When it’s time to approach web marketing, buzzwords like SEO and website content are often thrown into discussions with small business owners. The problem: Search engine optimization can be a scary idea, especially for SMBs that don’t know much about how it works. This could prevent companies from investing in new strategies to increase business exposure on the web.
SEO has gone through its ups and downs over the past five years. At one time, major SEO agencies operated freely in the United States, sucking up SMB budgets and promising significant returns. Through recent Google algorithmic updates, many of these organizations flopped, and left their clients out in the cold. This is because SEO is great as a stand alone practice, but it works much better with a solid content marketing strategy.
According to a Bright Local SEO survey, 70 percent of SMBs pay their SEO consultants $1,000 per month for relevant services. This up-front investment provides businesses with on-page optimization, which can clean up weak backlinks and resolve 404 errors. However, it does very little for business exposure and lead generation. Without active content marketing strategies, companies will have pretty websites, but nothing worth reading or discovering in search.
ContentLEAD recently reported on new data from the Custom Content Council, which showed that 81 percent businesses plan to create a wide array of content moving forward, such as for social media and their websites. Without a clear editorial strategy that factors in-demand subject matter, the right channels to reach prospective customers and SEO, SMBs will invest in the wrong techniques and waste resources.
SEO can be cost effective, but SEO is only workable when that seo includes a content campaign? Every company looking to improve its online presence should only consider working with an SEO agency that provides a variety of marketing services, from content to social to SEO as part of the gambit for raising their view online
