SEO is a journey – But be realistic and patient in that journey!

The reality is, as the title suggests, SEO is a journey!

Not a fad or a phase or a ‘once only’ exercise that needs to be undertaken, “just because your competitors are doing SEO”, but something that is much more important to your business.

Business owners and decision-makers need to gain a better understanding of the investment, time and effort that SEO will benefit the business, help generate more leads and generate more revenue as the organic visibility improves.

But what do you want to achieve through SEO, is it realistic and how soon can I start to see returns.

Expectations vs Reality

It may be natural to want immediate returns, good SEO can be expensive and show a dent in the financial spreadsheet in the early stages where as PPC will show a more instant return. So it is important when setting out an SEO digital marketing plan to set realistic expectations.?

A large site, in a competitive industry, with high search volume keywords,? will require time and effort to get great performance and the large monthly SEO fee may not see returns in the first couple of months but this is the start of the journey.

That is not to say improvements cannot be seen, even by making some key changes or by adding some fresh authoritative content, you will start to see green shoots of performance at an early stage.

It does take time for Google to review and understand the nature of your large site and to rank the keywords in strong/profitable positions.

This is the reality, and there’s a fine line between eagerness and impatience, and SEO is a discipline where that line is particularly fuzzy. Every site is unique, and sets of circumstances are always changing – such as new competitors, increased competition and the ever changing algorithms - especially with AI becoming more integrated into SEO/Digital Marketing strategies.

In any SEO strategy there will be a handful of quick wins that will see a jump in performance but overall there needs to be a digital strategy that underpins the business's long term goals & objectives.

Duration

Remember that SEO is a long-term project that should be grounded with long-term goals.?

Trying to achieve immediate improvements in lead generation and/or revenue can sometimes provide a fruitless return. Furthermore, as I have mentioned previously, SEO campaigns should not have an end date; they must persist through the lifetime of a business’s online presence.

But with the right strategy with compounding interest—the longer you spend, and the more consistent you are, the better ROI growth you will start to see, as long as you stay committed to quality content and best practices.

It isn’t just a case of keeping up with the Jones’ but also it is a case of ensuring your site still meets your customer's needs as well as meeting the needs of search engine algorithms and to not fall foul of any updates.

I always refer to an SEO strategy as Wile e Coyote chasing the road runner. Your site is Wile e Coyote and Road Runner is the top of the SERPs and when you stop SEO, I see this as Wile E going over the edge of the cliff, while Roadrunner goes around the corner.

He stays there for a while but then soon drops, I have seen this happen after around 3 months when performance starts to fade away.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

When setting out on the SEO journey, how do you know that you are progressing??

How do you know that the SEO budget you have fought your finance director for is being correctly utilised?

Questions that get asked on a regular basis, any SEO project, should have clear and precise KPI’s that are relevant in the short, medium and long term. This gives you an idea of progression and whether the SEO strategy is correct and/or needs corrective measures.

It may be the case of setting up process goals in the first couple of months to get an idea of the journey ahead, analyse the data that you have at hand, understand your competitors and create the right strategy for your site.

But also remember that KPI’s will change as the project changes, don’t be worried about this, what might appear to be a valid long term KPI in year one is likely to be below expectations when approaching year 3.

Knowing where you want to go, understanding the SEO process and acknowledging realistic KPI’s will make the journey significantly smoother.

Projections and forecasting can be a good way to understand the journey and strategy, and they can be realised should the right strategy be applied.

It isn't stand alone

Most clients that I work with, and have done so in the past, have adopted a multi-channel digital channel approach.

This has allowed the business to see immediate returns through PPC and Paid Social, get brand awareness through Digital PR and start the SEO journey.

Learnings can and will be taken from the early PPC results to help power the SEO journey and once Google (and your customers) is fully crawling and understanding your site the reliance on the paid channels can be reduced and better marketing costs vs transactions can be seen.