When business owners are looking at a search engine optimization (SEO) investment it is very important that they understand the nature of the investment; a long term solution with an extremely high return.
A good way to look at SEO is as an investment into establishing highly valuable real estate for your business online. The first page organically of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) is the most coveted real estate around for a business website right now because over 92% of searchers looking for a local business choose a result on the first page of the search results. As with most things in life that are highly valuable prime real estate online for your business is not easily and quickly acquired.
The reality of a search engine optimization investment is that it generally does not provide an immediate return on investment. While other options like search engine marketing (or Pay Per Click) can often provide a decent return on investment in the first month or two, SEO often takes several months. SEO is about making a website more relevant and popular in the eyes of search engines and creating relevancy and popularity for a website takes serious work and time. Time to improve the website, build the content, and have the search engines recognize the improved website and increased relevant content about the business online.
A proper SEO program should consist of website improvement, blogging, social media, inbound linking, business listings, ratings & reviews, among other factors. There are many components that go into creating a high amount of visibility for a business online.
While other programs such as search engine marketing may provide a quicker return on investment, SEO provides the largest return on investment by far in the long run. After 3 months of search engine marketing you may have a moderate ROI and no ROI from SEO but if you look at the ROI after 6 months or a year, SEO will be exponentially larger in most cases.
In closing, the SEO investment is one of patience and long term growth. It does take a significant investment up front to achieve high returns several months later. The key is choosing an SEO firm that has the experience and expertise to deliver the desired future results. An SEO firm should be looked at as a long term business partner and trusted advisor that helps a business grow.
The Benefits of a Blog for a Small Business
Many articles have been written over the years enumerating the benefits of blogging for online lead generation. While blogging is but one of many ways to generate leads online, there is significant data to back these assertions up. Here are just a few data points in support of business blogging:
- B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/month
- B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/month
- Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors
For the sake of simplicity, there are three broad reasons why blogging helps companies generate leads online:
1. It drives traffic your brand
2. It amplifies your brand message
3. It helps legitimize your brand
DRIVE TRAFFIC
Blogging helps drive traffic to your website by creating indexed pages and (eventually) inbound links to your site, both of which are critical to SERP (search engine page rankings).
Exemplified by Google’s Panda update, search engines are increasingly favoring fresh, high-quality content in search rankings. The nice thing about blogging is that each blog has a discrete URL, and as such is a separate web page that can be indexed by search engines. The more blog posts you publish, the more indexed pages you create for search engines to display in their results, which in turn helps your page ranking on Internet searches. Also, search engine web-crawlers tend to favor original content that has a more recent timestamp; they may skip over content deemed replicated or already indexed.
Inbound links (aka “backlinks”) are simply links that come from an external site to your website. When you blog, you are creating fresh, thoughtful (hopefully) content that others may find relevant or interesting. If an external site references your blog, they will usually include a backlink to your original blog page. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or authority of a website.
Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines like Google give more credit to websites that have a large number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.
By creating indexed pages and attracting inbound links, blogging will help your company generate organic traffic, the first step in online lead generation.
AMPLIFY YOUR MESSAGE
With the massive growth of social, integrating your web-based blog posts with social media can exponentially amplify your message.
As a matter of form, blogging is considered to be part of social media. Hair-splitting aside, most business blogs are website-based, therefore it is critical that brands actively integrate blog posts with their social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and especially Google+. Each time a blog is published, it should be automatically shared throughout your various social media. Moreover, you should dedicate resources to actively promote your blog posts on each social media channel.
LEGITIMIZE YOUR BRAND
As Randa Clay aptly pointed out in a recent Fast Company blog, the more customers know you, the more loyal they become. Blogging builds consumer loyalty and trust by helping prospects and customers solve problems or address pain-points. Most blogs will offer a subscription option through RSS and email, giving your company an opportunity to interact with subscribers every time a post is published.
Brands often use business blogging as a platform to show off their industry expertise and establish thought leadership. A recent survey conducted by Fast Company found that 71% of respondents said blogs affect their purchasing decisions either somewhat or very much.
In an increasingly crowded Internet, blogging provides your company an actionable way to drive web traffic, amplify your message, and legitimize your brand. In turn, all of these efforts will help your business generate leads online.