SEO & SEM

When a business first begins they start to develop a marketing strategy. Typically what we see is a Google search of SEO and how to get started with SEO. But really the best way is with a multi-level marketing team that has an understanding of everything that’s involved in order to create an SEO or search engine optimization campaign.

Some businesses attempt to create these SEO campaigns in house, which is more than possible. When you want something done right the first time you have to go with professionals. There are many different businesses within your local area that provide digital marketing, SEO services, and ways to increase search engine result pages (SERPs) and grow traffic. Professionals have a straightforward path and strategy that’s proven and can be tailored to the specific industry to achieve certain marketing goals. This allows for a  greater return in a shorter amount of time compared to a business implementing new strategies, testing, and researching to find a SEO solution. 

Search engine marketing (SEM) is very important and the concept is a new idea to some businesses. So today we are going to answer a couple of frequently asked questions about SEO and pay-per-click campaign.  These are common questions that we get from many of our clients revolving around their campaigns as well as their marketing strategy so you can expect to really gain an inside look at what we do.

SEO Marketing


What are SEO Services?
What is basic SEO?
What is the cost of SEO Services?
What should SEO Services include?
What are some SEO Services?

Search engine optimization services vary by digital marketing agencies, but they all focus on improving visibility of the business online in SERP for products, industry, or services. A marketing campaign typically consist of multiple strategies that target keywords to improve visibility online and add to awareness by generating search traffic to the business.

Search engine algorithms determine the ranking of websites on SERP’s. Search engines being Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. These algorithms are constantly changing throughout the year to meet the demands of these search engines clients. They typical publish the dates of changes but not the exact algorithm changes. So the role of SEO professional falls onto these people to continuously understand how Google and these other search engines are using their algorithm to index and rank website as well as content. With a good SEO manager their strong understanding can Implement practices to increase traffic as well as rank in the SERPs.

What Is SEO

SEO on the surface level consists of the following items:
Technical SEO: this optimization is the technical design of your website with factors of web speed, web site structuring, navigation systems, schema, etc.
On-page SEO: this optimization uses  front end items that are visible to the user and applies SEO techniques like meta tags and descriptions, title tags, images, etc.
Off-page SEO: is the optimization of items not visible on the page such as  backlinking, domain authority , etc.
Basic SEO Services consist of technical SEO, on page SEO, and off page SEO services. These three item should be included in a basic SEO plan. A more advanced plan can also include location-based SEO services, such as local SEO building strategies. Businesses can also opt for a specialized plan for e-commerce Services like product SEO optimization.
Local SEO: optimization is ideal for businesses seeking to target local clients. Your website will be focused on a more geographic area when combined with the targeted keywords you have. This works very well for restaurants  and businesses with a dependence on their location. This can viewed through geo-tagging.
ECommerce SEO: optimization is best for those offering a product, and which this service will allow you to increase your area where you’ll no longer focus on  small community but rather focus on a global scale or even National level. Where the SEO focus is on the product over local brand recognition.

What Costs Are Associated With SEO Services?

The cost of SEO Services really depends on how aggressive you want your marketing campaign to be as well as what the agency requires and fees associated. No agency is going to offer the same exact SEO strategy because they’re all created differently, but you can look to get very similar services.

SEO services are usually paid on a monthly basis and can sometimes require a down payment or even a capital investment on the marketing campaign because most of the time marketing campaigns require a certain amount of funding in order to be successful. Larger marketing agencies make  a minimum requirement in order to guarantee their success based on their strategy. Any marketing strategy requires a solid Financial backing.

What Should Be Included In SEO Services?

To start your SEO service should contain the basic requirements needed to succeed. Agencies Will differ and what they offer but they should all include these basic requirements.

 SEO Audits

The first thing that any digital marketing agency is going to do is they’re going to analyze your website, your social media, and anything else that might be directing traffic or creating an impression for your brand.  They’re going to look at backlinks, they’re going to look at the content that you have on your website, and they’re also going to look at your different social media accounts. This is to identify where the need is, where the weaknesses, the strengths are, to gain a better understanding of what your marketing campaign needs. If an agency doesn’t do this at the start I can already guarantee you that they are not going to be able to succeed with whatever your goal is.

Competitor Analysis And Review

On top of an audit, your SEO agency should be able to get a grasp of who your competitors currently are and who are the top competitors in your area that you’re competing with. The reason that we do this is we want to see what your competitors are actually doing and so we do almost like a kind of mini SEO audit on them as well. We really want to figure out what their weaknesses are and see if there is a hole that we can exploit. Once we find those gaps where your competitors are weak. We then go ahead and create an edge and widen that Gap and take advantage of it to put you in the front run of the Google search results. Once you start ranking for the smaller more reachable items we can then go for the heavy hitting keywords with larger competition. This is because we have gained ground in the space on other associated keywords with less competition. We are trying to dominate the market place and we have to start somewhere.

Custom SEO Plan

After getting an SEO audit and analysis of your competitors. Your SEO agency should then be able to prepare a SEO plan or your company. The plan should be custom-made to your industry, audience, brand, and marketing goals. Agencies that are looking to implement a single strategy for all industries should really be avoided because they are less effective and lead to marketing waste. In other words, money put into marketing that could have had a better ROI elsewhere. Custom SEO plans from a reputable SEO agency are invaluable and can lead your business to the success that you desire. You really have to identify best Agency for you.

Optimizing On-Page SEO

 On-page optimization is the first step to providing SEO services when it comes to attempting to increase the rank of your site on the actual SERPs.

On-page Optimization takes the form of the following:
  • Optimize Image tags, alt text, descriptive text
  • Optimize content on website for keywords
  • Creating and sharing a site map
  • Optimizing web speed, design, and responsiveness
  • Managing internal links
  • Optimizing headers, titles, and meta data descriptions

 Optimizing Off Page SEO

Off-page optimization includes external factors outside of your website that can influence ranking on different search engines.  We are managing our brand as it appears off of our website. Optimizing off page SEO includes the following:

  • Managing links built
  • Managing social media
  • Optimizing your Google account
  • Managing your blog content on external sites
  • Creating meaningful blogs to capture SEO

SEO Reports

A professional SEO company will provide continuous reports and data to keep you in the know how of what is going on with your marketing and SEO strategy. Typical SEO reports can look at item such as conversions,  ROI, traffic, rankings, Impressions, and influence. These reports are important for the company to do not only for themselves and for you to view. These report make it possible to view progress and lack of it. Having previous data for the marketing strategy really helps move the SEO campaign forward and so I highly suggest that this is something that you have included in your SEO plan. What strategies fail is as valuable as what succeeds!

SEO Reports are also very important because you need to have an understanding of how your money in marketing is being used and if you’re actually getting a return with this organization you are using. Otherwise you’re giving an advantage to competitor by having a poor marketing team.

Driven SEO

Marketing Campaigns and an SEO strategies requires continuous and ongoing effort. Rankings are not guaranteed in SERPs and a slowdown in SEO can prevent you from reaching your goals and allow your competitors to take that position. The typical approach to SEO is as follows and is a continuous cycle:

Campaign Objectives> Research and Planning> Implementation> Online Reporting > Campaign Results > Campaign Refinement

An SEO company has to continually optimize your website in order to get SEO results and further your marketing strategy.  Whether it’s finding new words or new leads, there’s always an opportunity to add more SEO and more content to rank for those of the essential key words. When you stop adding to the SEO, halting new content, search engines notice and actually reduce the traffic to these older contents and all their websites.  We really see a continued emphasis in updating and keeping things new and fresh in order to capture the audience that we need for marketing goals.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing?

PPC marketing or commonly referred to as pay-per-click marketing is where the marketing strategy is based on a budget and we are betting on keywords for your marketing campaign. We can control how much is spent in a day,  a week, and certain hours to meet the marketing goals. 

Pay-per-click marketing management brings in a person to manage your marketing campaign and optimize the budget, adding value to reach your goals.

This is typically used when dealing with social media accounts or Google ads, and this service is usually done by a professional. There’s a steep learning curve compared to the traditional SEO implementation of other strategies. Different marketplaces such as Facebook ads, Instagram  ads, and Google have different dashboards for using these ads. It can be very confusing for new users. Also, the implementation really relies on the keyword research in order to have a successful campaign. I really wouldn’t recommend investing into pay per click clicks without understanding the keyword Market that you’re in first.

What Is Provided With PPC Management?

Professional work done in pay-per-click management should include the following:
Keyword research: pay-per-click ads are based on keywords so it’s really important to get the best keywords for your ads. What I mean by this is that we need to do an analysis of what is the most cost-effective keywords and phrases that are desired for my business. The SEO company needs to be able to back up their findings because this is real money that’s being put in.
Targeted channels: This is the decision in which platforms you are going to be purchasing the keywords for your marketing campaign. We’re looking at platforms  like search engines and social media. Depending on your industry there may be different opportunities in this, however, your SEO experts should review the different options and what might benefit you best.
Competitor analysis: An SEO professional should be able to give you a analysis of where your competitors at and what they’re doing. Most importantly they should be able to show you the paper click ads that are being run near you as well as what the costs are and how much your competitors are investing into these key words. That way you have a better understanding of what your competition is trying to Rank FOR.
Funnels:  Your pay per click ads will Direct people to your website. This is known as the landing page. In the landing page as a marketing professional we want to then try to suggest that our customers do something. And a way that we can do that is by optimizing the page in which our customers arrive at based on what directed them there. For example if I have a Facebook ad for specific products I want to bring them to a specific page that promotes that product  Over a page that is a generalization of products.  I can achieve this by optimizing the landing page.
Research and Optimization:  An SEO professional can test your ads to review the performance. Many different platforms will allow you to present your ads in different ways Based on search intent and a professional can optimize the display for the best performance. 

Cost Of PPC Management

If you host your marketing campaign IN house you’ll really see that the cost is the direct cost of the ads as well as the time and resources of your marketing team to run the campaign. Typically an average business spends about $1,000 to $15,000 per month on ppc ads.  this number really reflects your marketing strength. More marketing money is good. it is also important that your marketing campaign is optimized in order for it to be a reasonable expense for your business. Without optimization we can’t say for sure that we’re getting the best return on our marketing money.

When adding pay-per-click SEO professional there will be an additional cost ranging from $300 to $5,000 per month. You will receive different marketing strategies depending on this monthly price that you pay. Most of the time when you have a really large and diverse marketing campaign and team that’s when we start to see the increase in fees for this larger Team.

Is PPC Marketing Management Worth It?

There are some advantages to managing a PPC campaign in house, but realistically there’s just so many benefits to having a professional do the work for you in managing your campaigns. The main thing is getting it right the first time. I would highly suggest using a professional for your PPC ads. Anything organic I would say attempt to do in the house. 

With MAP Web Designs, we really look at your brand and what might be associated with it to create the perfect marketing storm that will capture the audience you’re looking for. We offer dynamic pay-per-click campaign that will be continuously optimized for your target demographic audience. As an established Boise SEO Idaho company we are certified in Google ads and Google analytics as a Google partner. This means we have a strong understanding and building marketing campaigns on their platform which have been the center for pay-per-click ads. With new technology coming out we are constantly testing and looking for new ways to create campaigns for you. Applying all of our knowledge to help you and your business succeed and generate positive ROI when it comes to your marketing campaign.

Map Web Designs can manage your entire Pay-Per-Click marketing campaign, from start to finish. We ensure that we meet your budget requirements and marketing goals for the best possible results. We use  paid Pay-Per-Click marketing software that is not available to typical businesses. We pay a great deal of money to have these services to help our clients.  We have worked with different Industries and have a great understanding of what it means to optimize your PPC campaigns. We remove the mystery and we deliver results. Check out or SEO services at MAP Web Designs SEO Services.