From year to year getting into the top search results becomes more and more time-consuming and challenging. One reason for this is that there's a lot of competition and it is growing. Another factor is the regular updates to the search engine algorithms. It is almost impossible to calculate ranking factors and determine which of them are the most important and significant. Let's talk about SEO, whether it is relevant in 2023 and what approaches the experts advise to pay attention to.
The biggest misconception about SEO nowadays
When people talk about SEO they mostly think about meta tags, backlinks and other technical things only. However, today's SEO is not just that. SEO happens across many different channels: social media, paid traffic, video (video is a huge opportunity to boost traffic). The more coordinated you are across those channels the more impact you'll see. This might be called "Holistic digital footprint". The knowledge that we gain from SEO of how search engines work, how people search, the kinds of queries that people make to find information, whether it's on Google, Amazon, Tik Tok, YouTube or Facebook, is valuable for all the verticals. If you are only looking at what is happening on your website and only focus on traditional content like blogs, you are going to be missing a lot of potential traffic that's coming from other channels.
What are the biggest changes experts see in SEO?
A significant milestone where we started seeing big changes was when Google started pushing us to "mobile first". With the "mobile first" approach users also give information to Google rather than just getting information from it, and in real time. Simply by having their phone on their person, users are saying to Google if the road or cafe is busy right now. We're receiving information while at the same time sharing it. Using search engines used to be something that we just consume, but now we are a part of it. It means that Google expects your content to be more conversational.
SEO is not just a "fix it and forget it" type of marketing activity
We receive many requests to handle SEO, and people expect results once SEO is "done". Here's the thing, there is no such thing as "done" when speaking about SEO. Just in the last month, Google already had four updates, which serves as a testament as to just how much Google is changing their algorithm and requirements. You might have done everything perfectly and correctly, but you have to update it going forward. The internet is a living breathing organism, with users constantly engaging with content in new ways. You can't just set it and forget it, it's more like a garden, you wouldn't expect to just mow your lawn once, you have to look after it if you want things to grow and blossom! And one of the reasons why SEO is worth investing for a while is that with time you'll understand more about how your users engage with your website. Every time you test something new it builds on your skills and knowledge of both your site's SEO and user base which you should be paying attention to. It's tough to get started, but once you do its a really rewarding process.
It takes 3 to 6 months to see rankins come in!
Can small businesses manage SEO themselves? Or do they need an agency?
One of the great things with Wix is that it provides tools and default setting that simplifies the process. If you want to go a mile further you can do it quite easily with Wix SEO tools and prompts without a deep knowledge in SEO.
Another great thing about Wix is the simplicity of updating the content on your website. You can easily manage and administrate adding new articles, showing your expertise in the industry... which is precisely what Google wants to see - expertise. That's something worth investing time in and absolutely possible to do on your own.
Yes, it can be more of a challenge if you want to do something very sophisticated, then you almost certainly will need help from agencies or freelancers to get that going.