THE 3 GOALS OF SEO

By Mike McClanahan

When it comes to digital marketing, our clients all have a common goal—drive traffic to their business. And while the media have changed, those goals have remained the same for centuries.

Let’s take a look at those goals and how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Goal #1—Get Seen

It’s a pretty simple premise—before anyone can learn about you, they have to know you exist. Back when, that involved signage, handbills, and newspaper ads. Then came radio and television, which, along with magazines, widened audiences to a national scale.

Today, it’s the Web, it’s worldwide, and it reaches billions of eyes. But there are also millions of businesses competing for those eyeballs. That makes it essential to have a good strategy for standing out and ranking at the top of internet searches, and a whole discipline has evolved to make it happen—search engine optimization, or as it’s commonly referred to, SEO.

But the landscape is constantly changing so it’s important to keep abreast of the latest technological developments. What worked before may not today. A good SEO strategy needs experts who understand how today’s sophisticated search algorithms work and how to use them to their best advantage.

Goal #2—Get Read

High search engine rankings are great, but unless the searcher is motivated to click on the result, it’s all for naught. That’s why it’s important that your blog topics pique interest and your social media links inspire people to follow them.

Knowing your target audience lets you direct your online content to persons who are most likely to buy your products or use your services by choosing keywords and content that drive search engine rankings your direction and motivate searchers to give your content a look.

Goal #3—Get Results

Your site ranks high and tickles the searcher’s interest enough to give you a look. Congratulations, your SEO strategy is working—so far. Now you need them to like what they see enough to motivate them to buy, join, or take whatever action you want them to take.

Are your blog articles interesting and informative? Do they position you as a leader in your field? Do your social media posts motivate readers to learn more about you? To become a follower?

Your site administrator should be able to give you statistics on things like click-throughs, page views, the amount of time viewers spend on your various pages and the number of views that convert to sales. They should also be able to tell you how your statistics measure up to others in your industry and offer suggestions on how to improve each of these metrics.

It Takes a Team to Win

Expecting a person or two to understand the latest SEO techniques, develop effective blog and social media content, analyze performance, and implement a productive marketing strategy while building and maintaining a top-quality web and social media platform is unrealistic. Each function is its own discipline and requires specialists to do the job right.

The team at Unleaded Digital includes a roster of experts who work together to build a digital marketing strategy to help your business thrive. Contact us today to learn how we build, maintain, and market business and institutional websites that work.

After all, we got you to read this, didn’t we?