At the heart of it, search engine optimization (SEO) is a race. Actually, it’s a marathon, a never-ending marathon.
It’s a tally of the best resources online for any given search query, and search queries take lots of forms from single keyword searches to full on questions.
When a business adopts an SEO strategy, they do so to rank highly in that tally. But that tally is a constantly moving target. Why? Well, because the internet is a constantly changing environment.
Websites come and go. They change, they grow and the resources online change every second. It’s not a static resource. So the strategy to achieve a high position in an index that ranks its resources, one has to enact a fluid and constant strategy.
One of the biggest misconceptions about SEO for businesses owners is that once you rank on Page 1 of Google, you’ve achieved your goal. Well, perhaps. But you have to remember that there are thousands of other businesses out there looking to achieve that goal as well. If you’re able to implement a winning strategy that gets you to Page 1, it won’t keep you there without consistent tending.
The same fundamentals that help a website reach Page 1 of search engine results pages are also necessary on an ongoing basis to keep one there. Other websites are constantly storming the gates to topple Page 1 rankings, and set-it-and-forget-it strategies (if they ever get you there in the first place) certainly won’t prevent your site from being pushed back to Page 2, 3 and eventually beyond.
Winning SEO strategies always, always, always involve consistent and strident fundamentals implemented day-in and day-out. Website growth (resource growth) is the name of the game. That means content development, link-building, Google-My-Business Page management and activity, and other powerful SEO tools must constantly be in play in order to keep the hounds at bay wherever you rank in search. And that’s only the beginning of a winning SEO strategy.
You’ve got to study your competitors. You’ve got to know what kinds of SEO strategies they are implementing, where the holes in their search engine status are and how to exploit them on your own site, where the holes are in your own strategy and how to fill them and more. And this takes metrics and research. Getting to Page 1 is difficult, to be sure, for almost any industry today online. But staying there is anything but a single-effort operation.
It takes constant, consistent tending and re-tending. But for many businesses the rewards add up.
Seventy-percent of website traffic limits their site visits to the websites that rank on Page 1 of search engine results. If your website can capture he lion’s share of that traffic consistently, you can feed your business the targeted leads it needs to achieve real growth. And who doesn’t want that?
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to help develop a powerful SEO strategy to build targeted website traffic for your site and grow your brand, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!