Resilience and Ethical SEO

Creating a plan for long-term success

It’s fairly safe to say that 2020 wasn’t easy. Even the toughest among us had a rough year, but those who showed resilience made it through a bit better than others. Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, weather tough times, has long been a psychological buzzword and is arguably more important currently than it has been in less challenging times. Personal resilience is a critical trait to achieving success, but how resilient is your website and, by extension, your business?

Ethical and well-executed search engine optimization is a critical part of building resilience into your site. 

Gaining visibility in the search engine results isn’t easy, but it can be achieved with the combination of careful planning and skillful application of ethical search engine optimization. Ethical, it should be noted, means that you use no tricks, no short-term tactics to take temporary advantage. You may be able to score some quick results (although these opportunities are few with the current search engine algorithms), but it will hurt your site in the long run. SEO is a long-term strategy, and when employed effectively, you can build your site’s visibility, paying off over time as you see better results and increased traffic. Think of it as toughening up your site, adding grit. Rather than being tossed about by the turbulence caused by search engine algorithm changes and other fluctuations, your site maintains and even gains positions, pulling in more targeted traffic and potential customers.

Identify and rectify any technical issues that may prevent the engines from wholly indexing all your pages. Perform incisive keyword research and use it as a guide to building the right copy in the right places, understanding where your customers or visitors are in your sales process, and speaking to their needs. Be intentional with your site and take advantage of the on-site elements the search engines consider when attributing relevance. Remember that what the engines want is to provide the best experience possible to their customers – the searchers. Strive to be the best possible result for search queries important to your business. Take careful note of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and adhere to them. Understand how the search engines work, the best you can, and work within that framework to be seen as relevant for essential search terms.

SEO is best thought of as a process rather than a project. Google regularly updates its algorithm to return the best possible results, and as the algorithm evolves, rather than presenting problems, you’re given the opportunity to gain more visibility. Google’s latest updates have focused on content – how’s your site’s content? Have you written and written well about topics important to your business and industry? Does your content display E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness)? While you’ve taken the time to build SEO into your site, continue to create great content that’s topical and sticky. Being a thought leader is the best way to organically gain links from other sites, and search engines love great content. You know your business – share your knowledge in the form of blog posts, whitepapers, and additional illuminating copy.    

Will there still be tough times? Assuredly. Is your work ever done? Not really. But when you apply ethical SEO to your site, you build in a toughness that pays dividends during rough patches, one that allows you to maintain your presence and the traffic you’ve earned while other less-resilient businesses flounder. Think of it as building a solid foundation, then making periodic updates and additions. The building’s on firm ground and can grow to suit your future needs.

So while you may be glad to see 2020 in the rear-view, remember to cultivate resilience in not only yourself, but also in your online business. As part of your holistic online marketing campaign, adopt an ethical SEO strategy that will allow your website to weather periodic storms and return lasting benefits, keeping your online business afloat during turbulent times.