SEO Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint 

There are many factors that dictate when a business will see the effects of its SEO efforts. However, most online brands have a long road ahead when it comes to positive changes.  

At a minimum, it can take three months before results are seen. However, it often takes longer, from six months to a year plus depending on the type of keywords used, competition, and other factors.  

Why Does SEO Take So Long? 

The process of discovering, crawling, and indexing new content by a search engine naturally takes time, and a website won’t see the effects of this process for hours or even weeks. Additionally, businesses must be mindful of how they roll out new content and updates. Search engines may penalize your website if they perceive that these changes are happening too quickly (which calls your reputation into question).  

What Can You Do to Ensure Your SEO Strategy Is Successful? 

Having a strong marketing company in your corner helps, and SonicSEO.com provides clients with the benefits of our knowledge and experience. From web design to app development, we do it all. And when it comes to our SEO services, we use effective strategies that get results as quickly as possible. Call (505) 821-2000 to schedule a consultation or contact us to learn more.  

How Does the Helpful Content Update Work?

Google prioritizes quality content, as online content that is relevant, accurate, and informative is most likely to provide an optimal user experience. Accordingly, Google’s update includes three crucial factors:

Third-Party Content Hosting

Many websites feature third-party content, which is usually hosted on the website itself or a via subdomain. Going forward, Google recommends that any third-party content that’s not considered relevant should not be indexed along with other content on the site.

Changes to the Self-Assessment Guide

Google slightly tweaked the wording of its guide, which is designed to help marketers create quality content, and added new suggestions. In this case, the search engine recommends that content is at least reviewed by a person knowledgeable of the topic, that content is not falsely made to look new when it’s not, and that marketers should not add or eliminate content simply to enhance search ranking.

AI-Created Content

Google has been pretty vocal about favoring content that’s created by humans, as opposed to generated by AI. The updated language excised the phrase “written by people,” which suggests that AI-generated content will be more widely accepted. However, the search engine still emphasizes that content must be helpful and original.

What Should Online Marketers Expect?

Google’s new updates may seem rather dramatic, particularly when it comes to the wider acceptance of AI-created content. However, the changes all reflect the current thinking regarding what makes for quality content. As a result, marketers can maintain a favorable search ranking by:

• Ensuring that content is relevant and accurate
• Refraining from hosting irrelevant third-party information on sites
• Making certain that content comes from a place of knowledge by involving experts in creation or review
• Using AI tools responsibly and prioritizing the user experience above all else
• Avoiding short-cuts to boost search rank, such as generating new batches of content for the sole purpose of placing higher in search results

By maintaining a solid content strategy, marketers can remain within the recommended guidelines included in the helpful content update.

SEO Experience You Can Trust

With over 25 years of experience, our SEO team at SonicSEO.com knows that maintaining a good search rank is crucial to getting your business noticed online. To this end, we offer proven SEO services that can help you boost your current ranking, as well as monthly maintenance services to ensure you stay at the top of the results. Please contact us today to learn more.

Without the right marketing approach, most consumers will not be aware of your business or what it offers. Here are a few of the many reasons why you must develop a solid strategy to show the very best of what your business has to provide consumers.

Enhanced Awareness of Your Brand

When it comes to brand awareness, effective SEO will have a positive impact. SEO principles are applied to websites, mobile applications, and social media to ensure your target audience is fully aware of your business’s online presence. For instance, the use of the right keywords helps your site populate in relevant user searches. Good brand awareness is the first step towards business success, as you can’t earn profits if consumers are not aware that your business exists.

Improved Conversion Rates

Getting more customers to your website is really just the first step. Digital marketing can also enhance conversion rates by encouraging users to take specific actions. For instance, you may want to compel users to contact your business via phone or email to schedule services. You may also want to entice them to make a purchase via your website when it comes to products. In some cases, the goal might be to have users complete a form, sign up for a newsletter, or take some other action. While SEO brings users to your site, quality content creation and impactful calls-to-action get them to take some desired action.

Better Engagement with Consumers

Along with introducing your business to brand new customers, digital marketing strategies can also improve engagement with the customers you already have. This is especially true when it comes to social media, which personalizes your business and brand. Using social media effectively allows you to converse with customers and better serve their needs. It can also greatly boost loyalty among your target audience, who will look to your business’s social media pages for entertainment and information. Finally, social media can help you spread information regarding new products or services, special discounts, or events your followers might be interested in.

As your digital marketing gurus, SonicSEO.com will ensure that your marketing strategy offers the best chance of a positive outcome. Our team has vast experience with SEO, social media marketing, and quality content creation to put you on the road towards success. Contact our team today to learn more about how we can help you.

The Debate Over the Monopolization Of Search

It’s true that internet users have their choice of several search engines, but at the end of the day, only one really matters. The other two “major” search engines tried to compete for a while, and there are still some consumers who use them as their search engines of choice, but the reality is that 95% of searchers prefer one over the others. That said, consumer preference does not make the almighty search engine a monopoly. It does, however, monopolize search.

Businesses around the globe rely on the search engine giant’s algorithms to do business. Not only are those algorithms ever-changing, but also, they’re not very small-business friendly. After all, even the big brands with big budgets cannot figure them out, so how are small businesses and mom-and-pops supposed to?

The company claims it tries to help by suggesting ad budgets and recommending keywords. However, think about who controls what ads to display: The search engine. Not only that, but the company doing the reporting regarding how your money was spent and how many clicks, page views, etc., your ad generated is the search engine. There is no real way to validate all this information, so you must just blindly trust that the company is telling the truth.

Many small business owners are pleading with Washington to split the search engine giant into smaller, independent companies that cannot leverage each other’s data. While this is a creative and possible effective solution, advocates of the company believe that breaking it up would stifle innovation and make it impossible for brands to meet consumers’ demands for “more.”

Monopolies Keep Companies Innovative

When you look at it from a different perspective, any almost-monopoly motivates other businesses to try to keep up. Those businesses are continually innovating new products and services that consumers never even knew they wanted. Though it’s true that the California-based company is getting rich by meeting this demand, it’s also enriching the lives of consumers. At the end of the day, isn’t that all that really matters?

Reasons your rankings may fluctuate include:

• Algorithm tests and updates
  Search engines refine their algorithms every day and occasionally launch major updates. When search engines test algorithm changes and/or unroll major updates on the entire web, there’s not much to do but wait and see how your site (and your competitors’ sites) fare.
• Technical issues
  Back-end configurations and settings can have a significant impact on your rankings, especially if those configurations and settings negatively impact user experience. The key to rescuing rankings from technical issues is to quickly identify and fix the issue. Some of the most common rank-busting tech issues include:
  • Slow page loading speed
  • Server overload
  • Missing or improperly executed page redirects
• Search trends and seasonal interest
  If trending topics on major search engines are relevant to your industry, then you may experience a boost in ranking while those topics remain popular…followed by a dip in ranking when users lose interest in those topics. There is nothing you can do to maintain a ranking boost powered by fickle user interest. Just ride the tide.
• New competition on the scene
  The arrival of a new competitor (with a shiny new website) can impact your ranking as search engines adjust their index in light of the new content, new user behavior, etc.
• Content changes (new content added, old content removed)
  Major content changes, like adding new pages, blogs, etc. or removing dated pages, invite search bots to re-index your site. Depending on what was added or taken away, content changes could boost or drag down your ranking.
• Keyword-search intent mismatch
  Search engine algorithms often change as a result of AI (machine learning). As the algorithm gets smarter, it may re-index your site for a different user intent. If the keywords you use do not match the new user intent, your rankings could fall.

Of course, your ranking will also fluctuate if your site experiences major upheavals, like:

• URL changes
• Hacks
• Negative SEO attacks

As you can see, there are a lot of factors that impact your ranking—some you can control, some you can’t. To determine whether your change in ranking is a cause for concern, often you simply need to wait a day or two to see if the change self-corrects. If your ranking doesn’t rebound, then it’s time to start digging into your metrics.

SonicSEO.com monitors our clients’ search performance, so we know when performance drops require patience or prompt attention. We notify you of any issues and give you recommendations for adaptations that will help boost your rankings again.