As a business owner, you only care about the input and output – if I pay for this thing, will it make me more money in return?
And that’s the same thing with your SEO. If it’s not bringing you money, you won’t do it, regardless of how much “potential” we SEOs see through our keyword research, competitor analysis, and other means.
But what if your perception of what’s actually required to get you SEO results is completely wrong? What if maybe… just maybe… you’ve been lied to?
Impossible in the marketing world, right? I know, crazy.
Today, we’ll go over popular questions we get asked – is SEO a one time thing? Isn’t SEO just a one-time job? Is SEO a set-and-forget type of job?
~4 Minute Read
Quick Answer
No, SEO is not a one-time thing. 'Nuff said. But seriously, there is so much to SEO "optimizing" that you may not even be ready to believe. It's not just slapping your keyword into the title of your website and calling it a day. The work is consistent, monthly, and it digs deep into your audience's behavior. This post explains what all of this even means.
What Tasks Does SEO Even Involve?
For you to understand why SEO isn’t a one-time thing, you need to understand what’s involved. So, here we go:
- Keyword Research: This is the first stage of any SEO campaign. Keyword research involves researching keywords (who would’ve thought! lol). In all seriousness, we do keyword research to understand how your target audience (every business has a target audience; it’s not just homeowners) and what type of searches they mostly Google to find what they need.
I went all out explaining keyword research in our most recent guide, so you can check it out here.
- Initial Website Development: Most businesses already have a website (except 27% of those who don’t – a third of all businesses!), but if they’re hiring an agency for local SEO services, it MOST LIKELY needs to be re-developed.
Reasons are plenty, but this stage needs to be completed too (most SEO and conversion-friendly websites are launched with 20-30 pages at the start). I won’t get into all the techy stuff done to websites during this stage (on-page SEO, internal linking, URL structure, breadcrumbs, etc.).
- Further Content Development: “Content” refers to advertorials placed on your website to target a certain set of keywords that an audience might be searching for at a certain stage of their buyer’s journey (again, refer to our keyword research post). This is done consistently. Google likes it, and your audience will be “hit” with marketing at all stages of their sales funnel, which simply means that they will see your business so many times that they’ll HAVE to hire you because you’re everywhere.
Take our site as an example; look at our “industry” pages. A deck builder might be searching for “local seo [their city]” and see one of our landing pages ranking, or search for “deck builder SEO” and also see one of our landing pages ranking. That’s the purpose of content – to be inescapable for your audience.
- Off-site Promotion: Also known as “off-page SEO” or “link building,” this promotion refers to publishing your website on other websites.
The link building article I linked to goes IN-DEPTH on this and why it’s so valuable so we highly recommend you go through it.
- Spotting More Opportunities: Some SEO opportunities only show their faces once you start doing your SEO, and it usually takes a few weeks or even months to fully realize them. What does this refer to? New keywords not found in standard SEO software (for instance, many keyword tools don’t show people Google-ing “deck builder SEO,” which brings us leads), and fixing any issues that may arise.
SEOs don’t always get it right at the start, and the strategy may need to be revamped along the way. After all, Google may be a robot, but we’re all humans and can make mistakes.
And that has been a very quick summary. All of these tasks have subtasks, and those take time. Not to mention that success lies in repetition, bringing us to…
SEO Tasks Are Not a One-Time Thing Because They Require Repetition
What does “repetition” mean?
Well, to truly succeed in SEO, you simply need more of what you already have:
- You likely won’t get leads with only 10 pages, but with 50 pages, you’re way more likely to, although some industries are an exception; mostly health and finance industries. But then, the same rule applies. If you’re not getting leads with 50 pages, with 100 pages, your chances increase again.
- Only having one promotion on another website likely won’t do much, but 10 website promotions? Your chances of SEO success grow higher.
See what we mean? More is better in SEO, but with the caveat of not just doing more for the sake of doing more. Each new piece of content needs to be actually helpful and convincing for your prospect to call you, and each new website promotion needs to be done on websites where people can actually see your link.
Tracking and Optimizing for Higher Conversion Rates
If you’re working with an SEO agency with common sense, they’ll be tracking your conversions, which are either calls or lead form submissions (or sales if you sell products directly through your website).
After a couple of months, they should analyze your conversions and see if there are any things they can do to improve.
Do you know what happens if your conversion rate (in case you aren’t aware, a conversion rate is a percentage of people on your website who complete the action you want – call or submit a lead form – out of all people who saw your site) increases from 2% to 4%.
You double your revenue!
But it takes time to get data on how your users behave – usually a couple of months unless you handle a lot of traffic already. But most businesses don’t handle a lot of traffic; they’re way more likely to not have ANY traffic to their existing website.
And then, after a few months, the conversion rate should be evaluated again for further improvement, and so on it goes.
Conclusion
And there you have it! Our best attempt to get you to spend thousands of dollars on our services without having a slightest clue about the value you’re getting.
Just kidding, that’s what our blog is for. Browse through it and learn as much as possible before even reaching out to us.
We only work with businesses who actually get the value and understand the scope of work involved.
We’ll gladly educate you on this live on meetings, but we’d much rather have you read our hundreds-of-hours worth of content that we put up with the main goal of helping you, every day business owner, understand what local SEO is all about.
So, if you’re ready to get started with your SEO campaign after reading some of our posts, click here to enter your company details and we’ll get back to you.
Bogdan is a local SEO expert with over 3 years of experience helping businesses grow using Google. When he is not helping businesses grow, he works on his own SEO projects, works out, takes long walks, and watches Suits, which is completely ironic given how rarely he dresses up in a suit himself.