So, what does an animal nutritionist have to do with blog post about whether you should invest in SEO? Turns out a little, as you will see below.
The origins of this post go back to September 2019 when my wife Wendi (the founder of Wendi’s Weekend Trips & Whatnot blog) and I returned home from the FinCon Expo in Washington, D.C.. One of the sessions got me thinking about when someone should invest in SEO, aka search engine optimization.
SEO is a series of strategies and tactics to help websites rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The presenter’s point was this: If you have a website without a lot of content, then it does not make sense to invest in seo. What is your reaction to this statement? Do you agree with it? If you had a new site or one with a little content, would you spend money on SEO?
As you ponder the question for yourself, in this blog post, I want to:
- Share my initial reaction about when to invest in SEO;
- Answer why you might choose to not spend money on SEO; and
- Look at the advice from a different point of view.
Here’s my initial reaction about when to invest in SEO
When I heard the point made that if you don’t have a lot of content on your site, why would you pay someone for search engine optimization services, the first thing that came to my mind was a real-life scenario with one of my clients. Like most small business owners, my client knew more about the industry he is in and how to be successful at it than how to build and maintain a website, let alone handle SEO. When I began working with the client, I performed a technical SEO audit of his website and discovered it had major issues which didn’t lend themselves to a favorable user experience for visitors.
If you had visited his site, which did not have a lot of content, then you would have discovered it took nearly 50 seconds to load. Best practices call for less than 3 seconds. Who is going to wait nearly a minute for a website to load? Exactly, no one. Now, does it take an SEO specialist to discover a page load speed is slow? No, but it takes someone who understands the fundamentals of what makes a good website and how can it be improved to rank higher.
My client is a very smart man who has done well for himself. He has built a company that does work around the nation. He provides work for a lot of people, thus he helps feed and clothe a lot of families. His company is far more successful and profitable than Wooster Media Group LLC. However, websites and their performance are not his area of expertise. His focus is fixed on what he needs to do for his projects, not the website. Because of this, there was an opportunity for him to help feed and clothe my family, too.
The problem with a slow-loading website is people will not stick around and wait for it to load. For every second it takes to load, people are abandoning the site. Ask yourself, how much business would you lose if you thought it best to do search engine optimization work based on the amount of content on your site?
Another reason to invest in SEO with a new site is why would you market a site that is not optimized? If your website has some serious issues, then if you pay to drive traffic to your site, you are tossing good money after bad. You want the visitor’s experience to be as good as possible, and it will not be on a site that has problems and is not optimized.
While I can understand the speaker’s point, I hope you are beginning to see it is vital to spend money on SEO.
The animal nutritionist and when you should invest in SEO
Before we move on, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: The animal nutritionist.
While interviewing the nutritionist, who works with farm animals, I asked him about when farmers should seek out nutrition services for their livestock. “There’s no harm in getting a nutritionist involved from the get-go,” he said. “If you have cattle and are buying feed, you could be buying the completely wrong thing and not know it. So, you can get our nutritionists involved. There’s no downfall in asking questions.”
As soon as he said there was no harm in getting a nutritionist involved from the get-go, my mind turned to this post that focuses on when you should invest in SEO. We both arrived at the same conclusion: There’s no harm getting a professional involved from the get-go because you might be doing it all wrong. If you are doing it all wrong, then you can expect a harmful outcome.
SEO is cost-effective
SEO is cost-effective as a long-term strategy. It takes time and effort to build authority for your brand. But it is a strategy that pays off. When you focus on the items that will improve your rankings on search engines (like Google), your customers and potential customers will find you sooner. These items include keyword research, content creation, and content optimization.
The difference between using SEO over SEM (search engine marketing that involves paid ads like Google Ads) is that once you stop paying for Google Ads, you stop getting the benefit. However, if you invest in a quality SEO strategy, you will see a sustainable benefit in search engine rankings. (SEM has its place in the digital marketing mix, but it is pay-to-play.)
SEO helps to build your brand
SEO is all about getting people to find you online. This raises awareness about your company, and it helps you to build your brand. The hub of your activity should be your website because you own that. Think of social media as places you lease … and you can lose that lease at any time.
Higher search engine rankings give your business credibility
SEO builds your brand by helping you rank higher in Google and other search engines. By using targeted keywords and knowing what your customers are looking for, you will be able to answer questions and become an authority in your field.
You care about your customers and their experience with your product and website (or you should) and so does Google — that’s why SEO is important. The faster your site loads, the easier it is to navigate, the more information you have, the more questions you answer for your customers, the more your authority will increase and your brand will grow.
This helps to build rapport, goodwill, and trust with your ideal customers.
SEO helps you maintain a competitive edge
Do a search on the terms that you think identifies your company, then see if you rank on Google’s first page. If so, you have a competitive edge. However, you need to maintain that competitive edge. SEO can help you.
Google will test your ranking. I first heard this during an SEO conference. I’m not sure who the presenter was, but she said Google ranked an article of hers high to test it, and then it dropped down. The presenter said she did not think the article as written warranted the higher ranking, and she worked on it. So, sometimes SEO will get you noticed (give you a competitive edge), but you also need to maintain it (with SEO/content optimization).
You maintain a competitive edge when you have a solid SEO strategy. This includes not only looking at your site and content but also your competitors’ sites and content. SEO is not a “one-and-done” type of process. As you build your piece in the market, you should utilize SEO practices to ensure you are reaching your targeted audience. SEO can help you find the perfect way to reach the ideal customers in your niche.
Why you might choose not to spend money on SEO
It might sound silly (because it is), but you might choose not to spend the money: Because you don’t want to put your website in the best possible position to be successful. That certainly was not what the speaker was getting at in the presentation. Her point was there is not a lot happening with the website, so why not hold off on it for now. Her message was to postpone investing in SEO until there is more going on with the website. To a point, that is understandable.
A reason you might hold off on the investment is that the website, particularly if it is a blog, is a labor of love. My wife’s blog is a fine example of that. We do some basic SEO work on her site, but we do not do a lot. Wendi’s Weekend Trips & Whatnot is a site where Wendi writes about places where we have traveled, restaurants where we have eaten, and things we have done.
You might not invest in SEO if you have more pressing matters. You might be running into web development issues that need to be addressed first (but, an SEO audit will reveal issues). Or, you simply might not have the budget. You also might choose not to pay for the services if you can do the work yourself, and it makes sense for you to spend your time on it instead of your money. These are different reasons than simply waiting because of a lack of content.
How to get the most out of investing in SEO
Using all the tools in the SEO toolbox is the best way to get the most out of SEO. This not only includes quality content that is relevant and utilization of keywords, but also making sure your website is easy to navigate and is mobile-friendly. Plus you should be using good headings and sub-headings along with ALT text for your images.
Good SEO is also involved in social media that is relevant to your business. Post quality content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or whichever platform your customers are. This will help you raise awareness about your company and brand. When you invest in SEO, you will also help improve your rankings on Google and build your tribe.
Looking at the advice from a different point of view
Search engine optimization involves a lot of moving parts. The speaker might be onto something if we were to look at SEO in a different light. For example:
- SEO can refer to a technical audit of a website to improve lingering issues; or
- SEO can refer to optimizing the content on a blog post in order for it to rank higher in the SERPS based on the keywords.
So far, we have looked primarily at a technical SEO audit. This deals with looking at Google Analytics, page speed, mobile-readiness, meta descriptions, meta keywords, page titles, H1 tags, canonical links, 301 and 302 redirects; 404s; and a host of other things that have the potential to cause problems with ranking.
Then, there is the SEO that focuses on optimizing a blog post so that it will rank higher for a given search term, which we call keywords. This involves conducting keyword research to determine what the best phrase to rank for is. Like SEO, keyword research is both an art and a science. Claudia Pennington of DIY Marketing recommends trying to find the sweet spot of a keyword that has a nice monthly volume, but is not overly competitive.
Once you have your keyword, then you need to start writing your blog post, being sure to include the keyword in the permalink, the page title, the H1 tag, and within the first 50 words of your post. Then, you need to incorporate it throughout your blog post. You need to write a sufficient amount of words, which should be based on the average word count of the Top 10 pages that rank for the keyword. As I write this post, the average word count for the Top 10 pages that rank for “invest is SEO” is 1,544. However, the Top 3 have an average word count of 1,563.
As you can see from this post, I use a number of strategies to bolster the SEO of this page. After it is published, will I land on Google’s first page? I don’t know, but I am doing everything in my power to get it there. No SEO specialist can guarantee you will get on the first page of Google, but if you follow the guidelines I write about in Learn blog writing secrets in 5 areas to improve search results.
If we come at this from a different perspective and reframe the question, how would you answer this: Would you wait to invest in optimizing your content? If you don’t have a lot, then perhaps I can see waiting.
Final thoughts
While I reached a different conclusion than the speaker at this particular FinCon presentation, I really did get great value from it. She walked through how she marketed her business and how she proceeded. While many of the points she raised I was already familiar with, it is always good to be reminded and have them reinforced.
Before we wrap up, let me raise one more question: When should you conduct an SEO audit? You can find the answer here, in my post titled best time for a technical SEO audit?
If Wooster Media Group can ever be of help, do not hesitate to reach out.