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.
Cohesive marketing produces a number of outcomes, including a better return on investment (ROI). By keeping your messages and habits consistent, you can avoid the temptation to "try out" new trends as an experiment. Instead, you can incorporate the newest marketing tactics into your well-formed marketing strategy to truly harness the power of innovation.
A cohesive marketing strategy allows companies to promote their products and services under the umbrella of one main strategy. To achieve success using this approach, it's necessary to commit to consistency, work effectively as a team, and know how to leverage the power of bringing in additional resources.
Consistent Messaging
If new messaging is well thought out and carefully planned, the likelihood that it will help boost your results is high. Some of the best marketing minds are creative and willing to embrace innovative ideas. To make the most of your team's willingness to try new things, it's important to reinforce the idea that consistency is the number one priority.
Before you try something new, make sure it fits with your industry. Explore situations where it may or may not resonate with your target audience. Most importantly, if a new social media channel or marketing tactic is foreign territory, consult with marketing experts to get some feedback on how it may or may not work for your brand.
Using Multiple Channels
In general, there are six digital marketing strategies that companies commonly use as part of their cohesive marketing strategy: social media, paid search, organic search, web, email marketing, and content marketing. Many successful companies use only a few of these methods to support their message in an effort to retain and attract customers.
If you are only using one or two channels, consider how adding a few additional channels may give your marketing efforts a boost. Now is a great time to bring in marketing experts to help you tweak your message to better appeal to customers that may be using a channel or method that's new to you.
In many cases, a strong email campaign could get a valuable boost from further exposure on social media. Each component can complement another if used properly to create a result that helps you reach and exceed your ROI goals.
Marketing Technology
Marketing technology (MarTech) includes the right set of tools designed to support your marketing team's efforts This technology is useful when marketing teams want to optimize their efforts across multiple marketing channels while remaining consistent with their message and being able to accurately report on results.
If you are new to marketing technology, consider leveraging the expertise of a digital marketing agency to help you integrate the tech that may benefit your team most. There's no need to start over; your marketing efforts may simply need a refresh and some support from proven MarTech tools.
Internal Marketing Team and Resources
When it comes to creating a cohesive marketing strategy to grow your business, your internal marketing team is likely the most valuable resource available to your company. Even high-performing marketing teams suffer from occasional bottlenecks and breaks in communication, however. If your team seems to be in a rut or would benefit from an infusion of new ideas, turning to outside resources is one way to give the marketing department the boost that can come with additional tools and outside energy.
How A Cohesive Marketing Strategy Could Help Your Business
A cohesive marketing strategy is consistent and scalable. It offers your customers a clear message about your company and how you can help them solve an important problem in their lives. In order for you to achieve maximum ROI and reap the rewards of a well-formed and forward-thinking marketing plan, you may need to call on outside resources.
At Synchronicity, we recommend marketing strategies that consider every aspect of your digital presence as it relates to your overarching message. Our goal is to help businesses reach their marketing goals while achieving maximum ROI for their organization. A cohesive marketing strategy could be the difference between growing slowly and reaching your goals at a quicker pace.