Many business owners and new start-ups really believe they know the true meaning of “SEO.” But quality SEO requires a solid investment of time, research, financial resources, and (sometimes) a big buy-in to see real results.
What many do not understand, is the long term results that great SEO can drive into your business and marketing strategy.
Even the best-intended, most perfectly-executed campaigns can get derailed or just don’t work out as we planned. Many organizations waste costly financial resources in this area. SEO is clearly important for today’s business, but it is not essential and not worth the allocation of budget, unless you are willing to do this one SIMPLE thing:
PRIORITIZE
Many organizations or companies should prioritize their business vision and strategies in order for them to ma,ke the wise decisions to make it through. The economics of the area or the product fluctuates according to many factors. There as business owners, they should plan for the worst hoping for the best… but always with a strategy in place!
1. Define Clear Goals.
Clear and defined goals help everyone in an organization or corporation perform at their very best. The peak of perfection hits when all contributors are working on the same page, at the same moment.
The reality is that not every SEO professional and business owner is using the same set of metrics and blueprints. Some start slowly down one strategical path, while others jump head-first in the opposite direction.
The relationships among the content team should foster clarity, proactivity, and consistency. There can be no one-way streets. As the founder of ASTA, I have learned quite well the cadence and fluidity necessary between small business owners and the agency.
Some business owners lack the knowledge or the patience to see content creation as a business transaction – one that requires a lot of education and mutual support from each partner. ASTA is an expert, but that expertise comes along with years of experience, a commitment to communication, a clear vision with each business, and most importantly, good interpersonal relationships with all business owners.
2. Define Roles.
Collaborating efficiently can be one of the biggest challenges to moving your SEO efforts forward effectively. Roles should be clearly defined in order to get the most out of every strategy meeting and goal.
Incorrectly or loosely defined roles, where pertains to copy writing, SEO strategy, web updates, social media management, and project management can result in detrimental financial losses for business or nonprofit owners.
It’s important to know who will be responsible for each piece of the puzzle, what each step entails, and the full scope of work for the campaign or business. If you choose a company like ASTA, great! Most likely you will meet the team first, then have strategic meetings and reviews every quarter in order to establish subsequent deadlines, review scope of work and strategy, and deep dive into metrics – aka results! And with everyone on the same page!
3. Work with a plan.
Smart business owners must take the time to develop a plan to ensure open lines of communications, strategic analysis and pivoting, and timely receipt and review of reporting to stay on top of what’s working and what’s not.
As a business owner, great focus should be devoted to building a workable plan with concise but thorough details for action: the strategy. SEO strategies and processes change constantly. The goal is to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out the door and get to the business of monitoring the impact on metrics.
Once you are armed with data, you can move forward. Being able to show the impact to KPI can help you get the buy-in for the resources you need.
Developing an agile SEO strategy will involve incremental iteration and the breaking down of complex and overachieving projects into small, frequent changes. This will enable you to properly measure continual progress.
This approach will result in better results and increased authority. Again, your plan must have the space and flexibility to constantly change according to what is working at the moment. For this reason, it is critical for your development team and business owner to be on the same page at all times.
4. CONTENT
Content – for websites, social media, or even for your marketing e-blasts – is a crucial part of the successful strategy puzzle. Content is the fuel for your SEO engine!
Many businesses struggle to run SEO projects for their clients where there is no defined resource for content or where the resource is defined, but the requests for content are not processed in a timely manner.
Business owners should be aware of the challenges and workarounds. It is easy to jump into an SEO agreement or spend time on campaigns that end up in overwork, double-work, or lost work, in the name of hitting marketing goals.
No one wants to spend $15,000 on a dead-end SEO project – say, a website or social media management project that ends up costing $25,000 to recoop.
Clarify the costs upfront, budget for them, and decide where your priorities lie. Not all decisions should be based on ranking or website design. There are many other ways to achieve your marketing goals!
5. Practice updated strategies and tactics.
Don’t feel compelled to “do SEO”. That typically leads to forced tactics and often actions that are misguided or no longer impactful.
If a company tries to sell you outdated or spam-like tactics as “strategy,” take a moment to look around, do your research, and align your current best practices to what your business or product needs.
Time, energy, and financial resources can be lost in no time by focusing on narrow or outdated SEO practices.
SEO has gone through extensive evolutionary changes over the years, and continues to do so every day.
While most traditional marketing tactics (for the most part) still hold true in digital marketing today, SEO changes have quite drastically changed the landscape.
Webmasters and “marketers” continue to misunderstand the role of keywords in general SEO initiatives. Some of these outdated practices are:
- Metadata that is not properly aligned with the keywords represented, or the proper intent of the users conducting the searches for the high-volume keywords being targeted.
- Google no longer relies on keyword density.
- Writing for a specific “keyword density,” like many keyword-focused marketing tactics, is just missing the mark.
- Loading up web-pages with keywords — especially the same high-value keyword we are aggressively targeting throughout the website — is going to help us show up higher in search, thus outranking our competition? No!
- Write for humans, not search engine crawlers or any other robot. Search engines are advanced enough to understand repeated keywords, their variations, and the unfavorable experience of generally bad content.
SEO entails a lot of work, research, and resources that an established company should be investing in already. That doesn’t mean every start-up should set aside other priorities to focus resources here. But if you do, always look for professionals who can bring you knowledge, resources, and and a broad overview of current practices and strategies to help you determine the best way for you to get the most out of your budget.
If you need more information, write us below. We would love to hear your thoughts!
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