5 Principles to Building a Better SEO Strategy For Your Business

The SEO landscape is always changing. In order to ensure you are taking the best approach for your business, it’s important to begin with a solid foundation. One built on principles and not trendy tactics. With the digital marketing landscape always changing, if you stick to the essentials your website and your business will see success online.

The goal of any SEO strategy is more about maximizing your ROI. So in order to get the most out of your digital marketing strategy, we’ll address some basic principles. It is essential to start from the correct perspective. This will help you create realistic goals and a more targeted strategy for your business.

1. SEO is a Long Term Marketing Strategy

If you’re looking for a quick fix, SEO is not your best option. It must be looked at as part of your long-term marketing strategy. Yes, there are a few things that are done once and don’t need to be addressed for quite a while, but with so many changes in search marketing you, or your local SEO consultant, need to be on point.

Google changes its search algorithms frequently, up to 500-600 times yearly. More importantly for ROI, people are changing the way they use search engines as well. Both mobile search and voice search are on the rise.

Staying on top of the new algorithms and adapting to your users is a long process and needs patience. Don’t force it. Observe, plan, then take action.

2. SEO is Part of Your Entire Marketing Strategy

Search marketing is so often seen as something that’s done on the side or as an add-on to a traditional marketing campaign. In a world dominated by search engines, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In order to maximize the overall success of your marketing you need to integrate SEO with your entire plan.

This helps both the digital and traditional marketing and sales process. Yes, sales. The research done through SEO helps give the business a clearer picture of its buyer persona.  Search marketing drives qualified prospects to the website and landing pages. The data that can be shared with the marketing and sales team about their prospects and how they interacted with the site is extremely valuable. It helps improve the traditional marketing process and gives the sales team in-depth information on leads.

3. Focus On Mobile

The biggest reason? Because Google says so, and they have good reason to. More and more users are turning away from computers and are now using their mobile devices as their primary way to connect and search. Good SEO starts with good web development and good web development thinks mobile first. While the “mobile-geddon” algorithm was said to only affect mobile search, I have a hunch we will find out that it actually impacts way more. Looking at the desktop results of a search, you now see if a site is mobile-friendly or not. This is a clear indicator of how important Google sees this element to be.

Related: Mobile-Friendly Web Design: The Beginning to Your Local SEO Strategy

4. Think About User Intent

Too many search strategies are rigid and robotic. Search, itself, is far from that. Everything on your site impacts the way search engines view it. They are trying their best to help searchers find the best solution to their issues as fast as possible. Google’s algorithm is looking at the searcher’s intent in order to develop better results, faster. So when approaching your strategy, you have to do the same.

User intent can be broken down into four categories. Look at these and determine why your users need to visit your site. Then, build a strategy around their intent.

1. Navigational: Just browsing, looking for unique content
2. Informational: Targeted searches for specific problems/question
3. Commercial: Ready to purchase, but looking for the best option
4. Transactional: Ready to buy now

5. The Only Constant is Change

As we mentioned earlier in this post, Google’s search algorithm can change over 500 times a year and without notice.  But they aren’t the only ones. As SEO is becoming more and more of a player in all other areas of digital marketing, we must also factor in social media.

Facebook has developed a search engine inside of their platform, and with 1 billion users, yes billion with a B, we have to take notice. This year Facebook dramatically changed the organic reach in their news feed algorithm and we can expect more change as they look to better serve their users and look to grow their company’s dominance of social.

Harnessing the power of SEO is essential to any business looking for real growth online. Having a solid foundation that is built on principle is so important to success. So to wrap it up here’s a quick overview.

1. SEO is a long-term strategy. Be prepared for the journey and be patient.
2. Integrate SEO with marketing & sales. Good communication is essential to success.
3. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile. It’s really important.
4. User intent sets your approach. Know your users and what their goals are.
5. Change is constant. Embrace, learn, adapt, and grow.