“So, how are you going to help our business grow?” It is the question that, sooner or later, will pop up in your selling pitch to any astute manager or business owner. It usually serves as your cue to go on a mini-lecture on SEO and how it can take a business to the next level. Optimising specialists tend to forget that managers do not want to listen to lectures but look for concrete solutions, and that’s what we will talk about today. 

Yes, SEO means “search engine optimisation”, but going for the #1 ranking for a specific keyword is not always the best building stone of an optimisation strategy. Let’s look at the three most common scenarios and how we adjust our approach respectively. 

Service or product-based businesses

Or what we call “enterprise SEO”. Whenever we optimise for a specific product or service, the only successful approach is to go through a traditional SERP (search engine ranking position) campaign. Before we start creating content or backlinking, though, our primary focus is on research – choosing the correct keyword may prove to be the difference between triumph and disaster. Once you get the keyword straight, the rest is hard work, ingenuity, and stubbornness – the combination of these three never fails.

Entertainment or content-based projects

If you want to build up an online magazine or a news outlet in any sphere – sports, fashion, politics, tech, energy, environment, or science – the SERP strategy obviously cannot work. Why? First, you won’t be able to come up with a specific keyword for optimisation. Second, even if you do, it will be implicitly too general – therefore, you cannot realistically expect to get to the top-ranking spots. Third, you have to create fresh content on various topics that rarely fall into the same category, let alone the same keyword. 

What is the alternative? Here are the main things you have to concentrate on:

• Creating high-quality, engaging content – choose quality instead of quantity.
• Interact with your audience – respond to comments, allow discussions, create a forum section on your website, and invite criticism and suggestions.
• Build a social media following – employ Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other media outlets to increase your exposure. 

Individual or “mixed” strategy

The best example for that group are projects we’ve had in the tourism or restaurant field. While people do search by keyword, for example “Best hotels in Venice, Italy”, images and videos are the most powerful tool to attract more eyeballs. When it comes to hotels and restaurants, the best way to promote them is visually – people want to see where they will stay, gorge on the image of their desired dish, and feel the atmosphere of the place, watching an aerial video of the surroundings. 

Do you want to be competitive in the tourism business? Forget about success without a YouTube or Pinterest channel! They are a far more potent tool than a hundred posts you will write in your blog!