Looking at the relationship between SEO and marketing is a bit like comparing the relationship between the air and the weather, the two are in direct partnership with one another. While this may not have been the case for the last century or even most of the last 50 years, modern marketing almost always requires SEO to be taken into account, and taken seriously as well, in order to develop a truly viable marketing plan.
Marketing has its aspects that extend beyond online operations, obviously, with both print and on-site marketing being important aspects of your business’s marketing portfolio as well. That being said, no marketing strategy is complete in 2020 without an online presence, and as a result, an SEO strategy as well.
What SEO Is, And Deciding If You Need An SEO Agency
As you likely already know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. Broken down, that simply means to optimize your online content for a search engine’s preferences and guidelines. Easy enough, right? Although it sounds simple, it can actually be a very diverse and time-consuming process.
It’s for this reason that many businesses elect to partner with an SEO marketing agency to help guide them or handle this aspect, and sometimes more or the entirety, of their online marketing portfolio. SEO is something that, with time and education combined with experiences through trial and error, most business owners or online media managers can handle or create a decent outlook with. Despite this, there are industry niches and anecdotal information that typically only experts and those with SEO as their profession may know, which is why it’s often beneficial to bring in outside help.
SEO’s Impact On Your Online Marketing
When done right though, SEO can entirely revolutionize and sometimes even automate your online marketing strategies. While you’ll need to still produce quality content, make regular updates, and likely pair it all with digital ad campaigns, having an SEO strategy that gets clicks and ranks locally can make a significant impact on how hard you have to work for those views.
All business owners know that organic views are far superior to advertisement-induced clicks. Although it’s true that those who clicked on your ad may have been interested in your product or service, being able to obtain views from prospective clients who were already searching for it is the ideal scenario. This is exactly the definition of a hot lead, and while you should still be prepared to present the benefits and qualities of your business, you don’t even need to do up-selling or ingenuine sales tactics in this case.
This is especially important for startups looking to build a history, reputation, and ultimately, a trust. Whether you’re introducing yourself to an industry, a local community, or in most cases both, creating a positive association around you or your business’s name is absolutely paramount to success.
The best business transaction is a partnership between you and the client—a mutually beneficial relationship in which one provides value in exchange for monetary compensation, and the buyer walks away with an improved life, with hopefully a new trusted local business as well. The best way to achieve this type of amicability and healthy business style is through organic leads and organic clicks. This is accomplished online mostly through good SEO, and ultimately, good ranking.
Getting Started With Your Own SEO Strategies
Chances are if you’re reading through articles such as this, you’ve already got an online presence for your business. You’ve got the social media pages set up, you have a website, maybe even some reviews and an official business page registered with a search engine if you’re really far along. But you may have never really put much thought into your site’s SEO.
A great place to start is with an SEO audit. This can be done manually by comparing your site to the recommended standards to get some qualitative data, but also should be done using various online tools (there’s a lot to choose from) that can index your site and gather relevant quantitative numbers broken down into categories and factors you can change to improve your site’s rankings.
From there, business owners should decide if they want to continue implementing these adjustments and tips on their own, or if they want to bring in an agency or even create a staff position to fulfill their SEO needs. It will ultimately depend on the factors unique to your situation, and the choice will often come down to a combination of these in conjunction with your history and goals.
