Building an SEO Program – All or Nothing

Search engine optimization tends to get a bad rep with clients at times.  There can be multiple reasons for this.  For one, they may have had a bad experience with a previous  company that just left them feeling that SEO is just a snake oil sales pitch.  Another reason could be that there is not a full budget dedicated to SEO.  When this happens, you are left with only being able to do a few things that will make a successful SEO campaign.  Unfortunately, when it comes to SEO, you can’t just pick and choose which action items you want to do with your budget and then forget the rest of them.  Sure, it is great to have a site that has meta data across the board, but if you are not investing in link building, social outreach, content creation, proper site navigation, site technical issues (301 re-directs, canonical tagging, 404 error pages, etc.), then your efforts are just being wasted.

SEO is an all or nothing game.  You may want to debate this, but it’s the truth.  Think of SEO as building a house.  You start with framing out the house, but do you just decide not to put up all the walls or insulation or move in furniture or paint the walls?  Absolutely not.  That is the same with SEO.

SEO must also be seen as an investment like a house as well.  Building a house is a lot of money upfront and for the beginning of the project it seems like you have nothing.  But, the longer the project goes on, and the more work and effort that is put into it, you now have your beautiful dream home and the investment has paid off.  If you don’t want that investment or you want your results up front, then throw in some pay-per-click advertising as well.

So whats the moral of the story?  You must set realistic expectations when beginning an SEO program.  Do not think that you are going to create meta data and add a few keywords here and there within the site and then all of a sudden you are going to be ranked in the first position for these keywords.  If you have an in-house SEO team, be sure that your goals are set out from the beginning with a realistic timeframe.  If you are working with an SEO agency or contracter, than be sure to do the same with them.  Establish what your business goals are and be on the same page with them on a timeline.

Good luck and optimize away.