SEO has been a major buzzword around the marketing industry for close to 20 years.  SEO stands for search engine optimization, which means the process of updating your website to improve visibility in organic search results on search engines.

Effective SEO takes time and strategy.  When you start implementing your SEO strategy, it can take 6-12 months to see the results you are looking for.  The two most important focuses are content and backlinks.

Content is king when it comes to improving your search engine ranking because search engines like Google want to provide visitors with the most relevant and helpful results based on their search criteria.  The average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words (Source: https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking).  While there are many theories about why search engines prefer pages with more content, the important takeaway is to give search engines what they are looking for – long-form content. What are some ways you can add long-form content to the website?  Each service you offer should have at least one page on your site with a description of what the service is and how it would benefit them. Another way to increase your content is to add case studies to the website on how your business has served a specific industry or solved a common pain point.  

Google also likes when the content of the website is regularly updated.  It may take the search engines up to a few weeks to crawl the new pages of your site depending on your domain authority, but be patient. Even if the crawlers haven’t been to your site yet, you are still providing valuable information to your visitors that could help them during the buyer’s journey.

But, as a MSP, you are probably too busy to focus on your website, design, content, keeping it updated, etc. Hiring a content writer, website designer and developer may not be a viable option. So, what do you do?

• Look for firms that specialize in creating high-end, professional MSP website.
• Check if you can find ready-to-use MSP content packages that help keep your site interesting and informative to your leads.

Next week, we discuss another key element in MSP website SEO – Backlinks. Stay tuned!