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.
Utilizing automation in your marketing efforts is essential to ensuring ease and flow in your lead generation and conversions. Whether you’re creating an automated email to deliver a piece of premium content, creating a nurture sequence to convert leads, or simply setting up an automatic reply to a contact form, automation is critical. But how do you ensure your automated emails don’t inadvertently put people off? Here’s all you need to know about marketing automation etiquette.
Consent, PII And GDPR
From a marketing perspective, best practice has always told us that we shouldn’t send emails to people who haven’t agreed to receive them in some way. This has always been common courtesy, yet laws cover the use of email addresses and whether or not you’re able to send automated emails. In the US, this is covered by Personally Identifiable Information, the specifics of which vary from state to state, while in the UK, there is GDPR.
Simply speaking, as long as you ensure that the email addresses you are sending automated mail to have, in some way, consented to you emailing them, there’s nothing to worry about.
For example, if you provide premium content on your website and users need to input their name and email address to access it, you can include a checkbox that, when checked, states they agree to receive marketing emails.
Similarly, you can include such checkboxes on every point of contact. You can also (usually) infer that if someone has contacted your business directly to make inquiries, they’re happy to receive correspondence from you. And if someone is a current customer, you can reasonably say the same.
Always Deliver What You’ve Promised
If you’re convincing people to willingly subscribe to receiving automated emails (opting in), it’s essential that you immediately deliver whatever incentive you offer. If that’s a lead magnet or freebie, your first automated response to them should be an email delivering that lead magnet. You may need multiple automations to achieve this if what was promised is a series, like a course.
Consider also any elements you promised that aren’t automated. Have you promised a call? A free audit? A strategy or quote? Having an automation that confirms they have successfully signed up and gives them a clear idea of when to expect what was promised is essential.
Have they signed up for a discount? Send them the code. Did you promise them regular updates and weekly content? Make sure you consistently send it.
It’s easy to think of an email as an insignificant piece of information. But it’s not. It’s an agreement you have entered into with a prospect or a client, and it’s important to respect that. Whatever you promised, they have ‘paid’ for it with that email address.
Always Give The Option To Unsubscribe (And Hold To It)
Your prospects may agree to receive correspondence, but they can also change their minds and opt out. They may have had all they need from you already or it could not be the right time for them to consider your offer. They might have found what they were looking for or are simply in the research phase of their buying journey. That is why it's good email etiquette to always provide the option for contacts to unsubscribe. This allows them to leave on their terms and lets your team focus on engaged contacts.
Don’t Be Too Pushy
There are several ways to encourage contacts to continue their buying journey. Perhaps they’ve clicked a link to a sales page in a previous email, and you want to send them more information about that product. Or maybe they started the checkout process on your website but paused part way through, and you want to remind them to complete their purchase.
These are highly effective, but it’s easy for them to become intrusive and pushy.
Who hasn’t done a double take when an email landed in their inbox with the query ‘Forget Something?’ and the image of a product you were just perusing online? It’s no different when offering a product or service to a business; you can easily come across as overbearing. The best way to do this is to look at it from the perspective of how you can help rather than what you can gain by sending the email.
For example, instead of asking if they forgot to sign up for your service, you can ask if they’re struggling with a core pain point it solves and then explain how you can help.
Need help setting up your marketing automations? Get in touch; we can help - and you can always unsubscribe later if you change your mind…