Written by Trevor Mauch What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of making improvements both on your website and off-site to increase the visibility of your website in search engines like Google.
Why is SEO important for businesses?
SEO and evergreen marketing can result in more organic search traffic to your website, and in turn, more leads and customers for your business.
“Organic” search results are the unpaid results that appear on a search engine results page (as opposed to sponsored ads or paid traffic).
By optimizing your website to get found in the organic search results, the people who are looking for your services or products can find you, especially if you rank on Page 1 of the search results.
Few people click “next page” when searching… they never even see Page 2, never mind pages 4-9.
And the higher you rank, the more traffic you’ll get. According to Backlinko, the #1 organic result is 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in the #10 spot.
SEO Implementation: DIY or Outsource?
It’s vital to decide who’s going to implement your SEO efforts.
Many real estate professionals and small business owners who fail at SEO do so because they are not consistent enough or they don’t give it enough time to pay off.
We get it; working solo or running a growing company often means you are doing it all, and it’s easy to put stuff aside… even the important stuff. It’s important to commit to this and know you have what it takes.
If you question how consistent you can be or if you prefer to have someone else do it for you, consider hiring a VA (virtual assistant) or a professional company to do it for you. Browse our Marketplace of in-house Carrot services and trusted SEO providers.
However, even if you are outsourcing the work, it is helpful to understand the basics of SEO and marketing for your business. You wouldn’t hand over all of your financial statements to a bookkeeper without understanding the most important numbers behind your business, would you? The same is true for your marketing efforts.
How long does it take to see SEO results?
SEO is a long-term strategy. It’s a marathon, not a sprint!
It can typically take 4-12 months to see significant results from SEO improvements. But once you get going, SEO and evergreen marketing can help you attract and convert high quality prospects 24/7, for months and years in the future.
Be patient, because if done correctly, the results from SEO will be worth it!
If you’re looking for faster options to get leads quickly, great options are running paid advertising like Facebook Ads or Google Pay Per Click (PPC).
But let’s be clear: you should do both SEO and paid marketing to have the best performance for your website and deliver the most leads for your business.
How can I get started with SEO?
Carrot’s website platform is built with SEO and performance in mind. We also offer built-in SEO Tools to help you do keyword research, track your SEO rankings, and provide guidance as you optimize your pages.
To get started with SEO, we recommend focusing on 3 key areas:
- On-Page SEO
- Creating Helpful Content
- Off-Site SEO
1. On-Page SEO
For each page you want to be found by search engines, you’ll want to check and update the on-page SEO elements like Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions. Learn more:
2. Creating Helpful Content
Having helpful, descriptive content on your website is important for getting found by search engines and building trust with website visitors. Learn more about using content to increase your search visibility:
3. Off-Site SEO
Finally, after optimizing your pages and creating some helpful content, you’ll want to spend some time on off-site SEO. This includes everything that is not controlled directly within your website.
Off-site SEO (also known as off-page SEO) primarily consists of building citations and backlinks to your website. Learn more:
Carrot’s Domain Overview and Backlink Analysis tools can help you track your off-page SEO performance.
Learn More About SEO:
Don’t have time to do SEO yourself?
Take advantage of top-notch, Carrot-certified SEO providers to generate more organic leads: