Search engine optimization (SEO) services usually fall within three areas: on-page SEO, off-site SEO, and technical SEO. If you’ve never done SEO, it can be difficult to know where to start or what services you need.

Our team recommends the SEO services that align with our clients’ budgets, business goals, and timelines. While there may be an overlap in tactics, no two SEO strategies should be the same. What works for your business may not work for another.

We’ll explain some of the services we provide to help you gain a better understanding of SEO and more importantly, which services you should prioritize for your business.

Learn more about our data-driven SEO strategies.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO addresses a lot of items that can hinder a website’s ability to rank and earn traffic and sales. For example, you may already have really great blog content, but what if something in your robots.txt file is preventing search engines from crawling that content?

A technical SEO audit is like a car inspection. It may seem like your car is running fine, but an inspection may uncover problems that you didn’t know existed. Some of these problems may have a negative, long-term impact if they aren’t addressed.

For this reason, we recommend that most SEO campaigns start with a technical audit. It’s good to assess the health of your website and identify gaps and opportunities to improve performance.

Reasons to prioritize technical SEO services:

  • You have a limited budget and may not be able to engage in an ongoing SEO campaign yet.
  • You need faster results. Depending on the nature of the work, technical SEO may yield quicker results in the short-term compared to other SEO services.
  • You’ve never assessed the health of your website.

Local SEO

Local SEO is exactly what it sounds like. It’s SEO for local businesses. If you have a storefront or you target customers in a specific geographic area, local SEO should be a top priority for your business.

Other SEO services like content marketing are worth considering for the long-term. However, you want to make sure you’re ranking well for local search queries first before you start expanding your online footprint.

Reasons to prioritize local SEO services:

  • You only need to reach customers within a specific region.
  • You’re getting business from repeat customers but want to ensure that new customers can find your business.
  • You don’t have the bandwidth to engage in ongoing off-site or on-site content marketing.

Content Marketing

Yes, the saying is true. Content is king. Due to changes in algorithms and search results, our team has recommended ongoing content marketing to many of our clients in the last couple of years.

Content marketing doesn’t just mean writing blog content. It may include product and category page optimizations, longform resources, and video marketing. Importantly, content should have a strategy and purpose.

Good content can improve your search visibility, attract and engage website visitors, and yes, even convert. Content marketing may not yield quick results, but it can be easier to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) than other SEO tactics.

Reasons to prioritize content marketing:

  • You have the time and resources to invest in a long-term content marketing plan.
  • Your website is missing out on users at a particular stage of the conversion funnel.
  • You’ve never optimized, updated or refreshed the content on your website.

Link Building

Links are still an important part of Google’s ranking algorithm. However, it’s important to focus on the right links. That is, backlinks from the websites that your target audience is visiting.

It’s important to also consider the current state of your website. If it provides a poor user experience or lacks content, it may be best to hold off on link building. You want to make sure you’ve built a solid foundation first.

Link building can be a high-effort, time-intensive task. It requires consistent work. However, the payoff can be worth it. It can improve your organic rankings, increase brand awareness, and drive referral visitors to your website.

Reasons to prioritize link building:

  • You’ve already dedicated time and resources to your website’s content and user experience.
  • You have the capacity to allocate time to consistent link building efforts.
  • You don’t have strong brand recognition or need to market a product or service.

You have a lot of options when it comes to SEO, and truthfully your campaign may not need all of them. However, the right partner should understand what SEO services your business needs and when you need them.

If you’re looking to invest in SEO, consider partnering with an agency. While you can create or expand your internal team to handle some SEO work, our clients see the most success through a collaborative approach. This means they have some internal resources, but they trust our team to build a strategy that sets their business up for long-term success.

WTM can help you determine which SEO services align with your marketing objectives and business goals. Start a conversation with our team about SEO and other digital marketing services.