SEO – Is It Worth the Trouble?

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McCord Web Services is one of the few Google Partners in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area.

Is SEO or search engine optimization worth the time and trouble today? With Google seemingly to be changing all the rules and more competitors moving into your own marketing landscape, it may seem like a losing proposition, but… there are smart things you can do that DO payoff for placement.

What are the smart things that any small to medium sized business can do to improve organic search placement?

  1. Make sure you have unique content and work hard to make your website experience different from others in your vertical (business classification).
  2. Make sure you are blogging regularly – at least once a week. If you are not a good writer, invest in finding a firm that you can trust that will create great linkable and sharable content.
  3. Make sure you have unique Meta Title and Meta Description tags for all pages in your website.
  4. Claim and authenticate your website in the Google and Bing Search Consoles. You’ll get information that will help you do a better job and understand what Google and Bing think about your site so you can improve.
  5. Implement Google Analytics. You cannot improve your own website if you do not know how visitors are using it. Got a low bounce rate? Pat yourself on the back and find out what people seem to like about the page with in-page analytics. Don’t have many visitors? Get the truth and then drive traffic there with Google AdWords.
  6. Get a full SEO evaluation and roadmap on where you are and how to get to the next level personalized based on your own statistical information.

You can still succeed and garner search engine placement with optimization, but be smart and savvy about the tactics that are used. Don’t buy into link building, link farms, and guest blogging on off-topic sites. Think mainstream, great content, and excellent user experience.