Small businesses with existing websites frequently call The Marketing Square for search engine optimization (SEO) to “get to the top of Google” which is no little request. The first question is how much does SEO cost?
The answer is the same: How much is it costing you NOT to pay for SEO?
Everyone wants to turn up first in search engine results. But how to do it, what you’ll pay and the time involved sometimes places SEO outside of a small businesses’ reach. And while it’s a nice thought to say, “teach me, I can do it myself,” it’s not rational.
It takes years to learn and understand and many hours to institute on a website and online. It takes a team and an experienced webmaster to make it happen.
What is SEO?
SEO is an umbrella term that describes activities that cause a website to be searched and found by search engine robots. Your websites’ infrastructure and content will determine this.
SEO — Search engine optimization — is a confusing activity to most people who only know they want to be on the first page of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all the other search engines. SEO is a massive undertaking and website owners should educate themselves before hiring a firm for this service or they can get ripped off or be very disappointed by the firm that they do hire.
Top 4 Things to Know About SEO
No. 1: SEO is intensive and time consuming
No. 2: …therefore SEO requires a budget
No. 3: SEO activities change constantly and fluidly
PS: There are NO SEO tricks or activities to keep you at the top of search engine results forever or long-term
You have to change your website CONSTANTLY to stay competitive. Because SEO changes are continuous and what works one day can and will change the next day, you have to adjust and move with the changes or hire someone who will do it for you.
Why Do You Have to Pay for SEO?
The Internet is not a free service. Like phone service, it has its price whether you use Wi-Fi at Starbucks or pay a cable company to access it at home, the Internet costs. A lot.
It costs to access it and therefore it costs to be found online. Search Engines like Google and Yahoo and Bing are in the search results business it to make money. Their goal is to provide the best results to USERS. NOT to Website Owners. When they provide the best results, you’re likely as a consumer to use the search engine.
Google is No. 1 because it’s the most widely used which means it provides users with the best results. Regardless of Bing asking people to try their search engine in some of the worst TV commercials since Pepsi asked people to do blind taste tests, it’s still not gonna catch up with Google.
If you want to be found online, then you in turn have to provide outstanding content to the search engines. If you don’t touch your website or it looks like crap and has no valuable information, the search engines have no reason to provide it in a search result.
Give the search engines quality content and you’ll turn up in search results.
No one gets it for free. No one. There are millions of websites out there. There are millions of businesses online. If you want to compete you have to provide a valuable service, information, a reason for a search engine to put your website into its pool of great resulting resources to Internet users.
The Cost: You Need a Monthly Budget
While The Marketing Square works with a range of budgets, the amount of time it takes to provide SEO does have a starting point and a minimum. So if someone tells you that you can do it cheaply, expect cheap results.
SEO done properly should include multiple activities. There IS NOT one thing, one trick, one activity that will continually work for SEO.
Hearing or reading that pictures or a phrase or a keyword or a this or a that will work, is simply not true. There is no one-hit SEO wonder. Anyone telling you this is not telling you the whole story or they’re not educated. The truth is SEO changes constantly.
Check Your Rankings
Today, for example, Google instituted an algorithm change that will affect many, many websites according to a reports provided to The Marketing Square SEO Master Franklyn Galusha.
Today and moving forward, good, bad or ugly, Google robots will roam your websites and include them in search results, penalize them, or ignore them.
Check your rankings for the next several weeks and if you need help, give us a call.
