The Secrets to Successful Search Engine Marketing Aren’t Really “Secrets”
Congratulations! You have built your website and “they will come,” right? The internet is a “field of dreams” for many entrepreneurs and business owners. They build a website, launch their website, and they wait for the traffic to pour in and make them super wealthy. What happens in reality? Nothing, most of the time.
How do I know? I’ve been there. I built my first website for business in 2001 for my advertising specialties business in Birmingham, AL. “Certainly, my website would put me head-and-shoulders above my competition,” I thought. I did well for a short period of time but I didn’t have enough sustained growth. My website served as an online business card and gave me the credibility I needed to support my cold calling activities.
That was then. This is now.
No one actively goes door-to-door anymore in outside sales. In fact, telephone prospecting and sales is way down because no one answers their cell phone anymore if they don’t know who is calling. I’m not saying that telephone sales doesn’t work, it just takes a lot more telephone contacts than it used to.
The fact is that search marketing is the best way to get your business name out there in your local market and increase your sales. The real question is “How does a new company get started in the search marketing arena?”
Now that you have already built your awesome website, how do you drive organic search traffic to your website? What are the secrets to successful search engine marketing?
1. Build a new website
The first step to successful organic search marketing is in your website structure. If your WordPress website is over four years old, you need a new website. If your theme hasn’t been updated in the last six months, you need a theme update or a new theme. Code and technology change over time. Your website must change with the changes in technology. WordPress recently unveiled Gutenberg blocks which will render some websites useless over the next couple of years. The design is immaterial. The functionality is what I am talking about here.
How do search engines like Google know how old your website is? Some people like to think of it as magic. I call it technology. They also know how long you hold your domain for, who your hosting company is and more. They also know the structure of your website and how long it has been since you updated it.
Google’s search business model is to rank the newest and most relevant information at the top to serve their search customers. The best way to help make sure that Google and other search engines rank your site favorably, is to keep your site current. That includes the structure of your site and updating your WordPress theme. You may be thinking that it’s expensive to rebuild and redesign your website. Therefore, not making the investment may be costing you future business you will never get. Need help in rebuilding your website? Contact me or give me a call today!
2. Add your site to Google Search Console
This is a step that a lot of website owners miss. If you want Google and other search engines to crawl your site, you need to tell them to crawl your site. This does not happen overnight and could take up to four to six weeks before your site the search engines even know you exist (according to Google). However, skipping this vital step in search engine optimization could be costing your money in lost sales.
Undoubtedly, Google is the largest player in the search engine market. Google is so big that, at the time of this writing in June 2019, Google is being investigated for anti-trust law violations by The European Commission, Indian authorities, and there are rumors that the U.S. Justice Department and the FTC are getting involved.
To help Google find your site, you have to tell them where your site is. There are several steps to add your site to Google Search Console. Visit the Google Search Console site for instructions on how to add your site to Google Search Console.
3. Know where you stand in reference to your search ranking
The first step to any journey is to decide where you are now. How do you determine where you stand as far as your search ranking go? The best way to find out is to get an SEO report on your site. In fact, a good SEO report can tell you more than your Search Engine Results Page (also know as SERP) ranking. It will also tell you broken links, backlinks, page load speeds, technical issues with your site and more.
SEO Reports tell me how my websites are performing and they can help you tell how your website is performing. I offer a free initial website for my clients to get them started on improving their organic search results. Want ot find out how your website ranks? Click here for your FREE SEO REPORT!
4. Plan your blog posts and post often
The chances are pretty good that you know what your website is about and what products and services you sell. As a result, when your customers are searching for your products or services, what keywords do they use to find them? Why not search the keywords before you write your blog post? If you want better organic search results, you have to write your blog posts with the words your customers use to find you.
5. Get an SSL certificate for your site
One of search engine’s goals are to provide the best sites for their customers, the viewers. The value of providing the best information to their customers is that they can charge businesses for reaching these customers. I recommend paying for SSL certificates for your sites from a trusted source like this one. However, there are a lot of free SSL certificate sources out there. They may require you to shift your hosting to their company or you will have to re-key those SSL certificates every 90 days. I’ll cover those in a different blog post.
To summarize, the secrets to good organic search results are not really secrets but there is a lot of work that goes into achieving good organic search results that make you money. Good organic search results come from practicing SEO as a discipline in your daily activities. Begin your SEO journey today!
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