In the world of online marketing, developing lasting, effective Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is the golden goose. SEO works around the clock to help keep your business at the top of the results page making sure that you are providing the right customers, with the right information, at the right time. This leads to increased conversions, leads, and sales. Read on to learn more about SEO, how it works, and why it is important for businesses.

What is SEO?

While there are many different definitions that fit the essence of search engine optimization, one of our favorites is “the practice of aggressively seeking first page placements on Google for targeted phrases”. These phrases are developed based on the products, goods, or services that a business offers and can range from “lawyers near me” to “commercial roofing repair for offices in Santa Rosa”. Again, it all depends on what the business does and what phrases they choose to target.

When thinking about starting SEO, there is an important question that any business should consider first. Do people find what they are looking for when they are on your website? If so, then you have a great foundation to begin launching an SEO campaign from.

So What Are the Parts of SEO?

SEO has 3 main parts: content, on-page optimizations, and back linking. Each of these practices plays a key role in helping guide and maintain an SEO campaign’s strategy. Here, we focus on content marketing and on-page optimizations.
Content Marketing

Though fairly self-explanatory, content marketing is the action of creating engaging, interesting content surrounding the products, goods, or services a business provides. This can include anything from blogs and long-form content to social media posts promoting a new service. Content marketing is an incredibly effective aspect of SEO, though it requires a large amount of effort.

While effective, not every business chooses to partake in content marketing. This can be for a variety of reasons. Maybe the business owner just doesn’t have time to set aside where they write thoughtful, relevant content or they aren’t confident in their writing abilities. Perhaps they have tried writing content in the past and didn’t feel the effects fast enough. Maybe they’d just prefer if someone else wrote the content. No matter how you look at it, content marketing is unarguably a key part of a strong SEO strategy.

When demand grows, many business owners believe they must outsource fulfillment. The truth is that you should consider outsourcing fulfillment now rather than later.

For businesses that prefer to outsource their digital marketing, there are reputable SEO companies in Sonoma County who have a proven record of providing measurable results of increased traffic and lead generation.

On-Page Optimizations

There are many things that webpages can be optimized for. A common goal is to create conversion focused webpages that help improve the user experience and user flow, encouraging visitors to convert into customers or clients. This can be accomplished through several ways.

• Website Speed: How fast is the website? If a website takes longer than 6 seconds to load visitors are likely to leave and go to a different website that loads faster.
• Content Relevance: Are the visitors navigating to the site finding answers related to whatever they are searching for? If not, how can the page be optimized to ensure that the visitors coming to it find what they are looking for.
• Promoting User Flow: Does the website encourage users to visit more than a single page? Ideally businesses want users to click through the site consuming a variety of content. If there aren’t calls to action (CTAs) encouraging visitors to explore the site more, can they be added to improve effectiveness?
• NAP Uniformity: The name, address, and phone number make up the core contact information that prospective customers are going to be looking for when they are considering using a business’s services. Are these easily visible? More so, are they consistent across your website, social media, and Google Business Listing?

Paid Search Doesn’t Build SEO

Paid search campaigns (or pay per click) don’t inherently generate SEO by themselves. With paid search, the results are instantaneous. As soon as the campaign is turned on your ads are visible on the top of Google, if the campaign is well designed. It’s important to understand that paid search can be useful to create leads now while the gestational process of search engine optimization is beginning to churn.

In the long run, SEO will always be what businesses should strive for. After all, once your budget runs out your ads stop showing. But your placements on a Google results page work around the clock.

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?
This can prove to be a tricky question as there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer. While every campaign experiences its own rate of growth, the average SEO campaign can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months to hit its stride. SEO is a long term investment in the online growth of your business and, as mentioned previously, continues to work around the clock once it is in full gear.

Google routinely crawls websites online to determine both the nature of the site and the relevance of their content, which affects their results page rankings. With this in mind, a well-designed SEO strategy creates thoughtful, relevant content which, when combined with back linking and on-page optimizations, garners more favorable results page rankings.

How Can You Improve Your Online Presence?

SEO is a fantastic way for any business to significantly improve their online presence, given that they are willing to trust the process. When done well, SEO yields amazing results for businesses. Content marketing will help your website build domain authority and maintain relevance for visitors looking for goods, products, or services you provide.

Not sure where to start? Partnering with a reputable SEO company in Sonoma County is a great place to ensure your SEO campaign has a strong foundation. At WSI Smart Marketing, our team of professionals has the technical know-how to generate the traffic and leads your business is looking for. For a free consultation, please call us at (707) 843-3714.