Since the way SEO is done nowadays is an ever changing landscape, SEO experts find themselves often on the edge of their seats trying to catch up to changes, and customers need to know that SEO isn’t a magic bullet but a methodically laid out series of techniques and strategies.
Primarily, customers have to realize that just because they’ve hired an SEO firm that their websites and webpages won’t just shoot to the top of Google in the blink of an eye. Any SEO firm making that claim is lying, right then and there. It takes time for Google to index your webpages and you need to have patience and let the SEO pro do their job. In addition, there are responsibilities on your part as a customer that will require constant attention. You just don’t set up SEO and then walk away expecting miracles to occur.
The planning and strategies behind SEO call for continual education on both the parts of the firm and client. The SEO firm should always spend time educating the client, within reason, so that each knows what to expect of one another and the SEO results. This calls for the client to have a competent and relevant website. It has to have webpages efficiently designed for mobile and Local SEO. Contact info and spelling, grammar, all play a vital role in providing a solid foundation for the SEO professional to work with. They’ll also consult on how one can improve their website.
Content is still king, but if that content isn’t seen, then SEO won’t matter. Promotion nowadays is multi-level combining traditional offline strategies and the new and ever changing online strategies. Providing high quality content is always an equitable action that will bring in a respectable ROI, however, today’s search engines are valuing more instead of keywords.
Today’s search engines didn’t anticipate the power of social media. Surfers weren’t getting the results they deserved, but instead got spammy websites. Google wants their surfers to access the most relevant and safe content. Social media is providing this. Nowadays one can actually buy low coast ads on sites like Facebook. These low cost ads, which should be catchy and eye popping, can also be shared by other members at no cost to you. Should one of your ads go viral, that’s $10s of thousands of dollars in free advertising. These viral ads become part of the conversations of people who also comment and that link to your site will appear at least once, and if any happy customers are there, they may post a link to your site’s content too. This shows Google that your site is alive and of interest. It thus boosts your rankings on that foundation and momentum.
SEO results take time. Traffic will come and go, rise and fall. You have diagnostic tools for this that your SEO firm should educate you about. Most are free programs whereby you can check your statistics in great detail.
Following these basic principles, great content, promotion, education, social media, mobile, link building, and of course a well laid out website, and growth is inevitable. How much growth depends on you and your SEO firm, and the public at large.