Is SEO The Right Choice for Your Business?
Search Engine Optimization is crucial for most any online business, especially those looking to drive traffic to their website by harnessing the power of search engines. SEO can be time-consuming and changes often, so having a professional on your side can be advantageous.
When considering SEO for your business, it’s important to note that it’s not one-size-fits-all. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking it’s a case of “doing SEO” without thinking about the details and strategy behind it all. One of the most common misconceptions about SEO is that it is all technical and you can just go through your site and “optimize” everything.
This is where having a trusted partner to help you plan and execute a successful SEO is worth it’s weight in gold. Done correctly, you can outrank your competition for valuable keywords that are relevant to your business and increase your traffic and more importantly your revenue.
Before hiring an SEO expert, consider these points first to ensure it’s the right choice.
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Parts of a Successful SEO Campaign
What is SEO?
SEO, aka search engine optimization, entails actions you can take on and off your website to increase the likelihood that your site will be placed highly on a search engine results page for a relevant keyword or question.
To aid search engines in understanding your website’s purpose and presenting it to internet users, you should ensure your page names are correct and evident and create a logical site map.
You can do several things to increase the visibility of your startup’s website on search engines like Google. Your site’s loading speed, whether on a desktop computer or a mobile device, must be lightning-quick. Your web pages’ writing should be creative, simple to understand, and crystal clear. Web crawlers, which are used to compile indexes of websites, must also be able to comprehend it.
In light of these considerations, it is clear that you need a site map that is both logical and straightforward. If you want visitors to read your content and not simply “bounce” away after clicking on your site, you need to find ways to keep them there.
How? By making their time spent on your site rewarding and full of helpful information. Having that credibility on your side will help you immensely in your quest to gain the favor of search engines.
SEO And Your Business
Regarding SEO, some crucial things to consider are what kind of business you have and how people typically find your business. If your customer base is likely to use search engines to look for your business, that’s important to know.
SEO benefits businesses and their brand awareness, but for some industries, focusing on social media marketing and advertising can work better for initial customer awareness.
Do you have a brick-and-mortar store? Can people learn about you by driving past or by word of mouth? Do you provide a service or good that people will tell others about through reviews?
Or are you online only? Do you have an e-commerce shop that will rely on some form of online advertising or another tactic to drive traffic to your site?
The answers to these questions can help determine the right approach for SEO and content for your business. Executing a successful strategy for an e-commerce store looks very different from what a local brick and mortar store will do. The one thing they both have in common, however, is content. You’ll need to be producing good, quality, consistent content regularly if you’re wanting to truly drive traffic to your store.
Whether your business is a new startup or has been operating a website for years, it can still benefit significantly from a solid SEO and content strategy.
One of the big questions you should ask yourself is whether or not your have the time and energy to invest in producing quality content each month for your website. Many business owners simply do not have the time, energy, or skills necessary to do so. Not only do you have to run your business each month, but you also have to enjoy writing thousands of words each month as well. If that’s you, then my hat goes off to you!
What I tend to find with most business owners is the same issue that many face – the old saying goes “cobblers wear the worst shoes”. That’s where a trusted partner comes in!
The benefits of quality content and search engine optimization (SEO) can only be fully realized when these two strategies collaborate. If you’re starting a new company, writing content that will rank well in search engines is essential. If your company already has a sizable body of work, it’s in your best interest to review it and make any necessary changes to improve your search engine rankings.
A few short years ago, optimizing content for search engines meant forcing irrelevant keywords into an otherwise solid piece of writing. Because of this, many websites become inaccessible and frustrating to their intended audiences. Operators of search engines are beginning to implement changes to their ranking algorithms in light of this realization. Relevance is king in today’s digital era.
But how can you signal to Google that your material is pertinent? Be explicit in your writing; that’s the solution. If search engines can quickly grasp the central idea of your website, it will be ranked higher in search engine results.
When writing original content, you must have your keywords in mind to craft sentences that naturally include them from the get-go. Awkward keyword stuffing is a thing of the past.
If you are interested in SEO, you need to have a budget. SEO doesn’t work if you’re not willing to have a budget for your marketing. Someone always says they’ll do “cheap SEO,” but that’s not usually in your best interest.
However, if you are looking for quick results, SEO may not be your best bet right away. SEO is a powerful tool, but it can take 3-6 months for the results of your work to materialize. If you need to get your business in front of prospective customers’ eyeballs ASAP, your marketing budget should be spent on paid ads that can start working for you within 24 hours.
Putting all your eggs in the “new customer” basket is tempting, but don’t forget your customers who are farther down the sales funnel. You likely already have loyal customers, and you shouldn’t let your customer service falter in your efforts to attract new faces.
Sometimes it’s better to automate some of your repeat customer processes first before chasing after new customers. ROI is often higher with selling again rather than attracting and selling to a new customer.
Parts of a Successful SEO Campaign
There are multiple parts to planning a successful SEO campaign for a business. These include:
- Research: Scoping out the landscape and determining what sort of content is helpful to your target audience and pairing that with keyword research and competition
- Strategy: Some keywords are more difficult to rank for than others, and it is beneficial both short-term and long-term to have a proper strategy when it comes to ranking your content that will be beneficial to your audience and help your business grow
- Content: Producing content is time-consuming in itself. But producing quality content that is enjoyable to read and truly helpful to your audience is another thing. Add an extra layer that helps the content rank well with Google, and you’ve got a winning recipe for getting meaningful traffic.
- Technical SEO: This is probably the biggest misconception with SEO today. Many agencies and businesses claim to do SEO, but all they are actually doing is technical SEO. This should be the icing on the cake – something added to your successful content strategy. If you’re not producing regular content that is truly helpful to your audience, then your ceiling is limited, no matter how much technical SEO you perform on your site. Not to belittle its importance, but technical on-page optimizations are only a tiny part of the puzzle.
Conclusion
While SEO is ultimately essential for every business, you must take some time to carefully consider whether spending time and money on SEO is the best move for your business right now. If you believe a focus on SEO will benefit your business but don’t have the time to fine-tune your website and its content, you should consider hiring a professional to do it for you. Contact us today to find out how we can use SEO to drive more people to your website.
