When it comes to online marketing, there are a lot of avenues to choose from and combine. You have social media marketing, pay-per-click marketing, email marketing. But the most popular is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. We have talked a lot (here, here and here) on how important SEO is to your marine business, but the BIGGEST question we get is, “When will I start seeing results!?” The short answer – SEO is a slow burn. It takes time to build rankings, especially if you are in a competitive market.
What a frustrating answer, right? But it’s the truth. Now for the long answer. How fast your SEO results start to meet your goals depends on a variety of factors including how long your site has been around, how competitive you market is, how and when your website was built (you can read more on that here), if you are adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis, and a whole slew of other factors. Truth is, every marine business starts from a different starting point. If your site hasn’t been redesigned in 5 or more year or isn’t mobile friendly or responsive, you are starting far behind your competitor that just redesigned their site, write blog posts or fishing reports weekly or monthly, and is reaching people on social media.
With all that said, most marine businesses will see SEO results in about 6 months. See what we mean by slow burn? Below is a rough agenda of the results you can see when starting with our SEO marketing experts:
First Month – The marketing team at Charternet Web Solutions has been exclusively doing SEO for the marine industry for almost 20 years. Because of that, we have extensive knowledge of the the terms, key words and market your business needs to rank better in. We use this time to research your given area, do a website audit and form a keyword strategy.
Second & Third Month – Our marketing experts begin the behind the scenes technical stuff – optimizing your site based on the audit findings, getting you set up on your social media accounts so you can post regularly, help you build content, etc. We should note that this is the point where you will find out if you need to enter into a website redesign based on the audit results. The goal would be to make your website appealing to search engines, and Google in particular, has high standards. You will start building site content! Blogging, fishing reports, FAQs, company information, etc. The sooner you get a jump on this, the better off you will be!
Fourth Month – Continued content creation, technical optimization of the website, and development of a healthy link profile (which may include cleaning up low quality links). It is safe to say that if you have been adding quality content, keeping up with your fishing reports, posting blogs to social media, you could expect to see a marked increase in rankings, traffic, and lead generation. It won’t be anywhere close to the improvements you should see 12 months into your SEO efforts, but it should be significant enough that you know SEO is working.
Fifth & Sixth Month – By this month, you would have heard from us that social media and natural link building is crucial to your rankings. This can lead to a healthy, natural link profile, and of course generate leads in and of itself. Your marine website should be seeing more and more traffic coming in from SEO at this point, and your leads should be growing as a result. Going forward from here it will be tremendously important to keep up with your weekly activities of content creation, social media postings, etc!
Second & Third Month – Our marketing experts begin the behind the scenes technical stuff – optimizing your site based on the audit findings, getting you set up on your social media accounts so you can post regularly, help you build content, etc. We should note that this is the point where you will find out if you need to enter into a website redesign based on the audit results. The goal would be to make your website appealing to search engines, and Google in particular, has high standards. You will start building site content! Blogging, fishing reports, FAQs, company information, etc. The sooner you get a jump on this, the better off you will be!
Fourth Month – Continued content creation, technical optimization of the website, and development of a healthy link profile (which may include cleaning up low quality links). It is safe to say that if you have been adding quality content, keeping up with your fishing reports, posting blogs to social media, you could expect to see a marked increase in rankings, traffic, and lead generation. It won’t be anywhere close to the improvements you should see 12 months into your SEO efforts, but it should be significant enough that you know SEO is working.
Fifth & Sixth Month – By this month, you would have heard from us that social media and natural link building is crucial to your rankings. This can lead to a healthy, natural link profile, and of course generate leads in and of itself. Your marine website should be seeing more and more traffic coming in from SEO at this point, and your leads should be growing as a result. Going forward from here it will be tremendously important to keep up with your weekly activities of content creation, social media postings, etc!
Keep in mind that this is just a general outline. Many factors can reduce or increase this timeline.
Ready to expand your customer base with effective SEO marketing? With over 2 decades of marine industry experience, at Charternet Web Solutions we deliver powerful SEO management plans to fit your budget. Our experience with fishing charters, yacht brokers and water adventure companies combined with good data and knowledge means your marine business will rank on page 1 and your phone will ring off the hook!
Contact us today to get started!
Charternet Web Solutions
Dedicated to Keeping You on the Water
www.charternetwebsolutions.com
844.866.9283
