If you want your business to succeed, then you need to be successful online. You might have already built a wonderful website that sells your products and services, or maybe it just makes the world aware of your business. However, what good does it do if no one ever finds it? The online world is an endless sea of content, and yours could get easily lost unless it’s easy for people to find it. Search engine optimization does that, leading to website traffic and revenue for you. However, there are certain things you need to know about SEO for your business.
5 Things About SEO You Should Know
Search engine optimization is deep and complicated enough that there’s an entire industry of digital marketing firms and professionals dedicated to it. Your business would benefit from hiring one for your SEO needs. However, it still helps to know a handful of things about SEO yourself.
- Keywords Matter: Think about the keywords that someone would use to find what your business has to offer. If you sell appliances, that might include refrigerators. However, is someone going to type that in? Or are they going to just type fridge instead?
- Emphasize What’s Unique About Your Business: Your business probably has lots of competition in whatever sector you operate in. If you want to stand out online, then you need to differentiate yourself from everyone else. One way to do this is to focus on the unique offerings only you provide, and another way to do it is by targeting specific geographic locations.
- Backlinks Are Still Important: There are penalties for having too many links pointing back to your site, but it’s still true that you do better when you have more websites with a link in your direction. Exchange links whenever you can, but also try to get links from high-caliber websites. A link from an educational website or chamber of commerce is going to carry more weight than links from relatively obscure blogs.
- Be Sociable: Social media platforms account for a lot of online activity. Some estimates suggest that 25% of all online traffic is routed through Facebook alone. Have profiles on social media platforms where people can look you up, engage your business, and even generate backlinks by sharing your content.
- Content Is King: People turn to search engines for information and answers, and search engines provide that content as their product and service. That means search engines reward the best content providers with traffic. Compelling content should include not just text but also photos and videos. Update it frequently to show search engines that your website is actively managed and continually relevant.
You Can’t Do It Just Once
Even though SEO is a form of marketing, it’s not like a direct mail campaign or a limited run of PPC ads. In fact, SEO is not a one time thing. Search engine optimization is a process that needs to stay ongoing.
Why isn’t SEO something that only happens once? The fact that the online world is always changing is a big aspect of it. What people look up and search is always in flux.
Another big part of it is the fact that your competitors aren’t letting up with their own SEO efforts. Someone is always coming up with more content. Someone is always trying to get up the search engine results, whether it’s trying to get on the first page or just trying to move up that page.
Keyword research will start your SEO work, but it needs to be ongoing. Certain keywords that were once not competitive might become so. However, you might also find new keywords and phrases you can rank for that no one else has tapped into yet.
You’ll also need to keep SEO efforts ongoing for when the rules change. Google’s algorithm theoretically uses over 200 different factors to rank websites. There are changes all the time, and that requires resilience on the part of digital marketers. You’re always looking to improve your own business, and search engines are doing the very same thing.
The need for new content is also never-ending. People are always looking up and needing new things. Be a source of that information, and you can gain trust and authoritative status. Fail to keep generating the content, and your website will look stale in comparison.
How Long Will It Take to Work?
As Forbes points out, the strategy of SEO is one that takes time. You might be wondering how long it will take, and there’s no short answer to that question. Circumstances will vary quite a bit. However, you should be able to expect minimal results within four to six months. Your business should start seeing more complete results in six months to a year.
Seeing results in the first month or two is unlikely. This timeframe is likely to be filled with discovery, auditing, and planning more so than actual implementation. That’s more likely to happen in the second month. Even then, search engines will need time to start identifying and recognizing any changes that get made. Results might start trickling in by the third month and really kick in after half a year, but your real payoff probably won’t happen until the one-year mark. Your second year is when you’ll really start harvesting your investment.
Know When to Let Go
Once you choose SEO services and set your budget, let them do their work. They’ll need your input and insights about your business and industry, but you should never try to micromanage them. There’s always a risk of overcommunicating with them and eating up the time they need to handle the SEO needs your business has. If you trust that you’ve chosen the right digital marketing agency, then stand back and let them do what they’re good at. The eventual results will make your patience and diligence well worth it in the end.
