If all you had to do to increase your search ranking was sit down and enjoy a glass of wine do you think you would be up to task? Don't like wine? No worries, because beer works just as well.
Let's run over a little background first. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is not nearly as complicated a concept as industry experts want you to believe. Sure there are weird phrases like "meta tags" and "page authority" thrown around that have made you want to drink already but don't let all the geek speak concern you. Most of what you need to know about, and for goodness sake make sure any SEO vendor you hire knows about, is common sense. I promise.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, "If it's so common sense, why do we need to hire a professional inbound marketing agency like yours for"? The answer may surprise you because for the most part, you don't. Look, we have been doing a whole lot of this Search Engine Optimization stuff in our Savannah, GA offices and we have been doing it for a long time. On the setup side of things having someone like us on your side that really knows what they are doing is vital to your success. Once that part of it is done, however, with just a little guidance the rest is smooth sailing. All you need do to is continue to create content about your business or industry and link some of it back to your website. When we finish the setup part of an SEO engagement we show our clients what we would do going forward to continue expanding their reach. The final question is something like, "Listen Beth, do you think you can discipline yourself to pour a glass of your favorite Cabernet every Friday the moment you get home, open up your laptop and write for 30 minutes"? Who says no to that?
It rarely goes as planned though. Apart from the adult beverages, content creation and link building as I have described have no associated out-of-pocket expenses. In most cases the fact that these activities cost nothing turns out to be a liabilitiy and the biggest impediment to execution. When something costs nothing, the perceived value is nothing and so guess what gets done? Right....NOTHING!
It's notable really. If you were to pay some thousands of dollars to run a print ad it would be completely different. You would likely gather a group of folks to help make sure that ad was as perfect as it could be to squeeze all the juice out of that investment. The content creation, however, while costing nothing is likely to go a LOT farther toward bringing in new leads and it will continue to bring new leads even when the next issue of that perioidical w/o your ad comes out.
The only real caveat to all this is the the frequency required to get substantive SEO traction in a competitive market place. If you live in Hollywood, CA for example, there is probably a lot more need for limousines than say...50th wedding anniversary gifts. If you are a limousine company owner, you are going to have to do a LOT more drinking, errr, content creation than just once a week.
Have you heard of "Panda" or "Penguin"? These were nicknames for Google search engine updates. Well, Google is at it again making more major adjustments to its search engine algorithms in an update nicknamed "Hummingbird". These updates are going to be giving much more consideration to "Conversational Search". Content that is more in the form of questions like "Where is the best place to order pizza in Savannah GA" or answers like "How to fold a flag in 3 easy steps" are getting extra consideration in Hummingbird.
While almost no one knows exactly how Google's algorithms work, there is no doubt that content marketing works. Whether you are doing it yourself or hiring an inbound marketing agency, the ROI is undeniable. Now if you don't mind I'll have to excuse myself. I'm starting to feel a little tipsy.