Living in the Internet era has it’s undoubted benefits. These days all information is only a click away, and it takes just a few minutes to find answers to almost any question you can possibly think of. We all know how to search but there is another side to this coin. What do you do if you (or your business) want to be found on Google?
More and more business owners and webmasters, no matter their size and industry, try to acquire higher search engine ranking to bring a stable flow of new users and therefore new business. But too many of them have no idea where to start with SEO or how to over rank bigger websites in the competition.
How can I rank my website and get to the top of Google?
If to simplify the answers, search engine optimization techniques can boil down to the list of bullet points below (and I’m sure you have seen them all):
- Make your website loads faster
- Ensure that your website is mobile friendly
- Improve usability
- Publish a lot of content
- Get other people to link to your site
- And, of course, add some relevant keywords to your meta titles, descriptions, and on-page content
Straightforward enough, isn’t it? The biggest difficulty here is that in practice, SEO optimisation tactics are not as simple as it seems from the first glance. What matters the most when it comes to better search engine placement is not only “what to do” but, most importantly “how to do it”. Let’s rephrase the list above to better illustrate what the is difference between what and how:
- How do I make my website faster?
- How to improve mobile performance and why does it matter for high search engine rankings?
- How to increase usability and improve sales funnels, and how do I know if my website is indeed user-friendly?
- How much is a lot, and what content should I publish?
- How to make people link to my site? And how many external links to my website do I need?
- How to choose which SEO keywords I should use?
If to search for each of these points, Google will return thousands of guides, hundreds of thousands of articles, and millions of SEO tricks. But what it won’t give you, is the strategy created specifically for your website, your business, your goals, and your budget.
We can help fulfil your SEO dreams!
Can I do SEO myself?
Indeed, who knows your goals, products, and services better than you? Probably not too many people. And yet it doesn’t mean that you are the best man for the job. One of the biggest SEO traps that we have seen in our over 12 years of SEO experience, is a blind love and faith in a business you try to promote.
Don’t get me wrong, in no way do I mean that your business doesn’t deserve to rank high in Google and be seen. On the contrary, every website and every company has something outstanding to offer. But, you have to keep in mind that the foundation of organic marketing is what users are searching for, and not particularly your offer.
Innovative technology, new tools and apps, inventions, gadgets, new materials your product is made of, your company name, specific service, and a lot of other details and unknown for an organic user. Your SEO tactics should be to find out what users need, want, and how they search for it, and then tie it together with your offer.
On the other hand, if your offering is more conventional, you will have to find a new angle, fresh approach, and less standard target terms to help you stand out from the competition and create a list of organic mini-targets to achieve on the way to conquer the biggest keywords.
Remember, SEO more than many other marketing channels is about how your audience thinks, not you. And this is exactly where professional SEO strategy comes into play.
Before you start your SEO journey, you need to refine your expectations, and create a very clear plan of action. Unlike conventional advertising and PPC (Pay Per Click), SEO is a long-term battle. This means that your monthly SEO budget might seem smaller than what you would allocate to other promotional initiatives but the return on investment will also take longer.
How long does SEO take to work?
Depending on your website, industry, goals, and budget, it can take anywhere from 1 month to several years. On average, however, 3 months would be a fair first milestone when you should start seeing first SEO improvements, assuming that the strategy was correct, and changes were actually implemented.
You see, time is the biggest pain point of SEO. If your initial strategy or implementation wasn’t up to par, it will take months to understand that something went wrong, and even longer to get it fixed.
On a more positive note, in return you get one of the most balanced marketing channels, that if optimised correctly, will grow gradually bringing stable and predictable results that will help you grow your business smoother than ever. Investing in SEO might seem expensive in the beginning, but the budget will not change too drastically over time, whereas your sales will. For example, if in your business expansion you were to rely exclusively on PPC or an off-line advertising, you would have to spend more to get more.
Get professional SEO help
One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to SEO, is that since it doesn’t directly require budget, it’s worth doing it yourself instead of spending money on additional services. At the end of the day, to get a placement in a local newspaper, you have to pay someone, whereas you could update your page content yourself or assign your intern to make changes for you.
This is true, so is that, with a little YouTube help you could fix your own car, do your own wedding makeup, or assign your intern to give a presentation at a board of directors meeting instead of you, and yet, not too many people do it, the stakes are simply too high. But how important is your business success for you?
As a startup ourselves, we completely understand that spending significant budget without a guarantee and an exact timeline on returns is tough. But business reality is trickier than that, most likely you will still have to hire developers, content writers, or spend hours of your own billable time striving to get to the top of Google.
Hiring a team of SEO experts or an agency, can help reduce unnecessary expenses, and free up your valuable time to focus on other aspects of your business.
Nurture and treat your business as you would yourself, and it will bring you returns that you deserve!
