Q&A with a Houston SEO Expert

Troy web

Troy Cartmill, Houston SEO Expert from Reap+Sow Marketing, recently gave a short interview to help business owners utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to maintain momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Social distancing is not preventing deals from happening it’s just moving them online. Web content will be your top sales tool during this crisis and high keyword ranking will help your company survive,” says Troy.

Most business owners are familiar with the general concept of SEO, but that doesn’t mean they’re SEO experts. Houston digital marketing agencies, like Reap+Sow, are here to fill the knowledge gaps and guide you during this difficult time. The following are a few questions our team has been asked over the past week along with honest, easy-to-understand answers.

Is SEO a real service?

It sure is and there is a set of techniques you perform to optimize your site for search engines. Google wants to show the best information to their searchers, so they’ve created a complex algorithm to determine where content should rank.

Having a Houston SEO expert with proven experience on your team will ensure you’re following best practices and quickly adapt to algorithm changes so your content is more visible.

Is there more to SEO than blogging and can I do it myself?

Some business owners will try to blog themselves. While this is great, it’s only part of our strategy when creating killer content to attract the search engines. Your page needs to be structured just right.

A variety of elements such as keyword research, keyword density, URL creation, title tag, H1, meta description, alt tags on images, and schema data needs to optimized. You also need to do outreach to ensure backlinks are built which increases page authority, social shares, and website traffic.

Do I only need to do onsite SEO when my website is being built?

Your website should be built following SEO best practices, but SEO is not a set and forget strategy.

We recommend updating your onsite SEO on an annual basis. Take notes and compare the data to see what worked best over the past year and optimize for lower bounce rates and higher conversions in addition to search positions. The more content you regularly add to your site, the more Google sees you as an authority and will reward you in the SERPs.

Does site design affect SEO?

Yes and no. Website design itself is not going to help you rank for a keyword. What is going to help you is a design that focuses on user-experience so users stay on your website longer and view more pages. Google does reward this type of activity.

Should I hire a Houston SEO expert with experience in my industry?

This is debatable. The important part is working with a Houston SEO expert who gets results. The same tactics and strategies can apply to any industry. At Reap+Sow, we help oil & gas, education, SaaS and a variety of other companies rank #1 for target keywords to improve visibility and generate leads.

Let’s connect and see how our team can help you.