Search engine optimization (SEO) allows businesses of all sizes to connect with the people who need their products or services. What’s more is that SEO positions a website to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) at various stages of the customer buying cycle, which will lead to more sales. We love helping our customers with their organic SEO efforts, but many of them ask us why this is a long-term strategy and not instantaneous.
We hope to clear the air and explain why organic SEO is a long-term strategy.
Let’s Talk About Google’s Process
Back when Google was first used for the purposes it’s used for today, people would use what we now call “black hat SEO” tricks, which would include old SEO efforts like keyword stuffing and hidden text to links. Then, Google started making significant changes in the way it ranked pages and began ranking sites based on the quality of content and relevance for the user’s search intent.
Today, Google is continuously crawling web pages and gives the highest rankings to sites that have high-quality, useful content that utilizes organic SEO the correct way. To get one of those top spots on the first page, it takes a lot of time for the simple reason that Google doesn’t change a website’s ranking overnight. Google may be able to spit out millions of search results in seconds, but it typically doesn’t change rankings nearly as fast.
Google Wants Fresh, Established Content
As you can imagine, organic SEO is very competitive and new content is getting pushed out every single minute. While Google is also looking at the latest content published on the Web, it also looks at pre-existing material that’s been regularly updated. For example, Moz has a blog post titled, “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” that was published in 2015. It continues to be one of the top blog posts about SEO because it’s constantly being updated with the best SEO practices that matter today.
Content is a big part of a successful digital marketing campaign but will lose its impact if left unmaintained and updated. As a part of your long-term SEO strategy, you will need to make an effort to update your content will relevant links, words, and terminology to make each piece of content shine on search engines.
Organic SEO is a Continuous Effort
Again, SEO is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” tactic. Sure, you could get high rankings for a little while with your new blog post, but without continuous effort to make it as fresh and relevant as possible, it will go down on SERPs or even disappear. To be sustainable, you need to perform ongoing SEO activities that work for your site’s favor.
What are the Benefits for the Long-Term SEO Strategy
You may be wondering if all of this work is worth it, and the simple answer to this is yes. Here are some of the benefits you’d see in the long run with organic SEO:
- Your audience will grow naturally. Every time someone reads your content, you gain a new follower in your audience. When your site is optimized to be found on Google and full of high-quality content, the size of your audience will increase.
- You’ll attract new, engaged people. When you start gaining traction with search engines, your site will gain more exposure to new people, which will add to your SEO efforts.
- You’ll gain referral traffic. If your content is valuable enough, other websites will start linking to your website (which is a great link building strategy). These backlinks will do wonders for your SEO (especially if they are reputable sites) and show search engines you’re a reliable source for high-quality content.
Remember, above all, make sure your content is not good, but great. It needs to be worthy of showing up on top SERPs and attracting backlinks toward it. As long as you keep with the most current SEO best practices, always make time for your ongoing efforts, and write high-quality, fresh content for the web, you will see the results in the long run. It may be tedious, but it’s well worth the digital presence!
To learn more about SEO, let’s grab a cup of coffee sometime soon!
