For those of you who are bewildered by what SEO is, or at least confused by the crowd of SEO service vendors who never explain it, here’s the short answer: Almost all of SEO consists of keyword research pertaining to the client’s site, which means that it’s unique for every client. For the long answer, keep reading.
Not surprisingly, the bargain-basement SEO providers use a cookie cutter approach, which will not give you the results you hope for. All they do is submit your website address to Google, Yahoo, and Bing, maybe with a description link and your contact info, and that’s it. True, all of these things are important SEO details, but by themselves they’re pretty much worthless. The bottom line is, if you’re using a vendor who is not ranking your business site on the first page of Google search results, you’re wasting your money.
All right, then, what IS involved in SEO nowadays?
Keyword phrases, that’s what. Although not just any keyword phrases, as you probably guessed. All web searches, even through voice tools like Siri, are based on keywords, so at the end of the day, the only way that Google can rank your site in a top position is by indexing the keyword phrases it contains. That’s what it’s already doing with competing websites.
Of course, you can’t just stuff a bunch of pages with dozens of keywords you want to rank for: Google blocks your site listing for that kind of activity. That’s where content comes in. When online marketers talk about “content marketing” it’s really just shorthand for the use of valuable keywords woven into blogs, or used as hashtags in other content, such as videos or podcasts. We can’t teach you about content marketing, or about what makes a keyword phrase “valuable,” in a single blog post. But we can work with you personally (at your office or on WebEx) to help you figure out what your most valuable keywords are.
And from there, the marketing fun begins!
Feel free to drop us an email if you have any questions.
