SEO Process

It would baffle people how often I speak with prospective clients and hear “we need SEO help”.  Well that may be true, they do need help with their SEO.  However its a different then they expect.  After doing an initial audit, you quickly realize that they have little to no content.  Clients and business people not knowing the in’s and out’s of the industry or digital marketing altogether.  People hear “SEO” and think of it as a magic wand you wave and BOOM goes the dynamite.  They expect to see a massive influx in traffic and customers.

Sadly this is not what SEO is, and is not more importantly.  To begin simply put SEO is a process of helping search engines (like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc).  In order to help these search engines we “optimize” the content so it is easy for these search engines to audit a page and its content.  Notice I underlined “content” as it is the most important in that statement.  For search engines it is critical to show the most relevant digital content first.

This is where it starts to become complicated [a bit] for the everyday person.  Search engines give certain types of behaviors a value, and punitive values for others.  Here is a great example of how the same thing can be good or bad depending on the content.

If you use 25 keywords you want to be searched, and are not properly [according to the search engine’s algorithm] nested in your text, search engines will demote your site.  However if the 25 keywords properly represent the text, they will actually promote you in the organic search results.  The key is to know all these triggers and potholes to watch for.  In fact in recent years several companies have created SEO periodic table of elements.

Before the next time you say “We need SEO work done on our site”, ask yourself “how much content do we have to optimize (in the first place)?  It is important to understand that the road to a well optimized site requires there to be both a concentrated effort to add the correct content for your marketing strategy, and to make sure that it is properly optimized.  Lastly, and this can not be undervalued; Give it time!  SEO does not work over night.

Social has been the major game changer for SEO in the last decade, and warrants its own article so stay tuned…