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SEO means Search Engine Optimization – and refers to the process of creating and modifying a website so that it gets more traffic from Google and other search engines. SEO used to be simple and you could just write your keyword over and over again, but has become more complex over the years. Read more on the History of SEO.

SEO works by modifying elements on a website like the meta title and meta description of a page to ‘optimize’ it to get the most possible traffic. ‘Keyword targeting’ can determine which words you should be aiming for, and getting links from other high authority sites and creating relevant content on your web page and via articles on your site can shift your website up in search rankings over time.

For more check out Moz’s Beginner Guide to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or our (written for your quick consumption) SEO Basics Guide (3 Things You Should Do If Nothing Else.)

Any way of getting more customers to be aware of your company is important – particularly when they are looking for a product or service like yours. That is why search engine traffic is ideal. You can pay for ads at the top of search engine results and in various places on the web, but only 18% of clicks in search engines go to these ads because many customers are savvy enough to skip them.

They trust in the algorithm of Google to serve the best results towards the top of the ‘organic’ results, or the other results besides the ads – your job (or a professional SEO experts’ job) is to make sure your website is seen as the best result. The top 3 results for any one term get the lion’s share of the clicks, and the first page is generally the cutoff point for any meaningful traffic for most terms besides high volume ones.

SEO helps businesses by allowing them to attract more customers to their website and if it’s done right – attract them in a way that they also become customers. This is why we pair SEO with ‘Conversion Rate Optimization’ so that any site we’re doing SEO on also gets improvements in design and development that are intended to make it easy for people to become customers of your business.

You don’t want to just attract people to your site, you want them to take the next steps towards becoming a customer. Your website needs to be compelling and be set up for maximum conversions so that you can get the most out of our Chicago SEO services.

It will take anywhere from 1 month to 3 months to start seeing some shift, and likely 6-8 months to start seeing significant ROI from Search Engine Optimization work. That being said, if you don’t start seeing some shift in traffic (either month over month or year over year for seasonal businesses) then in most cases you should be very forward with your SEO provider and seek a clear explanation.

SEO is not hard. It does, however take time – it involves technical tweaks on your website, competitive analysis/content strategy, and building links from around the web.

So most people don’t have the time to get up to speed on all of the shifting trends, the technical aspects, and make sure their website is running perfectly for SEO like a finely tuned machine.

If you have an agency or team doing SEO + something else

When I say 1 to 3 months for some initial returns, or 6-8 months for significant ROI – I mean that much time concerted SEO effort, not SEO effort watered down with a redesign or an SEO + PPC agency trying to do both. Not that they can’t do that, but the time/effort/money spent would have to be double.

So my suggestion is to have a team totally dedicated to your SEO efforts, and if you want PPC done make sure that budget is entirely separate from your Search Engine Optimization work.

Slow is smooth.

Smooth is fast.

So when you or your Chicago SEO Agency creates content – make it significant and targeted, not worrying about the speed that it comes out, because 100 posts on your blog won’t create significant traffic, but that one that was super-targeted and useful will.

When you or your SEO Company creates links – make them hefty and serious. They should actually be almost a pain to get, whether through outreach, guest posting, or by deliberating with someone in your network to include a link back to your site. These things, when worth something for real will either take… money, time, or effort. If they don’t, they aren’t worth it.

85% of people searching on Google are clicking on the organic search results, according to Search Engine Watch.

If savvy customers are skipping the paid ads – you may want to as well. It really depends on the industry. Paid ads have a little thing next to it that says ad, and are shown above and below the ‘organic’ search results.

Many businesses opt to do paid ads and search engine optimization.

1. You can de-index any types of content that have less than 100 words. This might be the #1 suggestion for most businesses that have not done any SEO. For WordPress websites you can use the Yoast SEO plugin for this.

2. You can find terms that are driving traffic to your competitors with a tool like Ahrefs, or SEMRush and create similar but more in-depth and quality content for the same terms. Consider the intent of the searcher and create epic content that will service that intent while at the same time selling them your products or services with a lead generation form or listing of products.

3. You can reach out to higher trafficked websites that people in your prime demographic are reading, and ask if you can write a blog post for them. Create a quality piece of valuable content and use your bio at the bottom of the post to create a compelling picture of the products or services you offer and link to your website. Earning links from high domain authority sites (determine this with a tool like Mozbar) is the #1 thing you can do to drive visibility of your site up.