Due to popular demand, SEO Climb with Dave Estey is back. In series one, Dave talked about everything from what SEO (search engine optimization) is to how you can identify your online competitors. Now, back for a second series, he is getting more in-depth and going over more important SEO topics. In July, he touched on how much time you should spend on SEO, how often your strategy and practices need to be reevaluated, and why you may not see results as quickly as you expected.
All of these topics are essential when it comes to being successful in the online space, so if you missed any during July’s videos, check out this recap below to catch up.
How Much Time Should You Spend on SEO?
The question of how much time should be spent on SEO each month is a common one; however, there are many factors that play into how this is answered. As Dave discussed in SEO Climb Episode 1, the best way to get a general understanding of the time that needs to be put into your website is to do a full audit. If a website has been around for a long time, it’s likely more time will need to be spent organizing what is there to make for a better-optimized site.
On the other hand, newer websites will be fairly empty, making content production and general technical SEO, such as writing meta titles and even alt text for the pre-existing images. Of course, you will also need to spend time on data analysis. Sure, you can put a lot of time into content and technical SEO, but that doesn’t mean that what you’re doing will have an impact. You will need to watch carefully to ensure you are getting the results you want and need and make corrections and changes where necessary.
In general, when you start from a clean slate, you should expect to spend a minimum of 10 hours on SEO each month. The larger your website is, the more time you should put into it. Often, this number of hours can slightly decrease once you have gotten your website on track. The true answer to this question, like many other SEO questions, is “It depends.”
How Often Should You Update Your SEO Strategy?
Another frequently asked question when it comes to time and SEO is how often you should update your strategy. The standard answer from most SEO professionals is that it is always best to wait at least six months before deciding whether or not your current strategy is working. In SEO Climb Episode 2, Dave stated that while you will typically see some initial changes and effects after about three or four months, you will get a fuller picture to look at by month six.
This doesn’t mean that your SEO strategy should be updated every six months, though. However, this means it should be re-examined at the six-month mark. You should look at whether or not it is helping to increase your traffic, clicks, and especially conversions and sales that you want. If it is, fantastic. If it’s not, you will need to do some further evaluation.
When a strategy doesn’t seem to be working, always start by looking over your content with fresh eyes. Could it be better? Is it missing information that could help make the piece stronger? If so, make those changes and monitor for impact. If not, it may be time to start over with a new strategy. Don’t be discouraged or afraid if you need to begin again; it’s better to restart than to, as Dave says, “be married to a bad practice.”
Why Aren’t You Seeing Results as Quickly as You Expected?
It’s been 6 months since implementing your SEO strategy, and you haven’t seen a real increase in your performance. Now what? It can be frustrating if you aren’t getting results as quickly as you initially expected, but this doesn’t mean you should completely stop. As Dave stated in SEO Climb Episode 3, you aren’t going to gain anything from completely halting your efforts. What you need to do is identify why you aren’t getting the outcome you wanted.
The first reason for this, as discussed in episode 2, could be that your content is not competitive enough compared to the other online content focused on the same topics. You can easily get an idea of whether or not this is the case by simply performing a Google search yourself. Look up the phrase you are trying to rank for, see what’s ranking, and read the content on that page. Is the content better composed than yours? Does the content touch upon something you hadn’t thought of before?
If so, take some of the points in that content, build upon it in a way that makes your content even more valuable, and then continue adding to it until your answer is simply the best one out there. Google wants to serve users the best answer to their query, so the best way to rank is to make sure that answer is coming from you. However, there are times when there is another roadblock in the way of ranking.
If Google cannot find your pages to begin with, no amount of quality and uniqueness that is within them will matter. To ensure that your content is being found, it’s important that whenever you add a new page, you also make sure it is also added to your sitemap and that your sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console. Sitemaps are the easiest way for Google to identify and crawl the pages on your site; missing pages typically go unfound by the search engine. So if you aren’t seeing results from your SEO efforts, check the sitemap to ensure your pages are in there and add them if they aren’t.
SEO is not like a mathematical equation; there is a lot of investigation, trial, and error, which means you should always keep an eye on the impact your efforts have. If they aren’t making the moves you had hoped for, it’s time to reevaluate. Check your content and sitemap before anything else; it’s possible one of those two things is the issue. If not, it could be time to reassess your whole strategy or talk to some SEO experts like those here at Wikimotive.
More SEO Climb On the Way!
Knowing how much time to spend on SEO, how often to update your strategy, and why you may not see results as quickly as you expected are all important in managing your digital marketing efforts most effectively. But this isn’t all you need to know; there is so much more to learn! So make sure you stay tuned and catch all of the upcoming SEO Climb episodes that air on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even right here on the Wikimotive website every Tuesday morning. And as always, feel free to contact us with any other questions you may have!