New business owners already have a lot to worry about. Where should I put up my physical store? How do I advertise my business? How much should I charge for my product or service?
However, one of the things that’s a no-brainer in 2021 is the fact that you need to invest in online marketing for your business to succeed, especially while we’re still amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trends show that the number of people who prefer to shop and transact online is increasing every year. Thanks to the events of 2020, the trend has only accelerated. Businesses who relied solely on their brick-and-mortar stores to get revenue suffered, while those who migrated online early or even had an online presence before the pandemic managed to stay afloat.
Online marketing is more than just having a website or a social media page. If you’ve done your research, you may have heard of all these online marketing strategies and techniques, but among all of them, none generate hype quite like search engine optimization (SEO) does.
What is SEO?
SEO is a strategy that focuses on boosting your website’s ranking on search engine sites, be it Google, Yahoo, Bing, or others. The reason this is desirable is that experts observed that the higher a website is on the search ranking, the more traffic they get. Carrying out SEO effectively has many benefits, from increasing brand awareness to improving your business’s reputation. This is also an attractive strategy for many business owners because it’s low-cost and high return.
How is SEO done?
You start an SEO strategy by picking which techniques you want to use. That could mean implementing your strategy on your own or enlisting the help of the best SEO company in Houston. While the exact criteria that search engines use to rank the search results are kept secret, experts have analyzed the algorithm and have identified some of them. With this information, they developed techniques that are guaranteed to improve site ranking. Among these techniques are:
- Link building. Increasing the number of external websites that link back to your site
- Keyword research. Determining which search terms to target and using those terms in your site content
- Website optimization. Improving your website’s look and functionality to improve user experience
It’s also crucial that you select SEO tools to monitor your SEO progress. Identify clear and concrete goals so you know what’s working. Use previous SEO metrics data to adjust your strategy as needed. SEO campaigns are not something you implement and leave alone. Search engine algorithms change constantly, so you need to adjust your strategy with it to stay on top.
The truth is, running an SEO campaign is so complex that it’s practically a full-time job. The easiest way to get started on SEO is, of course, to work with an SEO agency. SEO has become so popular that it has sprouted an industry of its own, composed of consultants, creatives, and other personnel necessary to run your campaign. However, if you’re short on funds, it’s still possible to do SEO. The downside is, it will be time-consuming and challenging.
