Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

On the other hand, Elizabeth at ElderPets may be in trouble. One of its primary

goals is to get donations, but its website is currently focused on describing its mission

and founders, and it doesn’t even have online donation capability yet. This could pose

a challenge throughout the SEO campaign.

Remember the big picture here:

The SEO You Have, Not the One You Want

In an ideal world, you could take your Goals Worksheet to your boss and say, “Hey!

We’ve got a disconnect here. Let’s fix it!” But let’s just suppose that

ideal

is not the

word you would use to describe your organization. The fact is, your SEO campaign

may need to work with certain handicaps.

Over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of folks who have had to support their

business goals with a less-than-perfect website. Here are the most common reasons

we’ve seen for this:

• There is political opposition to change.

• There are scheduling bottlenecks: everybody else’s project comes before our

own site.

• The current marketing team inherited an outdated or lousy website.

• The site is floating along and isn’t really anybody’s responsibility.

Some Interim Solutions

It’s your job as the in-house SEO expert to lobby for a website that will deliver for

your company. But you may be wondering, “If my site is far less than perfect and—for

whatever reason—I can’t fix it right now, should I even bother with SEO?” Probably.

Here are some ideas for approaching SEO while you’re waiting for your site to come

up to speed with your company’s goals:

• Work on getting traffic, but lower your expectations for sales (or whatever

action you want your visitors to perform) for the time being. When you perform

your monthly rank checks during your SEO campaign, you may notice an

upswing in traffic, which you can use to motivate your people to make some

positive changes to the site.

• Ask for “ownership” of just one page, or just one section, and try to bring it

up to snuff. Can’t get a whole page? We’ve had customers who were given just

one chunk of the home page to do with as they wished. Surprisingly, site maps

Pearl of Wisdom:

Your SEO campaign must support the overall business goals, not just your

website.

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