How to rank higher in online searches
By Lucy Schultze
There has never been a more important time to connect with potential customers through online search.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought even the holdouts among us into a new relationship with technology. People were already using Google to find everything from lawn care to dry cleaning. But as the pandemic quashed traditional marketing efforts like events, sponsorships and in-person sales, the need to reach people through search suddenly earned a new urgency.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term with which all business owners are familiar, but few have had the time to become experts in SEO.
Essentially, an SEO program works to help your business rank higher organically when people are searching for the goods or services you provide — as opposed to increasing reach through paid search advertising.
A robust SEO effort can also capture their attention while they are searching for phrases related or adjacent to your main business niche, allowing you to connect with them earlier in their research and buying process.
Often, when people ask our team “Do you do SEO?” what they mean is “Do you do that magic that makes my website pop up first?” We would love to simply answer, “Yes, we do!” But the truth is, there’s no magic about it. It’s a multifaceted effort that takes strategy, skill and time.
How can I improve search rankings for my business?
If you are looking for the right SEO solution, it can be challenging to know what you actually need (and what you don’t need) and find the specific service to provide it.
There are seemingly infinite agencies and vendors online that offer SEO services. To compare apples to apples, you need to first understand the specific services they provide. For example, they may address a specific component of SEO, when there are actually many components that factor into your rankings:
Onsite SEO — Structuring your website in a way that aligns with how search engines scan websites.
Keyword Optimization — Finding which keywords your audience is using most in searches and spreading those across your site.
Content Strategy — Putting content on your website that perfectly answers the questions your potential customers are searching.
Link Building — Ensuring your website appears in all the major directories around the web. The more credible places your website is linked across the web, the more credibility you are given by search engines.
Local SEO — Making you more visible to searchers in your geographic area.
SEO Monitoring — Tracking how you are ranking over time and continuously adjusting efforts to better help your traffic.
“It can be challenging to know what SEO services you need — and don’t need.”
How long does SEO take?
Investing in SEO is a long-term strategy designed to compound and add value over time.
Depending on what you already have in place, there are certain things that can return almost immediate results. More often than not, the strategies a team like ours would put in place begin with extensive research, building of new content and a restructuring of what is already on a website.
The work starts with gaining a clear understanding of what your business actually needs as far as SEO services. In particular, for smaller markets and less-competitive fields, only a limited investment in SEO may make sense. Your SEO strategy and services should be tailored to what you already have in place, and where you want to be.
If you are more interested in seeing quick results, it makes sense to pair an SEO program with a pay-per-click Google ads campaign, which can drive results immediately. While businesses can create their own Google ad campaigns, an agency like ours works to segment and refine the ad campaign, delivering a lower cost per click with more targeted results.
The most important part of your strategy — and the part that can take the longest to complete — is optimizing your website. This can involve restructuring your website to be more easily readable by search engine, building content into your website that earns you credibility, or rewriting the content that already lives on your website with specific keywords in mind.
Along with pairing the right type of strategy with SEO for your business, it is essential to make your website both fast enough and mobile-friendly since Google has moved to a “mobile-first” index. This means that your website needs to cooperate efficiently with smartphones to ensure it is both ranked highly and indexed properly. Cross-linking — the process of linking one webpage to another — also increases your search engine rank.
SEO is not a one-time transaction. It takes consistent monitoring, attention to how the landscape of search is constantly changing, and an understanding of how consumers interact with search engines.
How does SEO fit into a broader marketing strategy?
Finding you is only the first step. How will your potential customers determine whether to choose you among the other options they can find through search?
This is the heart of what’s known as “inbound marketing,” a term that, simply put, means we meet potential customers where they are and bring them to you. It’s about understanding what consumers are actually looking for, even if they aren’t searching for that outright. This phrase captures the way our team works with many of our clients.
We focus on understanding how your audience is interacting with a search engine. If a potential customer is searching for storage solutions, a storage unit could solve their problem. If you own a storage company, a piece of content on your website titled ‘Storage Solutions for Small Spaces,’ that gives valuable information about storage tips and suggests a storage unit as a possible solution, would draw in that consumer.
When a consumer finds exactly what they are looking for in your website, especially displayed in a professional and thoughtful way, there is an automatic level of trust established. Positioning your brand as a knowledgeable source of information is what makes you stand out.
“Give them ways to find you — and reasons to choose you.”
What does SEO cost?
Some things to think about as you consider potential SEO needs for your business: What will they find once they locate you? Does your website or landing page have the content searchers are looking for?
Improving your SEO is not just making a check out to Google and hoping for the best; it’s about understanding how search engines are cataloging and delivering information, what your audience is looking for and what they expect to find when they get there.
SEO strategy can be as simple as rewording a few key paragraphs on your website, or it can be a total overhaul of your presence across the web. It all depends on where you are now and where you are trying to be.
While you can find a wide range of SEO solutions for sale online, it’s our belief that SEO services bring the most value within the context of a broader communications program — and that the scale of an SEO effort should be the right match for a client’s specific goals and competitive landscape.
What SEO approach is right for you?
Do some of your business lines make sense for an SEO campaign more than others? Where are your prime opportunities to grow your business through search?
Are you ready to see your results improve? Red Window Communications can review your current standing in the world of SEO, and create a custom strategy designed to help your business rank higher and attract more customers.
