One of the most important factors in creating an effective digital marketing strategy is setting the right expectations. Whether you are doing your own SEO, have an in-house team, or hired a consultant or agency, expectations can be a killer to success.
Or at least your perception of success!
What does your digital marketing success look like? How and when will it be achieved?
If you can’t answer these questions then, I hate to break it to you, but you will never be “successful” at SEO. There will always be something not going the way you think it should. And that’s because you haven’t set your expectations.
So that begs the question, how does one go about having accurate expectations of results?
Survey Says: Keyword Research
There are a lot of answers to that question, and I’m only going to address one here. But it’s a big one: Keyword Research!
Keyword research arms you with a lot of important information. Aside from just uncovering “phrases,” you can also get data on keyword difficulty, search volume, competition for the keyword, and more.
How will you use that information?
You have a couple of options:
- Let keyword difficulty data scare you away from optimizing those phrases
- Tackle them with full knowledge of what you’re getting into and what is necessary for success.
Either option is fine. Just make sure the “higher ups” are on board and have their expectations tempered accordingly.