Most small business owners are aware of how important SEO can be to their company. This element of marketing can quickly become your largest source of new clients and customers, all while costing very little to implement. Thanks to the countless guides around the web, many business owners choose to try and handle this work for themselves. While this can be successful, it will usually be a lot harder than working with professionals, and this article is going to be showing you why. With SEO being so important, it always makes sense to put a lot of time into it.

 

Complex Keyword Research

 

Keywords are one of the most powerful tools you have available when you’re trying to make a website popular on a platform like Google. You need to make sure that the content on your website is filled with keywords that users will be searching for. While there are a lot of tools available to help you with this, the process can still be very difficult without the right time, effort, and knowledge.

 

Understanding how keywords will impact your search rankings can be extremely difficult, even when you can see which keywords are the most popular. Those with the most searches will tend to be targeted by the largest companies with the most resources. This can create a monumental challenge for those who try to compete, and it can often be worth looking for keywords with less competition to make sure that you are able to make progress.

 

Website Structure & Speed

 

It can be all too easy to ignore factors like website structure and speed when you are trying to work on something like SEO. Search engines will only be able to make sense of your website if there is a clear route for them to follow when they are scanning your pages. This means that you need to make sure that you have a good hierarchy in place for your pages, along with features like menus and breadcrumbs to make it easier for your site to be explored by companies like Google. This can be very challenging if you don’t have any web development experience.

 

Alongside this, you also need to make sure that your website runs extremely fast. Search engine operators want to make sure that they direct users to websites that provide a good experience, and speed is a major element of this. Caching tools, CDNs, and a range of other methods have to be used to make sure that your website is running as quickly as it possibly can. If this sounds complicated, it could be worth looking for a professional that can help you with it in the long run.

 

Constant Content Production

 

This next area is usually one of the hardest for small businesses. Google and other search engines prefer websites that are active and have dynamic content. This means that you need to make sure that you have fresh content going up on your website on a very regular basis, with most successful websites aiming to publish new pages or blogs every week. Your keyword research comes into this, and you need to make sure that there is a reason for all of the content that you produce.

 

Alongside producing content, it needs to be posted on your site in a way that appeals to companies like Google. This can be quite complex, and you will need to do some learning about on-page SEO if you’re going to be successful with it. Most companies are able to achieve goals like this, though you will need to work hard to make sure that your new pages and blogs have been made in an SEO-friendly way.

 

Backlink Building

 

Alongside all of the other work you have to do, backlink building is an incredibly important element of SEO. Backlinks are links that come from other websites and are directed to your own. Writing guest posts on other people’s blogs can be a good way to get some backlinks in place, though you may also want to consider the idea of using directories and other similar tools to build backlinks.

 

Much like producing consistent content, this can be very hard. Most website owners don’t realize quite how much work they have to put into this element of their SEO, and this can leave you with poor results despite working hard on everything else. Ideally, you should have hundreds of backlinks in place once your website has been up and running for a year. This can be achieved when you use all of the methods you have at your disposal, including generating organic backlinks through creating posts that are helpful to users.

 

Getting Professional Help

 

As you can see, SEO isn’t easy. The process of getting your website into the top spots on search engines can take a very long time, and most small businesses don’t have time to do this for themselves. Even if you do have the time, it can be all too easy to find yourself making mistakes that won’t contribute positively to your SEO, effectively wasting your time and leaving you with little to show for the work you have done.

 

Working with a professional company can solve this issue. You will almost certainly be able to find an SEO agency with the talent to help to push your business forwards. This can make the process of getting onto search engines much easier, but you will still need to make sure that the right action is being taken. Tools like Google Search Console can help with this. Not only do they provide accurate metrics to help you to determine the success of your SEO, but they are also completely free to use.

 

Working on SEO doesn’t have to be a pain when you choose to get some help along the way. Many companies find that this sort of process is much easier when they have a company providing support, and this is something you should keep in mind when you’re working on your own SEO.