SEO consulting:
We optimize your strategy
It's good to trust, But better to be Certain.
Is your SEO agency getting the best out of your website? Do they pay attention to metrics that not only promote your website, but also your business? We'll tell you. As part of our SEO consulting, we evaluate your agency's data and measures. If the approach is convincing, we'll suggest ways to optimize the page further. If it is not convincing, we'll provide you with a list of questions for your agency. The result: a more effective SEO strategy. We guide you through the SEO labyrinth.
How to recognize
an excellent SEO agency
Relevant metrics. A clear strategy.
Finding a good SEO agency is not easy. Almost all agencies or marketing departments try to prove the success of their measures using various metrics. Unfortunately, many of these metrics are meaningless. A website or a keyword is increasingly displayed on Google? “240% more impressions!” Sounds great. However, such an increase rarely has a positive effect on sales. Even click rates, keyword position in the SERPs and PageRank say less than clients of SEO agencies are often led to believe – at least in isolation.
Good SEO agencies or marketing departments therefore keep an eye on the number of new clients and relate this to SEO metrics as well as the new client turnover. This is quite simple to do for online stores, but much more difficult for classic B2B websites. That’s one reason why some SEO agencies fail to do this, which sometimes frustrates executives and C-suites. And rightly so. Nobody benefits from yet another presentation with flashy graphics and figures that doesn’t even mention the essentials.
The crux of the matter
with keyword rankings
Most SEO agencies and marketing departments deliver monthly reports. That’s a good thing. These often contain a keyword ranking, i.e. an overview of how high up in the search results of various search engines keywords that are considered important are displayed. Also a good thing. However, clients can be manipulated quickly and easily at this point. So take a close look!
| Keyword | SERP Position | Change | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| seo for B2B | 7 | +3 | |
| seo optimized website | 16 | -4 | |
| optimizing seo copy | 34 | +1 | |
| website seo | 41 | -7 |
| Keyword | SERP Position | Change | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| seo for B2B | 7 | +3 | 
|
| seo optimized website | 16 | -4 | 
|
| optimizing seo copy | 34 | +1 | 
|
| website seo | 41 | -7 | 
|
Common keyword overviews can be misleading. For the following reasons:
- Monthly fluctuations are normal. They often have nothing to do with SEO measures. However, this is frequently suggested when discussing such keyword lists.
- Long-term trends are more important than monthly fluctuations. For websites with low traffic in particular, it can take six months or even a whole year for measures to take full effect.
- New keywords are added, older ones are dropped. Not every keyword counts, no matter how well positioned it is. It is often not clear which keywords are relevant for generating new clients and sales. This makes it difficult to assess the success of the campaign.
Our recommendation: Specify some keywords that should remain in the list. Ask for reasons why the keywords presented are considered important. Are they relevant to sales? How is this measured? Insist on a graphical representation of long-term trends. Something as simple as an annual overview with a trend line can make a huge difference for your assessment. A small change, but an important first step. Of course, other metrics are missing. Once the picture is a little more complete, you can start looking for correlations – especially with the number of new clients and turnover.
Be careful with backlink providers!
A lot of links for little money = untrustworthy
Don’t get me wrong: Backlinks are important. If many websites link to a page on your website, this can be seen as an indication of interesting and relevant content. However, the principle can easily be abused. Keyword: link farms. These are websites that exist solely for the purpose of linking to other sites and thus pushing them as high up the search engine rankings as possible. Even if the pages do not provide any added value for the visitor.
Since Google’s Penguin update in 2012 at the latest, the motto has been: quality over quantity. To gather many high-quality backlinks is effective. But a few high-quality links are better than many low-quality links. A link from the New York Times, for example, has a greater impact on the ranking of a page than thousands of cheaply purchased links from pages that nobody reads. That’s why we recommend: Hands off such offers! You have to earn good backlinks. Through good content with added value for visitors. Through a well-positioned brand that is talked about in the media or in your industry. By actively contacting the operators of sites that have an interest in high-quality content.
Low-quality backlinks from link farms and dubious online directories with lots of mirrored sites are not only less effective, they are dangerous. They may improve your ranking in the short term. In the long term, however, you are taking a significant risk: Your website may be penalized or completely banned from the SERPs. For some companies, this can be a “death sentence”. A good SEO agency therefore regularly checks the quality of your backlinks and makes every effort to ensure that low-quality links are deleted. Thus, we usually check how your SEO agency deals with backlinks as part of our SEO consulting.
Your SEO starts having an impact? Great! Here comes the hard part.
After an initial SEO audit, most agencies start working through the obvious problems that can be fixed quickly and easily. That makes sense. Pick the low-hanging fruits and go for the quick wins. Once these are out of the way, you can turn your attention to more complex problems, which generally require more time and effort. Creating high-quality content and building high-quality backlinks are among the hardest parts of SEO, especially for small or medium-sized B2B companies without an online store. According to hrefs and Semrush, some of the following measures can be considered quick wins:
On-Page SEO
- Optimize page titles and meta descriptions
- Alt texts for all images
- Optimize URL structure
- Strengthen important pages with internal links
- Set redirects for lost links
Off-Page SEO
- Create a Google Business profile
- Create business profiles for social media
- Enter your website in important business directories
- Earn backlinks from pages that link to your competitors as well
Technical SEO
- Optimize loading times
- Install caching plugin
- Create and optimize a robots.txt file
- Create a sitemap or upload it in the Google Search Console
- Optimize your website for mobile
Content Strategy
- Include keywords with low competition
- Create content for keywords not yet used
- Group topics for existing and future content
- Seek inspiration from your competitors
Google and other search engines respond relatively quickly to on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. They’re also comparatively easy to implement and therefore significantly cheaper than creating good content and building high-quality backlinks. With content, you often fly blind for longer periods of time. Its effectiveness can be assessed reliable only after several months, if not years. Therefore, a considerable amount of trust is required when commissioning an SEO agency.
Many SEO agencies are quite good in the first three areas. Finding an agency that creates good, effective content for B2B companies is considerably more difficult. Your average SEO copywriter may be an expert in optimizing shop copy or writing content along the lines of “10 AI tools you can’t live without.” Unfortunately, such copy rarely works in B2B. A professional buyer or engineer, for example, will have a hard time taking you seriously when reading something like that.
As part of our SEO consulting, we therefore take a particularly close look at your existing SEO copy. We check whether they are appropriate for your target audience. Upon request, we can also rewrite your website texts or create new content for your.
Our SEO Consulting
Review. Question. Evaluation.
If you’re unsure whether your current SEO experts are a good fit for your business, contact us. If you do, here is what you can expect. Our SEO consulting consists of three components:
- Review and evaluation of data, measures and alleged evidence of success
- A list of questions for your SEO agency or marketing department
- General assessment in the form of a summary and a list of suggested measures
The goal of 2. is to gain a better understanding of the existing SEO strategy. It’s not always possible to determine why certain measures were taken based on the data alone. A good strategy is holistic and must consider many parameters simultaneously. Therefore, it’s important not only to understand what was done, but also why it was done.
It can happen that neither the data nor the measures are convincing such that ultimately a change of agency would be advisable. If so, we’ll let you know. But primarily, we want to help you better assess your current SEO strategy and make it more effective if there’s potential for improvement. This may mean better aligning the SEO strategy with your business goals. This may mean activating untapped potential. Whatever the right path may be in your case, Beyond the Blur will accompany you.