Deciding How Much of Your Marketing Time Should Go to SEO
Often, entrepreneurs have little time and resources to commit to various startup tasks. Our marketing expert Jim Yu breaks down how founders should approach SEO and incorporate it into their marketing strategy.
By Jim Yu •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
SEO is extremely important, especially as consumer habits and search-engine algorithms change. Consumers are becoming less and less likely to engage directly with businesses when looking for information. In fact, most consumers today start their discovery process with a search, making search the largest and most predominant digital marketing channel today at 16.9 percent.
The main goal of SEO is to ensure that your content is easily understood by people and search-engine algorithms, so it may be discovered by consumers when they search. While these algorithms are extremely advanced, they don't take in information the same way a person would. By actively enhancing SEO, you're ensuring that the algorithms in place can easily determine what each page is about and how the content is useful for people looking for answers.
Keep in mind, SEO is not a one-time action -- it requires constant maintenance, as search algorithms are constantly changing. Just last year Google introduced massive changes to its search algorithm increasing emphasis on high quality and media rich content. If marketers fail to have dedicated resources on SEO, their content is extremely likely to get lost in the endless mass of marketing content produced on a daily basis.
Related: How to Seamlessly Include Keywords in Your Web Content
No matter how advanced your SEO program is, if consumers don't actually find value in your content, your marketing is for naught! It's just as crucial that marketers dedicate time and resources to crafting content that is useful and engaging. If possible, a marketing department should have a team dedicated to creating content. This team should focus on content that offers a unique perspective, inspires conversation, is timely and fulfills some kind of need for consumers.
Today, quality content needs to be closely integrated and SEO-aware to achieve the best results.
