Did you catch our Instagram Live last week about SEO and website content? We talked about search engine optimization, website content, keywords, client reviews, and more. Plus, we covered how our digital marketing packages and a la carte services can support your small business’s online footprint. 

For today’s blog post, let’s start with a basic SEO overview. 

SEO stands for search engine optimization, or a set of practices designed to improve the rank of your web pages in organic search results. Everything from how often you use your keyword and how you write your title and headings to your internal and external links and even how frequently you publish new content impacts your SEO. 

You may be wondering why SEO matters. Consider the last time you looked something up online. How often do you scroll past the second or even third page of results when finding an appropriate URL to click? Hardly ever, right? You’re not the only one: Research shows that the top three search results get over 50 percent of all clicks with less than 10 percent of people even clicking through to page two. 

Our clients often ask for the difference between SEO and Google Ads. 

An easy way to explain the difference is that SEO is non-paid organic traffic, while Google Ads (also called pay-per-click advertising) are paid organic traffic. Although both lead to real (organic) users clicking on your website, the results are achieved in different ways. SEO is a slow, tedious process. We tell our clients that it takes six to nine months of continuous effort before they’ll see results. Google Ads offer a quicker approach but at a cost: In 2023, companies will spend anywhere from 9,000 dollars to 30,000 dollars per month on Google Ads (the sponsored content displayed at the top of your search results).

If you want better SEO without a big investment, website content is a great place to start, which is why these two topics often go hand-in-hand.

Clients ask us if they really need new content on their website each month, and the answer is always yes. Google wants to know your website is evolving, not stagnant. One way to show them that your business is alive and well is with consistent content updates. With that said, new content can be something as simple as a 350-word blog post or 200 new words on a landing page. 

Equally important, you need to make the changes on a regular basis. When it comes to SEO, it’s not the number that matters as much as consistency. A regular posting schedule allows for you to increase your organic traffic and build brand awareness without getting burned out. We recommend that clients publish a minimum of two blog posts per month. For smaller companies, this may feel like a big commitment. If time and budget allows, publish more! Big companies can push out as many as a post — or even more — per day. 

In our next post, we’ll dig even deeper into website content and take a closer look at blog posts, keywords, word count, and testimonials. Stay tuned!

If you’re looking to develop a digital marketing strategy and expand your online reach, please reach out to our team today.