In SEO, as in life, setting expectations can save a lot of stress and grief.
Recently, a deluge of spam from companies (often with no url for their own business, hmmm…) promising to get your company ranked #1 in Google within 2 weeks for a rate of $25 per hour has caused some misconceptions. Mainly that SEO is an easy, guaranteed, inexpensive, one-time effort. A case of if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And true it is in this case.
I’m going to do things backwards and offer up a summary at the beginning. Then those of you who have the time and inclination can continue to read the rest of the points.
To summarize, try to find some less competitive keywords that are relevant to your business and region and spend time on those instead of the very competitive search terms. If you would really like to try to rank for extremely competitive keywords, perhaps try a paid campaign in Google Adwords. This can be good value and ROI if right for your target market.
Another important point is that properly-done SEO efforts will reap benefits for years to come. Generally though, SEO is an ongoing effort. Pages and posts that rank highly in Google now can slip for various reasons. It may take some work to continue to rank highly for a specific keyword, especially if it is competitive.
Another benefit of an ongoing SEO effort is discovering other selling points. New blog posts SEO’d for keywords that are relevant but you haven’t SEO’d for in the past is an effective way to increase website traffic.
Depending on your business niche and budget, an online marketing effort including ongoing SEO, Social Media marketing, paid Google Analytics campaigns or enews emails, can all be great ways to bolster a business and increase profits.
For example, London Drugs, Canadian Tire or Safeway don’t send out one e-flyer or email and SEO their pages once and then consider their online marketing efforts complete.
Let’s dive (a little bit) deeper into the details:
Clients often ask: Why is my website not appearing in search results?
I find it amusing when clients ask this two days after their brand new site gets put up.
It could be one, or a combination of many things such as:
- Google doesn’t know your site exists. It is not automatic that Google will know, you need to let the search engine know that it can crawl your site.
- The site has not been indexed by Google yet. It can take a week or more after your site has been submitted to Google for it to be indexed.
- The site hasn’t been SEO’d. Just installing an SEO plugin isn’t enough. The content needs to be optimized.
- The site is optimized for extremely competitive keywords. If this is the case, it will make it almost impossible for the site to be found.
- The website has ‘no index’ tags.
- The site has been penalized and removed from Google. This can happen if the site is not meeting Google’s quality guidelines. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769
Why has my post not been ranked yet?
- As mentioned before, if the search term (keyword) that the post has been optimized for is ultra competitive, it may be next to impossible to rank for that term.
- Also, Google tries to show pages that people are interested in seeing. So if internet users are actually visiting the post, it will be easier to rank for it. I know, chicken and egg.
How long will it take to rank my site on the first page?
- It’s not a set amount of time, but it can happen within a week, over the course of a few weeks, or not at all.
- SEO is a process. Even if it’s number 1 in Google right now, it can move down in rankings as competitors work on SEO for their posts and pages. Likewise, posts can move up in rank if they are lower down, sometimes mysteriously, other times after further SEO. Sometimes a post can remain ranked at the top of Google for a long time without any further SEO work.
Here are some SEO basics to consider:
- Keyword competition. As mentioned, optimizing a page for a highly competitive keyword will not help you rank on the first page, no matter how much you optimize it.
- Keyword search volume. If no one is searching for a term, it may not be a good use of time to SEO for it. Although, low volume terms can pay off sometimes because they are easy to rank highly for. There may also be some unnoticed benefits like when a page or post is SEO’d for one term and then happens to rank highly for several related terms (that may also be low volume but those visits can add up).
- Meta description. By optimizing the meta description and title for your pages, you will not only avoid duplicate metas but this will also help you improve the click-through-rate. The more people click on your page, the higher the chances for your site to improve its position and rank on the first page.
- Content promotion. Social signals are a massive Google ranking factor so it’s essential to use social media platforms to get the word out about your new post.
- Quality backlinks. The more quality sites link back to you, the more popular your site will become in the eyes of Google.
- Domain authority. Sites that have a high DA are more likely to be ranked by Google on the first pages because the search engine will already know that people love that site. When you’re just getting started, your DA will be quite low and you’ll need to attract a lot of signals that show Google you publish quality content that people love.
- Publishing frequency. Quality content, not frequency is what matters. And it would follow that the more quality content you have on your site, the more opportunity to rank highly on your chosen terms:
- As of March 2018, Google says this about publishing frequency: ‘Google’s algorithms doesn’t give a benefit to a site that produces more content, more frequently than other sites. Having more unique and quality content gives you more opportunities to rank well in search. But just because you publish 10 new pages per day and your competitor does 1 new page per week, it doesn’t mean you will rank better for the same keywords because you publish more.’ https://www.seroundtable.com/google-content-frequency-25367.html
- Content length. According to Neil Patel, “The average page that is listed on page one of Google has 1,890 words”, so bear this fact in mind next time you start writing a new blog post. Content length also helps with time on page. That’s because the more content you have, the more time people are going to spend on your site. Generally, a 300 word minimum is standard for SEO purposes.
Thanks for the original article Squirrly Co!. Here’s the full article from Squirrly Co for those who would like to read the complete article and delve a little further into details.
About Us
At Lara Spence Web Design in Vancouver, BC we have many small business clients to whom we provide affordable SEO services.
Providing good value SEO services to local business is our MO.
We have many clients that are ranking number 1 in Google for more than 30 relevant keywords.
We have helped grow website visits from the hundreds of monthly visits to the thousands. Unlike companies that promise the moon and stars for pennies, we have an actual url for our business and a portfolio full of happy, ongoing clients.
We have a diverse team of experts covering all areas of online business such as graphic design, web design, copy writing, Google Adwords campaign managment, social media marketing and of course, extensive experience in SEO services.
Contact me directly today to book a free telephone consultation:
Lara Spence, Principal and CEO of Lara Spence Web Design
Email: lara@laraspence.com
Phone: 604-324-4020