In today’s blog, we’re interviewing our preferred SEO and Paid Ads partners at Elevate Online, Brett Westerman of Oktober Media. 

This interview with Brett provides both a high-level view of SEO and provides key insights into what you can expect from working with an SEO expert. 

Here are the questions we’ll cover so you can skip ahead if a specific question catches your eye:

• Meet Brett, Founder of October Media
• For a beginner, what is SEO?
• What are some common misconceptions you see around SEO?
• What is one thing someone could do today to improve their website’s SEO?
• When is the right time to bring an SEO expert?
• How soon can people expect to see the benefits of SEO work? 
• How does SEO fit into an overall digital marketing plan?
• Is there anything else you’d like to add about SEO?

But first, I want to start by giving you an introduction to Brett Westerman and Oktober Media. 

Meet Brett, Founder of Oktober Media 

Brett has been running digital campaigns for ~12 years, starting on the agency side, then moving in-house, and finally springing loose with independent clients (which turns out to be his favorite ones). 

Oktober Media focuses on executing paid media and SEO campaigns for clients both B2B and B2C. Paid channels include anywhere you can buy eyeballs (or ears) on the internet. 

All answers below were provided by Brett to help you better understand what SEO might look like for your business. 

For a total beginner, what is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization. Creating content that Google will find as it wanders (technically “crawls” by following links) the web, includes in their “index” of pages that exist, and (here’s the fun part) ranks for search queries that users type into Google.com. 

A few components of SEO include: 

• Technical – Input on technical aspects such as fast site speed and mobile friendliness (Google prefers both) and ensuring pages are coded in a way that allows Google to easily find and interpret content. 
• Content – Researching the phrases that users are searching online (tools provide this with great specificity) as a means of market research for how your brand might provide relevant content to those questions and concerns.
• Analytical – On what phrases am I currently ranking and how does that organic traffic behave when experiencing my landing page and broader site?
• Local – Your business presence that appears in Google Maps and organic results is powered by “Google My Business”, a free listing portal that can also be optimized to improve your brand visibility
• Links – As mentioned before, links between pages and between domains are how Google “crawls” between websites. Without links they wouldn’t be able to find pages. Links to your site are also a factor in ranking when arriving from other high-quality sites. 

What are some common misconceptions you see around SEO?

How about three SEO myths – this will be fun:

There are no quick SEO wins. There are, however, simple changes with outsized SEO impact. 

• By this I mean that including a keyword here or there may not change the game by itself alone. The list above shows ranking impact from UX, content, visitor behavior, and links, so it’s very much a team effort. No quick wins. 
• However, there are fundamental “tables stakes” for SEO that can significantly improve ranking if they are found to be in error. Examples include: slow site load time, lacking meta information on core pages, poor internal linking structure, or tags that disallow Google from crawling your site. 
• So a good SEO audit starts by first finding these “outsized effect” changes we can make, and then building from there with (slower) incremental improvements. 

Another “grey area” myth is the impact of PPC on SEO. Officially they have no relationship.

• Even at Google HQ, the SEO (or ‘Search Quality’) folks are separate from advertising. I’m sure they see each other in the cafeteria and avert their eyes. 
• However, opportunities for exposure to relevant audiences will increase your chance for gaining inbound links and brand visibility. 
• You might promote an especially well-written piece of content (i.e., proprietary research with an infographic) that could gain internal links that may not have happened without the additional exposure that advertising provided. 
• So you can see how it’s a dotted-line correlation there, but most of marketing is. 

SEO is not “free traffic”.

• While the organic placement does not cost to appear (as would banner ads) or to be clicked (as would PPC ads), the energy that brought that listing to a ranking position required labor and research from SEO experts, developers, content writers, and designers. It was not an accident that a page ranked, so there very much is an investment side to the equation when considering “free” organic traffic. 

What is one thing someone could do today to improve their website’s SEO?

How about three (relatively) simple actions you can take today: 

1. Claim your business on Google My Business, upload quality photos, and ask customers to leave a review of their experience (targeting the most satisfied customers is always a good idea). 
2. Implement “structured data” markup that provides context on WHAT your content is about. There are CMS plugins that can help with simple implementations, or get a developer involved for larger-scale projects. 
3. Speed up your site! Downsize images and use a CDN (Content Distribution Network) to serve up images faster around the world. Get rid of shared hosting and consider Cloud VPS or a dedicated server. 

When is the right time to bring an SEO expert like yourself in? 

Perfect world scenario is considering SEO before a site even launches (or refreshes), way back during wireframing and content ideation. 

Post-launch is the next most critical time period. Monitoring Googlebot activity, redirect accuracy, and ranking changes should be top of mind in the 1-3 months after a site is refreshed or launched. This will set the stage for the next year of SEO performance. 

Quarterly SEO reviews are a cadence that works well for most sites. This allows enough time for Google to make meaningful ranking changes that can drive your decisions for the upcoming quarter and year. 

How soon can people expect to see the benefits of SEO work? 

All I gotta do is press the “SEO Button” right here on my laptop and you can watch those results start flying! (… is the mis-guided expectation)

Aside from the “outsized impact” mentioned above, optimized content should start to see movement within the first 3 months. This would be at least hitting the radar of ranking up to position #100. While nobody makes it to page 10 of Google results (let alone page 2), this still gives an indication that Google acknowledges you exist and are relevant for a given topic. 

An initial ranking provides somewhere to start, and an idea of how you might pivot that ranking phrase into other phrases, or improve your article to better emphasize that keyword/topic.

How does SEO fit into an overall digital marketing plan?

SEO as a function of marketing can be considered both evergreen (content that will be perennially relevant to both your brand and audience) and campaign-based to reinforce short-term objectives.

Search queries are a treasure trove of market research that can inform non-SEO facets of the organization. Popular phrases can be tested in PPC ads. Trending topics can be communicated socially to your audience. Even offline media, such as billboards or radio (or increasingly digital audio, my new favorite) can utilize copy and topics that SEO has proven to be effective.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about SEO?

Search users on Google are communicating high intent in their queries (e.g., What is the best gym equipment? How do I start with CRM marketing? Why do my ears hurt?) and brands are the authoritative voices to help. We just need to listen and respond accordingly. 

Interested in SEO for your business?

Katie, here. If your business needs an SEO boost, there’s no better place to turn than Oktober Media. 

Click here to learn more.