Investing In SEO For Your Brand

In 2022, almost half of small businesses (47%) are still not investing in SEO (search engine optimisation) as part of their digital marketing strategy. If their competitors are in the 53%, they could see a drop in traffic as the competition takes over new businesses through their search engine rankings. So why invest in SEO for your business?

Best Practice SEO

In order to boost search rankings many businesses, including a number of professional SEO agencies, use what it considered black hat SEO. This method of SEO typically produces quicker results, however, they are primarily short-lived results.
Black hat SEO works by manipulating the way that Google crawls a website, to increase its rankability. By implementing tactics that aim to undermine Google’s parameters, while not displaying appropriately to the user means that they are meeting guidelines.
In order to contradict this, when Google updates their algorithms they often penalise those sites that have been undermining the process. Thus leaving them in a worse ranking position than before.
Best practice SEO means working through a strategy that complies with the latest algorithm updates in order to continually grow and maintain quality rankings. This means that SEO experts are constantly updating their practices, including the team at Netbiz.
Want to know more about black hat SEO? Take a look at our article: What Is Black Hat SEO?

Long-Term Marketing Strategy

SEO is not an immediate quick fix that will see you ranking number one in the first month. Investing in SEO means that you are investing in a long-term strategy, one that will see greater success, the longer it is continued.
Your SEO strategy needs to consider your keyword focus, and how attainable rankings will be for them. This starts with vital research into search volumes and keyword difficulty before undertaking any activities on your website.
You will also need to consider the target audience to ensure that your keywords would be relevant searches to them. This also includes developing your content strategy to suit the audience. While Google appreciates longer pieces of content, the algorithms also determine whether the content is too long for the target audience.
Spread your focus across all aspects of your SEO strategy. Many businesses, especially those looking to undertake SEO with little understanding, may attempt to blast through one stage at a time, such as on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO. However, by incorporating each element throughout your long-term strategy, you will see better overall results.
Think content. Your website may already have content, it may already be factual and read well, however it might not be optimised for SEO purposes, or may have been on the site for a while. Content needs to be updated regularly, not only does this help to keep a site up to date, it also allows Google to see that the information on the page is as relevant as possible when displaying it on searches.
Remember that, while content is king, you also need to include a healthy dose of technical SEO and improved user experience in order to reach the highest results. Technical SEO can incorporate the speed of the website, cleaning code, removal or rectifying broken links and the development of high-quality web pages and sitemaps.
Finally, when you reach that golden ranking stopping the SEO efforts might seem like a wise choice. However, this will then not only stop regular updates from being made to the site, but it will also allow for the competition to step in and rank above you.
(Forbes, CoxBlue, WebFX)

Search Engine Algorithms

A significant amount of SEO is considering the search engine algorithms and enhancing a website to conform to the latest algorithm update. With updates for the likes of Google happening multiple times a year, this means that SEO is an ever-changing process.
As mentioned above, these updates help to remove the black hat competition. Paving the way for long-term white hat SEO to dominate the high-level SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
When working to suit algorithms and the parameters set out by Google, remember to focus on what you can change, rather than what can’t be changed. For example, we as SEO experts have no way to alter how Google’s algorithm works, nor can we dictate their rules or what our competition does. However, we can implement a strong strategy that encompasses all aspects that the algorithm looks for in order to improve our own rankings.
Would you like to read more about the latest Google algorithm update? Take a look at our Google Algorithm Update blog.

Why Invest In SEO?

When it comes to why to invest in SEO, the important thing to consider is how important it is that your business is on page one of Google:
The #1 result in Google gets approximately 32% of all clicks
Google organic search is responsible for 59.2% of the world’s web traffic
After searching on a smartphone for something nearby, 76% of people end up visiting the business within 1 day
28% of local searches result in a purchase
75% of searchers never go past the first page of search results
Consider how much more traffic your website will see if you were already on page one of the SERPs.
(Backlinko, InterGrowth)

Creating Synergy Within Digital Marketing

While SEO alone can work wonders in the world of SERPs, using it in conjunction with other digital marketing practices can aid your business towards increased visibility, improved traffic and therefore higher revenues.
Consider implementing social media marketing into your digital strategy, alongside SEO, PPC, retargeting and email marketing.

If you are considering investing in SEO services to improve your search engine results, speak to the team at Netbiz today. Not only are we an award-winning web development company, we are also a full-service digital marketing agency based in Staffordshire.
If you are looking for a quick boost while your SEO campaign starts to take shape, speak to our PPC experts who can give you a push in the right direction.