SEO can seem like a very difficult process. And while it’s true that it does require plenty of consistent work, that doesn’t mean it should be impossible for Omaha business owners to understand. If your business has a website but it’s not receiving as much traffic as you’d like, you’re probably very interested in learning how SEO can fix that problem.
Since it can be quite challenging to figure out where to focus your search engine optimization efforts, we want to cover the key elements of SEO that have the biggest impact. By reading through the rest of this post, you’ll learn how SEO can help your business attract more potential customers, as well as what Big Red SEO can do to maximize the effectiveness of this process.
Content Marketing Has Become a Pillar of SEO
When Omaha businesses contact us about SEO, the most common issue they have is their website isn’t bringing in enough traffic. To help them understand why that’s the case, we generally start with a SEO audit. During the course of our audit, we may discover a technical issue that is preventing their site from ranking well in Google.
While technical issues do come up, that’s not the most common reason Omaha businesses suffer from a lack of traffic. The most common reason is because they simply don’t have enough content on their website. If a business website only has a few pages, it’s going to be very hard for it to rank well for the wide range of terms that people use when searching.
This issue relates to a very common misconception about SEO. Although it does make sense to base SEO efforts around a handful of core keywords, people aren’t always going to use those exact keywords when they’re searching for something related to a business. From very long searches to searches that are phrased as questions, there are many unique styles of searching behavior.
All of these different forms of searching are often referred to as the long-tail of SEO. What’s interesting about long-tail SEO is even though specific searches may only drive a few visits a month, the cumulative effect of ranking well for a large number of long-tail terms can be very significant. Not only is it a great way to drive traffic, but the traffic is highly targeted for a specific business.
So what’s the best way to start ranking well for an array of long-tail terms? The answer is content. Specifically, blog posts written on all kinds of topics related to a business. By covering lots of information and properly promoting these posts, a business website can start establishing a much larger presence in Google.
Links and Citations Are Still Very Important
Over the last few years, social media has been very prominent throughout conversations about online marketing. While we completely agree that social media can be a useful marketing channel for businesses, we’ve definitely seen many instances of businesses placing too much of an emphasis on social.
The biggest issue with social media marketing is these platforms aren’t ideal for converting users into leads or customers. That’s much easier to do on your own website when you have visitors coming from highly targeted searches that include buying intent.
While social media isn’t ideal for generating conversions, many businesses still use these channels a lot because they think it will help increase their search engine rankings. Although that can be true to some extent, Google still places much more of an emphasis on links and local citations.
If ranking well for targeted searches in Google is one of the top priorities you have for your business, social media shouldn’t be your primary method of pursuing rankings. Instead, that activity should go on the backburner while you prioritize a SEO strategy that’s centered around acquiring quality links and citations.
SEO Isn’t a “Set It and Forget It” Strategy
When Google was much younger, it was fairly common for businesses to get themselves ranked for specific keywords and then have little trouble maintaining those rankings for a long time. Even though some businesses are under the impression that they can still operate in that manner, the reality of Google in 2015 is SEO has to be an ongoing investment.
If an Omaha business isn’t actively taking steps to maintain and improve their rankings, it’s only a matter of time until they will start to see declines. The main reason is the modern search engine landscape is far more competitive than it was even five years ago.
Not only is it important to take an active approach to SEO, but it’s also important to stay on top of the latest changes in the search engine optimization landscape. Since this can be a lot for an already busy business to handle, many choose to put a team of experts in charge of their SEO. By having a company that’s solely focused on driving the right kind of traffic to your website, you can help your business continue to grow.
Big Red SEO Focuses on Real Results for Omaha Businesses
As you can see from the SEO components we covered above, all of the most important elements of this practice directly relate to driving real results for businesses. Since there are SEO providers who sell their services but aren’t able to tie them to useful results, this criteria is the best way to evaluate a SEO company prior to working with them.
At Big Red SEO, our entire approach to search engine optimization revolves around making sure that Omaha businesses can get the leads or customers they desire. While we use a wide range of SEO best practices, they all tie back to the goal of helping a business strengthen its bottom line.
If you’re ready to take the next step with SEO and want to ensure that all of your efforts deliver the best ROI, call Big Red SEO at (402) 522-6468 to discuss what we can do for your business.