Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) can help you build your credibility, draw new leads, and blow up your bottom line. Business owners and executives are so well-known for the benefits of earning a top spot on Google that some consider it to be the only form of online marketing worth their time and effort over the long run.

In fact, the only issue with SEO has to do with those two words: long-term.

Being a pioneer in digital marketing, we realize here at Ideal Visibility that it is essential to achieve search exposure that almost any company attempts to do. Consequently, it can take many months before an SEO campaign can show tangible results in competitive markets. 

Unfortunately, before they reach that point, many marketers will give up on optimization, content creation, and other activities.

The best answer to that conundrum, as with most things in life, is simply being patient. With respect to SEO, take the appropriate actions and you can get results over time.

However, if that answer doesn’t please you, finding the correct kinds of shortcuts is the next best option. Note that keyword stuffing or other ineffective gimmicks are not what we are talking about. Instead, we mean a handful of methods that you should pursue to work your way to the top of the search listings of Google to get full profitability in a minimum period of time.

In particular, let’s look at five that have proven to be effective with our clients…

Know your search market and patterns for searchers 

Without having a clear idea of the challenges and opportunities in front of them, far too many marketers (and web designers) jump into search engine optimization. The same mistake we don’t want you to make.

Get a good sense of what your target market looks like before you start optimizing your pages, or have someone do it on your behalf. Understand which men and women you want to sell to, where they spend their time online, and what kinds of messages are attractive to them. This will help you collect the correct list of keywords and search phrases and create winning offers that will help you turn visits into sales.

There is no substitute, particularly when it comes to SEO, for information and insight. Until you have all the facts and insights you need, make sure you do not start.

Concentrate on a very particular set of search terms

Choose a very narrow set of terms and ideas to focus on once you know who you are trying to reach and what they are searching for online. This runs contrary to a lot of advice you’ll read about search engine optimization (especially when it comes to context and authority), but in the short term, it makes sense.

You can’t try to corner the entire search market for your industry when you’re just getting started, or take on all the competitors at once. Alternatively, you should concentrate on search phrases that have a relatively small amount of competition, and that represent a near-perfect match for the goods, services, or benefits that your business brings to the market.

This is all a detailed way of saying that at the start of your SEO campaign, you should look for spots where you can earn easy wins. Collecting them and building on them is easier than being overly ambitious and seeing your plans come to nothing for a long period of time.

Optimize Your Local Search Website

Suppose your company has any kind of geographic component. In that case, you should ensure that your site is optimized for local search.

Google provides you with clients in your town or neighborhood to use the big home field advantage. Use your pages to add city and state names, street addresses, ZIP codes, telephone numbers, and driving directions. If needed, create location-specific pages for various branches. Add maps and make sure that any social listings you have online are consistent with the information you provide.

Case studies have shown that Google updates search listings quicker than larger categories of industry for geographic areas. That means that by letting search engine spiders and real-world clients know where to find you, you can jump to the head of the line – and give your company an immediate boost. On your website, these are easy changes to make, and they can pay off in a very big way.

Most company owners and executives recognize that Google and the other search engines will look at content and links when matching search queries to known websites. However, many do not realize that dozens of factors are taken into account by the search algorithms. Technical problems sometimes serve as “tiebreakers” that can make or break a search engine optimization effort.

Suppose your website has performance problems, such as slow page load times, broken links, and errors due to incompatibility with specific devices. In that case, your search rankings will be hurt. Each of these makes your website appear less trustworthy, which affects the way you are seen by search engine spiders and real-world clients.

Most technical website problems aren’t visible to the naked eye. Hence, a simple website audit is the best way to find and correct them. This is a fast and inexpensive process. Even better, it can tell you if your HTML has any problems lurking beneath the surface while helping you identify growth opportunities. This is a great time to schedule one if you have not had a website audit in the past.

Supplement With Paid Search Ads, and Organic SEO

Your company would attract so much organic search traffic from Google, Bing, and other online portals in a perfect world that you would never think about using paid search advertising. In reality, though, advertising with pay-per-click (PPC) can be a perfect addition to SEO.

You can easily set up, adjust, and run search ads for one thing. Actually, within just a few hours, we can often have new customers up and running. That means they don’t have to wait for their websites to start bringing targeted traffic to them.

What is potentially more important, though, is that it is possible to carefully test and configure PPC campaigns. So, suppose there is any doubt about the viability of a keyword, message, or offer. In that case, you can find answers and solutions before months are dedicated to an ongoing organic SEO project. For that reason, it’s often better to start any search visibility campaign and then let things progress from there. How? Through search ads.

Want to hit this spring’s ground running?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get quicker results from the optimization of search engines and online marketing. After all, to increase your profits, you do these things. That’s not because you have free time and money you want to spend in a creative way. But it is important that you use your schedule and resources to pursue ideas that are actually going to work.