Search Engine Optimization
We are an SEO agency based in Vancouver, Washington that’s served clients in both Vancouver and the Portland metro area since 2015. Get A QuoteView Our Work
Reach. Engage. Convert.
Design and SEO should always go hand in hand. If someone tells you that all you need is a beautiful design and your business will flourish, we can’t honestly or wholeheartedly agree with them. The goal of a business is to be found on the internet by potential customers who are looking for the products or services your company is offering.
Now beautiful designs that never get displayed in search results benefit no one in today’s digital world. If your website shows up at the top of the page, attracts a lot of traffic, but converts no one, that’s also not the results we’re looking for. People buy because they feel confident in the products and the company that offers them. What if your website doesn’t translate the level of trust or professionalism your customers need? Ranking on the first page doesn’t always correlate with your conversion rate.
We are an agency with a strong background in both functional web design and SEO. Working with us means more traffic to your website and more conversions from web traffic to real paying clients. Our proven strategies give your business visibility in a sea of competition. Ichor Studios uses data and research to provide the best plan for our clients. We translate your needs into solutions for your brand.
Full-Service SEO Agency that You Can Trust.
We are a full-service SEO agency serving businesses here locally in Vancouver, WA, and Portland, Oregon. We also provide SEO services to companies in other states that focus on either local or national SEO. Whether your goal is to rank your website for a specific city or nationwide, our SEO team can help! Our services include:
What We Do:
- Keyword Discovery
- Market & Competitor Research
- On-Site Website Optimization
- Local SEO Optimization
- National SEO Optimization
- Google My Business Listing Optimization
- Customized & Easy-to-Understand Monthly Reporting
- Well Researched and Data-Backed Content Marketing
If you want an honest and experienced SEO specialist to help you reach your ranking goals by following good practices while keeping you updated along the way, you are in the right place. Let us help you and your business today!
What is SEO, really?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, at its core, enables search engines like Google to send more high-quality visitors to your business through organic search results.
Why You Should Care About SEO?
Like the definition above, a successful SEO strategy brings more high-quality potential customers to your website. Traditional networking and referral based business growth strategies might work for a certain type of business at a specific stage, but eventually, you will need a website to help you grow. SEO lets you reach your target audience in the digital world without relying on someone sharing your product or service. The goal of a business is to be found on the internet by potential customers who are looking for the products or services your company is offering. A good SEO strategy does exactly that! Here are some other benefits of SEO compared with pay-per-click (PPC), which are paid ads.
A Sustainable Strategy
SEO is a sustainable strategy that will help you gain and maintain your visibility over the long term. Just like when someone is trying to lose weight, SEO is comparable to a life-style change solution where you eat healthily and exercise regularly. It will take a while to form the habit and see the results. However, it is much more sustainable and affordable. PPC is similar to choosing the route of plastic surgery to reach your ideal physique without changing your diet and exercise habits. You will likely see results faster, but it’s very expensive and hard to maintain.
Promote Reliability and Trustworthiness
SEO provides your businesses with rankings, a type of visibility that signals more reliability and trustworthiness. As a consumer, we know the difference between paid advertisement listings in Google’s search results vs. the organic results on the first page. How often have you clicked on the first result on Google that has a little Ad icon there? Most people realize that the business has paid to be on the top, not because they have been around longer, and more people have been searching. Most of the time, people skip and ignore these ads entirely to go down to the first organic result.
Build A Solid Technical Foundation
Following good SEO practices builds a solid technical foundation for your website. If you read about Google’s best SEO practices, you will know that regardless of what your goals are when it comes to your website, these good practices still apply. For example, Google ranks search results based on your site load speed, whether or not your content is relevant to your customers, if your website is easy to navigate, or is secure with SSL properly installed. All these ranking factors are important whether or not you care about SEO.
Why Choose Ichor for Your SEO Goals?
An Excellent Listener
A good SEO strategist listens to their client’s short and long term goals and customizes strategies accordingly. We see too many people over-complicate the SEO world and aim to confuse and scare clients. We are not saying SEO is simple. It certainly is not. But there are some SEO terms we can explain clearly and easily.
Client Education
A successful SEO strategist cares about educating their clients because it is one of the most important ways to earn the client’s trust and prove their value. There should also be an established understanding of what SEO is and what you’ll do for the client to boost their rankings.
Set Realistic Expectations
We’ve seen some colleges in our industry make bold or even false promises of very specific rankings. Each search engine, like Google, has a unique and sophisticated proprietary algorithm. If the algorithm is a secret and constantly changing, how can someone be so sure to guarantee a very specific ranking?
Follow the Guidelines
It’s important to know search engines’ published SEO guidelines and never practice gray or blackhat SEO tactics. Search engines like Google will punish you for following bad practices to manipulate your rankings. Once you get penalized, it won’t be easy to revert the situation.
Do the Research
Research is important, whether that’s keyword research, backlink research, competitor research, or market research. Knowing the SEO landscape you are dealing with is essential.
Has a Passion for Data Analysis
If you don’t love data, being an SEO specialist would be a difficult job for you. Statistics reveal whether or not your strategy is working. You can tweak your approach depending on what the data is telling you. To look at the full picture, we need to evaluate data collected through your website, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google My Business listing insights, SEO keyword tracking campaigns like Moz, and any other platforms you are utilizing as a part of your SEO optimization strategy.
Communicate Effectively
Communication is key. We don’t use prepaid reports that we can generate within one minute. Instead, we care about our clients’ feedback. Everyone is different and prefers different methods of learning and communication. This is why we work with our clients to develop customized monthly reports that enable them to learn about what we are doing and keep up with our progress.
Thrive in Change
An SEO professional not only has years of experience practicing SEO but also prepares for potential future changes. We are specialists who are trained to adapt to new changes. Google tweaks their SEO algorithms daily and releases major updates throughout the year. A good strategist keeps themselves updated every day with any changes in the SEO landscape.
Continued Education
We believe in learning. Every year, Ichor attends SEO conferences throughout the country to continue educating ourselves and learn from the best SEOs in the world.
Always Do Right by the Client
You can have all the qualities we mentioned above, but if your heart’s not in the right place, then you are not a good SEO specialist. Always doing the right thing means not manipulating data and reports. Be honest with the results even when they are not so good. In the complicated SEO world, the rankings fluctuate just like the stock market.
SEO 101: Learn more about some technical terms you may have heard.
On-site SEO
On-site SEO, also referred to as on-page SEO, focuses on optimizing elements on a website to improve search engine ranking and visibility. Content optimization and HTML source code updates are common focuses when it comes to on-site SEO.
Off-site SEO
Off-site SEO/off-page SEO refers to optimization tactics used outside of your website that improve your rankings and visibility within search engine results pages (SERPs). Some common off-site ranking factors include site popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is an overview of the technical health of your website. First and foremost, it ensures that search engines can crawl your site. Every search engine’s main goal is to provide the best possible user experience for their customers. To do this, they need to understand your website. Some key-elements of technical SEO include site load speed, meta tags, and device responsiveness.
Local SEO
Local SEO focuses mainly on increasing search visibility for businesses that serve their communities in person. Local SEO starts with claiming a business listing to ensure your location appears in a local search on Google. It also involves optimizing your listing’s backend setting, so Google understands your business better, managing online ratings and reviews, encouraging local-centric social media engagement, and beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions
• How long will it take before I see ranking improvements? Depending on your industry and competition, we usually see ranking improvements anywhere between 2-6 months.
• Do I have to sign a contract if I want to hire you for SEO? No, we do not believe in contracts. If you do not like our service, you should have the freedom to leave without penalty.
• How much does SEO cost? Depending on your project’s scope and goals, our most basic SEO package starts at $875 per month and goes up from there.
• Do you charge for reporting every month? We believe in transparent reporting and clear communication with our clients. That’s why we decided to go against the industry-standard protocol and included complimentary reporting and meetings with no minimum contract length.
• What if I don’t want to receive monthly reports and prefer more in-person meetings? We have different reporting options that you can choose from.
Reporting Option #1
- You’ll receive a detailed monthly SEO report including ranking fluctuations, completed tasks with a timesheet, and a technical SEO to-do list for the upcoming month.
- One annual in-person meeting at the client’s location (up to 2 hours).
Reporting Option #2:
- We’ll provide a detailed quarterly SEO report including ranking fluctuations, overall quarterly online performance, completed tasks with a timesheet, and a technical SEO to-do list for the next quarter.
- One semi-annual video conference call (up to one hour).
- One annual meeting at the client’s location (up to 1.5 hours).
