Posted on May 9, 2022 / by Webmaster / in company news, IT knowledge base

SEO FAQs: The Top 10 SEO Questions New Clients Ask

Many companies are considering SEO, but have some burning questions about the hows and whys. Knowing when and what results to expect from SEO is something every client needs to understand. Here are the answers to some of the SEO FAQs (most frequently asked SEO questions) we hear.

Q1. How much do you charge for your SEO service?

We have standard SEO packages tailored for new and small WordPress website:

I. Site Audit & Technical Update + Keyword Research & Analysis: HK$6,000

II. Basic Off-page Optimization + Website Maintenance: HK$2,800/ month

- 15 keywords
- The target is to reach 5,000+ monthly impressions in 3 months

Services for proprietary websites or larger SEO projects are highly customizable. There is a few basic contributing factors that will affect the final project scale and its fee:

The target keywords: the number of keywords, their popularity/ difficulty and the level of competition
The goal: the approach and required resources will be totally different to increase impressions 10x gently than to rank #1 in 3 months
The size and technology of the website
The current state of the website: its topical authority, number of traffic and technical SEO compatibility
The scope of SEO Services: Site Audit, Keyword Research & Analysis, Backlink Building, Digital PR, Blogger Outreach, Content Strategy, Gap Analysis and Creation

If you are not sure. Please feel free to come talk to us:

Email: sales@wavyos.com

WhatsApp: +852 6099 4407

Or submit your question to us here.

Q2. What is your minimum SEO contract period?

We don’t have any minimum contract period. We charge our SEO services on a monthly basis.

It doesn’t mean we can achieve any major SEO goal in one month. Typically it takes 2 – 4 months to begin seeing new rankings. We would encourage our clients to make a longer commitment and planning to their SEO project. But it is never our intention to lock our clients by means of a long service contract. We know many SEO agencies do though. Our firm belief is if we do our service right and make good progress, our clients will stay with us. However, if clients decide they need to reallocate their marketing budget, they have the total flexibility to do it.

Q3. Can you guarantee my SEO rankings?

Ethical agencies just won’t guarantee something they can’t control. Ranking position is one of them. As a client, you have to beware of any company that claims they can.

Here’s why. SEO is an open and ongoing competition. Some keywords are easier to rank. While some other keywords are nearly impossible to rank (without ‘burning’ an un-proportionately large amount of resources). And there are many variables and outside factors that determine which websites rank number one. To name a few, these moving parts include the search volume (difficulty) of the keywords, user search intent, your website authority on the topic and the level of competition. There is also one plain fact to bear in mind: those top ranking websites won’t just sit and wait idly for you to challenge their throne.

To ultimately get a top position, the first thing we do is to make sure you pick and prioritize your keywords (and battlefield) thoughtfully and strategically. We’ll research, review, recommend and finalize the keyword list with you. We have to find the right keywords that are worth targeting. During this process, you’ll see estimates and get a picture on how your SEO marketing is going to perform on different search terms.

Q4. How do I know whether our SEO campaign is progressing or not?

Besides Ranking, there are some other key metrics of organic traffic that help you to track and measure the performance of your SEO campaign. Let’s take a brief look at each of them below:

Ranking

It is number of search queries and average positions you website pages currently rank on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Ranking is obviously the most representative index to tell how well your SEO campaign is doing.

Number of Referring Domains

The number of other websites that connect to your web pages.

Number of Backlinks

The number of links from other websites that connect to your web pages.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts the ability of a website to rank on SERPs.

Page Authority

Similar to DA, but not meant for the overall website, Page Authority (PA) predicts the ability a specific page will rank on SERPs. PA score ranges from 1 to 100. The higher the scores the greater ability to rank.

Impressions

It is the number of times your links have appeared on SERPs.

Clicks

It is the number of times users have clicked on your links on SERPs.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR is the number of clicks that your website receives divided by the number of times your links is shown: clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. It can be used to gauge how effective your links are performing to different search queries.

Conversions

The number of actions visitors have taken on your website, like clicking on a link, filling out a form, or adding their email address to a mailing list.

Q5. Can we get SEO results fast?

Unfortunately there is not any shortcut to SEO we are aware of. It’s not about the amount of budget you spend either.

Traffic is typically a direct result of an increase in rankings and impression. None of them happens overnight in the SEO world. The first major step we need to take is to making updates to your site. Then off-page promotions follow. Depending on the size of your project, it takes weeks to months to complete the necessary updates and get them indexed before you will begin to see increases in those metrics.

Q6. How long should we do SEO?

SEO is a continuous marketing. Achieving the rankings is only half the battle. Since search engines are constantly evolving and updating their algorithms, your rankings can fluctuate from one day to the next. Maintaining current rankings is just as involved as getting new ones. It takes constant research, technical updates and new contents to keep your pages in the top positions. Discontinuing SEO after you’ve achieved rankings will cost you losses of them.

Q7. How many new articles we need to write for our business blog each month?

Blogging with consistency is necessary for SEO to work. From multiple studies carried out by Hubspot, publishing 2 – 4 times per week provides the highest results in terms of both traffic and conversions. Listed here below you’ll find for your inspiration some interesting numbers extracted from those studies:

Companies that published 4 blog posts per week or more received 3.5x the traffic compared to companies that blogged less than 1 times per week.
11+ posts a month is a magic number — it results in a noticeable increase in traffic for both B2B and B2C businesses.
The more posts you already have on your blog, the more traffic and leads you receive. The key amount was around 400 blogs. If a blog had more than 400 total posts, it received approximately twice as much traffic as blogs with 301 to 400 posts.

As a rule of thumb, the more frequently you blog, the more traffic you tend to get. You need to align your publishing frequency to your SEO goals.

Q8. Does Social Media help to increase my website’s rank?

Social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking. But it correlates with the elements that influence it. When more people share your content throughout social media, although Google doesn’t count them the same as a link from other authority sites, it generates vital signals that indicate your posts are useful to your target market.

Q9. Can we do SEO on a WordPress website?

The answer is definitely yes! Once known primarily as a blogging platform, WordPress has built a reputation for providing a solid SEO foundation as an open CMS. With WordPress, you have a platform that’s packed with SEO tools and support for optimization.

Click here to read more about WordPress’s SEO friendliness in one of our other articles: What is WordPress?

Q10. Should I also do or stop Google AdWords/ Pay-per-Click (PPC)?

Google AdWords or any other PPCs could be a great tool to supplement your SEO efforts. It can help enhance relevant traffic and get instant results. In a way they are very much alike. The goal of both of them is to getting your website listed in front of the users when they enter a target search query. But deep inside SEO and PPC are very different. Let’s see how.

Comparisons between SEO and PPC

PPC does not snowball over time. Once you stop paying, it stops.
Although we are always talking about Google ranking. But if your website can get a ranking on Google, it will likely get a comparative ranking on other search engines as well. But for PPC, you’ll have to do it and pay each platform individually.
If you don’t follow the SEO research closely, you might not know search engines will also rank other keywords that it determines they are related to your website/ topic automatically. The higher ranking position your website is, the more of these ‘other similar keywords’ it will get.
Organic ranking does not happen overnight. But with PPC you can always get a top position. All you need to do is to outbid your opponents.
Organic results are more trusted by users in general. They are getting 20x more traffic opportunity than paid advertisements.
You have to pay for every click with PPC. Its cost per click is ever increasing. On the contrary there is no additional charge for clicks received from organic traffic.

You can probably see from the above. PPC is better at gaining fast and direct results. But then the reach of SEO is exponential. With the same amount of budget used, SEO can give you a lower cost per click in the long term.

After all there is no absolute right or wrong-to-do in marketing. It’s more about maximized Return on Investment (ROI). The effectiveness of each type of advertisement varies in different industries and regions. SEO and PPC are not the only options. You should evaluate every of the potential channels/ combinations to figure out which will bring the biggest benefit to your business (and budget).

A Small Takeaway

Let’s give you an example of how a sound strategy of mixing SEO and PPC is liked.

A client of us is running a fresh fruit store chain. A large part of their marketing budget is spent on SEO throughout the whole year. The SEO works bring their website steady growth on both its DA, topical authority on being a fresh fruit vendor and so target traffic and brand awareness. During a year when harvest seasons arrive for durian and lychee, instead of doing more SEO for these seasonal fruits, they will increase their spending on PPC to boost their sales.