What is an SEO Company and What Do They Do?

Working with a seasoned SEO company will help you place your website in a prominent and sought-after location on a search engine results page. The company you choose will need to be giving you reports, responding to your questions, and finishing a lot of work – you may have been told to “just hire an SEO agency”, but what do they actually do?

A survey has found that 81% of companies would prefer to hire SEO agencies over and in-house marketing employee, so they must be doing something right.

Whether your business is small, big or brand new, the secret to its online success is to prioritise search engine optimization. With millions of businesses operating online and competing for search rankings, the competition is likely to be strong regardless of the stage of your company’s life cycle.

Our SEO heroes are here to tell you everything you need to know about SEO companies and what they can do for you to take your online business to the next level.

What is SEO?

Search engines like Google utilise algorithms to examine websites in order to identify the greatest match for a particular search because their ultimate purpose is to deliver useful results to users. 

The practice of making a website appealing to search engines is known as SEO, or search engine optimisation.

A website’s worth to search engines and potential users can be increased by having high-quality content, speed and backlink profiles. Search engine rankings are more likely to highlight a website on the results page for a relevant search phrase when it finds one that offers useful information.

In a nutshell, an SEO strategy is crucial in making your website stand out in the crowd.

What is an SEO company?

An SEO company is a specialist agency that helps businesses to optimise and improve their website in order for it to rank higher on search engine result pages. All of the work carried out by an SEO company is aimed at making a website more attractive and valuable to search engines thus increasing its visibility. 

SEO companies use a range of techniques to help websites build up visibility in organic search results. The services offered by an SEO company can include keyword research, content creation, link building, website audits, and more. Some may even put this all in a fixed monthly SEO package for you.

These services are designed to improve the performance of a website on search engines by increasing its relevance for certain keywords and phrases that are most likely to be used by users when searching for the types of products or services offered by the business.

What does an SEO company actually do?

Before developing a plan to boost your site’s ranking, a SEO company must be aware of your existing situation and the state of your industry as a whole. 

An SEO will need to address the following questions, for example:

• How well is your website performing right now?
• What are the appropriate keywords for your business and industry?
• Are the title tags and meta descriptions on your website distinctive? Has your website been marked up with schema?
• Is your website easy to use? Does the navigation make sense?
• What websites do you link to, and which websites link to yours?

An SEO team will then research your website thoroughly before examining the competition. Knowing what your competitors are doing well and what they are overlooking will help them identify opportunities for your website to stand out.

7 SEO services to improve your web page’s search rankings

After conducting all necessary research, your SEO company will develop a unique plan to raise the position of your website. 

This strategy will focus on areas that require improvement to provide a comprehensive, useful, and friendly website that appeals to consumers (and search engines). 

Here are some of the services and SEO campaigns an experienced SEO company should provide:

Link acquisition

One of the most crucial SEO actions is link building. In order to rank in Google, you must have links. And sure, it is still among the most significant, officially acknowledged Google ranking factors.

Different methods are used by agencies to find potential link partners, evaluate their authority, and get in touch with other websites on your behalf.

There is a lot of jargon used in the wider context of link development. You might hear the following terminology being used by your agency:

• Do-Follow Links: Links marked as “follow” or “dofollow” might affect how pages rank in search engine results.
• Nofollow Links: These links have no effect on the destination URL’s position in search results.
• Domain Rating (DR): An SEO indicator that rates the quantity and quality of a website’s backlinks on a scale of 0 to 100.
• Link Profile: An evaluation of every link on a website and it’s overall profile strength.

Keyword research

Given their importance, keywords are arguably the most well-known SEO component. A page’s keywords help search engines understand the main points of the information on the page by matching the search terms people are likely to use.

In order to assess how challenging it will be to rank for each potential keyword that is pertinent to your goods or services, an SEO company will investigate all relevant keywords. Going after those challenging words could be worthwhile if they turn out to be the most profitable.

Long-tail keywords have click-through rates 3-5% greater than regular keywords.

Keyword research is often split into two categories: transactional keyword research and informational keyword research. Your transactional keyword research will aim to collect and organise keywords with buying intent, which can then be used to create new pages or optimise current pages on your site. 

Informational keyword research aims to collect and organize keywords with educational intent, which can then be used to inform your blog content strategy. This can help you create content pillars to support your product range for example.

Here’s a quick snippet of some of Dandy’s informational keyword research for reference:

Content creation

Any form of content that you need for your website can be produced by SEO companies. They will mostly support you with the following categories of content as part of your SEO campaign:

1. Blog post content.
2. Landing page content.
3. Meta descriptions and page titles. 

This is where the creative juices really get flowing! Let’s have a look in a bit more detail:

Blog posts

• Blogging boosts SEO significantly, so when you begin working with an agency for content marketing, they should provide a well-researched content strategy and blog calendar. In terms of blog post content, this is your content strategy for the upcoming months.
• The majority of agencies either employ a writer internally or collaborate with one who is contracted out to develop content for them.
• The number of postings the agency will normally advise you to publish each month will rely primarily on your budget.
• In most cases, if you’ve allowed the agency access to the CMS, it will upload and format the content for you.

Landing pages

• With landing page content, an agency will offer suggestions for what, in its opinion, is the best course of action.
• Your agency will usually research and write the content, either internally or with a dependable external partner. 
• The best SEO companies often have expert in-house teams to craft SEO-informed blog and landing page content. Take a look at the content on this landing page for our affordable SEO packages, for example:

Meta data

• By providing a brief, relevant summary of the content of a given page, a meta description tag typically informs and piques users’ curiosity. Similar to an elevator pitch, they persuade the user that the page is exactly what they are looking for in just a few seconds.
• Similarly, meta titles tags inform both search engines and the reader what the content of the page is all about. It should be direct, to the point and relevant to what the reader will find if they click through.

Technical SEO

One of the most lucrative SEO skills you can have is unquestionably good technical SEO skills.

When you approach an SEO company, it will highlight its technical SEO expertise and attempt to identify many of the problems with your website’s SEO by performing a technical SEO audit with a number of specialised SEO tools.

Here is what a good SEO company will be checking for:

• Review the organisation of your website and make sure it is logical and search engine friendly.
• Evaluating performance metrics for your website, such as site speed and Core Web Vitals.
• Reviewing your website’s internal and external links and identifying areas for improvement.
• Checking to see if your redirects and canonicals are implemented correctly.
• Examining your robots.txt and sitemap files to make sure they are implemented properly.
• Checking your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts.
• Ensuring that your images are search-engine-friendly.

All sounding a bit complicated? Best to leave that part to the experts!

Looking for someone to take SEO off your hands?

Now that you know what an SEO company can do for you, it’s time to start thinking about hiring an SEO agency that’s right for your business.

The price of their SEO services, their level of expertise, and the general calibre of their audits are just a few of the factors that will affect your choice.

We take great satisfaction in being a full-service SEO agency at Dandy that provides thorough audits, knowledgeable guidance, and exceptional service. We really believe in prioritising our clients and consistently strive to produce the best possible results.

Book your FREE SEO Audit today!

What is an SEO company? FAQs