords we should optimise the website for. Now, for an SME business, sometimes the directors will want us to focus on a service or a product first.

We then direct our concentration on that area, and start to optimise those keywords. We do this through improving the technical, the off-page and the on-page ranking factors. We also use then Google Analytics to monitor how we are improving the businesses organic traffic.

It’s important to run an audit, to carry this work out we use marketing tools. We also have one of our experts look at the website and look for areas of improvement. For example, it might become obvious that many pages are content thin. When we check some of the pages, it might also become clear that there’s

AI text used. We might even see some really old fashioned and poor SEO methods such as “cloaking the text”.

Then we need to look at the company’s backlink profile, we need to see if there’s spam links.

Then we need to have a look at the technical SEO, for example is their somethings that’s been written into the robot.txt which is hampering the indexation?

Is Googlebot or let’s say the bots used by ChatGPT being prevented from crawling and indexing that page?

Is the crawl budget being used wisely?

What quality is the content marketing?

Are the articles kept up to date, or is it quite clear when analysing the bounce rate using Google Analytics that the bounce rate for that page or blog posts is high?

What’s the web design like?

Is it offering a really good U.X that’s user experience?

Or is the dwell time across the main pages low?

Once we have carried out the SEO audit, its then a matter of implementing the work.

We may find for example, that your direct competitors are weak in a certain area. For example, we find that their backlink profile is weak.

We could then use that to your company’s advantage, what we mean by that is by concentrating on backlink building we can move your business up Google’s ranks.

For other businesses, it might become for example crystal clear that AI text has been used.

It could also be that the main landing pages, the pages which should attract the most organic traffic perhaps they are content thin.

If they are content thin, we could work with our copywriters to rewrite the pages. We could add more detail; we could adhere to the guidance of Google YMYL.

We also have a very good understanding of Google EEAT therefore, what we can do is implement very high-quality pages.

These pages are then very helpful to visitors; therefore, they earn a higher dwell time, plus the bounce rate is less.

Since we started Walsh & Partners over 14 years ago, we have understood that for a business’s SEO to be a success, the main pages need to offer high-quality advice.

It’s important to know that you can spend huge amounts of time building links, plus also strengthening the companies on-page SEO, however you can’t ignore making technical improvements.

The reason is businesses need to make the best use out of their allotted crawl budgets.

This means making sure that the robot.txt is set up correctly. It also means that an XML sitemap needs to be generated, so that Googlebot can read that text.

Also there needs to be good use of internal links, in order to help shoppers to better navigate the website.

On top of that, what you also need is to fix broken links. Not only do broken links cause a bad user experience, what they also do, is that they can stop link equity from being passed through.

When you have a strong backlink profile, a backlink profile full of do-follow and no-follow links, you want the link equity to pass through. Therefore, if a backlink is linking to a broken link, the link equity won’t pass through. Therefore, you have to fix this in order to strengthen the company’s technical SEO.

Then you need to use internal links to pass the link equity to internal pages.

Part of a digital marketing agencies job is often to create the content marketing.

Now what we would advise is that the agency creates a content calendar.

This allows the agency to carryout keyword research, then think about ideas for what the content marketing should be written about. Then you can start to come with ideas for pages which will help your customers find a solution to a question that they may have.

For example, it could be what’s the best diamond engagement ring to buy below £3k. Now this from keyword research being carried out by the SEO company, may find that this is a commonly asked question that’s asked to Google.

Now, if you then create content marketing, really good advice, that has a high Google EEAT score, it’s perfectly possible that page ranks straight away on page one of Google. Then you could use backlink building to move that page up the ranks.

What you can therefore do by publishing such high-quality advice, is you can start to draw in more and more organic visitors.

As these organic visitors increase, there will be some who are ready to make a purchase.

Because you have offered such high-quality advice, the shoppers will want to browse your products and services that you sell. Then you can start to sell more items.

This is called using content marketing to increase the number of organic visitors to your website.

It’s a very effective way of drawing in customers when done right.

However, don’t use AI and don’t write thin content pages.

Instead, the page needs to have a high Google EEAT score.

Now, it’s same for large businesses, as it is smaller companies, to rise up Google’s organic ranks you need backlinks. The backlink profile needs to be strong, you need well written anchor text, good mixture of do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re a solicitors practice with say 7 solicitors, or you run a national company employs in excess of 7 thousand lawyers, often you need links.

You need backlinks to show that your website is “authoritative” this is a key part of Google EEAT.

In that to have a website that ranks high organically, you need to have authoritative backlinks.

This means links with high DA score.

The link needs to be very high quality and we would say that best way for any SME business to get links is earning the link.

You simply earn the link through writing top quality content marketing. Because this work can rank so high in Google’s organic SERPs, there’s the potential that it attracts hundreds of thousands of organic visitors. Some of these visitors may link to that page, this therefore can help to generate a do-follow, or indeed a no-follow backlink.

The stronger a business’s backlink profile, the higher those businesses rank on Google.

For many small businesses, they are reliant to organic and local search engine optimisation to bring in sales and leads. We are the experts at this process, working with many SME businesses with a monthly budget of 1k plus.

We help to analyse backlink profiles, the on-page SEO and we carry out technical SEO improvements. We make your business more visible, helping to draw in new leads.

We always stress to clients, this is not a fast process, it often takes 6 months to see tangible results.

With our extensive experience, we are the experts at this process.

Owned and managed by Ryan Walsh, he is known as one of the best SEO consultants. We have had backlinks, plus our work cited on Search Engine Land, which shows that we really know our stuff at this agency.

We don’t just offer small business SEO; we also work with e-commerce businesses as well.

It’s important that all of the pages and articles are created to draw in the right visitors.

Therefore, this is where creating the content calendar is important, setting out which topics will be written and talked about on the company’s websites.

Then there’s on-page optimisation of the SME’s website.

This means optimising the H1-H6 tags, optimising the alt text, meta descriptions and also the anchor text.

It means optimising the page so the business is drawing in customers with “buying intent”.

This means, writing quite often very detailed buying guides.

These buying guides should answer frequently asked questions that your business gets asked regarding those products or services that you sell.

Then when the content marketing is made as helpful as possible, this is when it will attract more visitors.

Then using on-page SEO and good web design, you can turn those visitors into customers.

The short answer to this question is, it depends on which agency you hire to implement the work.

If you take shortcuts or implement spammy work, this can mean that the organic rankings will eventually move down.

However, if you implement high quality work, that is white hat work, which follows the advice of Google’s YMYL, EEAT and Webmaster Guidelines, well organic rankings will improve.

However, what we would say is, whichever agency you hire, whether they are one of the best in the business like Walsh & Partners, or another company, the process is slow. It’s a long road to walk, so typically for example we always say don’t expect any meaningful progress until 6 months in.

If the website has received a Google penalty in the past, such as a link penalty then it can take even longer to see results. That’s because that low quality or spammy work needs to be undone, before you can start to move forwards and obtain higher organic rankings.

Again, this depends on whether a freelancer, small marketing company or large agency is going to be hired.

Prices to vary wildly depending on who you choose.

However, the more reputable marketing agencies, such as Walsh & Partners, often have local SEO packages starting from 1k per month. Therefore, this type of marketing is very affordable to most SME businesses.

We are one of the best and most experienced SEO agencies in Cardiff. We work with businesses on a monthly basis to improve their local SEO. The agency is owned and run by Ryan Walsh who is known as one of the best in Wales. Call us on: 029 21 761777 and our team are here to help you.