When are talking about social media as it relates to SEO, this is often misunderstood by our clients. We do engage in social media activity for our clients – primarily on Google +, Facebook, and Twitter, but this activity is geared for SEO purposes – it is not meant to be the only representation of our clients on social media! We will make posts, create videos, or post content like infographics in social media postings that we can create links to. So really, social media as it relates to SEO can almost be understood as a function of off-page SEO. It is not a true social media campaign in the sense that it is built for branding and consumer engagement.
SEO Pros & Cons
The Cons
- SEO is a long-term strategy. Depending on the size and competition in your market, it can take anywhere between 3-7 months to truly see an ROI out of SEO. We report weekly on your SEO progress so that you can see proof that you are getting to where you want to go, but it does take time.
- With the mobile environment or consumers that are using a smartphone, many consumers use the ads that they see at the top of the results and that tends to take up the majority of the screen on their smartphones. Also, on a smartphone, many of the ads have phone numbers built right into the ad so consumers often don’t even need to click on the website – they just call directly to buy or get their needs taken care of.
- SEO is an ongoing battle. We tell our clients even when we get them to the top, that there is no such thing as “resting on our laurels”. Google (and the search engines in general) are constantly changing the rules or their algorithm and we always have to keep working to keep our clients at the top of the first page.
The Pros
- Once you get to the top of the first page of the search engines, you are visible to potentially thousands of consumers who are looking for what you provide. Think about it – especially for the death care industry – who and why are people searching for keywords like “funeral” or “cremation”? Those kinds of searches by consumers do not happen by accident! Someone typically has to have a specific need to look for these types of services so the power and value of showing up organically for these kinds of keywords cannot be stressed enough.
- Typically there is a perception of a reputation. Generally speaking, among consumers, there is a belief that if you show up at the top of the first page of Google, you must be better at or more reputable at what you do than your competition.
- SEO represents a fixed-cost opportunity! Once you get to the top of the first page, you don’t have to pay extra or more to continue to show up there. As a matter of fact, GoldSquare makes a point to try to make sure that our SEO provides steadily increasing traffic to your site while your price stays the same. Be sure to ask us more about this!
