The overall aim of optimising your website through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is to raise its profile in the search engines – to improve rankings and traffic. However, you should never lose sight of the primary goal – to actually increase sales and/or enquiries. Fundamental to effective SEO (but often overlooked by site owners) should be the setting of realistic goals – and monitoring those goals to see what impact your optimisation activities are actually having. Defining these goals, and setting realistic expectations on how they can be achieved is an important first step in any optimisation strategy.
I’ve outlined below 5 fundamental elements that every site owner should consider before they embark on an optimisation campaign for their website.
1. It will take time
SEO is rarely a quick solution – it takes time to put in place optimisation strategies, and time for the search engines to pick up on and react to those activities. Depending on the strategy, and the current status of your site, it is possible that you will see some change relatively quickly – sometimes within days. However, quick improvements may also only last short term. More substantial improvements, in rankings and traffic, which tend to “stick” will usually take weeks or even months to show up. Of course while you’re waiting, and if you want some quick short term gains, you could always spend money on PPC. However, obviously once you stop paying for PPC the traffic will also stop. This is not necessarily a bad thing – and as long as the returns generated by PPC outweigh the cost, there are valid reasons to keep PPC as an ongoing strategy. SEO could be considered as an investment while PPC is just like paying rent – they both drive traffic, but SEO is far more sustainable than PPC (providing less risk and often greater long term reward).
2. You will probably have to change some things
I love the saying “If you want to change something in your life – you need to change something in your life” – meaning that if you keep on doing the same things in life, then why should you expect anything to change? This clearly applies to your website as well – if you want the search engines to start ranking your site better, you need to give them a good reason to do so, and this will involve change, which will probably include adding more content, changing the site structure, or building more links.
3. Monitor & measure
In order to monitor improvement, you need to know where you are at. But what statistics and metrics matter the most for your business? The answer is probably not simply rankings and traffic. Your site’s Conversion rate (the percentage of your site visitors which buy your product/make an enquiry/signup for your newsletter/take any desired action on your site) is also very important (and arguably more so). Monitoring and measuring the behaviour of visitors to your website through analytics is VERY important and helps you gain an important insight into how your business operates (and can be improved).
4. Keywords Research is Critical
There is no such thing as too much Keyword Research, keep in mind that what is relevant and hot today, may be yesterday’s news tomorrow. There is no such thing as too much keyword research, so dig deep into trends while improving traction for your market’s root phrases and lucrative two and three word keyword combinations.
5. SEO is not Set and Forget
Once your site achieves good rankings/traffic/sales, you should not assume that it always will. The internet is growing at a frightening pace, with more and more websites added daily, and some of these new sites will probably be in your own niche, competing directly against you. Your existing competitors, will also be striving to improve their own rankings, and probably getting smarter about SEO and optimisation for their own sites. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to continually evolve and improve your site – but don’t get complacent, and make sure that you keep an eye on the competition.
Ireckon Web Marketing specialise in Search Engine Optimisation and Conversion Optimisation. If you would like to discuss raising the online profile and optimisation of you own website, please feel free to contact us for a chat.
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