Memorial Day weekend is just a month away. The Solutionistas are looking forward to cookouts and sitting around the campfire. And this got us thinking about search engine optimization (SEO) and how it’s just like building a campfire. No, seriously! Hear us out.
The Campfires and SEO Connection
Anyone who’s ever built a fire knows that unless you’re using lighter fluid, you need a method for laying the logs, adding kindle, and starting the flame. Once you have your fire started, you must add fuel to keep it from burning out and wasting all of your hard work getting the fire started. But all the effort to build a campfire and keep it burning is worth it when your family and friends gather around to enjoy a brew and tell stories.
The same is true of your website’s SEO. You need the right fuel—technical expertise, keywords, website security, and rich content—to get your SEO going and ranking well on Google. And like a fire, you need to continually feed your SEO strategy with engaging, relevant content. When it’s working, your SEO strategy will attract all the awesome people you want to reach—current customers, potential clients, and all their family and friends.
Finding the Right Fuel for Your SEO Fire
Good SEO requires expertise and knowledge of the factors Google’s top-secret algorithm prioritizes. Many SEO companies promise they know all the tricks to get your website to rank #1 on Google. That may be true in the short term. But this approach to SEO is a lighter fluid blaze that attracts a lot of lookie-loos, not a slow-burning campfire that attracts the people you want to build relationships with.
That’s why the most sustainable approach to SEO starts with your audience and what you have to offer them. Know who your target market is and the words they use to search for you online. Regardless of the secret sauce Google adds to its algorithm, it’s primary goal is to make it fast and easy for users to find the information they’re looking for. It rewards website content that does a good job of this. The closer you can align the keywords of your website to what your target market is searching for, the better off your SEO performance will be.
Keeping the SEO Flame Burning
Even the best-built campfire will burn out if you don’t add fuel regularly. The same is true of SEO. Investing in SEO when you build your website has diminishing returns unless you refresh your content regularly. Blogging and social media are two great ways to keep your SEO flame burning brightly. Blogging keeps the content on your site fresh, relevant, and keyword-rich. Social media posts that link back to your site help build your site’s reputation with Google, too.
Even Eagle Scouts have trouble building an SEO campfire. If you’re unsure how to get your fire going, let’s talk, share a brew, and gather ‘round the campfire.