Minneapolis SEO Services

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. In a nutshell, SEO is the art and science behind getting your website better internet rankings. A top SEO agency will work hard to improve your keyword rankings in Google search and drive new traffic to your website.

Top ranking websites hit more of Google’s 200+ ranking factors than other websites.

Factors that influence SEO success include high quality website content, properly tagged images on your website, proper website formatting. A few SEO checklist items include optimizing your page titles, header tags, meta content, internal and external linking and website page load time, to name just a few).

In addition, off-page content and activity should include strong social media profiles, Google reviews, quality backlinks, video, blogs, how-to’s, infographics and on and on. Get the picture? It’s not rocket science. It’s just a LOT of activity.

Local SEO involves optimizing your website and SEO strategy to improve your visibility for location based searches. Think about a dentist, for example. With a Local SEO campaign for a dental office, we would want to target local customers within a reasonable driving distance.

In short, we’ll use local SEO services to target a specific demographic.

Keywords are both words and phrases that people type into search engines when doing online research. As an example, “SEO” is a keyword. So is “SEO agency near me”. SEO is a singular keyword, and SEO agency near me is a long-tail-keyword.

Keywords and keyword research set the path for an SEO campaign. We want to identify what and how people are searching for you, and make sure your website has the content that shows you fill those needs.

Backlinks are links from other websites that point back to yours. They are also referred to as inbound or incoming links. Effective SEO strategies work to improve both your backlink profile as well as optimize your website with internal links.

Internal links are links on your own website that connect to other pages on your website. Done properly, we can help Google and other search engines better understand your website.

For starters, Google tells us they are. In fact, backlinks are so important for SEO that Google says backlinks are one of its top three ranking factors.

Consider backlinks to be similar to roads and bridges around your business (your website). Backlinks connect your website to the outside world and we want to put your website on a very busy intersection. Backlinks are like votes for your website and give it relevance.

Backlinks are an indicator of your website’s popularity. When a website links to one of your pages, they are effectively telling the internet that your page is worth sharing.

The Ahrefs website is a great resource when it comes to SEO strategies. Here is an article on Ahrefs that answers the question “Why are backlinks important?” in greater detail.

Google’s #1 job is to show you the most relevant search results for any given search. In order to do that, Google has created the smartest, most widely used search engine to help with internet searches. There are over 200 factors (some known, some unknown) that Google uses to determine the quality of a web page.

The more of those 200 ranking factors that we address and optimize (hence the term Search Engine Optimization), the better our chances become of showing up in Google search results.

Sort of. Social media on its own doesn’t affect your Google rankings, but user engagement does (think shares, likes, comments, etc.). In other words, it is the engagement from your social media that provides the value for SEO. Not the post itself.

Many companies don’t understand this, and repeatedly post with zero engagement. Zero engagement is not helping your SEO. Gaining engagement on social media isn’t easy, but it starts with providing high quality, informative content.

Yes, it is. “90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the last year. (BrightLocal)?” Whether you have a small, medium or large business, SEO is a game changer. Startup business? Established global business? Same answer. Visibility in search engines doesn’t just happen without a concerted SEO effort. 

If you have capacity for new business, investing in search engine optimization could make a huge difference for your business. For many, it’s game changing.

First, there is no set answer here. For sure, SEO takes time. There are many variables that affect how long it takes to see results with search engine optimization. Some of the factors affecting SEO include your industry, your competitors (are others investing in SEO?), the strength of your domain (age, authority, backlink profile). Another significant factor here includes exactly WHAT keywords you’re wanting to rank for and in what market(s)?

We typically tell our SEO clients to put the blinders on for 6 months. That said, we do see victories all along the way often times fairly early on. Pro tip: If you’re considering investing in SEO services for 2 or 3 months and THEN deciding if you want to continue…..don’t do it at all. Save that money and invest it elsewhere in your business.

No. And you should run away from any SEO agency that does. Nobody has a secret backdoor into the search engines, or a favorable connection to Google and that’s a good thing. SEO companies that promise page 1 results are typically engaging in black-hat SEO techniques that can lead to your website being blacklisted. They’ll happily take your SEO dollars for as long as you’re willing to pay.

You don’t want this. What we CAN guarantee is that you will see “improved” rankings, with many of our SEO clients ranking on page 1 for their most important keywords.

The cost of SEO can vary greatly, with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars per month to thousands of dollars per month. At HyperX Design our sweet spot for small businesses falls just short of $1000/month. That said, we are flexible, as SEO is simply time spent. Smaller budgets just mean less time spent. Companies who hire us for SEO services appreciate that we can work with budgets of all sizes.

If you are a small business and want more inbound lead activity, investing in SEO services can provide enormous returns. Companies who invest in SEO services month after month don’t do it because it’s an expense. Instead, SEO is a long term investment which leads to better profitability.

Through learning, trial and error, you definitely could improve your Search Engine Optimization without hiring an SEO agency. Your website itself is the foundation for SEO success, so if you’re wanting to tackle SEO yourself, that’s a great place to start. Of course, you’ll need to be able to implement improvements and changes on your website.

If you already have a WordPress website, that’s great, as optimizing websites for SEO with WordPress is very user friendly. Tips: Tag your images with ALT-text, strengthen your page titles, your header tags, and optimize your content. Think about the keywords you would like to show up for and look at your website. Do you see those words multiple times on a web page? If not, there’s a great opportunity to improve!

We’ll cut off the questions with this one as it’s super important. There are a lot of shady characters out there in the SEO world. The unfortunate piece, is most companies don’t know any better and will keep writing checks until they finally grow frustrated with a lack of results.

When we talk about results with SEO, at the end of the day, it’s all about increasing the amount of inbound leads or sales opportunities. Ask, and they’ll tell you how they found you. That’s one way to know if SEO is working. Manual? Sure, but good to know.

Next, there are a few core fundamentals that we zero in on. First is keyword rankings. This is an easy one to measure by using a dedicated SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush. Say, hypothetically, when we started, you had 6 keywords ranking in Google….now you have 350. That’s a pretty clear indicator that SEO is working. Keyword rankings won’t improve by accident.

Another measurable is your Domain Authority. What is Domain Authority? Also known as DA, it is an indicator of how likely your website is to rank in the search engines. Based on a scale of 1 to 100, an SEO expert will help boost your Domain Authority, given enough time.

Your backlink profile is another measurable when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. If you started out your SEO campaign with 8 backlinks, and 6 months later you’ve got 450 backlinks, you can be assured that your SEO agency has been busy. Now, it gets more complicated, as not all backlinks are created equally, and not all backlinks help rankings, but we’ll keep it here. In general, more backlinks (built naturally) are a good indicator of a quality SEO company working on your behalf.

These three are all measurable, and your SEO company can’t hide from them. They’re either moving in the right direction, the wrong direction, or not at all.

What about website traffic? Sure, it matters. However, traffic can be manipulated or bought by unscrupulous SEO firms so they can show you “progress”. Same with bounce rates. If you’re talking with an SEO agency who’s primary measure of success is traffic and bounce rates, maybe look to another SEO company for help.