Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has emerged as a critical element in the digital marketing landscape. With an ever-increasing number of websites competing for the attention of users, businesses are investing heavily in SEO to improve their visibility and drive organic traffic. However, achieving success in SEO is not an overnight process, and it can often be a long and challenging journey. This article delves into the various factors that make SEO challenging and explains why it requires time, patience, and consistent effort.
The algorithms that govern search engine rankings are constantly evolving. Search engines like Google continuously update their algorithms to provide the most relevant and high-quality search results to their users. These updates can have a significant impact on the SEO strategies that businesses employ. To stay on top of these changes, marketers need to monitor search engine announcements, industry trends, and best practices, and adapt their strategies accordingly. This requires a considerable investment of time and resources.
SEO is no longer solely about optimizing your website with the right keywords. Over the years, the number of ranking factors has grown substantially, making the task of SEO more complex. Some critical factors that impact search engine rankings include site speed, mobile-friendliness, content quality, user experience, and backlinks. To be successful in SEO, businesses need to optimize their websites holistically, addressing all these aspects. This multi-faceted approach demands time, expertise, and consistent effort.
Creating high-quality, relevant, and engaging content is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO. However, content creation can be time-consuming and requires ongoing effort. Moreover, the content must be optimized for search engines, incorporating relevant keywords and ensuring it is easily accessible to search engine crawlers. Additionally, with the growing importance of voice search and natural language processing, optimizing content for conversational queries is becoming increasingly important.
Backlinks, or links from other websites pointing to your site, are a key factor in determining search engine rankings. They signal trust and authority to search engines, which in turn improves your website's visibility. Acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks is a challenging and lengthy process. It involves outreach, relationship building, and crafting valuable content that other sites would want to link to, which can take months or even years to achieve.
As more and more businesses recognize the importance of SEO, the competition for the top search engine rankings intensifies. Depending on your industry, you may be competing against established websites with strong domain authority, making it harder to outrank them. Analyzing your competition, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and developing a tailored SEO strategy to outperform them requires time, expertise, and persistence.
For sure, SEO plays a pivotal role in the realm of digital marketing. However, it is crucial to recognize that attaining success in SEO is a long-term endeavor rather than a quick win. The constant evolution of search algorithms, the increasing intricacy of SEO factors, the ongoing necessity for content creation and optimization, the significance of backlinks, and the highly competitive landscape all contribute to the challenges and time-consuming nature of SEO. By exercising patience, adopting a strategic approach, and maintaining consistent efforts, businesses can progressively enhance their search engine rankings and ultimately benefit from increased organic traffic and visibility.
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of curating website content to achieve top rankings in Google, among others.
In the past, SEO stuffing keywords into every possible location—something we used to call the “SEO Top 5.” These include the HTML Title, Meta Description, Headings, Body Copy and Anchor text.
Google’s own documentation suggests—and even states directly—that most of these have little impact on rankings.
But is SEO really dead?
Search engines have one goal—to provide the best, most relevant results for a given keyword search. As a website owner, your goal should be to provide that best, most relevant web page. The trick is to understand how search engines make the choice.
You should always include an HTML page title and meta description, because these are usually visible in the search results. And, yes, you should use your target keyword here as well. But, write them to be helpful to humans. That way, you’ll increase traffic and help search engines learn what your website’s about at the same time.
The same is true for page content. Write your website content to be useful and engaging to visitors to your website. Use keywords appropriately, but don’t overuse them in an attempt to boost rankings. Keyword stuffing doesn’t work and may even hurt your rankings.
To get you started, here are a few things every website owner should do;
But, there are hundreds, if not thousands of signals search engines use to decide which websites are worthy of those coveted top spots.
There are literally thousands of ways to ruin a website. A website can be beautiful, perfectly branded and use all the latest browser technology—and yet still suck in a profusion of ways. Let’s examine a few favorites.
Topping the list is a website that’s too slow to load. Not only will your slow loading website turn away visitors at a rate of about 12% for every second you make them wait—you’ll also be signaling search engines that your website offers a poor user experience. As a rule, a bad user experience equals bad rankings.
Next up, your website has to be mobile friendly. All major search engines place priority on a website’s mobile experience over the desktop. And for good reason. Over two thirds of online searches are mobile. Desktops don’t even make up the remaining third.
Coming in at number three—hard to find contact info. There’s no point putting time and energy into the perfect web experience if your website visitors can’t figure out how to contact you. Put contact info on every page, and encourage users to reach out to you using whatever method they prefer. Forcing visitors to fill out a web form might just force them to look for somewhere else to do business.
Perhaps more important than being easy to contact is giving your visitors a reason to contact you. Not providing enough information on your website encourages your visitors to continue doing research. In the end, they’ll probably choose a competitor that provides lots of details about their company and the products and services they offer.
Finally, it is impossible to overstate the importance of organic search engine rankings. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your website content the best candidate for coveted top spots in Google among others. Earning the number one position for the right keywords is a competitive advantage you can’t achieve any other way.
To recap, your website should;
Wherever there are businesses, dozens of web designers will be fighting to win them as clients. Unfortunately, way too many business owners sink a lot of hard-earned capital into what turns out to be series of bad ideas—executed badly.
So, exactly how does a business owner get online without getting burned? To answer that question, we need to examine the industry.
To begin with, anyone can call him or herself a web designer. There are plenty of educational opportunities—colleges, certifications, online study… …you name it. However, most web designers teach themselves and quickly succumb to their own bad ideas.
It’s easy to be taken in by a web designer who uses all the right words, and confidently explains how their design is your ticket to online abundance. Sadly, their path down the information superhighway way too often turns out to be a World Wide Waste.
Your first line of defense should be developing an understanding of the Internet landscape and how various elements fit together. You don’t have to be a web designer to know the kind of online experience your customers expect. Mostly they want information, and they want it right now.
So, give it to them—right now. Web designers love to design. As a result it’s easy for them to put their priorities ahead of yours. They’ll propose all sorts of things that seem really cool, but come at the expense of page speed. Recent data shows that users will give you 2.6 seconds to decide whether or not they like your page. If that page takes more than 2.6 seconds just to load…
The best way to illustrate that is to experience it…
We've all experienced award winning websites that are miserably slow to load. The designer and the owner of the business are no doubt very proud of the online spectacle that’s been created. Everybody loves it…
…Except customers. They simply give up and move on to a competitor’s website that’s less frustrating.
The designer missed the mark because the designer’s priorities were given preference over the needs of the customer. It happens all the time.
Often, the designer simply has weak skills or obsolete ideas. A good web designer won’t ask you to live with website “quirks.” Everything should work exactly as you or your visitors expect. The entire user experience—as a customer as well as site administrator—should be natural, obvious and error-free.
Web technology moves fast. It is easy for a web designer to become out of step with the latest standards and best practices. This is particularly true with online search, or SEO. Many methods that were standard practice two or three years ago, can get your website de-indexed today. “De-indexed” basically means getting kicked off the Internet.
Spend some time researching current sources, including Google’s own documentation, to learn about SEO. You’ll not only feel empowered, but will likely learn many so called experts aren’t experts at all.
Most web designers have a poor understanding of business fundamentals. For this reason, the best “web designer” is usually a web agency with experts in consumer behavior, product positioning, conversion path optimization, engineering, security, and other critical business areas.
Web design doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be right. Your business and your sanity depend on it.
If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call or drop us a note.
Let me begin with a story. We have a client that went through half a dozen Internet marketing agencies prior to working with us. Those agencies did all the standard stuff: social media, PPC, landing pages, SEO… you name it. In every case, the agency added to the costs, but failed to make even a tiny impact on sales. Given that history, it is surprising that we are able to tell this story. Even as we were signing contracts, the client told me point blank that he didn’t believe our experience would be any different that what he’d been through with other marketing agencies. Fast forward a year… In about 12 months, we managed to place about 150 keywords on page 1 in Google. Those, by the way, are just the ones we’re tracking. There are probably another 300-400 top performing, related keywords that we don’t track. I’ll save an explanation of that for another article. Now, with hundreds of page one (most in the top 3) keyword rankings, you might expect tens of thousands of new visitors to the website. In reality, it’s closer to 4,000 per month. Big deal, right? Seems like a lot of work for 4,000 visits. Maybe, but here’s what those 4,000 new visitors mean to our client. From their own numbers, website form fills alone have lead to a little over $550,000 in revenue so far this year (FY17, as of August 1st.). Including web generated phone calls pushes YTD web-generated revenue close to a $million. Here’s the thing. For that $million in revenue, the client pays nothing to Google, and very little to the agency. The obvious question—What did we do differently? How is it that OCG Creative was able to tack on an extra million dollars in top-line revenue, after all the other agencies failed? The answer: Keyword selection. Well, keyword selection, coupled with being very good at SEO. Of course, you also have to provide your website visitors with what they were looking for when they decided to click, but it starts with optimal keyword selection.
There are three primary factors to keep in mind when selecting keywords for SEO. Lets examine them. User intent: A good way to look at this is to ask, what kind of problem is the searcher trying to resolve? When asked, clients typically suggest keywords (key-phrases) that are very broad. In SEO terms, we call them “short tail” phrases. An example of that would be “school supplies.” Short tail phrases tend to have the highest search volumes. In fact, 60,500 people search for “school supplies” every month. Compare that with “minecraft school supplies”, which receives about 720 searches per month. That’s just 1.19% of the search volume when you take away the word “minecraft.” It’s what we call a “long tail” keyword or key-phrase, and a virtual guaranteed better performer than “school supplies” by itself. The problem with short tail phrases is that they are nearly impossible to match to the problem your website visitor is trying to resolve. “School supplies” can be anything from soap for the nurses office to copy paper. The individual looking for “minecraft school supplies” probably has a 10 year old boy that’s into minecraft. (That’s a video game for those of you without a 10 year old boy.) The problem the searcher has is her kid wants minecraft themed stuff for school. (We can safely assume it’s a mom, because dad would try to make him get by with last year’s supplies. Let’s hope those karate lessons paid off, because any kid rolling into 5th grade with his 4th grade pencil box is the guaranteed object of ridicule.) The point is, regardless of the tiny relative search volume, “minecraft school supplies” is almost certain to make a sale. That very same mom conducting an initial search for “school supplies” is going to forced to keep searching. To further that point, we can generally assume about half of people searching for any given phrase will click on a result. Roughly a third of those will click on the top result. Number 2 gets about 20%, and #3, maybe 12% to %15. That works out to 120 website visits if your site is number one in the SERP (search engine results page). A highly targeted phrase is also going to have a high conversion rate. I’ve seen conversion rates as high as 70% for some keywords! Let’s aim lower, 25%, which would lead to 30 visitors making a purchase. To make that a little more digestible, I’ll break it down. Search volume, “minecraft school supplies”: 720 Searchers that clicked: 360 Click share for #1 in SERP: 33%, for 120 website visits Conversion rate: 25%, for 30 sales Let’s say the average sale is $50. That’s $1,500 per month in sales from a single keyword. Annualized, that’s $18,000 per year from one keyword! If you can identify 100 key-phrases like that one, similar numbers will produce $1.8M in annual revenue. It doesn’t even have to be 100 products. There might be 20 or more keywords different searchers use to find the same item. Since each searcher is a unique individual, the result is cumulative.
Shift your thinking from broad-match, high volume phrases, to long-tail phrases, highly focused on user intent. These are far easier to optimize for rankings, and will provide a directly measurable ROI. When selecting keywords, have a specific customer in mind that will take a predictable action. Know what problem the searcher is trying to resolve when searching that phrase, and provide the solution. Finally, set expectations for every keyword you choose to optimize. At minimum, include your anticipated click volume, conversion rate and average sale for each, and track them monthly. By planning your SEO efforts around specific keywords, selected based on user intent, you’ll be able to forecast their ROI. You’ll find it easier to achieve top rankings, and get a massive jump on your competitors.
In a recent post, I told the story of a client that enjoyed $550,000 in new revenue from online lead generation during the first 7 months of 2017. In actuality, the total is significantly higher, since that only includes form fills, and not web-generated phone calls. For the purpose of this discussion, form-fill data works just fine. Let me provide some context and break that down a bit. Prior to the start of our campaign, this company was averaging $5.5M annual revenue. $0.00 of that was generated by attracting new business online. I should mention that our efforts began a few months prior to January 1st., so we had a bit of runway leading up to FY17. Monthly, $550K breaks down to $78,571.43. Annualized, that’s a pace of just over 17.1% year over year. To understand what that means in terms of ROI (return on investment), we’ll need to dig a little deeper. Two key metrics are (1) the number of customers making up that revenue; and (2) how many times each customer will purchase over a lifetime. We know the cost of the contract, so we can calculate the cost per acquisition (CPA), as well as the lifetime value (LTV) for every new customer attracted through SEO. The formula is simple: ROI = LTV - CPA Determining the cost per acquisition is also simple. Just add up all the promotional costs and divide by the number of new customers generated from those efforts. Lifetime value is the amount each of those customers spends. If you are calculating the total return for a given effort, count all of the customers attracted by the campaign. For the above campaign, monthly sales of $78,571.43 represents 3.4 customers. So the average revenue per sale is $23,109.24. Most customers spend that annually and stick around for at least 3 years. Lifetime value (LTV), then, is $23,109.24 X 3, or $69,327.73. Still with me? The entire cost is the amount spent on SEO, which happens to be $5,500 per month. We just divide that by 3.4, the average number of customers acquired through online search in a given month. $5,500 ÷ 3.4 = $1,617.65. Now we can calculate the actual ROI using the formula. ROI = $69,327.73(LTV) - $1,617.65(CPA) ROI = $67,710.08 per month. ($812,520.96 per year) As a side note, that’s a CPA of about 2.4% of revenue. Most industries establish their marketing budgets around 4% to 6%, so 2.4% is very low. Obviously, not every business sells $23,000+ items, but the ratios are the same for every business. It is the relationship between CPA and LTV that determines the success of any marketing effort. It’s what our clients are really interested in, even if they’re not used to thinking in those terms. So, as you put together a plan leading into next year, using hard data in your lead generation planning will keep your forecasts as accurate as possible. Maintaining the relationship between revenue from each generated lead, relative to the cost of acquiring it, will also help you scale your plan.
Blogging on a consistent basis for your business can help boost your overall marketing and SEO efforts. Not to mention—it can be fun! However, if you’re new to blogging, the process can seem daunting. Where do I start? What do you I write about? These are all questions that might run through your mind at the thought of blogging for your company. Aside from being great for SEO, I always look at blogging as a way to take information that's unique to your business and share it with the world. For example, Danielle Litoff, a Doctor of Physical Therapy and Health Coach over at Battle Born Health, blogs monthly about physical therapy and various health related topics. Without the power of blogging, people wouldn’t have access to her years of experience and expertise on a large-scale. Think of it this way, you are the expert in your field, and now you’re able to share valuable information to educate and inform others. If you’re new to blogging, don’t worry—you can start small and build from there. Here’s some tips to help you get you started:
One of the things that business owners get caught up on most is the question, “What am I going to write about?” You'd be surprised by how much information you can share on your blog. That’s why it's a great idea to grab your team and brainstorm topics together. Make a long list, and don't leave anything out. That way, you’ll always have fresh ideas to choose from. If you need inspiration, you can browse other blogs in your industry to see what they’re writing about.
Blogger Tip: If you’re a beginner blogger, I recommend blogging once a week. If that intimidates you, start with a monthly or bi-monthly post and build momentum from there. The key is to pick a consistent schedule and stick to it!
Now that you have your topics picked, it’s time to set a deadline for writing, editing and posting blogs. In the world of writing, it’s absolutely imperative to stay organized and set reasonable deadlines that you can communicate clearly with your team. I promise you that 90% of the battle with writing is staying organized! If your team knows what day their writing is due, it makes the process much less stressful for everyone.
Organization Tip: Keep a digital calendar that can be shared across your team. Writing your personal deadlines on paper also helps keep them sharp in your memory.
List of interesting and engaging topics? Check. Deadlines set? Check. Now, it’s on to making an editorial calendar. Depending on your preference, you can manage your calendar online using a number of tools. Some tools that I like include: Google Calendar and Trello. Or, you can keep it old-school with paper. The most important thing is to keep it up to date and share it with your team. Setting up a google alert on your calendar can help remind you when to start writing posts, so you won’t miss a deadline. Now… it’s off to get some coffee so you can start writing! Happy Blogging!
