There are a lot of reasons you might be anxious to start a brand-new search engine optimization campaign. Perhaps you recently launched a new website, or even a whole new company, and want to see visitors start coming in. Or, it could be that you’ve been in business for a while, but are tired of watching Google, Yahoo, and Bing deliver hundreds or thousands of buyers to your competitors every month.
Either way, you’re probably feeling eager to get started. After all, who wouldn’t want to get all of the great business benefits that come from a working SEO campaign as fast as possible?
Even though you’re probably anxious to see results, it’s best not to rush into a new search engine optimization campaign without taking a few preliminary steps first. Here are three things you have to do before beginning your climb up Google’s rankings:
1. Audit your current site for positions. If you have an existing website, now is the perfect time to have your online marketing team take a good look under the hood. See where you currently rank for your most important keywords, how your pages appear to search engines, where your current traffic is coming from, and what kinds of links you have pointing to your site.
Note that you shouldn’t skip this step, even if you don’t have an existing site, since you can learn a lot from running the same kind of analysis on your competitors.
2. Research keywords for your plan. One of the classic search engine optimization mistakes is to simply assume that you know what your best potential customers are searching for. Just because a keyword seems obvious, however, or even gets lots of traffic, doesn’t make it the best one to concentrate on. A good online marketing partner can spend some time researching different keywords, ensuring that you get the biggest payoff for your time, effort, and money.
3. Experiment with pay-per-click Internet advertising. Given the effort it takes to reach one of the prime positions on Google and other major search engines, there’s really no excuse for not testing your landing pages, marketing messages, and other elements before you start showing up on the first page. By taking advantage of pay-per-click ads, you can get valuable feedback in a matter of days, not weeks or months.
Another advantage of PPC campaigns is that they’ll allow you to test negative keywords, which can be filtered out to help you avoid wasting time and money later.
Even though it can be exciting to rush into a new search engine optimization plan, following these three steps first is likely to make your campaign more efficient, and more profitable. Why not talk to a member of our team today about a free search engine optimization consultation for your business?