Creating and developing a successful SEO campaign takes time, a whole lot of effort and a great deal of patience. But, as with anything in life, if you work hard enough and are completely committed to the cause, you will eventually reap the rewards of your labour.

If you compare the process of building a successful SEO campaign with that of building a house – you will realise that your dream home isn’t going to be ready to move into in a matter of days or even months, in fact if you want your home to be absolutely perfect, prepare yourself for a long wait and put the IKEA catalogue away.

Planning

Before you can begin to build your house, you are going to need to draw up a design plan. When constructing an SEO campaign, planning is crucial if you want to succeed. Think about what you want your business to achieve from running an SEO campaign. Ultimately your main aim is to increase sales for your business to make more profit. However, as you have already been warned, an SEO campaign can produce excellent results – but they don’t just happen overnight. Once you have drawn up a plan and received your planning permission, it’s time to set the foundations.

The Foundations

If you don’t want your SEO campaign to fall faster than a tonne of bricks; you are going to need some solid foundations (or in terms of SEO – keywords) to build your campaign upon. Think about your business and what services you can offer your customers. Then put yourself in the position of a customer seeking your services. What words would they type into Google? Ultimately, your keywords need to be wholly relevant to your business strategy and the content on your website. Get these right and you are ready to order your bricks and mortar, get them wrong and you will be better off finding somewhere to rent.

Start Building

Once you have the foundation of your keywords in place, you can begin building your website. This is where many companies forget the simple principles of appealing to their target audience. The blood sweat and tears spent getting your site to the top of Google’s search will have been a waste if your website fails to appeal to and engage your visitors. In the same way that a house should be both functional and comfortable for its occupants, your website needs to appeal to visitors whilst being easy to use and navigate.

Think of your website as a high street store. You want your customers to find what they are looking for from your shop as quickly and easily as possible without any problems. Complicated websites will just frustrate your audience and turn potential customers away.

Although it is now difficult to imagine a world without the internet, the World Wide Web has only been in existence for the past 17 years. With this in mind, it is clear to see why so many people – especially from older generations – are not completely comfortable when using computers. So, when developing your website remember not to over complicate matters. If you consider the needs and tastes of your target audience throughout the design and construction of your website, you will be on to a winner.

Furnishings

In the same way that an empty house is furnished to transform it into a home, your website will need effective content once the design phase is complete. For effective SEO results, your content should be relevant to, and focus on, your keywords and terms. Basically, your keywords are where your potential customers and Google come together. By strategically placing and linking your key terms and words within your articles, you will maximise your websites search potential.

Add Value to Your Property

To add value to your new home, you may consider getting an extension. Your SEO campaign’s value-adding extension comes in the form of distributing your content onto social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook in the hope of receiving Back-links. Basically, back-links come from other websites incorporating direct links to your business within their websites. Google considers back-links to be an accurate judgement of popularity –more back-links result in higher popularity and ultimately a higher rank on Google.

Although tough, if you can create a successful network of followers on social media websites or distribution websites, then over time your content is more likely to be distributed across a wider audience – maximising the possibility of others Back-linking to your site and therefore increasing your popularity and so on.

Maintain Your Home

All homes need maintaining to ensure they are kept in the best possible condition. Don’t become complacent if your SEO campaign is going well. Your campaign is an on-going process. To maintain SEO performance (and to keep Google happy), your website will need to be regularly updated with relevant and unique content.

If you consider and plan all aspects of your SEO campaign and take into consideration all the factors that will shape your campaign, your business will reap the rewards of your labour for many years to come.

Joe Harris is a content writer for a specialist SEO company that offers a comprehensive range of internet marketing services.