SEO is extremely effective at showing up as an authoritative figure on the SERP results. But how long does it really take, and when do the measurable results start coming in?
What is the most important thing to focus on?
Stepping back for a moment, one can ask, “What will cause this business to fail?” and, “What can allow this to grow?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Businesses fail because they do not make enough money to be profitable or sustain themselves. And to grow a business means to make it more profitable by either decreasing the costs of production or increasing the price at which consumers buy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In smaller businesses, this most often means getting more clients and people to buy products they have, or finding cheaper ways to produce similar quality results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, a salon may attract more clients by incentivising referrals, running Meta ad campaigns with an entry offer for new clients, or offering new products or services to existing clientele. A salon may fail because they hire new staff who don’t get trained properly and make mistakes, leading to bad reviews, lower appointment rates, people canceling, and switching salons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are only a few things that can happen, and the situation changes for each business. But the questions are revealing of what actually matters to solve. And in this particular business problem analysis, SEO fits nowhere in the process until the reviews and staff issues are solved.
So we can see where SEO fits into that process, and make sure it is done where it should be, in its own time and place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you sit down to help a struggling business, the to-do list can look like a mountain. And if it is started in the wrong spot, or important tasks are delegated for later, the results will be delayed. The business will stay in the same spot until those tasks are done. And if there is a finite amount of money and time, the list will never get done if it is completed in the wrong order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The business will keep losing money, the budget for marketing runs out, and the things that would have moved the needle stay buried under the optimizations that never really mattered yet.
So from the beginning, priorities must be decided, and correctly, or the fruits of many hours tweaking with branding, copy, and design will never be seen.
So SEO can feel like a sludge. It takes months to test, months more to fix, and even longer to get just right. But when it’s done in the right order, it is all worth it.
Fix the urgent problems, then the optimizations, and the business thrives.
Optimize, get around to urgent problems later, and then the business dies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEO is extremely effective at showing up as an authoritative figure on the SERP results. But how long does it really take, and when do the measurable results start coming in? What is the most important thing to focus on? Stepping back for a moment, one can ask, “What will cause this business to fail?” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":4528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,162,184,4,161],"class_list":["post-4519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-business-growth","tag-digital-marketing","tag-marketing-strategy","tag-seo","tag-small-business"],"yoast_head":"\n