How or process works

It's important to understand that with every new client we take on, there's a process that needs to be carried out, to get the most out of the SEO work carried out for your Website. We also utilise cutting-edge software and tools to extract all forms of data, including competitive data, to drive our decision-making processes.

Step 1: Initial consultation – free of charge

We start off by discussing your needs, issues, and ambitions for your Website which can include everything from a sudden or/and sustained drop in rankings, improving the content of underperforming pages, or designing an SEO path for a new Website.

This then lets us formulate a strategy that we can implement to achieve maximum results from your Website, from your budget. Doing this allows us to formulate a strategy that will improve your organic rankings over a set period of time.

Step 2: Onboarding

Our onboarding process consists of 3 main steps to make sure your Website is ready to perform at it's maximum in the SERPS:

  • We carry out a detailed audit of your existing site to look for problem areas that need to be fixed or improved upon. Often times we find that fixing technical issues that have been hampering your site's performance can lead to a healthy increase in rankings. Conducting an audit basically makes sure your site is built on solid ground so that everything else we do to your site has a great platform to grow from. Check out our SEO audit checklist to get a better idea of what's involved with an SEO audit. Note: If you're in need of local SEO (simply targeting the customers in your area) the audit process is less involved, and not all areas of your Website are as critical or as involved as they will be for a 10'000 product eCommerce site.
  • Next, we carry out top-level keyword analysis to make sure your pages are targeting the correct people (the ideal buyers of your products or services), as well as carrying out analysis of your top competitors to gain insights into their strategy.
  • We also undertake a content gap analysis to create extra content and areas of growth on your Website that have been missed as this will bring even more paying customers to your business. We essentially create pages that target your ideal customers that need to be on your site but aren't.

If you own an eCommerce Website or a Website that changes frequently due to the nature of your business, we add your site to our unique cloud-based monitoring system that systematically watches it, scanning for technical and on-page errors that will harm your rankings. This is all done in real-time so we're alerted immediately and can fix the issue(s).

Step 3: Commence working on your site

Below are some of the deliverables you can expect to get from us:

  • Rework existing underperforming content wherever there is a good opportunity, mainly in pages/URLs of your Website that are in and around pages 2 to 5 in the Google search engine results pages.
  • Create new content based on the research carried out, competitor data, and gap analysis.
  • Entity building, we work on and build out your brand so that it becomes a recognised authority/entity within your niche and in Google's eyes.
  • We implement Schema markup on your Web pages so Google's crawlers can quickly and easily understand what your pages are about. We feed the crawlers all of the relevant information so there's no ambiguity about what each page is about. This is incredibly important to the SEO performance of your pages and comes in the form of Schema markup such as local business, article, tech article or reviews, etc.
  • Link building is still a key aspect to ranking highly in the SERPS, especially in competitive niches, so we promote your content in the form of outreach and industry-focused link building. Note: Our fees for link building are based on our outreach time, i.e. getting in touch with and building relationships with webmasters. Outreach is labour intensive and time-consuming but out techniques are proven and successful. There is also a fee for link placement, as nearly all Website owners charge a fee to add a link to their Website that points to yours.
  • If you're a business that relies on local search traffic, we make sure that your GMB listing is optimised and showing up for the correct search terms and as often as possible.
  • We report on our progress by looking at the increase in visibility and impressions in Google Search Console, rank trackers, and GMB visibility (if you're a local business). However, please note that reporting on your rankings via rank trackers is a somewhat flawed concept because they don't account for things like geo-location (up to 70% of searches have some form of local intent to them) or personalisation, meaning your search history.
  • From time to time we will need to adjust or add to your content accordingly depending on your competitor's behavior (you have to assume they will react to your improved rankings) and/or new gaps that emerge over time. So we constantly asses your competition and watch what they're doing.

How the workflow is presented to you

In our opinion, the most important aspects of working with any service provider are:

  1. Is the provider going to deliver?
  2. How can I see what they're doing for our money on a month-by-month basis?

That's why when you choose to work with Digital Cornerstone, before we start work you receive a month to month breakdown of everything we plan to do over a predetermined time frame, based on budget. This way you can see what we're going to be doing over the time we're working together and check everything that's changing within/around your site and have clarity with everything we're doing.

Below are examples of the type of breakdown of the monthly deliverables and associated costs you can expect to receive through Google Sheets.

content deliverables G-sheet

Sheet 1 is a breakdown of all content needed based on the onboarding, keyword research, and gap analysis. This will be either rewriting existing content or creating new content.

g-sheets roadmap

Sheet 2 is the month by month breakdown of what is going to be done in each month.

Please note that these are just examples and that every project is different. The speed we deliver everything is dependant on your budget and needs.

Summary

We formulate a plan that starts with understanding what it is you're trying to achieve then systematically work through your site to maximise your budget and ROI. It's only when there's a roadmap in place that you can truly get the most from a Website.


    Last updated on 21st January 2022 at 20:08