Does Studio Simpatico Offer SEO Services? March 02, 2020 | From the Studio, The Simpatico Blog

In 2020, “Because everyone has one” isn’t an unreasonable answer to the question, “Why does your company need a website?”

That said, it’s worthwhile to consider the role that your shiny new website will play in your sales and marketing funnel. Will you personally be directing potential leads to the site? Will you be sharing your site’s content to your social media followers, and hoping they convert? Will you be buying online ads? Or are you hoping prospective customers or readers find you via online search?

If you suspect that a large volume of your high intent, prospective customers are typing the same phrases into search engines like Google and Bing, optimizing your site to appear at the top of search results for some of those phrases could be a fantastic strategy. Achieving the coveted page 1 Google placement involves a multifaceted approach–tactics typically referred to as “search engine optimization” (SEO).

Unsurprisingly, SEO is one of the most asked about services here at Studio Simpatico. Though we are not an SEO shop, I typically describe us as “SEO aware,” since we do build SEO strategy and tactics into much of our process. In this article, I’ll be breaking down the high level techniques typically used to optimize a website for search, and outlining which are provided (and not provided) by Studio Simpatico as part of a typical website design and development engagement.

Keyword Strategy for Core Pages

Can Simpatico help?
Yes, though we don’t provide ongoing monitoring services.

As a UX firm, our discovery process involves diving deep with you to understand the myriad attributes of your target customers, as well as the best way to message them. As part of this process, we also do some upfront, evergreen keyword strategy — in other words, we think about what your ideal customer might be searching for. In conjunction with this ideation, we conduct some light keyword research (using tools like AdWords Keyword Planner or KW Finder) to get a sense of the search volume. It’s also a great way to brainstorm ideas for combinations of keywords.

It’s particularly important to think about keywords that signal “high intent.” To use ourselves as an example: we might optimize for “website design,” but this is a broad set of keywords that likely includes people looking to learn about designing websites (not our target customer). Compare that to something like “website design agency.” Although there is less volume, someone who is searching for those combination of words is more likely to be a prospective customer.

As part of our site map process, we outline which pages we plan to optimize for different keywords. We then make sure that those pages contain those keywords in the URL string, title tag, and throughout the content of the page. We also populate the title and description Yoast fields (which is what show up in search results) with content that we believe will be compelling and inspire people to click and visit your website, given what we know about your target customers.

After your site launches, it’s smart to track search appearance and conversion data of all your pages within Google Search Console. This type of ongoing monitoring and tweaking is a good idea and typically offered by an SEO agency; Studio Simpatico does not offer this service.

More reading on keyword research::

• Build a Keyword Strategy that Helps Business Boom Now & In the Future
• Keyword Research
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

Keyword Strategy for Ongoing Content

Can Simpatico help?
Unfortunately not.

In addition to the core “evergreen” pages of your website, content marketing is often a big part of our clients’ online strategy: producing and promoting valuable content via search and social to drive customer acquisition. If you’re hoping this content is well-optimized for search, there is obviously an SEO component to the content production work: you’ll want the strategy to be informed by keyword-centric thinking, you’ll want to ensure you’re following best practices about content length and the inclusion of links (internal ones, as well as external ones to authoritative sites), etc. Just as we don’t offer ongoing copywriting and content generation services, Studio Simpatico does not offer ongoing SEO support.

Backlinking

Can Simpatico help?
Unfortunately not.

Google and other search engines are constantly crawling the internet. They view and rank all websites in terms of “authority” on different subjects, and they develop these opinions largely through who is linking to whom. For example, if WordPress.org links to Studio Simpatico and the hyperlink text is “best WordPress agency in the world,” Google would likely see Simpatico as an authority on WordPress, moreso than if my mom (love you, Mom!) posted the same link from her website.

A process that in some way mimics the web version of PR, creating a “backlinking” strategy can often involve looking at competitors’ backlinks for inspiration and ideas.

Simpatico does not offer these services.

Redirects and 404s

Can Simpatico help?
Yes — as part of a redesign engagement, but not on an ongoing basis.

If as part of the new website, you’re planning to change your URL structure (for example, if you’re planning to change studiosimpati.co/get-in-touch to studiosimpati.co/contact-us), you’ll want to make sure that all the links that Google has previously crawled don’t suddenly “404.” To do this, you’ll want to make sure you have redirects in place. As the name might suggest, redirects redirect the user (and Google) from one page to another. We typically set up redirects as part of a website relaunch, but we don’t monitor 404s or broken links on an ongoing basis.