What to Expect From SEO

In my opinion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long term marketing investment you make in your business. There are several reasons why I say this, so let’s jump right in and take a look at what you can expect from SEO.

First of all, search engine optimization is a broad term and it means different things to different people. But one thing is for sure: We can all agree on the expected outcomes of search engine optimization – (1) higher rankings and (2) more traffic from qualified visitors.

How long will it take to get higher rankings and more traffic from qualified visitors?

HERE’S THE SHORT VERSION

Most marketing niches with a reasonable budget and a knowledgeable SEO team on their side can achieve Google first page ranking for one or more keywords within 3-6 months. Ranking #1 can take much longer (from 6 months to several years), depending on how strong the #1 site is and how SEO-active they are.

You want to be #1 for keywords with exact local monthly traffic of 1,000+ searches as reported by Google’s keyword tool. While being on the first page of Google is great for your ego, it won’t do much for your traffic – unless your keyword has 500,000 exact local monthly searches.  Unfortunately, keywords with that sort of search volume are usually ultra-competitive and very broad.  It’s best to drill down a bit and focus on the words and phrases that are more targeted and describe exactly what your business is about.

Here’s a real life SEO case study of a client site and how we achieved 8x higher traffic in 7 months after implementing SEO (combined with his active 3-5x per week blogging and social media activity).

Other client stories are somewhat similar.  Contact me with your website and your target keywords and we can begin to get an idea of what you can expect from SEO.

NOW HERE’S THE LONG VERSION

How long will it take to get higher rankings and more traffic from qualified visitors?

It depends on several factors:

1. Quality Of Website Content – Does your website communicate a clear purpose? Is it easy to navigate and does it give people what they want? If you have a website with poor content and a bad layout, your visitors are just going to leave and your bounce rate will through the roof. With a bounce rate near 100%, Google is never going to reward you with sustained high rankings, no matter how much SEO work you do. Simplify your site’s purpose, clean up your layout, and watch your site’s bounce rate drop in Google Analytics. Your visitors will stay longer, visit more pages, and Google will reward you accordingly.

2. Frequency Of Adding Content – I’ve seen hard proof that adding fresh, quality content on a frequent basis has an enormous impact on the amount of traffic your website attracts. Each time you add a piece of content, you give Google searchers new ways to find you. Plus, Google loves content, so the more the better. But don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. You are trying to build a following and you don’t do that by adding poor quality content. When you speak about your business, give insight, share strategy, and educate. Build trust and you will build traffic.

As for frequency, I would add content as often as you can, either by writing it yourself, opening your site up to guest bloggers, or paying to have someone else write content and post it to your site for you (after you proof their work).

3. Link Building – Creating backlinks to your website is generally considered the “meat” of search engine optimization work. The quality, relevancy, and diversity of incoming links to your site’s pages have a big impact on how well your site ranks in Google for various keywords.

4. On-Page Optimization – On-Page SEO refers to the optimization of the titles, header tags, descriptions, keyword density, image alt tags, internal linking and # of words on each of your site’s pages. If your home page content is wonderful and talks all about restoring old cars, that’s great. But if your title tag says “Home”, your images “alt” tags are blank, and you have no header tag, you don’t do yourself any favors toward higher search rankings.

5. Competition. The strength of your competitor’s websites is a key factor in determining how long it will take you to achieve high rankings in Google. If you want to hit #1 for a keyword and the current #1 site is a Goliath, it could take years of adding content and creating backlinks to wrangle the #1 spot. You might be better off fine-tuning your niche and ranking for less competitive keywords, then taking on Goliath later down the road, once your site has achieved some authority within Google. The competitiveness of the keywords we build your small business SEO strategy on is one of the main factors in determining how long it will take to see increased traffic to your website. For most niches, you can usually reach page 1 of Google search results within 3-6 months, although we’ve seen results quicker.

Small businesses who see the best results from SEO have a few things in common: (1) They create quality content, (2) they create quality backlinks from a diversity of sources, and (3) they commit to SEO for a long period of time.

SEO’s benefits are long lasting. It is easier to keep a #1 ranking than it is to achieve a #1 ranking. And once you achieve multiple #1 rankings, you are locked in to a permanent flow of organic traffic that can last a long time and dramatically impact the growth of your business.

But it’s not all about rankings.  In fact, traffic is the most important indicator of successful SEO and internet marketing.  Successful online marketers see a steady rise in search traffic (save for seasonality), as they continue to add quality content, fine tune their site per Google’s webmaster guidelines, and work on building relationships with other sites and businesses found online.

This is where we can help you.  We specialize in working with small business owners to help them achieve greater sales and a more valuable website, through SEO and internet marketing strategy.

Contact us with your website and your target keywords and we can put together a proposal that helps you increase your sales and improve your business’s bottom line.

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