Anyone who has built and launched a website has likely encountered an oft-repeated acronym: SEO (search engine optimization). And while you might not have ever done SEO yourself, you've benefited from it in the past: Every day, search engines like Google employ complex algorithms to sift through more than 400 billion web pages and deliver the most relevant results.
Website owners like you use SEO techniques and strategies to get their websites to the top of the search results for relevant user queries. But SEO is not a one-time endeavor — Google and other search engines change often, and ongoing SEO ensures your website stays in front of the people you want to reach. Just as a physical storefront requires regular maintenance and updates to stay competitive, your website needs ongoing SEO to remain visible amidst the ever-changing digital landscape.
The ABCs of SEO: What is Ongoing SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Don't let the techy jargon intimidate you. HubSpot — considered one of the gold standards for SEO and digital marketing advice — defines SEO as simply a collection of strategies and tips that "expand a company’s visibility in organic search results'' and help "drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue."
SEO Connects the Search Engine Algorithms With Your Website's Content
Regardless of your website's goal or industry niche, all SEO techniques have one thing in common: They look at ways to optimize your website's content, keywords, and links to help search engines rank your website higher in the search results when someone searches for something related to your keywords, content, or brand name.
According to HubSpot, SEO needs to address the key factors that all search engines use to determine the value of your website's content — and therefore how high in the search results your website or specific landing page should appear:
- The intent or meaning behind why someone is searching for a specific term or question
- The relevance between what someone searches for, and the content on your website
- The quality of your content (for instance, a website about physical exercise written by certified personal trainers is deemed by Google to be higher quality than a website where the articles are written by non-experts)
- The performance of your website, such as how long it takes a page to load and whether it works well on mobile devices
Static SEO Versus Ongoing SEO: Why It Matters to Stay Fresh and Keep Your SEO Updates Current
As users' web behavior changes and technology evolves, search engines proactively adjust their algorithms.
If you aren't conducting ongoing SEO maintenance and upgrades, a well-optimized website today can quickly become obsolete tomorrow, causing your search rankings to drop and attracting fewer organic visitors. Google itself updates its algorithms several thousand times per year, including significant "major" changes every few months that dramatically change how it crawls and ranks content. For example, Google's infamous Panda update changed how it ranked how-to lifestyle content on the Internet, causing one major content publisher to lose a whopping $6.4 million of traffic and advertising nearly overnight.
How Ongoing SEO Influences Your Website Strategy
Staying abreast of changes to SEO techniques and strategies provides important guidance to your content, marketing, and overarching website strategy. For example, it can dictate or influence:
- How much content you publish, and the content's format, length, and focus
- How you incorporate other forms of media on your website, including images, video, and audio
- How you organize content on your site, including landing page layouts and your site's navigation
- What keywords and target users your website focuses on
Embrace the Power of Ongoing SEO
Caroline Forsey, an expert in thought leadership and marketing content, looked at the survey results from more than 400 of the world's leading web analysts to predict the biggest SEO trends of 2024. According to her data, some of the top changes in SEO strategies this year include:
- A heavier emphasis on expertise, meaning the content on your website should come from experts in your related field (including bylines and author bios that demonstrate the author's credentials and experience on the topic they're writing about)
- A renewed emphasis on first-person, credible content, especially as more websites generate high volumes of low-quality AI content (Google itself has announced upcoming changes to tackle low-value articles created by AI)
- A priority on websites that are deemed trustworthy, such as e-commerce sites with well-rated customer service, or content sites that do a good job of citing trustworthy research and statistics
- Bonus points on content that is creative and original and doesn't simply rehash content found on other sites
Of course, these SEO trends will inevitably change every year, and ongoing SEO will keep you competitive no matter what Google, Bing, and other search engines do. No matter your website's industry or content strategy, ongoing SEO requires that you:
- Focus on keeping your content fresh and high quality, including new blog posts or regularly refreshing and updating old product descriptions or articles
- Conduct keyword research often, since the terms or phrases that your core audience uses will evolve over time
- Maintain your website's overarching performance, such as mobile-friendliness as mobile devices evolve, and page load speed
- Build a diverse portfolio of high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites within your niche, which may include outreach campaigns, getting others in your industry to write guest blogs, and participating in online forums or communities
- Keep on top of technical and performance metrics, such as scanning your site for broken links (and fixing the links you uncover) and using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and conversion rates
- Stay on top of algorithm changes so you can adapt your SEO strategy in real-time
Some website owners think of SEO as the first step of their promotional strategy. But it's less a first step, and more an ongoing journey to ensure you, your brand, and your content stay relevant in such a competitive atmosphere. Whether you choose to go it alone and take a DIY approach to SEO, or you choose to consult with a digital marketing and SEO agency, check in often and make sure your SEO evolves as the world around you evolves.
In today’s digital and technological economy, social selling is bigger and more prevalent than ever, possibly due to the recent global pandemic. It may also be more challenging than ever since there are now so many more people and brands using social media. But wait, isn’t social selling just social media marketing? Yes, and no.
Though social selling is done on social media, it allows you to target your brand’s right buyers by leveraging your existing connections and establishing a solid rapport with them. It requires a bit more finesse than simply running an ad, and it may well be the modern-day replacement to cold calling when done well. Nutshell? Social selling is about building meaningful and relevant relationships, utilizing the power of social media connections, and then turning those relationships into sales.
So, how can a business cut through the ‘noise’ and reach their target audience, without sacrificing the ‘social’ and community aspect? There’s a fine line to walk in keeping your social media interactions targeted and branded, without losing the integral human connection of social media, and potentially alienating followers.
To help, below are some of the best practices we know of for social selling successfully. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a manufacturing company or selling your services, if you are selling something, you’ve got to learn how to do it well.
Establish Yourself on Relevant Platforms
There are several social media platforms these days, which means it can be difficult to know where to focus your time and attention. Let’s face it, social media can be a time suck if you’re not using it wisely. Do your due diligence before getting started, and determine which platforms are most popular for the demographics and markets you want to target. Choose to spend your time on your top 2-3 sites, because trying to be everywhere all the time can quickly become exhausting. Plus, by focusing on just a handful of sites, you can truly establish yourself and create a well-branded social persona that’s attractive to your audience.
Create a Game Plan
Social selling takes time and commitment. You can’t go at it halfway and expect to succeed. Building a following and establishing street cred takes time and consistency, and you can’t be consistent with anything without some kind of game plan in place.
Ask yourself questions, like:
- What types of content do you plan to share?
- How often do you plan to post new content?
- What time of day will you post your content?
- What are the best times of day to reach your target audience?
- Will you enlist help in your social media campaigns?
- What will they help you do?
- What benchmarks will help you know your tactics are working?
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of questions, but they are some basics to get you rolling. Going into anything with a failure to plan means you’re only planning to fail. You have to know what your goals are and how you’re going to reach them, otherwise, you’re going to waste a lot of time spinning your wheels. Social selling is effective, but it takes strategy.
Prioritize Relationships Over Sales
Social media is so named, because the whole point is being social with others, creating connections, and building relationships. It’s sales 101 that absolutely no one will be interested in buying something from you unless they know you, like you, and trust you. All three of those things are established through relationships.
When you nail them, sales naturally follow, because people have a relationship with you and your brand, and they know they aren’t merely seen as a transaction, but truly valued as a customer. It sometimes feels like good, old-fashioned customer service has taken a beating over the last several years, but there’s something to be said for seeking to serve your customers and clients well.
How can you begin to serve your customers? By ridding yourself of the ‘what can I sell you’ mentality, and exchanging it for the ‘how can I help you’ mentality instead. Social media is a wonderful way to connect with people and offer real value to them, through the content you produce and share. Done well, and sales follow naturally.
Commit to Real Interaction
No, you don’t have to reply to every single comment you receive on social media. However, brands that do really well, are typically responsive and do in fact reply to almost everyone. As your business grows in size, you might have to enlist help doing this, but hey––that’s a great problem to have!
It’s also important to start relevant conversations with your audience and keep them going until the conversation dies off. Then, start another! This takes regular interaction and engagement, which is why it’s so important to have your plan in place and to create a consistent social media schedule.
Granted, this short list is by no means an exhaustive one. There are many effective strategies you can use to market your business on social media. Just remember that social selling can be a bit of an art, so if your business wants to stay competitive and relevant, it pays to invest your time in mastering it.