03 Mar Growing Your SEO Part 2
As so much of the marketing focus of businesses is aimed online, I wanted to share a few more insights with you on the topic of growing your SEO results. To fully appreciate my insights, you may want to revisit my previous post on the topic, to review my analogy of how SEO rankings can be compared to lawn care.
What if I asked you to imagine a really nice lawn? You’d probably describe one that’s weed free, beautifully green, well maintained and spacious. (If it’s been a while since you’ve cared about your lawn, think estate property or a high end golf course if you need help with that.) If the lawn is big enough and green enough to make you turn your head as you drive by, cause you to imagine it in a show home magazine, or if you can picture a young couple getting their wedding photos taken there… then we’re probably on the same page now. That green grass is what I’d like to compare to top ranking results on Google.
Was it always that way? Nope, it’s the result of goals, planning, maintenance and investment. Maybe you already have a website, but in “grass terms “, it’s not green at all. In fact, your SEO lawn is brown, crunchy, and hasn’t had much traffic in a while. Maybe there are some navigation glitches that make it hard for customers to find the information their looking for, you’ve got some links that don’t work, or other little problems that discourage exploration like metaphorical thistles. What can you do to green up your SEO results?
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK: Depending on your site, you may need what I’ll call a lawn reno. That may mean that you need to dig it up, and start with some landscaping that makes the most of your property appeal. The landscaping elements of your website are the design and functionality that makes your website look inviting, stylish, and provides visitors with a positive experience.
THE SEED: When choosing grass seed you want to choose a high quality seed that’s intended for the climate you live in. In SEO terms, starting with good seed is starting with content that suits your ideal audience of existing and potential clients, customers, readers and admirers. It’s content that includes references to the search terms and intentions of your audience.
THE FERTILIZER: You’ll want your new grass to be healthy with all the nutrients it needs. Growing your web traffic and subsequently the influence of your brand online requires some “reseeding”. You may need to tweak some content to get more qualified web traffic, or bring people to your website from other sources such as other marketing materials, referrals, social media sites, blogging and videos.
THE PESTICIDE: Naturally you’ll want to ensure that your website is free of ” weeds”, such as links that don’t work, 404 pages that aren’t found, content that’s bringing the wrong kind of traffic, or non-responsive design that is discouraging mobile viewers. It takes regular monitoring of your analytics to see where your traffic is coming from, what they’re looking for, and what is of most interest to them so that you can weed out anything that may be working against you.
THE VARIABLES: Of course there are environmental things that you can’t control. How green your grass looks is very relative to the green of the neighbouring properties. Maybe when you built your website, you were the only one in your area offering your service. Now there is a whole development of competitors with their own lawns popping up around you. The expertise you’ve acquired by being “in business for 30 years” is not always apparent to your online customers.
And then there’s the weather, those search engine algorithms that crawl through your site to sort out the most relevant information for searchers. Yes, you may have better weather (aka search engine results) elsewhere, but if your customers all prefer Google, those are the weather conditions to focus on.
The point I want to make about SEO results is this: The results are not instant, and they are not a one time action. They are a cumulative result of many things that can be influenced, but not guaranteed. If you’d like to improve your site for search engine optimization, we’d like to help.
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