When to Invest in SEO: 4 Obvious Indicators

As a small business owner in this digital marketing age, you probably know that one of the key elements to running a successful business is being able to attract your customers online. For every business that wants online visibility, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always a preferred choice to boost their organic search results. Learning how to optimize your website using SEO is a very useful skill that can help to drive traffic to your website. Combined with the other strategies in inbound methodology, it can eventually help to attract visitors and convert them into leads.

Are you unsure about whether your website needs to be optimized through SEO? Let’s check out whether your business has the following 5 signs. And if you do, it’s not too late to start investing in SEO!

1. The most obvious one – your website does not show up in search engines

If your website is not showing up on the first few pages of SERP (Search Engine Results Page), this is already the most obvious sign that you need to optimize your website for SEO! Having a website alone is not enough if it cannot be seen by the audience. Only by optimizing your website through various methods, such as index inclusion, keyword analysis and on-page optimization, it is possible to slowly climb to a page 1 ranking.

2. You THINK your website is original and up-to-date.

Keeping your content original and up-to-date is really important. If you feel that your content has not been updated for a long time, then you should update it with fresh content!
You need to constantly update your website content with the latest information, as Google has confirmed that fresh content is a major factor that plays a crucial role in search engine ranking.
Look at this case, where blog posts of the business owner observed a progressive drop in traffic through organic search. This was because he didn’t update it for 4 months, and other sites that were competing for the same keywords were being updated regularly. Once the owner started updating the content, the web traffic bounced back to the normal level.

So, make sure to keep your website content updated, and keep publishing piping hot content in your blog! Blogging is the easiest way to get your webpage to rank #1 on Google, just like how HubSpot does it.If you’re not sure what topic to write about, you can send out a couple of quick surveys, or engage with customers through social media to understand their needs and questions, and write a blog post that addresses their concerns!

3. Your webpage does not look credible

Think about the first time you meet a person, the first thing that you would notice is their appearance, and how they are dressed, right?
The same rule applies to website design – the appearance of your website is the first point of contact that your website visitor has with you. If you know that the first impression of a person is the best impression, then the first impression of a visitor to your website is also equally important!
Your website design doesn’t have to be too fancy or dramatic, but it must be clean and professional so that it catches your visitor’s eye, and builds credibility and trust in your business.
The goal of having a smart and professional website is to bring in potential high-quality leads, that can be nurtured and even converted into customers to take your business offers.

However, this is not enough! A professional website also needs proper SEO to improve it and become visible on search engines. With better website design optimized for SEO, you are on the right track to developing your business reputation and people will start becoming aware of your brand.

4. Your website has poor “relationship” with other websites
Link building is an essential part of SEO, and this will only happen when you develop relationships.
There are two fundamental ways in which search engines use links: not only is it used to discover new web pages, but it also helps to determine how well a page should rank in the SERP – because links are signals to Google that your website is a quality resource that is worth paying attention to.
Since Google put link building as one of the most important ranking factors for SEO, many businesses started taking advantage of this – by spamming links. In fact, this is only a very short-term strategy as Google would soon find it out.

So, building links from high-quality and a highly influential website is the best strategy for optimizing your website performance through SEO. Since they are highly influential, and additionally if you can get external links from them, you are allowing their website visitors to visit your site too! Together with good content and positive user experience, (e.g. low bounce rate), your website ranking will soar very soon.

If you realize that your website is facing some issues based on the points above, then maybe its high time to start making changes!

Before you start your optimization work, not only do you need to understand the basic techniques of SEO and the mistakes not to make when doing so, you also have to stay up-to-date with the new updates that Google launches constantly and figure out the best SEO practices. This is because Google algorithms are complex and always evolving, so there is never a magic formula for SEO.

So, keep refreshing your content, stick with the most current SEO practice and you will definitely climb the ladder on your way to the SERP!

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