In the internet age, search engines are the gatekeepers for any business that hopes to be successful.  If you’re not doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you’re likely to get left in the dust by your competitors.  So you already know you need to start SEO – that’s a given – but is your website ready for it?  

At TIC Digital Marketing, our fingers are on the pulse of search engine algorithms – we know what makes them tick.  If you’re planning on investing in SEO, you need to make some preparations if you want it to be effective. Here are a few steps you should take before you even think about calling an SEO specialist.

Finalize Your Website Content and Plan out Everything That Needs to be Included

You know what they say: content is king!  The content on your website is going to determine your ranking in all the most popular search engines, so before you start SEO, you need to make sure it’s ready for prime time.  Before you pick up the phone to call an SEO specialist, give each page on your site a once-over. Look out for any incorrect info or phone numbers and identify any areas where content needs to be beefed up.  You may have some new pages that need to be created, so make a plan for everything you want to include.

Determine How Important SEO is to Your Overall Marketing Strategy (and Budget Accordingly)

While any business can benefit from an SEO audit, some need the attention more than others.  Some businesses need a big SEO budget to ensure they can beat out their competitors on search engine results pages.  In other cases, it may be difficult to do effective SEO, or those dollars may be better spent in other areas. Before you start SEO, look at your overall marketing plan and decide the best way to reach your customers.  If you think other marketing methods will be more effective, scale back your SEO budget and choose a company that can do an adequate job for less money.

Choose the Most Important SEO Metrics for Your Company

If you’re not keeping track of the most important SEO metrics, it’s going to be difficult to determine the success of your marketing efforts.  Before you start SEO, select a few metrics you think will most accurately reflect the success (or failure) of your SEO campaign. Here are a few you might want to look at:

• Organic Traffic
• Bounce Rate
• Conversion Rate
• Top Exit Pages
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Pages Per Session
• Backlinks

These are just a small subset of the metrics you can look at, but all of them can give you data about user behavior and search engine rankings. You can use them to determine how effective your SEO efforts are and determine how much to budget for them in the future.

Delegate Who Will be Responsible for SEO and Reporting

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth, and the same philosophy applies to SEO.  Assigning multiple employees to handle different aspects of an SEO campaign can actually hinder you as people apply their own discordant philosophies to your project.  Before you start SEO campaigns, choose a person in your organization to spearhead the project. With just one person handling communication and reporting on your SEO campaign, you can be sure that the work is being performed in a consistent manner and will give you the most data and the best results.

Before you start an SEO campaign, it never hurts to get your house in order.  These tips are a great place to start, but if you want expert advice, get in touch with us!  Call us at (858) 480-9932, send an email to [email protected] or fill out our contact form below to get a free website audit or learn about our services.