Raise your hand—or give us a silent nod—if you want more customers or clients. More sales. More donations. And generally just more eyeballs of your content. Both art and science, SEO can help bring more visitors to your website (and help keep them there).
Search engine optimization (SEO) is many things
When clients ask us how to get to the top of the search results, it boils down to a few things:
- What content is on your site & how relevant it is to someone's search
- How often your site is updated
- How your content is actually marked up (coded)
- Who can vouch for your content—links from high quality websites
- Is your website mobile friendly?
- How quickly does your your website load?
- ... and much more!
The methods Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other engines use to index, sort, rank, and display website search results are proprietary.
Google in particular takes into account hundreds of different factors, some of which are public, but most are not.
And just to throw wrenches in the mix, search engines are always adjusting their page ranking methods—so what worked in the past won't always work in the future (Google's latest Panda and Penguin updates, for example).
Content strategy + technical wizardy = improved SEO
So, not only is improving your site's page ranking a technical exercise, a lot of times it can actually be a fundamental shift in your website's overall strategy, including content creation, navigation and page structure.
It's more than just adding a few keywords and tweaks to your site's "meta tags." (In fact, Google doesn't even use the "keywords" meta tag any more.) Good search engine optimization is really about carefully adjusting each page and creating new content to reflect the results you're looking to obtain.
No one can guarantee a top placement
We're pretty good at what we do but we'd be lying through our teeth if we could guarantee you the top spot for every search a user types in—that just doesn't happen. (Google even mentions to be very wary of any website or SEO firm who promises otherwise.)
Good SEO results don't materialize overnight either; it can often take weeks or months after you start a content marketing campaign for changes to affect your ranking. When we perform SEO services, we give you realistic expectations of what to expect.
The long tail phrase
Today's SEO is not about expecting huge results in a short amount of time—especially for extremely competitive, short phrases. Searchers today are using longer and longer keyword phrases, which turns out is ideal for niche markets.
The great thing about the Internet is there is someone searching for your niche, today. Are you capitalizing on these?
SEO from Green Bay, WI
Oftentimes for local business SEO, targeting keyword phrases using geography (like SEO Services in Green Bay, Wisconsin) can help you business rank locally. But ultimately the goal of any search engine marketing campaign is useable content.
The silver lining
The good news is ultimately when you have an effective strategy and killer content, obtaining a top website ranking often takes care of itself with just a little marketing—so people share your content—and getting people who love your content to link back to you.