The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is going through some major changes. So should your SEO plan. That’s why we have issued a revised version of SEO Guide for Professional Services.
Let’s take a look at what is happening to organic search, why it’s important to professional services marketers, and why your SEO plan might need an update.
The Evolving World of SEO
There was a time, not so long ago, when SEO was relatively straightforward. There were a series of steps to make sure that your website was set up in a way so that search engines could ‘crawl’ it to index your pages properly.
If you selected your keywords carefully and inserted them in the webpage copy, you were off to a good start. Add to this a link building campaign and your SEO plan was complete.
This led to the rise of an entire sub-industry devoted to SEO. Unfortunately, it also led to a plethora of shady practices aimed at ‘tricking’ Google and other search engines into ranking your page high enough to garner increased web traffic.
Many professional services firms have taken this path, sometimes without knowing that they were. How do you know if you are one of them? If you are paying a relatively small fee for SEO ($1-3000 per month), it may be you. Quality costs and too many firms have taken shortcuts only to find that results are elusive.
But Google is not stupid. They saw what was going on and did something about it. More specifically, they have executed a series of rapid updates to their search algorithm. The resulting changes have been estimated to impact the search rankings of 90% of all websites. This is big.
How Have Things Changed?
Google has a long-standing commitment to making sure that its customers find the search results that they are looking for. To make sure that this is the case, Google has moved beyond simple keywords and links.
The new algorithms are more sensitive to social media reaction to a piece of content and try to take into account the context of a search. In short, the rules have changed.
The shortcuts are evaporating. As a result, many SEO shops are going out of business or becoming desperate.
What Every Professional Services Executive Needs to Know
While most professional services executives will never get into the nuts and bolts of executing an SEO plan, they do need to have a basic understanding of the evolving world of search and how it affects their firm.
That’s where the second edition of our SEO Guide for Professional Services comes into play. It’s designed to give the busy professional services executive a good, practical knowledge of what’s involved in SEO today.
It covers such key topics as the business case for SEO, key program components, measurement of program performance, and deciding which pages to optimize. The revised guide also debunks some common SEO myths.
As with all of Hinge’s Executive Guides, this guide is available as a free download. There is no complicated registration and no one will call you. Our commitment is to educating the professional services industry on the rapidly evolving world of marketing. It would be hard to imagine a topic more in need of improved understanding.
Download the SEO Guide for Professional Services: Second Edition and let us know what you think or contact us with your questions. Enjoy and get smart.
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