Anyone who has built and launched a website has likely encountered an oft-repeated acronym: SEO (search engine optimization). And while you might not have ever done SEO yourself, you've benefited from it in the past: Every day, search engines like Google employ complex algorithms to sift through more than 400 billion web pages and deliver the most relevant results.
Website owners like you use SEO techniques and strategies to get their websites to the top of the search results for relevant user queries. But SEO is not a one-time endeavor — Google and other search engines change often, and ongoing SEO ensures your website stays in front of the people you want to reach. Just as a physical storefront requires regular maintenance and updates to stay competitive, your website needs ongoing SEO to remain visible amidst the ever-changing digital landscape.
The ABCs of SEO: What is Ongoing SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Don't let the techy jargon intimidate you. HubSpot — considered one of the gold standards for SEO and digital marketing advice — defines SEO as simply a collection of strategies and tips that "expand a company’s visibility in organic search results'' and help "drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue."
SEO Connects the Search Engine Algorithms With Your Website's Content
Regardless of your website's goal or industry niche, all SEO techniques have one thing in common: They look at ways to optimize your website's content, keywords, and links to help search engines rank your website higher in the search results when someone searches for something related to your keywords, content, or brand name.
According to HubSpot, SEO needs to address the key factors that all search engines use to determine the value of your website's content — and therefore how high in the search results your website or specific landing page should appear:
- The intent or meaning behind why someone is searching for a specific term or question
- The relevance between what someone searches for, and the content on your website
- The quality of your content (for instance, a website about physical exercise written by certified personal trainers is deemed by Google to be higher quality than a website where the articles are written by non-experts)
- The performance of your website, such as how long it takes a page to load and whether it works well on mobile devices
Static SEO Versus Ongoing SEO: Why It Matters to Stay Fresh and Keep Your SEO Updates Current
As users' web behavior changes and technology evolves, search engines proactively adjust their algorithms.
If you aren't conducting ongoing SEO maintenance and upgrades, a well-optimized website today can quickly become obsolete tomorrow, causing your search rankings to drop and attracting fewer organic visitors. Google itself updates its algorithms several thousand times per year, including significant "major" changes every few months that dramatically change how it crawls and ranks content. For example, Google's infamous Panda update changed how it ranked how-to lifestyle content on the Internet, causing one major content publisher to lose a whopping $6.4 million of traffic and advertising nearly overnight.
How Ongoing SEO Influences Your Website Strategy
Staying abreast of changes to SEO techniques and strategies provides important guidance to your content, marketing, and overarching website strategy. For example, it can dictate or influence:
- How much content you publish, and the content's format, length, and focus
- How you incorporate other forms of media on your website, including images, video, and audio
- How you organize content on your site, including landing page layouts and your site's navigation
- What keywords and target users your website focuses on
Embrace the Power of Ongoing SEO
Caroline Forsey, an expert in thought leadership and marketing content, looked at the survey results from more than 400 of the world's leading web analysts to predict the biggest SEO trends of 2024. According to her data, some of the top changes in SEO strategies this year include:
- A heavier emphasis on expertise, meaning the content on your website should come from experts in your related field (including bylines and author bios that demonstrate the author's credentials and experience on the topic they're writing about)
- A renewed emphasis on first-person, credible content, especially as more websites generate high volumes of low-quality AI content (Google itself has announced upcoming changes to tackle low-value articles created by AI)
- A priority on websites that are deemed trustworthy, such as e-commerce sites with well-rated customer service, or content sites that do a good job of citing trustworthy research and statistics
- Bonus points on content that is creative and original and doesn't simply rehash content found on other sites
Of course, these SEO trends will inevitably change every year, and ongoing SEO will keep you competitive no matter what Google, Bing, and other search engines do. No matter your website's industry or content strategy, ongoing SEO requires that you:
- Focus on keeping your content fresh and high quality, including new blog posts or regularly refreshing and updating old product descriptions or articles
- Conduct keyword research often, since the terms or phrases that your core audience uses will evolve over time
- Maintain your website's overarching performance, such as mobile-friendliness as mobile devices evolve, and page load speed
- Build a diverse portfolio of high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites within your niche, which may include outreach campaigns, getting others in your industry to write guest blogs, and participating in online forums or communities
- Keep on top of technical and performance metrics, such as scanning your site for broken links (and fixing the links you uncover) and using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and conversion rates
- Stay on top of algorithm changes so you can adapt your SEO strategy in real-time
Some website owners think of SEO as the first step of their promotional strategy. But it's less a first step, and more an ongoing journey to ensure you, your brand, and your content stay relevant in such a competitive atmosphere. Whether you choose to go it alone and take a DIY approach to SEO, or you choose to consult with a digital marketing and SEO agency, check in often and make sure your SEO evolves as the world around you evolves.
Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to increase their brand reach and ensure they remain relevant in the market. Social media marketing can be a highly effective way to reach new prospects and increase brand awareness, but only if it’s used the right way.
But chances are, as an in-house employee with a lot of responsibilities and errands to run, writing tweets and posting photos on Instagram or Facebook or updates on LinkedIn isn’t on your priority list. To manage your social media marketing effectively, you have to maintain engagement in a practical, sustainable manner. This is where a professional social media manager can come in handy to strengthen your brand’s online presence. After all, 77 percent of businesses in the United States have an active social media presence, and you don’t want to be left behind.
Of course, one of your in-house team members can oversee your business social media marketing campaigns, and this is better than nothing; however, the strategy and time required to create, manage and execute an effective social media strategy demand the attentive effort of an experienced social media professional.
Here are the key reasons why so many businesses including B2B organizations are choosing to hire outside social media professionals over in-house employees.
Professionals Understand Strategy and Planning
A social media strategy isn’t a “set and forget” or a “post and pray it works” endeavor. Such techniques don’t work and will only harm your business. Rather, you need a synchronized, well-planned strategy that will work with other marketing efforts to make sure there is consistent brand messaging and communication, which enhances more customer engagement down the line. A social media team has the experience of working with an array of businesses and helping them grow. So, they know what works and what doesn’t.
For starters, they analyze your target audience, current social media performance, and competition. This allows them to know ahead of time what will trigger most interactions and attention on social media and what will not. With this data, they create highly creative posts designed to resonate with your target audience to further increase engagement. They’re also able to make proper adjustments based on research analysis to ensure you’re getting the most out of your social media investment.
Experts Have Experience in Social Media
When getting started with social media, sure it’s easy to create Facebook and Twitter pages and send a couple of emails to connect with people. But that won’t build a great online presence for your business.
Initially, you need to know your overall company goals and how social media fits into achieving these goals. Have you thought about how you’ll do keyword targeting on social media to align with your SEO strategies? How are you going to measure ROI? How are you going to schedule content on different social platforms? What strategies will you use to drive traffic to your website from social platforms? To achieve this, you need experts who have experience in social media marketing.
By hiring a social media team, you will not only have a dedicated team at your disposal instead of one employee juggling all these tasks, but you’ll also gain loads of expert advice from professionals on how to run social media campaigns. More importantly, social media experts specialize in specific areas so they have information on which platforms yield the best results and what type of content is needed to get your business in front of the right audience.
It’s also a smart move to leverage experience from industry experts to skip much of the trial and error phase especially when it comes to social media marketing.
Social Media Professionals Understand Best Practices and Make Efficient Use of the Marketing Budget
Establishing a social media budget may not be the easiest thing to plan. You might have to deal with lots of unexpected expenses, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Businesses can gain a competitive edge by hiring a social media team that understands the best practices to get the most out of their campaigns. Last year, Facebook’s algorithm update drastically decreased organic reach, forcing most businesses to turn to social media ads. Likewise, many marketers expect a similar sort of downturn on other social media platforms in the coming months.
The good news is that social media professionals understand the art of running extremely successful ad campaigns.
From creative details such as design to the critical details of ad copy, timing, posting, and the actual budget, social media professionals know when to make the move.
You might also be surprised to know that social media professionals can help save a significant amount of your budget. For instance, on average, a full-time social media employee will cost you between $50,000 and $70,000 annually. On top of that, you will have to account for the actual expenses of the paid ad campaigns.
With a social media professional, you can fully account for your money. They will breakdown the details including the most suitable strategies that fit your business goals, the social media platforms to use, the number of posts you can expect each month, as well as the types of content that will be featured. This way, you will account for every dollar and it will make it easier to plan your budget.
Consistent Social Media Content
Social media is constantly evolving and businesses are expected to keep up.
There is nothing worse than prospects searching for a company on social media, only to find that their pages haven’t been updated for ages. A social media team will help you keep up with the latest trends. They will also make it a routine to create custom content and post consistently on every platform. They also know what type of content is going to attract more likes and shares and will create content calendars for similar content.
Consistently posting new content is a great way to attract a social following and drive more traffic to your business’s website. These posts also play a critical role in convincing prospects to check out what you’re offering in your business. This is a great way to turn prospects into repeat customers and increase revenue.
Access to Top-Tier Social Media Tools
When it comes to social media, there are tons of tools out there both free and subscription-based.
To remain at the top of all social media channels and streamline each campaign, businesses require different tools. Think about reporting, social scheduling, analytics, etc. And that only scratches the surface. Many of these tools are similar with only slight differences but others are far beyond most company’s budget and the cost keeps increasing with additional features or upgrades. So, do you have time and resources to keep up with all the new social media management tools, trying them out and deciding which is the best for your business?
Social media professionals already have these tools in place to help run your campaigns smoothly and make the most of your budget. This additional bonus is enough to maximize the performance of your social media campaigns while saving a lot in recurring monthly subscriptions in the process.
Ready to Bring a Social Media Team on Board?
One fact is that social media marketing has the potential to grow your online presence faster than most marketing techniques.
Securing the expertise of a social media professional will do more than just create an effective marketing campaign; it will build a huge following, improve customer service, increase sales –all while cutting a significant amount of your social media spend (employee salary, efficient management running the ad campaigns, etc.).