As long as there have been search engines (or just about) there have been marketers, trying to ensure that their sites were seen by as many eyes as possible. SEO has come a long way since the early days, but the goal remains the same, and contractor marketing is no different to any other type of online marketing.

People have written books about search engine marketing, and chances are, there will be many more written as the landscape evolves. If you don’t have time for the books though, here’s the quick and dirty guide to getting found on Google.

Getting Found Takes Time

The first thing anyone needs to know about being found online is that it takes time. One of the key factors search engines like Google consider when deciding where to place new sites is the age of the domain. If you’ve just registered your domain and launched a website, it will take several months of consistent SEO, content marketing and other tactics to get your site spotted by search engines.

The good news is that once your site does gain traction and climb out of Google’s “sandbox” it’s a matter of maintaining and building on the momentum you will already have gained. So while you may spend more time and money early on, it will ease off as you gain recognition from search engines.

Search Engine Marketing Starts with Great Information

When it comes to online contractor marketing, and any other kind of internet marketing these days, everything starts with giving away something. That something is usually information, in the form of content, and that content forms the basis for everything else you will do.

Content is the centre of any inbound marketing strategy today, and quality content is one of the most important factors when search engines weigh your site against the competition. Most of the content that you place on your site is likely to be text based (articles, blogs and content pages), but it may also incorporate video, images, downloadable material and even applications.

Information, or content, serves many purposes when it comes to SEO and search engine marketing, including:

• Giving search engine spiders something to crawl and catalog. Spiders are tiny pieces of code that “read” websites, and help search engines to catalog them. Great content can help them to figure out where you fit faster.
• Establishing your reputation as an expert in the industry. People trust experts and they want to work with people they trust.
• Great content is shareable, and when your content is shared on social media, you’re likely to get a link from the site that is sharing it. Since search engines take quality links into account when determining ranking, the more shares your content gets, the better your site will do.

You Can Take Immediate Action

It takes time to build a great website, take care of all the technical elements of SEO, and build up enough content to generate incoming traffic, but there is a short term solution you can use while you wait for search engines to start noticing you.

Paid ads or PPC advertising is a quick and easy way to buy your way to the top of search results. It can be expensive if you aren’t sure what you’re doing, but it can also kick start the traffic to your website, and that can give your site the boost it needs to continue growing long term.

Wherever you are in creating an online presence, and whatever your long term goals for SEO, contractor marketing online and your inbound marketing strategy, there’s no time like the present, and the sooner you get your search engine marketing started, the sooner the search engines will start noticing, and sending you leads.