SEO is a set of technical tasks that help organisations to secure relatively top positions in search engine result listings (Sungin et al, 2016). Furthermore, SEO can be described as being “highly effective in delighting and retaining customers in the post-sale enablement, adoption, and retention phases of customer marketing”. Nowadays, it is a common method for any company wishing to expand their digital marketing strategies.
According to Gupta et al (2013), the key benefits from SEO are wide such as tracking ranking, to track a page or a website, to estimate the total traffic, to increase brand awareness etc.
There is a list of initiatives to undertake if you wish to improve your SEO strategy effectively. In order to understand better your audience, your business should be using SEO through multiple ways, but keywords and links remaining the most important.
- Keyword Research
The first approach for an effective SEO is to focus on keywords. Hill (2017) describes them as being influential but not unique as you first need to know your exact target market in order to find the right keywords. On the other hand, DeMers (2014) puts more importance on keyword research, by saying “without a proper keyword research, any SEO campaign is doomed to failure”. This statement is supported many times as it is a crucial step of the optimization process. If you want to get the best from this process: take a long-tail approach to keywords as customers are getting more precise when researching something specific.
Indeed, once you focus on your long-tail keyword research, you can think about originality by duplicating your content, and try to keep in mind that to be the best you need to be unique.
- Link Building
SEO website (2018) describes “an intricate process” to develop the right relevant links and opportunities to improve your competitive position on the Internet. Furthermore, Hill (2017) also mentions that you can build up links not only with other websites, but as well with blogs or influencers in order to help increase your business’ popularity.
(If you need more information regarding how to strengthen your link building, visit DeMers’ blog as he provides more detailed tips on the process).
Furthermore, SEO is not just an investment in better visibility and higher rankings; it is the primary way to protect your internet assets (Spencer, 2015). So don’t wait until something bad happens in order to react. Link risk management is one of the ways you can protect your traffic. and the income that results from it.
- Mobile SEO
As most of us grew up in a digital era which keeps evolving through a range of different aspects, it is important that your business think of mobile SEO too. As Toonen (2017) stated “mobile traffic has now eclipsed desktop traffic”. Mobile SEO is focusing on a specific range of customers, and according to the author, smartphone users have a higher buyer intent than desktop users which is beneficial for brands or companies selling online products. Also, keep in mind that with smartphones developed services, people have been more reluctant in researching by typing it down on screens and would prioritize researching through vocal research… Not many businesses are up-to-date regarding some recent innovative features of mobile phones such as Siri for Iphones.
- SEO Plan
However keep in mind that for any strategy you may have, you need to develop a plan to be able to keep a timeframe and a range of key steps to follow adequately. Once you’ve fixed all your activities into a plan, keep in mind that the world is an evolving place, so focus on a continuous and updated plan in order to keep your business into the competitive world (Ledford, 2016).
Brown (2103) supports the ongoing approach of SEO by stating “any time a new page or new content is added to your site, it needs to be properly researched against your marketing goals, and tagged properly”.
Risks are everywhere when not prepared properly and carefully. Here is a list of some negative aspects of using SEO:
- Long-time results from it (patience is the key…)
- When using SEO, it doesn’t give you a guaranteed place on 1st page searching platforms (digitalmaerketingphilippines.com)
- SEO is a continuous process and a continuous improvement. (just remember, any change will be successful if you start from little rearrangements, check the results and then do bigger.)
- Stay away from black hats and focus on white hats. Some companies employ a black hat tactic to gain search rank in order to counter the search engines as Google. So in order to avoid a possible banishment from the search engines, prioritize an SEO friendly White hat approach .
- Control spamming blog comments as you may loose credibility to the research platform as Google and to your customers as well.
So, it has been quite clear on how to benefit from SEO techniques and the risks according to them. However, remember that a risk is not always negative and can be beneficial for your business if you have been prepared for it, so have a look at this article for further information. Each individual or business has different point of views on SEO methods, but even if the overall points are slightly different sometimes, they all are mostly similar in the way of being original and innovative. It is agreed that an effective SEO must be a continuous process that might be time consuming, but it remains crucial for keeping your business at the top.
References
Brown M. (2013) 5 SEO Fails: What you risk by managing SEO internally [online] Available at: https://www.business2community.com/seo/5-seo-fails-risk-managing-seo-internally-0630574 [Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Dame N. (2018) SEO and Customer Base Marketing: Deepend relationships for more repeat sales. [online] Available at: https://blog.marketo.com/2017/05/seo-customer-base-marketing-deepen-relationships-repeat-sales.html [Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
DeMers J. (2014) 7 Advanced Ways to Improve your site’s SEO [online] Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237819 [Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Digitalmarketingphilippines (2017) The Pros and Cons of Using SEO for your Business [online] Available at: http://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-using-seo-for-your-business/[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
DiSilvestro A. (2013) Common SEO Risks: To take or not to take [online] Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/common-seo-risks-to-take-or-not-to-take/62638/[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Gupta S., Miglani S., Sundriyal V. (2013) Search Engine Optimization Techniques. Vol.2, Issue 9, Published: International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology
Hill, C. (2017) How to use SEO to get more customers [online] Available at: https://creativeresources.threadless.com/how-to-use-seo/[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Ledford J.L. (2016) Search Engine Optimization Bible, Chap. 3, vol. 3, 2nd Edition, Published: Wiley Publishing Inc.
SEO (2018) Increase Search Rankings [online] Available at: https://www.seo.com/seo#kr[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Spencer S. (2015) Link Risk Management: Are you using this critical SEO tactic? [online] Available at: https://searchengineland.com/link-risk-management-using-critical-seo-tactic-217701[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
Sungin L., Wonhong J. et al. (2016) Search engine optimization. Vol. 34, Issue 2.
Toonen E. (2017) Mobile SEO: The ultimate guide [online] Available at: https://yoast.com/mobile-seo-ultimate-guide/[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]
WhyPeopleClick (2018) What are the risks of search engine optimization? [online] Available at: http://whypeopleclick.com/services/search-engine-optimization/risks-search-engine-optimization/[Accessed on February 20th, 2018]