Thinking It’s Too Late to Prioritize SEO, Think Again!
However, the latter point isn’t entirely true. As we have learned through our car dealership digital marketing, there are quick wins to enjoy from SEO, yes. Many of the larger benefits will likely come down the road, but there are plenty of reasons to optimize a website for benefits in the short-term. Every business will benefit in perpetuity when they are willing to put the effort into SEO marketing.
While a lot of marketing techniques focus on the needs and desired outcome of the advertiser, search engine optimization is all about adding value to the customer experience. Every step of a quality SEO plan should fall back on whether it helps the online user get the information they are looking for. The first step of SEO work is usually keyword research. This is a process that allows a business or organization to see what the monthly search volume is for the terms that are most relevant for their business. It’s good to go after terms that are competitive, but not too competitive. For instance, a shoe store selling Nike sneakers should not expect to compete for the term Nike sneakers. However, a shoe store in a suburb that sells Nike sneakers could look at terms like Nike shoe store near me or Nike sneakers near me. These local terms will have high search volume and by optimizing the website to represent the store location, it can bring in more foot traffic rather quickly.
Once the keywords have been determined for a page, it’s important that the page content is then optimized for those terms. This starts with the Meta title, Meta description and H1 tags. Meta titles and Meta descriptions are what shows up in the search engine results underneath the website link to show searchers what type of information the page is offering. Meta titles are typically the two main keywords and then the brand name. The Meta description should feature these keywords and have a clear call-to-action. When applicable, it’s great to include a phone number as this may convert some customers without them ever visiting the website. The Meta title and the header of the page should align with one another. This not only helps the search engines understand what the page is looking to rank for, it also helps the user understand clearly what information they can expect from the site.
When the correct keywords are chosen, there’s usually a quick jolt of improvement in the search engine rankings. This may just mean a site goes from three terms appearing in the top 100 pages of the Google search engine results to now 25, but it’s progress that can be tracked over time. Current customers who utilize your website will appreciate the increase in professionalism and will spend more time on the site, which helps create brand loyalty in the short-term as well.
The best marketing plans call for a mix of search engine optimization and paid search tactics. Paid search starts with a similar process in identifying the terms that your target customers search most often. Once these terms are identified, a paid search marketer must consider the cost of the search term. The cost is determined by the search volume and competition levels for the search phrase. Paid search is all about guaranteeing real estate on the terms most important to a business. Paid search can be monitored in real-time so businesses can ramp up early and slowly start to pull back once they see the full fruits of their SEO labor.
If you want to learn more about how you can implement an SEO or paid search strategy for your business, reach out and contact our team. We’ll be happy to walk you through it step-by-step.
