It's a good question, with no specific answer, other than: "It Depends."
Where are you with your current website’s SEO?
Do you have the right keywords on your site now? Do you update your site often? Some home builders haven’t done anything on their current website when it comes to SEO and they’re starting from way behind the industry and their competitors. If you have a huge amount of catchup to do, it will add months to the process.
How engaging is your current website?
Assuming you have Google Analytics on your website, how long do visitors stay on your website? Google Analytics tracks this, and obviously, the longer the better. Google says if people are more engaged, your site must be worthwhile. (btw, if you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, you’re even further behind the road your competitors have started on 5 or 10 years ago.)
How often are you going to add content to your website?
The more you add, the quicker the results of showing up on Google and other search engines. The more you add information to your website, the more search engines re-index your site. How often do you have to post stories? At least slightly more than your nearest competitors are posting on their sites.
How good will the content on your website be?
Updating your blog is one thing. Adding self-serving content like how great you are won’t do much for your site because no one wants to hear that, because no one believes it when you say it about yourself. The content on your site has to be educational and worthy of attracting readers. A good measure of how good your content is, is if someone wants to share what you have to say?
How good is your content OFF your website?
Posting on your blog is one thing, but you can reach more people by getting your articles out to where they already are (assuming they’re not already on your website!). Are you posting your insightful, well-written articles on websites your audience already visits? Find out where they are, and become a regular contributor.
How original is your content?
Lifting content from other sites works against you in two ways:
- it’s copyright infringement, and
- Google knows when duplicate content exists and penalizes all but the first website to have had that content.
How good are you at driving people to your website?
Are you sending out informational e-newsletters that link back to your website? Are you posting relevant information on social media? Is it interesting enough for people to want to Like, share, or link to? You need to do both.
How good are the images you’re using?
Are they dumb stock photos that people see all the time? Minus 10 points, because if your images look bad, it will be assumed your article will be bad, too. Unique, interesting images show your audience you look at things form a different perspective.
Learn from your competitors that show up on page one.
When you Google the phrase you researched to know what your audience uses, see what the websites that show up on page one are doing from the list above. Critical: no guessing at keyword phrases!
It is imperative you know what phrases your prospects are using because if not, you can lose critical time using the wrong keywords. To read more about that, see our blog on the importance of using the right keywords here.
See how often that pesky competitor showing up on page 1 meets these criteria:
- are keywords in their Page Titles? (Page Titles are the keywords that appear at the top of the browser window)
- are keywords in their headlines?
- how often do they use their keywords in their blogs? (research shows that your keywords should not be any more than 3%- 5% of the word count of your articles),
- how often do they post blogs? (however often they’re posting: that’s what your goal should beat)
- how many pages in their site uses those keywords? (it’s best if you use keywords on multiple pages).
One final thought:
Search engines can’t yet (but will soon) be able to tell if a story is well-written and informative. People can tell if something is well-written and informative, and if they think it is, and it makes them look smart by sharing your information, they'll help spread your content, and subsequently, links back to your website.
As a Columbus web design firm, we specialize in content marketing, getting your audiences attention in 5 seconds or less, and helping you have a website that is better than your competitors.
