If you run a business or manage a website, chances are you’re familiar with the term “SEO.” If not, or if you have been too shy to ask, let me give you a quick rundown.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a digital marketing technique that started in the mid 1990’s when the Internet started to really take hold. This can also refer to the people doing the SEO, the Search Engine Optimizers. The goal of SEO is to increase the relevancy of a given website by working with certain aspects of a site to make it more search engine and user friendly, therefore, moving it closer to the top of search rankings. When internet users type in a given keyword that a certain organization would like to be ranking for, like “wedding catering des moines,” the goal would be to get that organization’s website as close as possible to the number one search result on Google, Yahoo or Bing.
A few things to keep in mind about SEO
SEO takes time
If your current SEO company or web development firm has promised you quick results from their SEO program, chances are there are some illegal tactics happening on your site. By illegal I mean against the rules that Google, Yahoo or Bing have put out for webmasters to follow. Black hat tactics like stuffing your page full of keywords, creating page titles that are hundreds of characters long and buying bad backlinks to try and trick search engines into thinking your site is well-connected, can all hurt your site and have negative effects on your search rankings.
In our ongoing SEO clients, many of our clients who are doing well in terms of their SEO campaigns have been working with us on a monthly basis for anywhere from three months to a year. Good SEO and higher search rankings are not an overnight process and it takes time to get to where your brand wants to be.
Your Competitors also do SEO
You might think you’re the only one in the area who is doing intense SEO work, but you’re probably wrong. Your competitors might be doing SEO as well; even if it’s sub-par SEO with mediocre time commitments and efforts, they are still doing things to get them to the top. We keep this in mind and track your rankings against your main competitors to see what we need to be doing to get your site above theirs.
It constantly changes
Yahoo and Bing unfortunately don’t have incredibly advanced search algorithms. Fun fact: Yahoo and Bing are also essentially the same search engine. They use the same algorithm to create a search directory, so their results aren’t quite as accurate as they are on Google. Google, on the other hand, is a search giant. They release hundreds of updates a year, sometimes up to two or three a day, and are designed to shake up the results and weed out bad sites. The hard part about SEO is figuring out which updates have made a huge impact on search results and how to change SEO efforts to keep your site at the top.
SEO takes work
Good SEO and ideal search rankings cannot be achieved overnight. Like I mentioned before, SEO takes time. But something else to consider is that it also takes work. At Webspec, we believe that a monthly hours budget where we spend our time improving your site over the course of the month is the best approach for improving search results. It’s not a full time, 40 hour a week effort, but it is something that takes a significant amount of hours over the course of a month to achieve.
SEO in an ongoing process
Many people think that SEO is a one and done task on their website. Forget this notion immediately. Sure, launching your site with a strong initial SEO set up and good content structure is important, but if you never touch your SEO again after that, Google is going to notice and punish your site. Ongoing SEO is the way to make sure your site is where you want it to be in the search rankings and that it stays there.
Why should I pay for ongoing SEO work with Webspec Design?
Many of our clients will ask this question before signing on to do ongoing SEO on their site. Whether or not we built their site in the first place, we can still help improve rankings. Through a combination of good SEO practices, content creation and programming changes, our SEO team caters to improving search rankings for your site in Google (as a result, this also hits the SEO requirements for Yahoo and Bing). If you’re interested or curious at all, here are more reasons to do ongoing SEO.
- When you google your company name, your corporate site or some other company comes up first.
- If you type in your main service and location, like “wedding catering des moines” or “carpet cleaning des moines iowa” and your competitors come up first, or you don’t show up on the first three pages.
- If your current web development company or your SEO company have never mentioned SEO to you or if they are saying they have done work on your site and you haven’t seen any concrete plans or results.
- If you want to get your website on the first page of search results but you don’t have the time to figure out how to do SEO or the time to put into making it better.
- If you don’t feel like your PPC campaign or your advertising efforts are working to get you more business. Ongoing SEO with Webspec targets your organic search results, something that doesn’t fade out over time. Magazine ads or radio spots disappear after a while; organic search results are much more lasting with ongoing SEO efforts.
- If you’re proud of your brand new website, but your customers or clients haven’t been able to find you.
- Don’t have time to write? We can write all your content, blogs and press releases.
- If your content is not original or if your website is lacking content in general.
- Bonus reasons! If you still aren’t sure about ongoing SEO with Webspec:
a. You get a weekly report of progress as well as a monthly report of your keyword rankings and Google Analytics progress from your campaign manager.
b. You get ongoing programming, design and content help from Webspec Design.
c. We do all the research in house.
d. Your website is always going to be improved.
e. There’s always someone you can call/email to answer your questions.
f. Our own website ranks nationally for words like “PHP development” and is at the top for “iowa web design” and “des moines web design.”
Interested? Contact us today! We would be happy to answer your questions and get your site started on the path to a stronger digital marketing and SEO effort, which means more business for you.
