Let us talk SEO for a minute. Getting noticed is the result of behind-the-scenes SEO magic. However, here is the big question: is there a need to employ someone to take care of it? I’ve done it myself (spoiler: it didn’t work as expected) and I’ve had professionals do it as well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve got some strong opinions on this, and trust me, I’ll develop some. Let us begin!!
Understanding SEO Services Technical SEO: Behind-th
e-Scenes Optimization
We had a website that needed a lot of improvement in its technical setup. Its performance was hindered by issues such as poor site structure, slow loading speeds, and lack of optimization, and most importantly, it was not able to achieve the desired results due to those things. Pages took more than 8 seconds to load, so the site’s speed was particularly problematic. To tackle this, the team put in compression and caching such that the load time, for example, went down from 8 seconds to 3.5 seconds, or 56% better. User engagement noticeably improved as the bounce rate decreased.
Then the team tackled the website’s internal linking structure, which was messy and inefficient. They cleaned it up, fixed broken links, and fixed navigation, which made the site much easier for search engines to crawl. On the organic traffic side, however, this resulted in a 25% increase.
Another focus was mobile optimization since the site was not mobile-friendly. With the implementation of responsive design, the mobile traffic increased by 30%, and mobile conversions did in fact grow. It also revamped the URL structure, which was previously confusing and not search engine friendly. Once I cleaned it up, its rankings for the targeted keywords increased 20%.
A critical part of improving the website performance and driving such significant results has been technical SEO (often overlooked).
On-Page SEO: Making Your Content Shine
A popular way in which the SEO blog Backlinko, run by Brian Dean, took a strategic approach to on-page SEO, boosting ranks and traffic. Backlinko chose to focus on implementing keywords that were relevant to their audience, like “advanced link building strategies “, rather than just conducting research. This earned them 40% more organic traffic within those three months. They also enhanced the meta description and title tag for a more compelling search result. For example, they changed their old title tag from “Link Building Techniques” to “The Ultimate Guide to Link Building in 2025”, which boosted the click-through rate by 25%.
Backlinko used that to improve their internal linking by making sure key articles were easy to find through contextual links. It allowed them to crawl deeper within their site and enhance their page authority, which in turn actually brought them to a 20% increase in keyword rankings for key topics.
In addition, they were able to optimize images by compressing them without lowering the quality of the image and reducing page load time by 30%. As a result, all these on-page SEO changes brought a 50% increase in overall traffic and firmly established Backlinko as a leader in the SEO space. And yes, measurable results on multiple SEO metrics could be observed through targeted optimization by Backlinko.
Content Creation: Fueling Your Website
The subscription-based grooming brand Dollar Shave Club effectively used content to engage consumers and boost sales simultaneously. Firstly, the company successfully used blog posts, articles and landing pages covering grooming tips, product reviews, and life advice consistently. It was given to the audience it was meant for and made SEO optimized. Consequently, in six months they have increased their organic search traffic by 45%.
To revamp their product descriptions further and informational content on the site, they also did. Each product page featured engaging, brand-infused copy that highlighted product benefits, leading to a 30% increase in conversion rates.
Additionally, Dollar Shave Club’s content strategy was all-encompassing with videos, infographics and user-generated content. From a social media engagement perspective, their social channels increased by 50 percent as YouTube content alone increased customer referrals by 60%. Dollar Shave Club not only grabbed new customers but also built a loyal community, and by increasing retention by 25% over the year, Dollar Shave Club was able to get a good grip on its growth.
But their content-driven strategy is a textbook example of a way to shoot website growth and customer loyalty because it is the content you build (and they build) that will drive people there. That’s why aligning your content with search intent is key to ensuring your audience finds what they need — and stays engaged.
Off-Page SEO: Building Authority
Off-page SEO was used by Moz, a leading SEO software company, to establish its online authority and to gain traffic to its site. The backlink building was one of the main tactics. Moz had authoritative sites like Search Engine Journal and Neil Patel backlink the post along with high-profile industry blogs. This significantly boosted their domain authority and, more importantly, increased organic traffic by 35%.
In addition, they focused on managing local SEO to target businesses in the Seattle area, where Moz is headquartered. Moz optimized their Google My Business profile and encouraged review by working with Yelp, leaving reviewers with programmatic Thank You emails after submitting a review, as well as updated NAP (name, address, phone number) consistent across all online directories, and an increased 50% local search visibility. It consequently drove an increase in local leads and inquiries.
Lastly, Moz used Moz for Building Brand Awareness through optimizing their social media profiles. When it came to social media platform engagement, they aimed at raising engagement by posting SEO tips that make sense and linking them back to their happy little site. These platforms brought 40% of referred visitors to their website.
Moz had boosted its authority using backlinks, local SEO, and social media to grow its traffic and brand visibility to significantly higher levels across multiple channels. If you’re looking for expert help tailored to your business, Genzpro Tech offers strategic SEO solutions that bridge technical, content, and off-page SEO into one seamless growth plan.
Analytics & Reporting: Measuring Progress
Analytics and reporting have greatly helped Airbnb make measurable improvements to online performance. They used SEMrush for ranking reports, which helped track their keyword rankings.
Airbnb consisted of tools such as Google Analytics to track website traffic as well as how users were behaving on the site. It found out where the visitors were coming from and which pages were more engaged. The data that they analysed made them realise that mobile traffic was growing so fast that they needed to optimise their mobile experience. Mobile traffic was 25% up in the last six months as a result.
The tools Airbnb used for ranking reports included SEMrush, which helped track their rankings for the various search terms like vacation rentals and short-term rentals. They identified which keywords were underperforming keywords and used that data to revise their content and SEO strategy. If you’re trying to achieve similar improvements,
it’s critical to run a complete SEO audit for better results, ensuring all areas of your site are optimized for search engines and users alike., which gave them the ability to change their content strategy and SEO tactics so that they are able to get a 30% improvement in rankings for these keywords.
Airbnb also took the time to closely keep an eye on conversion rates as a way to measure how well their website was converting viewers into bookings. They optimized their checkout process and A/B tested various landing page layouts to finally improve their conversion by 15%. Airbnb did this through comprehensive analytics and reporting and thereby got their foot forward to drive targeted improvements and as a result boosted traffic, rankings and bookings.
2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of SEO Providers
The Good: High-Quality SEO Providers
Aira is another great example of a good and long-term SEO provider. The Fitnessista works together with them to enhance their SEO visibility and audience engagement. The difference between Aira and agencies that guarantee results was that they set up a sustainable SEO base, giving organic traffic a 50% gain in 6 months.
Their track record of proven success with strategic and white hat SEO using clients such as T Mobile and Gumtree stands as evidence of a track record backed by success. When starting with The Fitnessista, Aira did research on keywords that were low in competition but had high value and that applied to the audience. Then they used already existing blog content and optimized it to match these keywords, increasing their ranking on these key terms to a large extent, thus contributing to the massive traffic increase.
The Fitnessista’s ability to see exactly what was going to change made them feel comfortable enough to communicate transparently, so The Fitnessista knew exactly what was going to change. Aira also came with some clear proposals on what each phase of the SEO strategy is meant to be (content updates, on-page updates and link building). This increased engagement, organic leads resulted in long-term growth for The Fitnessista.
Aira has stood for the most part and has built trust and obtained real outcomes for clients through their commitment to serious, moral SEO rehearses.
The Bad: Avoid These Red Flags
A business, DoodlePrints, that provides custom print on demand fell into the trap of a budget SEO provider who was ‘guaranteeing overnight rankings’ for a whopping small fee of $200 per month. The agency, without providing any evidence, promised to get them on the first page of Google in 30 days for several competitive keywords, guaranteed. When they were excited at first to start seeing some initial improvements in their traffic, a spike arrived and disappeared.
The agency purchased backlinks to their website from irrelevant sites with poor quality, which Google flagged as black hat tactics. About a month later, the DoodlePrints website dropped its rankings drastically and organic traffic tanked by 45%. Worst of all, the agency would not be transparent about the methods they used and refused to provide any details to repeated requests. Moreover, they continued sending mass emails with generic offers for ‘more discounted’ services, showing a lack of attention to DoodlePrints’ actual needs.
Hence, the business wasted months recovering from the penalties, which not only blew away their rankings but also slashed their sales by 50%. The plight of Yahoo SEO represents just how critical it is to be on the lookout for agencies on offer low prices, unrealistic guarantees, and short-term guarantees that invariably end up causing perpetual injury to your SEO and your general business execution.
The Ugly: Beware of Scams
When I hired an SEO scam agency to bring me rankings for just $150/month, in the end, it all fell into the hands of GreenTech Solutions, which was a small environmental consultancy. GreenTech signed on, desperate to expand their online presence, but the offer seemed just too good to be true. The agency, however, had no professional website, no professionally written MI, and no client testimonials or case studies to back up their claims. GreenTech completely overlooked these red flags.
He paid for the service and never got any useful reports or updates. The agency’s so-called ‘SEO programme’ was vague with a lot of overuse of keywords and just shady backlinks from dodgy sites. GreenTech held a static rank within a month, and yet organic traffic did not improve. And worse still, as they ranked well for their keywords, they were starting to drop in the Google rankings, and Google was flagging their website for unnatural linking practices. This reduced traffic by 35% and leading the company to lose potential clients due to the penalty.
The agency could not be reached for clarity or results following repeated requests, and GreenTech was stuck with nothing to do. All that cost them more time and money to recover from the penalties. Clearly, in this case, one should not trust agencies willing to offer them a deal that is too good to be true, untrustworthy and unable to produce verifiable results.
3. When Should You Pay for SEO?
When to Invest in SEO
Glossier faced intense e-commerce competition, which required expert SEO intervention to scale effectively. A popular brand with a direct-to-consumer model in its DNA was aware it had several technical issues related to its website—old, slow load times, bad mobile optimization, etc. When Glossier had unsuccessfully been trying to do their SEO in-house, they chose to hire SEO services to help overcome these challenges.
In order to optimize their site’s technical aspects, they hired a specialized agency. Its ability to fix issues such as page speed, mobile responsiveness, as well as site structure allowed the agency to improve their mobile traffic by 35% and their bounce rate by 25%. In addition to this, the agency also did keyword research to focus on high-value beauty-related keywords that are optimised for the search engines as well as user intent. It led to a 50% increase in organic traffic in the first six months.
With intense industry competition, SEO expertise was essential for Glossier to continue growing and maintain its leadership. By hiring an expert, they could solve the technical issues and the industry-specific thing; in other words, they do not have to bother with the SEO things anymore and concentrate on different angles of business development that deliver so much measurable SEO success. The unfortunate fact of this case is that in these cases, you have a complicated project, a technical barrier, is outside of your control or if you don’t have much time, you’re in an industry with specific needs, you should invest in a professional SEO.
When Not to Pay for SEO
Melbourne electrician Jason Rainsforth says he spent nearly $20,000 under the impression Supple Digital would help his business improve its online rankings. Despite a significant investment in technology and the website, he received only four visits a month and no leads. Over 17 months, his Google search rankings declined, and Supple Digital suggested purchasing additional keywords for an extra $500 per month. When attempting to terminate the contract early due to dissatisfaction, Rainsforth was informed he would need to pay 50% of the remaining fees to exit the agreement.
This case illustrates the risks of hiring an SEO firm without thorough vetting. Any business should be sceptical of agencies who overpromise results, lack transparency or demand upfront payments and deliver no tangible results. Research and selection of reputable SEO partners is important to formulate their marketing budgets efficiently and thus lead to tangible business growth.
4. Key Investments for SEO Success
SEO Tools
The main SEO tools would be Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Pro, and Screaming Frog. In other words, these tools give you the innermost insights of how you can improve your website and what you should be working on. Ahrefs and especially Ahrefs have backlink analysis and keyword research, which exposes that the websites are linking to you and what keywords you’re ranking for.
With SEMrush, you have the opportunity to completely analyse your competitors’ strategies to follow and adjust your own. Within Moz Pro, there are a number of tools that come in handy for auditing your site, tracking your keywords and developing a link-building strategy. Screaming Frog is great for conducting the technical audit, finding things like broken links, missing meta tags, or duplicate content, for instance.
Having a use for these tools at all times, you can monitor your SEO progress, identify opportunities and improve your strategy to achieve the desired results. Backbone for an effective SEO campaign.
Training and Education
Staying ahead of the SEO curve is fundamental in ever ever-changing world of SEO, and it is necessary to keep investing in your learning continuously. Platforms such as Coursera or Udemy provide us with in-depth SEO training courses that one can take online. Be in touch with workshops and webinars to know about the best practices and latest trends on the market. MozCon or even SMX is the type of industry conference where you can network with other SEO experts directly and get some valuable insights. These resources help you become familiar with SEO intricacies and apply effective strategies to your website.
Quality Content Creation
One big thing to invest in is hiring professional writers, content strategists, and subject matter experts who will have a huge impact on your SEO efforts. Professional team, these experts can create excellent, interesting, as well as optimized for search engines content that is both informative and helpful. Written content will gain you more authority, usher in more organic traffic and hold users engaged. Having dedicated content strategists means your content will help you towards your SEO goals, and subject matter experts bring the credibility and depth to your topics. This combination improves your rankings, provides a better user experience and will strengthen your site’s overall SEO performance.
Technical Audits
It’s essential to have regular technical audits to preserve a good-performing website in search rankings. Such audits help determine and fix such things as poor mobile optimization, slow load times, broken links, duplicate content, etc., that can impede SEO. They can be identified using tools such as Screaming Frog or Google Search Console.
This is done by doing these audits often, to ensure your site is completely optimised and therefore, search engines will crawl and index your site well. Get technical issues fixed immediately to avoid a penalty and keep or even improve the position of your web page on the search results list.
5. How to Choose the Right SEO Provider
Research Before You Hire
Before hiring an SEO provider, it is necessary to do proper research to make sure you choose wisely. First, check their website and portfolio. This will give you an understanding of the types of existing businesses they’ve worked with and their abilities. A strong portfolio of successful projects is a good indicator of their expertise. Second, search for client testimonials and case studies to determine how the company has aided in the success of a customer or two.
They are useful real-world examples and give good insight into their effectiveness. In addition to that, read online reviews, but be wary of writing too positive reviews; some reviews might be biased or even faked. Look out for any repeating type of feedback, as it can be useful in understanding if their services match with what you need. And when you carry out this research, you choose a good, well-set-up and reputed SEO service provider who can yield measurable results.
Ask the Right Questions
If you are going to entrust an SEO provider with your business, you should ask these kinds of questions to know whether they could be a good fit for your business. Therefore, the first thing you will probably want to ask is about their strategy for your business. They do not have the one-size-fits-all approach and instead should opt for adapting the plan to your industry, goals, and target audience.
Then, inquire about how they define their success. Do they care about traffic growth, conversions, or keyword rankings? Aligning expectations with performance is what will help you to understand their metrics. Finally, have questions about what you can realistically expect as results. SEO is a long-term strategy, so avoid anyone who promises immediate results, as it takes time to show outcomes. A reputable SEO company should have defined objectives for your site, and outline the timetable for which you can anticipate seeing obvious signs of progress. These questions guarantee that you are hiring a provider that is transparent, realistic and really cares about seeing your business succeed.
Get Everything in Writing
Before hiring an SEO provider, you need everything in writing to avoid miscommunication and keep things transparent. Then, ensure that deliverables are set out in the agreement in order of specific goals, services offered and what is expected from them. Both parties know exactly what is expected of you in the event.
Then set out timelines for which each phase of the SEO strategy will be carried out and milestone dates to review progress. Pricing structures need to be agreed on flat fees, hourly rate or on a performance basis upfront. It takes out surprise charges, or it doesn’t have any hidden fees. Finally, decide upon your set communication expectations: how often will you communicate, what methods of communication are preferred, and to whom are you your key points of contact. This ensures accountability and alignment with the SEO provider on clear, measurable goals.
Set Realistic Expectations
Patience is what SEO is all about. While paid ads are able to yield instant results, SEO is rather a long-term strategy that needs to be left to bear fruit after some time. On average, you should see measurable results anywhere between 6 and 12 months as SEO results vary depending on industry competitiveness, the quality of your website and the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.
When we talk about SEO, each part is of equal importance: technical optimizations, content creation and link building – each will lead to gradual changes in rankings and traffic. Setting realistic expectations means understanding that SEO isn’t a quick fix; it’s about regular growth over time. Find out anyway you can if any SEO provider offers to deliver instant first-page rankings. Think of SEO as a journey and one with consistent effort, which leads to sustainable growth and long-term results.
6. The DIY SEO Approach
Learn the Basics
Moreover, just to start learning SEO, you must learn the basics. Then begin by tracking down respected SEO blogs such as Moz, Backlinko, or even Neil Patel’s blog, because they tend to regularly share understandable, helpful, and in the case of many, even humorous insights, secrets, and updates.
They will also serve in keeping you up to date with changes within the industry and what the best practice is. It should also include taking online courses from platforms like Udemy, Coursera, HubSpot Academy, or similar, which provide beginner-friendly tutorials and certifications. Moreover, join SEO communities on forums such as Reddit or Twitter and ask questions, share experiences and learn from people. Interacting with other SEO Goers will further help you to understand better and get support while learning this skill. This will help you: a) learn about SEO from these steps b) understand these very foundational SEO steps.
Focus on the Fundamentals
When it comes to SEO, there are a few top things you can do to get long-term success. The first step is to have quality, valuable and relevant content. Google rewards good quality sites with useful well well-written content. Subsequently, mobile friendliness should be prioritized since more people browse on mobile devices than on desktops.
Your website should be easily responsive, and the navigation to be easy on any device. And finally, if your website structure is to be user-friendly, your website has to be a user-friendly one with clear headings, easy-to-read content and the like. A structured website that makes users and search engines to find what they need also helps in increasing engagement and rankings. Consistently working on these fundamental parts will both give your web page some SEO friendliness and improve your site’s quality to please Google with higher rankings.
Use Free SEO Tools
It doesn’t cost you much to start with SEO tools. Google Search Console and Google Analytics are free tools. Google Search Console lets you see how your website performs in search results and find errors, such as crawl errors, and submit site maps for indexing. It shows you how visitors interact with specific pages on your site and deep down where they came from.
These are SEO metrics tracking tools that help you track what you need to and help you find what you have overlooked. Furthermore, Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Keyword Planner can aid in your keyword research as well as allow content to be optimized based on real user data. Using these free tools regularly will help you fine-tune your SEO strategy and see your progress without spending too hard.
Monitor, Adjust, and Improve
SEO isn’t a quick task and should not be followed up with set and forget. Keep track of your rankings in the promotion of the targeted keywords. Tools like Google Search Console and SEMrush help you track your keyword rankings and monitor how they evolve. Use Google Analytics to watch your traffic and see which pages and which drivers bring the most visitors.
If the pages are simply not performing, then the content might need tweaks, or on-page elements could be optimized. Finally, based on the data, adjust your tactics. If something isn’t working, it is the most straightforward thing to do to change it to see if that solves it and to be as specific as possible about what isn’t working. SEO is an ongoing process, so continuously improving based on data helps your site stay competitive and visible.
7. The Power of SEO: Why It’s a Game-Changer
SEO vs. Paid Ads: A Long-Term Strategy
One such example of that difference between SEO and paid ads is the case of Everlast, a popular fitness brand. Everlast had always relied on pay-per-click advertising to drive high amounts of traffic to its website. They initially drove traffic from paid ads, but this brought instant traffic at a constant budget, which was required to maintain it. After they focused on SEO, they started by developing organic rankings for high-converting keywords.
In the next 12 months, their site’s organic traffic went up by 60%, yet the cost plummeted for acquiring new visitors. The key benefit? Consequently, their organic traffic continued to grow even without ongoing ad spend, and paid ads only provided them temporary traffic. This switched them to SEO, thereby saving costs on ads and improving the revenue on investment with time. By the end of the year, paid ads cost per acquisition dropped by 35%, and the company experienced an increase in sales revenue through organic search.
Revenue Growth Through SEO
Revolve, a widely popular fashion retailer, decided to take advantage of SEO to complement its already successful paid advertising campaigns. Up until recently, Revolve heavily relied on paid ads to get traffic, but they saw the potential long-term benefit of focusing more on organic search. In the content area, they invested in creating high quality SEO optimized fashion collection, influencer partnerships and seasonal trends-related content. In its first six months, Revolve went from gaining 40% more organic traffic to $50K of organic revenue and $ 250 K.
But the key to their success was that they were targeting specific long-tail keywords from their niche, one of which was ‘summer dresses for beach weddings’ or ‘sustainable fashion brands.’ However, while these long-tailed keywords are more competitive, they did help Revolve show up higher on Google for highly relevant, high-converting search terms. This traffic was SEO driven growth, which meant they did not have to rely on expensive ads to start getting traffic and convert at a higher rate.
Therefore, by adopting a long-term SEO strategy, Revolve has built a steady revenue stream that is now a big part of its business growth and, in doing so, reduced reliance on ad spend, leading to greater profitability.
ROI from SEO
A good example of a business that has gotten so much return on its SEO investment is Shopify, the e-commerce platform. It was only by investing heavily in SEO by creating a comprehensive content strategy and honing its technical SEO that both Shopify and Dropbox saw a 3X return on an investment within the first year. Their strategy involved rendering their website structure and content, which has value, then building backlinks from trusted domains.
This led to them becoming over 50% more traffic from the organic search traffic year over year, and conversions from organic visitors increasing by 40%. With Shopify, for each dollar spent on SEO, there was $3 of additional revenue. This is an example of an ROI, proving that SEO delivers strong returns when businesses invest in long-term, sustainable strategies rather than quick fixes. Future years show that SEO offers one of the most cost-effective digital marketing solutions, as returns can only continue to increase on such an appreciative platform.
Final Thought
A long-term, inexpensive strategy of SEO is strong and delivers sustainable results, but it demands patience and smart skills in creating one. Some businesses may get away with paid ads for the moment, but it can pay off more in terms of building long-term, in terms of growing, having conversions and generally things that really make your ROI bigger. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or hire experts, you have to make sure that you have realistic expectations, choose the right provider and make the right investments into the right tools to be successful in SEO.
