If you’ve been a business owner for long, chances are you remember when the buzz about search engine optimization began. When internet databases like Google and Ask Jeeves first gained popularity in the late ‘90s, these search engines ranked pages by keywords, page titles, and inbounding links. Pages often gained high rankings by “keyword stuffing” and other simple on-site tricks. But by the time the mid-2000s rolled around, search engines began ranking pages based on the quality of content provided. And that’s when the topic of SEO took off. Major search engines like Google implemented huge changes to weed out websites that prioritized advertisement-based revenue over user satisfaction. And similar changes to Google’s algorithms are still happening today.

With all that said, we’re naming 2017 the year that traditional SEO is dead. So here are four reasons you should be thinking more about how your website performs and less about how it ranks on search engines.

1. The Internet is More Than Just Words

The intention of every major search engine is to create an easier way for website users to find the content they’re looking for. And in the early days of search engine optimization, the only tangible way to analyze content for its relevance was through words. But a website is more than just words, right? It’s made up of graphics and videos and links and structural elements. The limitation of traditional SEO is that it focuses on only one piece of an entire website: the words. While search engines may only analyze a percentage of the big picture, internet users don’t interact with websites the same way. Visitors see and experience every element of a website at the same time, and while the words are a huge part of that experience, they’re not the only element that matters.

Focus this year on establishing a holistic approach to the way you build or maintain your website. SEO is important—there’s no doubt about that—but at its best, SEO is only responsible for getting people to your site. It’s up to you what they do when they get there.

2. User Experience is Everything

While the latest Google algorithms consider more than 200 factors for ranking on its search engine, there are only a handful of factors that correlate with significant results. Many of these significant factors are used to determine the quality of a site, which directly affects page rankings. Factors such a dwell-time (how long a user stays on your site), bounce rates (when a user lands on your site and then immediately navigates away), and page views per unique visitor have major influences on page rankings. Now more than ever, user experience (or how users interact with a website) is critical.

Creating a website that is both easy to use and engaging will boost repeat traffic, increase conversions, and grow your word-of-mouth referrals. And doing so establishes the quality of your website with Google and other search engines by increasing dwell-time and page views and by decreasing bounce rates. At the end of the day, both your page rankings and your website conversions will increase, which means growth on both sides without any sacrifice to either.

3. Organic Traffic from Social Media Increases Every Day

Very few business owners doubt the power of social media anymore. In an age where the average person spends more time in a day on social media than they do eating or drinking, there’s no denying that social media matters. Social media is responsible for a massive amount of website traffic every day, and the percentage of website traffic from social media is constantly increasing. Many industries experience a large percentage of revenue coming from traffic that originated with social media, meaning that users are becoming more and more likely to find your business on social media than they are on major search engines. This is especially true for e-commerce businesses, who report an average of 26% of website traffic coming from social media.

A strong social media strategy creates an opportunity for a business to tell its story to people who would normally never get to hear it. Being active on social media is a proactive approach to raising awareness about your business because you’re meeting people where they are rather than waiting for them to look for you. It’s always important to have a great website, but getting people to your website is a major undertaking. Often times, a strong social media strategy is far more effective for driving website traffic than SEO.

4. Google Has Trust Issues

Remember what we said about “keyword stuffing” and other outdated methods for ranking pages on Google that became popular years ago? Turns out Google has developed some major trust issues since then. Now, Google uses an extremely complex system called PageRank to determine the trustworthiness of a website and its domain. This calculation analyzes factors such as backlinks, domain age, and domain reputation to establish how trustworthy your site is. SEO expert R.L. Adams says gaining Google’s trust can take years, especially if your website is relatively new, and gives some great tips of building that trust over time.

The bottom line is, boosting your page rankings (especially in a competitive industry) can be an overwhelming undertaking. Think of establishing strong domain authority as a 5-year long play. There are things you should be doing to increase it, but it’s not the only way (or even the best way) to grow your business.

Conclusion

It’s easy to get roped into SEO schemes that guarantee first-page placement for relevant keywords, but be cautious about placing too much value on paid methods for boosted page rankings. Many SEO companies charge more than $1,000 per month for their services, and while they often deliver on their promises, first-page rankings don’t always translate to increased revenue. If your website is not user-friendly and your content is not high-quality, chances are that all that extra traffic your website is getting is wasted effort. Prioritize creating a site that engages users and delivers an unforgettable experience, and you’ll quickly see your website traffic resulting in increased conversions and growth for your business.

If you’ve got questions about your digital strategy and how to best grow your business, contact us today to schedule a consultation.

The lowdown: Since December, Tangible Strategies has moved from its office space in the Village of West Greenville, launched its brand new website, and undergone a good bit of internal restructuring. Needless to say, it’s been a crazy few weeks, and we want to make sure you’re caught up on all things Tangible as we ring in the New Year. So here are a few thoughts from our Founder and Creative Director:

Laying the Groundwork

We seem to be talking a lot lately at the Tangible office about the idea of settling—settling for just three cups of coffee in the morning because we’re trying to avoid caffeine overload (seriously, guys, turns out this is a real thing), settling for a tiny desktop Christmas tree because we were too busy with the move to fully decorate the office, settling for a presidential candi—wait, no, we’re not getting into that again. I think it’s safe to say that 2016 was a more-than-hectic year (for us, it marked our first full January-to-December succession in good ol’ Greenville). But honestly, for all its craziness, the last month of a rather long year was one of the most exciting and encouraging 31 days we’ve ever had. Which has got us thinking, maybe settling isn’t such a bad thing.

As many of you know, Tangible Strategies has been around since 2011, but for most of its existence, the business was a simple husband-and-wife venture with big dreams of far-off grandiose. In July of 2015, we moved the business to Greenville, SC from Western North Carolina and quickly realized that the demand for small business marketing in the Upstate was much larger than the two of us could handle on our own. So in January, we began building out our team, getting settled into an office space in the Village, and building a reputation as a true-to-its-name agency in a marketplace still entirely foreign to us.

A Year in Review

We’ve learned a lot since then, as you might imagine. In particular, we’ve learned that doing business in Greenville is all about who you know—and getting to know the right people is no easy task (in fact, this realization has been the primary inspiration behind our networking series GVL Connect). We’ve learned that project workflow for a team of two people looks nothing like project workflow for a team of three people. Or four people. Or five people. We’ve learned that possessing the capability to do everything does not mean one should actually try to do everything. We’ve learned that following through on promises really is as impactful as we always knew it was. And we’ve learned that partnership and collaboration are two things we simply cannot live without. Which is one of the many realizations that persuaded us to rethink our processes—and our work setting—a bit.

In case you’ve missed the details, Tangible Strategies now lives inside The Wheelhouse, Greenville’s newest cowork space along the Swamp Rabbit Trail. The Wheelhouse is a collective office space specifically created for marketing professionals and agencies, where freelancers and creative teams alike can work together on projects while maintaining their own brands and unique identities. A rather unique business model as cowork spaces normally go, The Wheelhouse acts as an agency itself, bringing in a steady stream of marketing projects and then turning to its tenants for executing the work on those projects. At its core, The Wheelhouse is designed to support the growth and development of other businesses while sustaining the same for itself. It’s ingenious really.

Making the Move

In October, Wheelhouse co-owner Jeff White approached our team after several recommendations pointed him in our direction. I was immediately enthralled with his idea for a new kind of cowork space and, after a few conversations, realized that the business philosophy behind The Wheelhouse lined up quite nicely with what we had been building at Tangible for the past five years.

And so there we were, faced with the prospect of an opportunity that would help grow our business, allow us to work on larger scale projects, and connect us with other local marketing professionals. You can imagine how long and hard we had to think about our decision. (I’m kidding; it was a no-brainer.) I’ll admit, we had our reservations at first, as none of us are particularly keen on big change, but the more we thought about it, the more this move made sense.

Experiencing the Benefits

After more than four weeks of working in The Wheelhouse, the Christmas-morning-like excitement has worn off and the new atmosphere is beginning to feel more normal. We’ve introduced the space to a handful of our clients, and we’ve even hosted a few networking events here. In the few short weeks thus far, we’ve formed new client relationships and watched the interior of the building continue to develop (re: the new garage door behind our table). A lot has happened in 40-ish days, but most importantly, we’ve been able to experience exactly how moving into The Wheelhouse is going to benefit our business, and we are super excited to share our findings with you.

Better Focus

Hands down, the biggest benefit to moving into The Wheelhouse is that we are able to spend more time doing what we’re great at doing. In the Village, we operated a full-time art gallery, a passion-driven project that allowed us to support emerging and student artists in the area, something we truly loved. In moving, we closed down the art gallery, which was bittersweet in every way, but in transitioning away from our role in the arts community, we’ve only now begun to realize just how much time and energy went into maintaining that presence. Redirecting that focus toward client relationships and toward our own needs has made us better partners of the businesses we serve on a daily basis.

Stronger Service

In addition to prioritizing our own business needs, we’re beginning a shift toward narrowing down what services we offer, focusing on the things we’re best at doing, such as websites and branding. We’re not a one-strategy-fits-all kind of agency—and we never will be—which means that our services are vastly different from client to client. This was never an accident on our part. We knew many small businesses were tired of trying to maintain relationships with half a dozen freelancers—one for their website, one for their social media, one for their graphic design, one for their email marketing, etc., etc.—and so why not offer to meet all those needs under one roof? At The Wheelhouse, we are surrounded by marketing professionals of every kind, which in essence means our team just got a lot bigger. We are able to offer the same solutions to businesses we always have, but we’re able to pass off the execution of services that we’re not as familiar with. Which means we are able to dial in on the services we do really well.

Richer Networking

Because of the structure of our new office environment, we meet new people every day who are operating businesses of their own in the Upstate. Meeting the entrepreneurs around us leads to a bigger network, which really means a bigger community to collaborate with. A larger, more inviting office space means more opportunities to do what we love more than almost anything: connecting people. We couldn’t be more excited to see how our networking grows in 2017, and we hope you’ll be a part of it.

Looking to the Future

So in many ways, moving out of our own office that was occupied by just our team and just our ideas can be perceived to many as a downsize in business—or, like I said before, settling. We do share spaces with other business professionals now in a way we didn’t before, but to us if this new space and workflow is “settling,” we’ll take that and more in 2017. For us, settling has taken on a new meaning. It’s requiring us to focus on what we are best at, rather than trying to do it all. Our choice to narrow down who we are as a business has led to a stronger team, a more precise focus on serving clients, and a substantially larger opportunity to connect with other small businesses in Greenville.

Growing Your Business with Facebook Live

Last year, you may have begun to see certain large, geologically-named celebrities (looking at you, The Rock) streaming live content in your Facebook feed. Then your friends may have begun streaming their everyday journeys. In March, you may have noticed the opportunity to watch live videos more prominently in your newsfeed. More recently, you might have tried reacting to live videos and found that you can now “love,” “laugh,” and “appear shocked,” to name a few. This month, you might have seen the new video hub on Facebook mobile. And then of course, you may have read about the F8 summit and Facebook’s announcement that live streaming would now be open to all devices, including drones and hi-def cameras. But what does that mean for you, a small business or individual?

Choose Your Content Wisely

The algorithm change announced in March to show live-streaming videos more frequently in your followers’ newsfeeds is only helpful to you if you have meaningful content to share. So as an individual or small business, you need to be more selective and deliberate in choosing what content you stream live, rather than less. Because the algorithm will show live content at a higher frequency, your followers have a better chance of seeing it. Meaning, if you’re putting out content that’s not your best, your followers have a higher chance of seeing it, which could lead to unfollows. Your best bet is to choose deliberate, meaningful content to stream live in order to garner the best reactions. Announce your live-streaming times beforehand to help grow your audience and be sure to follow up your live stream with a recap and link to the video.

Do Your Research

Before beginning a live broadcast, look up best practices for creating live video, and make sure you understand how the platform works. Facebook allows you to take live video using both the front and back cameras on your phone, and with the advent of other devices, your options are pretty much unlimited. Similar to a regular post, you can also add copy to your live broadcast describing the topic. Once the video is live on your wall, you can go back and edit your video. Learn what your options are and how to make the most out of your live broadcast. Check out these tips from Social Media Examiner to help you get started.

Know You’re Not Competing with TV

Although there’s been some buzz about Facebook Live eventually attracting live-streaming television, director of product at Facebook responsible for overseeing Facebook Live Fidji Simo says that Live is not competing with traditional television. The focus now is on user experience, says Simo. She did note that Facebook Live could potentially supplement traditional television. For example, there have been a number of cases where TV journalists have gone live after their traditional broadcast to expand on a story they were covering. Currently, however, there’s no ad play to tempt TV marketers, and Simo doesn’t see that happening any time soon.

Founder/CEO of Deep Focus Ian Schaefer agrees. Although there may be some demand for certain live events, like sports (Twitter has already nabbed the rights to live stream Thursday Night Football in the fall in conjunction with the NFL), Schaefer is unclear whether there is any interest in premium live content beyond that. “The push for live is bizarre,” he says, “because there’s not really much precedent outside of sports for there to be any kind of money to be made from streaming live video. There’s not much that indicates to me that a generation that’s going mobile is going to be doing more live-show watching.”

So rest easy. You may be competing with larger brands and bigger marketing budgets, but Facebook Live hasn’t reached the deep pockets of TV advertisers, yet.

 

The takeaway: Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook to see what we’re doing with Facebook Live! Share your live journeys with us and we might just return the favor.