Many business owners contact us for help with their SEO efforts, as they want us to provide them with a way of increasing their company’s visibility, which should lead to them gaining more leads, and therefore improve their revenue. Many people see SEO as a quick way of meeting their immediate goals, leaving them free to focus on their long-term goals, e.g. they believe that using SEO can get them onto the first page of the search engines quickly, then they can relax and start spending their time and money elsewhere. As a digital marketing agency based in the heart of Cheshire, it is our job to manage these expectations, and this is how we do it:

Persuade People to Think Long-Term SEO

We very quickly have to dispel the myth that SEO is a short-term game. SEO is something you have to commit to for the long-term, and so it should be counted as one of your long-term goals for your business. Each website is unique, and the circumstances in the world of business and the internet world are always changing. The search engines are continually updating their algorithms, new trends may emerge that affect your industry, and new competitors may spring up – all of which can affect your choice of keywords. So, it is best to think in terms of the fact that an SEO campaign really has no end date, it is an on-going process which needs to be reviewed and adapted on a monthly basis. On a positive note, though, the more consistent you are with your SEO in terms of content quality and best practices, the better your return on investment will be.

Effort = Results

The more effort you put into SEO, the better your results will be. SEO is a term that encompasses a lot of processes, such as inbound links, blog posts, social media and your website. Therefore, if your business has only one person trying to manage your SEO process on top of their other work the results won’t be as great as a business with a team of people just dedicated to SEO. That is where Zool can help though – we can write blog posts for you, we can make changes to the backend on your website, we can help manage your social media communities, etc.

Evaluation

When we first start an SEO campaign, clients usually have beliefs and expectations about the general course the campaign is going to run on. Zool, try to manage this by explaining, as mentioned before, that businesses are unique and unpredictable, so things may happen which we can’t plan for that might affect the campaign.

Therefore it is essential to have a regular review process. At the beginning of the first month, we take a snapshot of the current metrics, and that serves as our baseline. You may start to see peaks in traffic during this month, but there won’t be enough data to give any significant insights – the first month is really about creating the systems and procedures to carry you through the rest of the campaign.

The first significant milestone is the three-month point. This is the point in the campaign where you can check out your analytics data to see how the traffic has grown. The actual increase in traffic growth may well be slight at this point, but you should start to see the exact composition of the traffic beginning to change. Now is the time to look at whether any particular group of subjects are getting more attention than the others, and make adjustments based on what you find.

Once you are past the six-month mark in your SEO campaign, then you have much more opportunity to analyse the data on a month to month basis and see any fluctuations as they happen, and tweak your campaign based on these fluctuations. Once you have quality data archived, this can help you set more realistic SEO goals for the next few months.

Understanding the process of SEO and using this understanding to set your expectations can really help with a focus on your long-term strategy, and not make any drastic decisions in the first six months.

If you would like an insight into how an SEO campaign could work for you and your business, then please contact Zool today on 01625 238 770.

How to Set Realistic Expectations for SEO

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Many business owners contact us for help with their SEO efforts, as they want us to provide them with a way of increasing their company’s visibility, which should lead to them gaining more leads, and therefore improve their revenue. Many people see SEO as a quick way of meeting their immediate goals, leaving them free to focus on their long-term goals, e.g. they believe that using SEO can get them onto the first page of the search engines quickly, then they can relax and start spending their time and money elsewhere. As a digital marketing agency based in the heart of Cheshire, it is our job to manage these expectations, and this is how we do it:

Persuade People to Think Long-Term SEO

We very quickly have to dispel the myth that SEO is a short-term game. SEO is something you have to commit to for the long-term, and so it should be counted as one of your long-term goals for your business. Each website is unique, and the circumstances in the world of business and the internet world are always changing. The search engines are continually updating their algorithms, new trends may emerge that affect your industry, and new competitors may spring up – all of which can affect your choice of keywords. So, it is best to think in terms of the fact that an SEO campaign really has no end date, it is an on-going process which needs to be reviewed and adapted on a monthly basis. On a positive note, though, the more consistent you are with your SEO in terms of content quality and best practices, the better your return on investment will be.

Effort = Results

The more effort you put into SEO, the better your results will be. SEO is a term that encompasses a lot of processes, such as inbound links, blog posts, social media and your website. Therefore, if your business has only one person trying to manage your SEO process on top of their other work the results won’t be as great as a business with a team of people just dedicated to SEO. That is where Zool can help though – we can write blog posts for you, we can make changes to the backend on your website, we can help manage your social media communities, etc.

Evaluation

When we first start an SEO campaign, clients usually have beliefs and expectations about the general course the campaign is going to run on. Zool, try to manage this by explaining, as mentioned before, that businesses are unique and unpredictable, so things may happen which we can’t plan for that might affect the campaign.

Therefore it is essential to have a regular review process. At the beginning of the first month, we take a snapshot of the current metrics, and that serves as our baseline. You may start to see peaks in traffic during this month, but there won’t be enough data to give any significant insights – the first month is really about creating the systems and procedures to carry you through the rest of the campaign.

The first significant milestone is the three-month point. This is the point in the campaign where you can check out your analytics data to see how the traffic has grown. The actual increase in traffic growth may well be slight at this point, but you should start to see the exact composition of the traffic beginning to change. Now is the time to look at whether any particular group of subjects are getting more attention than the others, and make adjustments based on what you find.

Once you are past the six-month mark in your SEO campaign, then you have much more opportunity to analyse the data on a month to month basis and see any fluctuations as they happen, and tweak your campaign based on these fluctuations. Once you have quality data archived, this can help you set more realistic SEO goals for the next few months.

Understanding the process of SEO and using this understanding to set your expectations can really help with a focus on your long-term strategy, and not make any drastic decisions in the first six months.

If you would like an insight into how an SEO campaign could work for you and your business, then please contact Zool today on 01625 238 770.