Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for many companies is taking a step into the unknown. Unlike traditional marketing methods, there is a period of time where you are paying a company for something you cannot see. Print advertising gives you an instant visual reminder of exactly you have paid for, you might not quite understand why that tiny little advert with slightly smudged font and barely legible phone number is worth quite so much, but everyone else pays that, all your competitors are there so you need to be there to… right?
Many SME’s have noticed a demise in this form of advertising. In a bid to find the new way to reach out to customers it’s likely you heard about the growth of the web, and your “best friend put you in touch with someone down the road” that could build you a website. Unfortunately this website has now sat around for a good few years and you have never had a single enquiry. You have solidly made up your mind that internet marketing does not work for your business.
For anyone who grew up with The Secret Garden among their favourite childhood books (if you didn’t it is well worth a read), you will know that when Mary found the key to the garden this is when she evolves into a young girl full of spirit and friends are drawn to her. But this did not happen overnight and the garden took months of work to transform it, and at the same time Mary blossomed from a lonely spoilt girl into a well loved child.
The reason I have used that analogy is that a website is very much like The Secret Garden, the missing piece of the puzzle was the ‘key’, or in the case of your redundant website the key to success is SEO. Gradually over those initial months you will start to see rankings appear on page one, you will see traffic increasing, and within a year you will see your website in full bloom.
The hardest time as a client is the initial 3 months of a campaign. As consultants in the first 3 months relentlessly trimming the over grown grass, pruning trees, digging flower beds, and planting bulbs. Weeks and weeks go by and there seems to be very little happening, but then after months of toil, numerous wobbles as a client, and reassuring chats with your SEO consultant, suddenly spring arrives. Your keywords are no longer fluctuating between page 2 and 3, they are sitting comfortably on page one. Now you can start to see the significant impact SEO can have on driving traffic to your business, your once abandoned website is reaching out to new customers and generating enquiries and the first 3 months of doubt melted with the last of the spring frosts.
