If you want to restructure your company digitally, you can’t avoid search engine optimization or SEO for short. They increase the number of customers who come to the company website in a targeted manner. Google SEO experts know how SEO works and how it can be improved.
Factor A: How important is SEO for SMEs?
For companies that want to develop sustainably and ensure their survival in the future, SEO is enormously important. SEO means optimizing the website so that it appears high up in the search engines for the relevant keywords in relation to the services that the company offers. In addition to a functioning technology, high-quality and unique content that provides users with answers to the questions they have is also important.
How often do you hear the sentence: “SEO is keyword texts – that’s what my intern does”?
Often! Interns are used not only by companies but also by agencies. If they are really good and have the necessary SEO knowledge, that’s also possible. They need to know how to link measures that are important for successful SEO optimization and create a context between the company’s service and the potential customer. For a sophisticated strategy, however, it is far from enough to fill a text only with keywords!
This worked years ago, but Google’s algorithms are now so advanced that a high keyword density tends to have a negative effect on rankings. Nonsense content, which does not provide any real added value for the user and is only looking for the accumulation of a few keywords, ends up in the lower ranks in the search engines. Optimizing SEO for a company is not even done quickly. It consists of various components.
What are they?
In the beginning, you have to think of a strategy: Where do I want to go, and how can I achieve this? Which pages do I have Google index? What belongs in the meta description, and how do I link internally? It takes people who understand the user and respond specifically to him with the help of various channels.
Pure SEO technicians can’t do that. They understand the algorithms of a search engine. These provide them with information about users and their search behavior – but they cannot predict what might interest them in the future: Which products, services, services, and information are relevant? How can the customer be addressed in a targeted manner?
Who then develops the overall strategy?
Storytellers, copywriters, journalists, and overall strategists are able to do this. Good storytellers in the field of text and image as well as SEO technicians together form the foundation for a good SEO strategy. Together, they deliver the ideas and content for a target group that they have analyzed in detail.
“SEO OPTIMIZATION IS NOT EVEN DONE QUICKLY.”
Which channels do I choose to distribute this content?
Examples are video, Facebook, Twitter, newsletters, advice texts, podcasts, testimonials, calls to action, use of cookies to address people based on footprints via advertising and push channels. What goes well, what doesn’t, what can we serve?
A good SEO strategy is characterized by being familiar with all these marketing areas, networking, and applying them skillfully. Companies can also do this themselves or hire agencies that are well positioned – especially in marketing.
How can SEO benefit from other disciplines in online marketing?
Agencies are good at advertising, and an SEO strategy also includes other components from online marketing: ads, TV, or radio spots. Good offline advertising has been proven to have an effect on search queries on the net. But that’s only part of the SEO strategy.
Many agencies have grown very quickly, but have not provided enough SEO capacity to provide comprehensive support to customers digitally. Some have enough SEO technicians, but not enough people who continuously deliver good content – and the necessary measures.
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Entrepreneurs shy away from costs – don’t pure keyword texts help them?
That’s better than nothing. The only problem is that there are too many goods that need to be explained. If the user gets to my horticultural page thanks to good keywords, this does not necessarily bring him to the purchase. Maybe he just makes a price comparison and still decides for the dealer, who also provides videos on a jigsaw or secateur use.
Maybe he will also sign up for the newsletter there and come with his family to the garden center party, to which he has received an invitation by mail. That would build trust and bind customers – i.e. successful marketing with the starting point SEO. I address the customer in the information phase with good content and thus facilitate his purchase decision.
It sounds obvious to respond to customers in this way.
But it’s not. Not even for the big companies. Often it fails because companies do not put themselves enough into the target group even with the keywords. They require knowledge of facts that need to be explained – which is a fatal mistake. The credit card VISA, for example, cannot be found under the search term credit card
For the simple reason that the word credit card is not on the website. Or the search term “law studies”: No university ranks in the top ten under this term because they all market themselves under the keyword “law”. So they are not found so quickly.
What was or is the common SEO strategy in companies so far?
Not all, but many companies simply spread keyword content. They are absolutely dependent on Google. An example from my experience as a consultant: An online shop offers hundreds of products at reasonable prices. For many years it ranks high in the search engines, but then comes an update from Google.
From one day to the next, the search algorithm works differently, and the shop or price comparison loses the rankings. Google needs confirmation that a page is really good and well visited: through positive user signals, videos, and unique texts.
Which mistakes in thinking about SMEs do you encounter the most?
Many people think: I have no chance against the digital strategy of the competition anyway. SMEs also have opportunities to position themselves well. What makes my company unique? The expertise of the employees? The way I sell products? Or how do I additionally deliver purchase inspirations? Am I asked as a guide? Do I have a product that no one else sells? Google knows that there are different intentions in a search query.
As an entrepreneur, you have to find distinctiveness, recognize them, use them for yourself and expand them. You can do this yourself or get professional help. One thing is clear: this is the only way to build a reputation on the Internet.