As someone working with “what a business needs to be successful,” I find that there are certain default ideals that someone believes they should have. When specifically working with SEO consulting services, the expectations can be dramatic… often based on a combination of misinformation and lack of guidance about what someone actually needs.
Why is it that so many businesses default to the world of believing they need something because everyone else says we should have it?
For the most part, we are driven by a lack of strategies, defined by the popular and going thing. This is followed by over saturation in the marketplace and then losing positions, ranking and sometimes our entire business. While this may temporarily work, it also has a life cycle. If you get in early enough, you build the life cycle. If not, then you are competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of others who are doing the same thing.
Yes, there is a way to change the outcome. But, it requires changing the way we look at strategies.
I don’t believe in strategy for business development and your business, then leaving everything alone and hoping it all works. To really understand what we need and how to maximise results, we actually need strategies for every part of our business.
It's Business In the Information Age
In the Industrial Age, corporations had an advantage. They needed to build a brick and mortar business, define a specific strategy, and create a lifeline that lasted for 25 – 50 years.
That doesn’t work anymore. Information moves quickly, trends alter every year and businesses are merging globally online and offline that is changing the way we do and think about business. That all impacts business and how we decide to position in the market.
That means that the strategic approach to building a business also doesn’t work. Too often, businesses get stuck in the swamp of “how it was done” and “textbook rules.”
What we need instead is strategies for information. Yes… all information. When I have worked exclusively with SEO consulting services, I provide a strategy. When I start developing social media, I provide a strategy. It’s the only way to really boost what you want with your business.
There’s different “must knows” that come along with strategies for every channel or medium. It’s not defined by the mission, vision and objectives. It’s a breathable, workable plan that shows the strengths and weaknesses and what you need to do.
At the Center of Digital Positioning
To start with the tried and true strategy, it requires expanding to digital positioning.
I’m curious to know if any business has ever looked solely at how they position online in relation to other competitors. Not pricing, not value. But something that really looks at your online landscape. That means looking at positioning by channel. How do you compare with your keywords against others? What is your YouTube standing in relation to others?
You need to know how much exposure your content gets in comparison to others. This is the new form of digital positioning that very few are looking at.
To understand digital positioning, you must understand this:
1. Who your competitors are and how they rank
2. How they are working with SEO
3. What they are doing with social media. That includes numbers, followers, likes and amount of content.
4. What partnerships they have built (affiliate marketing, etc)
5. How involved they are with different channels
Then, find out how you relate to this. If you are just starting out, then you need to be in “the middle of” if not ahead of those who are working with digital positioning.
What I’ve mostly found with my SEO consulting services is that, even with all of the information available, most businesses are taking a shot in the dark. Instead of looking at positioning and strategies surrounding the digital landscape, they are building the basic skeletal structure out and hoping that it works.
Of course this works to begin building your brand. But it doesn’t work to create the momentum you want and to help you stand out from the crowd with the amount of information you want to send to others.
Adding In The Trends
There was an interesting trend that happened in 2009 – 10. Marketers started announcing that everyone would move away from computers and into mobile.
Only a few companies took advantage of that and positioned their companies so that it would take advantage of mobile. And, mobile grew. After it did, every other marketer went into the trend and built up. Now, mobile is saturated with hundreds and thousands of apps, ads and businesses that use it as a standard.
You can expect that every medium you use online is going to continue to expand with updates, new versions and additions. You can also expect that new trends are going to surge, leading to a different way to use the Internet.
I love blockchain and cryptocurrencies as the perfect example. In the beginning, no one believed it would work. But, those who decided to follow the possibility of innovation took advantage of it and got into the mix.
I also love the new trends of bots coming up. Recently, when I was working with SEO consulting services, I recommended this as an addition to a website, not only for customer service, but I can see how Google is going to continue developing AI and their bots and incorporating it into websites.
Had they made an executive decision to introduce the bots, then it may have changed the game. It’s a trend that is up and rising and that many marketers are now preaching as the next thing.
If they introduce it at a later state, every other company will have bots as well, leading to saturation and missing on the opportunity to build relevancy.
These are Information Age trends. And whoever bites first, wins the crowd. Follow and know what is next to boost your brand identity.
How It Adds Up
That’s just the beginning of strategy based on medium and channel. When I work with SEO consulting services I’m looking at more and the scope of the current landscape.
Take this for instance. Every year, Google announces what the trends are going to be in SEO. They let you know exactly what you should or shouldn’t be doing and how to work online.
If you don’t have a website, then you need to expand beyond Google to define your digital positioning. If you do have a website, then you should be combining the announcements of the year with an overview and scope of what is happening. And, you need to do your own research to understand the complete scope of what is happening.
This isn’t strategy that used to be a part of the digital landscape. It’s much more. These are value additions that support your business vision and growth.
Your SEO, social media, content, videos and everything you add online should be complimentary to the brand of your business. If it isn’t – don’t do it. If it is, make sure you are at the top of the crowd with how it is implemented. And, make sure you have a strategy that shows the how and why of what this should be.
Instead of looking at how we need to forcefully go into the world and write as much content as possible, we should be looking in the opposite direction.
How can you build a strategy where every time you do one thing, it boosts you up?
If you aren’t following this approach, you’re contributing to the white noise of the world, becoming one more profile, one more account and one more article within the industry.
SEO Consulting Services and Beyond
My challenge to every business is to have medium based or value add strategies for every type of medium they are using. With my SEO consulting services, I’ve looked at the full scope of a business and how SEO will compliment their business, instead of how they need to aggressively pursue doing everything and following basic SEO rules to get on top.
I’ve applied the same approaches to emails, funnels and social media.
Every time this approach is used, there are results. And when clients don’t refer to strategy first, we usually have a conversation 3 months later… there is uncertainty of the ROI, how to measure the return and what is actually happening with their website as well as the digital information that is online. It ultimately always backfires and has to be redone.
This ultimately takes place because businesses aren’t looking beyond the scope of general operations, management and staying “caught up” with the general ideals of what they should be doing.
Using something different – like SEO consulting services, strategies for social media and identifying digital positions is what gets results. There is no other way.
As the online world becomes saturated, filled with information, identified by those who talk the loudest and with fewer tools coming up, the success also requires changes.
That means looking at what your strategy is going to be to stand out and to not become buried in the millions of other faces of an online presence that will rise to the top.
What side of the coin do you choose to be on?
The one where those who talk the loudest win… or those who are the smartest win?
I’ll tell you which one is easier.