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There exists a misconception among many business owners that SEO is a process that once done is done forever. This can lead businesses to fail to extract the maximum benefit from their online presence. If, in fact, search engine optimization should properly be thought of as a continuing process of refinement and adjustment, businesses may be missing out to competitors who have a more aggressive and nuanced approach.
We’re going to take a look at three major reasons why business owners should consider SEO as an ongoing part of their marketing and promotion.
First we should define our terms. In this article we are conceiving of SEO as not just optimizing for keywords and traditional link building. Since the Panda and Penguin updates, high-quality content has become the bedrock of effective SEO strategy. SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand.
As Business Priorities Change, So Should SEO
Content production and optimization plans should be firmly rooted in overarching business goals.
A business’ priorities can change for any number of reasons, especially in the case where limited resources are available for marketing. It’s often not financially viable to institute a comprehensive SEO and content marketing strategy that will cover every possible base, so it’s necessary to focus and prioritize specific goals.
For example, a young business may choose to focus most of its effort on gaining new clients or customers. This often involves filling the top of the purchase funnel with people who had previously been unaware of the brand. Doing this requires a different approach to optimization, content production, and social media marketing than would be the case if the business were prioritizing customer retention, or if their brand were already well known.
Markets Develop and SEO Should Reflect The Current Market Context
The starting point of any SEO strategy should always involve competitor and customer analysis. Businesses need to know who they are selling to, and who else is selling to their potential customers before they begin producing content and optimizing their site.
Both of these factors are in constant flux as competitors, customers, and technology develop.
If, based on an initial audit, a company discovered a weakness in their competitor’s SEO and content marketing strategy, and exploited it, they can expect to see increased search traffic. But, it has to be assumed that those competitors are also keeping an eye on their competitors and evolving their strategies to match. Strategies that once gave a business an edge over its peers in the market may be commonplace a year later and no longer bestow the same benefit.
Search Engines Change
As every site owner whose rankings have tanked in recent months because of Google’s algorithm changes knows, search engines are not a constant and reliable factor. Tactics that have been very successful in the past can today result in no benefit at all or even a penalty in extreme cases.
If your SEO employed a tactic that in the past was successful, but has now resulted in the rug being pulled from under your site because Google has decided that those incoming links should be ignored, then your SEO is in need of updating.
These factors and others are what makes SEO the exciting pursuit that it is. We’re faced with a constantly shifting landscape and are tasked with the mission of finding the best path for our clients. That requires a long-term commitment to constantly evolving and testing our approach.
