Understanding and Optimizing for Compounding SEO

Long-term success is the goal of the vast majority of business owners, and is generally reflected in marketing efforts of all types. And when it comes to SEO and related forms of digital marketing, this desire is reflected in what’s known as a compounding effect.

At SEO Werkz, it’s our goal to create long-term, viable SEO strategies for all our clients that will not only boost their site rankings and other online marketing factors in the immediate sense, but also over a longer swath of time. From local SEO to themes like on-site optimization, web design, social media marketing and many others, we’ve assisted hundreds of clients with long-lasting, successful SEO campaigns. Consistency in growth is our mantra, including a keen eye to the theme of compound marketing, and more specifically compounding SEO. While you likely have some idea what this theme refers to based on its title, here’s an in-depth look at compounding SEO and why it’s important for many businesses, plus how to prepare for and actionize a compound SEO plan.

Compounding SEO Basics

As we noted above, and as any longtime SEO pro or online marketing expert can attest, SEO has both short- and long-term impacts. The right tweaks to your site’s SEO will often show virtually immediate results improving your visibility and page rankings – but maintaining and even building on these is just as important.

And as it turns out, research shows that SEO is enormously effective here as well. Legitimate, diligent SEO efforts on a website will continue to show benefits on a year-over-year basis, with steady growth in web traffic common even years into many campaigns. In fact, this steady growth is often seen even on sites that haven’t made significant changes for some time – though of course, there are limits here in terms of sites that have old or non-relevant content still present.

Under the Hood

You might be wondering: How does this work? How is it possible that even if you make very few changes to a developed site that’s months or years into an SEO program, the program will continue to generate traffic increases? Let’s dive in a bit further.

When any website attracts organic traffic on Google, aka the goal of SEO, it creates a network of increasing demand. This demand might be expressed in organic links, positive reviews, improved visibility or even an improved user experience. Simultaneously, content created on your site using SEO tools will bring more shares on social media, which will send increased ranking signals.

Over time, this will lead to content attracting more backlinks and becoming more authoritative. Google, therefore, will automatically keep moving it up the rankings – continuing the same cycle we just described. You’ll eventually get more and more “indexation” credits from Google as you up your keyword inclusion, and your authority will only trend upward. Content can become a ranking factor for numerous different keywords, and will always attract new searchers. With the right tweaks, especially for pages that don’t get updated as often, your benefits will grow each month or year.

Timing Themes

There’s also a major timing component here. Choosing when to invest in SEO will often have a big impact on the ability of the SEO to compound on itself and multiply in success year over year, especially without any additional investment.

The ideal time to begin an SEO effort is a few months before your new site is even launched. This will allow you to enter the market with strength. Many compare SEO to a snowball rolling downhill: It may start slowly and relatively small, but it will quickly gain momentum and, eventually, will be very difficult to stop.

However, if you’re already past the point a few months prior to launch, it’s never too late to get started. SEO investment is a first step toward major long-term revenue collection, and getting that snowball rolling sooner rather than later is important for many businesses.

Accelerating SEO Compounding

Now, you have plenty of control over how your compounding SEO program works and accelerates. Here are a few areas to keep an eye on:

• Keywords: From the jump, it’s vital to focus on the right keywords and competitive research. Ideally, as we touched on above, this process should begin well before the site is launched, and will help set a baseline for the content that will be created on the site.
• Content: In addition, the content itself must be high-quality and evergreen. It also must match the intent of searchers, or will not be considered positively by Google. While we have noted here that compound SEO often allows for limited tweaks to a site once a program is up-and-running, one exception area here is continued creation of relevant content.
• Optimization: On-page optimization themes like header tags, images, alt text, meta descriptions and various links need to be handled well.
• Link sculpting: This is an in-depth industry term that’s also known as topic clustering, one that involves directing links to the right pages to impact Google rankings on various keywords. Ask our team for more information about link sculpting if you’re implementing a compound SEO strategy.

Prepare for Changes

One important note here: Be aware that search engine ranking factors change constantly, and this may have an impact on your compound SEO efforts. As we noted above, however, your best weapon against these changes is great content: Google will never minimize the importance of this ranking factor, and it remains vital even for sites with great programs set up. Our team will work with you on additional factors to closely monitor as you move forward with a compounding SEO strategy.

For more on compounding SEO, or to learn about any of our PPC, web design or social media marketing services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.