As we head into spring, with Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow far behind us, the ground is thawed and primed for new life. Spring is a superb time to breathe new life with your winter’s bounty into your digital presence, because the “April showers” it costs to overhaul your web presence, will take time to create “May flowers” in the form of blossoming lead generation and sales. As your friendly, local digital green thumb, read on for SEOversite’s guidelines on what you need to get the results you want, how long it can take for leads and sales to bloom, and how to survive the next winter with your online presence.
Your Site’s in Sight
We recommend fully custom-coded websites and have previously discussed that the cost for this can vary substantially, as can the time it takes to develop. You may simply require a home page with a few interior pages, or you might need full e-commerce capability with hundreds or thousands of interior product pages. A website for our average client, however, with a few dozen pages of both written and dynamic content (videos, pictures, animations, etc.) will take 3-9 months to construct and go live.
Any lag is typically due to delays in the client providing content or making decisions. If your gardener asks if you want Marigold or Morning Glory seeds planted, and it takes you a month to decide, it will take that extra month for you to see the flowers eventually bloom. There is much your “gardener” should be doing in the meantime to get the garden built the right way – constructing the flower beds, filling them with the right soil, and more (all essentially the custom coding of your new site). This can be one of the most important steps to make sure your site eventually ranks well. The responsiveness of the garden’s future proud owner, however, will determine the gardener’s success in delivering on time. Be patient, but be responsive.
Increase Your Garden Visitors
Once your website is built, while there can be a Field of Dreams effect where the mere construction of a new site might draw visitors, much needs to be done to provide digital Miracle Grow to grow website traffic.
Digital honey bees can be employed to cross-pollinate your garden in the form of link building, connecting your site to others in an ethical way to improve its visibility. It must be certain that your garden’s name, address, and contact info is listed consistently across the hundreds of garden directories across the internet. Each flower in the garden needs to be labeled with “meta tags” including both the species and common name. New species need to be added constantly to further delineate your garden from others, as can special features. One of our favorites, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden here in Miami, has hosted exhibitions of sculpture artists to draw new visitors, like Dale Chihuly. Think about what content can be the Chihuly sculpture for your business.
This all takes a talented team to guide you, and perhaps just as importantly, time. As digital marketer Josh Steimle asserts in Forbes, “if you can’t budget for 6-12 months of SEO, you might be better off putting that budget somewhere else.” This is a long-term strategy that requires the appropriate budget, and patience.
Weather Proof for Next Winter
Despite the care we take to build the right garden, we can’t stop a winter freeze from coming again – all we can do is protect what we’ve built by reinforcing it and preparing for the inevitable down times.
At some point when the sun is shining you may take a seat in your garden, enjoy the beauty, see many visitors walking around enjoying themselves, and think to yourself, “I have built it, they have come.” Meanwhile, many others are building and growing their own garden down the street, which is why we continue employing the digital honey-bees to make your site stronger and better able to withstand competition, changes in algorithms, and other digital gardening challenges. You are competing against yourself, but also against every other site vying for your leads, not to mention the frequent changes to Google’s search algorithm, including one in just the last few months.
Consistently and constantly having your web marketing team add to your content through blogs, videos, pictures, and other dynamic content, build links and interior pages, growing ratings and reviews and more all insulate your garden from proverbial deep freezes and carrot eating rabbits.
If you need gardening advice, we’re not the best source (but after writing this newsletter we’re thinking of starting GardenOversite). If you’d like more info on how to maximize the effectiveness of your website and your online presence now that spring has sprung, we will leave you with this planted seed: email us at guardian@seoversite.com.