SEO has multiple complexities that for a newbie starting out in SEO can seem very daunting and overwhelming. Luckily, with the right direction and commitment to learning, SEO can become easier than meets the eye. It’s important to recognize that SEO is always updating, changing, and on-going, but the general idea behind it stays the same.
In this article, we will go over a few pin points to help your business understand basic SEO aspects and fundamentals to help you start with SEO. Let’s get started!
Where to Start with SEO
One of the best first steps your business can take is creating a website that builds on your online presence and authority. If you’re looking to save a penny, start with a subdomain with sites like Wix, Weebly, Hubspot, etc. From there you can start creating content that you would want others to see or be informed on. Content doesn’t have to be text either. Utilizing different methods such as videos, social media platforms, and tutorials can be another way to add content to your site.
Once you have content implemented, you can then test different formats to see what works and doesn’t work. Testing out different formats, fonts, colors, design, etc. with A/B tests can help you decide what consumers are interested in and what bores them. There’s nothing better than testing trials and errors to help improve the overall quality of your website. There are plenty of other ways to start your SEO, but having an online presence, content, and tested format are critical pieces moving forward with SEO.
SEO is Controllable
While we mentioned SEO has multiple layers and complexities, SEO can be controllable and directed the way you position it going. Growth in SEO is ultimately left up to you to grow it as you want. Here are a few factors your business should consider when starting SEO:
- Invest where you see fit: You can invest in a domain name, hosting, site themes, and general technology (security, shopping cart, site features, etc.) as you see fit. Do what’s best fit for your business. Investing in things that won’t improve or help your business grow will be a waste in investing in.
- Growth means Content: If you want to grow your website, you need to add content. It can be entire segments to your site, a paragraph on an existing page, or adding more landing pages. Be creative and add different types of content to your site as well. Examples could include tutorials/DIY, informational posts, or industry updates, etc. Even answering popular questions people may have can help to grow your SEO and site.
- Free Links: Work to promote or publish on other sites or leave relevant valuable comments with links. Doing so can help improve the credibility and authority of your website. Directories are great places to add your own information especially within your specific niches. You could also hire someone to help you with sharing or exchanging links.
Overall it’s important to remember that SEO will take time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Which means your site does not need to be perfect overnight.
Brand Reputation
As a company it’s important to create value and trust for your brand. When you build trust, it helps someone convert to your business. This can become incredibly powerful over time. To help your brand relevance, get your name out there and help others associate your brand with something memorable. Making sure you’re the best choice for what you’re offering is what helps strengthen your brand overall.
If you want your brand to be known for something great, explain what that is. It could be through your price, services, features, etc. Why would someone want to buy from you or participate in your service? You need to build the value within your brand for people to trust in it. Is it the way you handle things, the better price option, is it how you’re training people? Improve your value proposition to see the best results.
Also work on having a unique and consistent voice through your branding. Ultimately be yourself and let your brand reflect the true attitude and style of its founder. It’s going to be easier to maintain when you are yourself. People will ultimately love you for being you and stick with your own voice and not be someone else. It will be harder to maintain with different voices or point of views. Your brand reputation matters more than you know and people look and notice how you present your business.
Organic Visitors
Now that you have a site, see who is coming to your site and why.
- Gather data: Use tools like Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, Omniture, Domo, etc. Tracking visitors where they’re going and what they’re doing is key information to help your business make the right decisions and moves for your website and products/services. It will also help you modify and tailor your website to what people like and prefer.
- Traffic by source: Understand where your traffic is coming from, you may find that a certain medium (email, social, organic, direct, etc.) works well for your brand. Segment your sources and build upon what is working and spend less time on the things that aren’t working. This will also take time and you will learn things over time.
- Visitor interaction: Track a few customers and see how they interact with your site. Do they navigate or go to pages as you expected? Are they coming to the site and interacting with it, leaving it, or exploring something. Test where they’re coming from and what they’re doing.
Action Tracking
Action tracking helps you better understand how customers use your site and the actions they could possibly take. It’s important to have some goals for what you want your customers to do when they reach your website. Here are a few:
- Determine Actions: What do you want your customers to do? What actions are you wanting them to take? Do you want them to buy , sign up, share, etc. Whatever it is, set up ways to let your visitors accomplish those actions.
- Tag actions: Use tools to gain insight into user clicks and actions. Knowing where your customers go on your website helps your business know where to invest.
- Refine action flows: Just like your website and content, test how you get your audience to take action. You could switch a button to a picture, or text to video for example.
- Determine Lead Attribution: Depending on the data you have, you can determine how you need to model out potential ROI. If you have only traffic data, you can assume a certain conversion based on the source (a direct source converts more than an organic source). If you have action data you can attribute potential revenue based on action’s value. Form fills can sometimes be more valuable than email submissions. Ask your business if what you’re doing is actually bringing value to your business.
Conclusion
Overall, you need to start by making your website, promoting it, and then seeing if it’s doing what it’s supposed to, then to lead attribution. If you’re seeing the data, content, and you’re getting a certain amount of traffic and revenue in, your business can start drilling into what’s making the money.
Recognizing where your money or ROI is happening is important to factor into implementing SEO. Your business must review all of your potential ROI and see how they compare to each other. At the end of the day, you should be comparing your actual revenue vs your projected ROI. This helps you narrow down your traffic or action value to get more accurate data.
If you’re needing help with SEO, you’ve come to the right place. At Boostability, we’re the #1 White-Label SEO Provider for SMBs in the world. With our available small business SEO services, we can help your business build a strong online presence. Learn more on how your business can partner with Boostability to build your SEO to its fullest potential.
