Last week I was listening to a podcast on change management leadership (not as boring as it sounds), and the leadership expert was talking about the importance of “disrupting and reinventing so you can remain relevant.”
It seems that everyone is reinventing right now as we all try to manage the fast pace of change. And specifically, the fact that the landscape is growing increasingly competitive while technology is changing rapidly and customers’ habits are evolving significantly.
When you throw SEO into the mix and the frustration of trying to improve rankings and visibility, your strategy and clarity around what you’re even doing and prioritizing can get very convoluted.
SEO Follows the Business Strategy—Not the Other Way Around
According to a recent study by Adobe, “75% of marketers stated they believe the industry has transformed more in the past 2 years than in the previous 50.” I’d say that feels about right.
I talk to a lot of businesses who are frustrated that they’re not ranking at the top for their keywords. Maybe they used to rank. Or maybe they never ranked at all but they’ve sunk a lot of money into digital marketing and are frustrated with their results.
Honestly, your SEO is only going to be as good as your ability to keep up, innovate, and remain a market leader. While there are many businesses that legitimately are awesome offline and just need to focus online, that is not the case I see most of the time.
Many businesses expect the SEO to do the work for them. They haven’t kept up with the marketplace and with the changing buying habits of their market and their business strategy is not reflective of that.
If their approach is outdated, their SEO is never going to keep up.
I read this brilliant remark in an article recently: “Because SEO is not an alternative for marketing; it’s a SUPPORT for marketing. Get the marketing right, and then have the SEO that makes it work properly.”
What Is Your Current SEO Focus?
The goal of SEO is to be found everywhere for as many keywords as you can. Anywhere your potential client can type a query into a search box, you want to explore it.
Why digital marketing takes so long, and is often so expensive, is because you need to experiment and tweak constantly.
It’s the same for SEO.
One of my clients recently mentioned that her goal with an engagement with me was to “knock it out of the park” with SEO within a few months.
But her site was new.
The company had no links.
They are in a competitive niche.
Their content doesn’t stand out from the pack.
I love her tenacity and goal, and while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to kick ass and take names with SEO, it most likely is not going to be that quick or easy.
So what exactly do you need to do for SEO?
The answer depends on your Marketing Maturity. Here is a rundown of some of my SEO recommendations and next steps for recent clients:
- One client had a significant percentage of mobile traffic that was continuing to grow. Their target demographic is also consistently on their phones, and they’re a leader and innovator in their space. They have a dream backlink profile. An app is absolutely next for them, along with schema, and optimizing their different channels and content assets to the next level.
- K-12 Non-Profit: a marketing angle is needed with newly written unique copy. With a local twist. National competition is fierce. They’re developing their brand and unique angle, which is what I need to get my hands on so that they’re not stuck with a generalized SEO strategy that won’t get them the results they want.
- A local, nationally-recognized private school – they must own their Google My Business listing like it’s their job. Let alone recalibrating their title tags, meta descriptions, and defining a more realistic keyword strategy.
- A luxury B2C consumer company for home products – ranking for core keywords means building out pages with unique content not provided by a manufacturer, putting their NAP (name, address, phone number) everywhere and more prominently on their site, as well as improving their GMB (Google My Business) profile and driving calls and appointments into their store.
What about you? Do you know where to go next? How are you keeping up with the fast pace of change?
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Jenny Munn
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