It can also be one of the most frustrating areas of your business if you don't get it right. If you want immediate results, organic search engine optimisation isn't for you. But, with care, you can use it to wean your company off its expensive pay per click addiction.
Pick your keywords
SEO works fastest and is at its most profitable when you pick off small, easily conquered, areas of the web.
Don't go for the bright lights of the keywords that have millions of searches every month - these will be difficult for you to get a foothold in without an enormous budget. Instead, pick off a bunch of lower competition keywords. Ideally ones that have buying intent so that potential searchers are likely to have their wallet in one hand, ready to spend.
There are a few different ways to decide whether a keyword has buying intent. The first one is obviously if it has the word "buy" in it. But keyword phrases that include a make and model number are also good clues. You can also do a search for the keyword on Google (in fact, you should do this!) - if there is a cluster of adverts at the top of the search and more either down the side or at the end of the first page, that's a good sign that other people think this is a buying keyword. They wouldn't be spending good money on adverts if that wasn't the case.
Target each page on your site
For the best organic SEO marketing results, each page on your site needs to be single-minded in much the same way as Idefix the dog is in the Asterix cartoons.
If your page content strays too far, you'll confuse both Google and your site visitors. Both are easily confused. So keep your page content tight. If the content looks like going off topic, create a new page for that topic.
This means that your page needs to be coherent. All the different elements such as the title, the headlines, the image names and the content itself need to gel together. It's a skill worth learning as it will help Google to figure out what that page is about and will be crystal clear for your visitors when they find you in the search results.
Keep at it
Organic SEO marketing is a permanent job.
You can't rest on your laurels. If you do, you can pretty much guarantee that your competitors will begin to overtake you in the search results. And new websites will come in to existence, nibbling away at the edges and gradually overtaking you.
You need to set time aside each and every month to do your search engine marketing. It's as simple as that.
Set yourself up a spreadsheet or a chart or whatever works best for you. But don't tuck it away - make sure that you refer to it on a regular basis and then actually action the points on it.
