Does the “SEO implementation” process work differently for different products and services?
Let’s look at this in more detail.
Each website is unique and therefore different from one another. The difference lies chiefly in their objectives. There could be some overlaps in the objectives (with the closest competitors) but there would be areas where they are different from each other, and that is what makes a website or business different from one another.The search engine optimization process depends on the objective of each site and the factors that make them stand apart from their competition (USP).
For instance, a website that sells gifts online may have the objective of becoming a very popular online gift shop that sells almost any gift that you can think of, at very competitive prices. Their target audience would be anyone, any age group, gender etc. Their website would have to be designed and promoted keeping in mind all of these factors.
On the other hand, a website that provides services, such as, car maintenance, might want to target a certain population of car owners in a specific geographic area.
See the difference between the two?
The website concept, design, content, all of these depend upon the objective of the website and the product and services the website is offering. Some of the pertinent questions that website owners need to answer before they embark on setting up anything online are:
“Why do I want to set up a website”,
“What is my objective”, and
“How do I see it growing in the next 5 years”
There will be several more questions but the idea is to have a clear understanding of what you want and how you see your business growing.Once the understanding is clear, the implementation of SEO best practices can begin.
Typically, SEO basics will apply for all websites irrespective of which market or population they are catering to. But there will be quite a bit of difference in how SEO is implemented and applied to each of these websites. Each website or product or service has an USP and that needs to be highlighted in all the online promotional efforts, by optimizing the website and optimizing messages across all the online channels, such as, Social networking site, PR sites, online forums,…
Let us take the example of the online gift store. The gift store’s audience is anyone who needs to buy gifts. The objective of the business is to attract such buyers. The target population in this case is huge. The only limiting factor perhaps would be the area that they operate on. If they can deliver the gifts to a certain geographic region only, they will need to focus on that area and work on tailoring their message to be in sync with their objective.
On the other hand, a car maintenance website’s target market will certainly not include everyone. Their target would be car owners, commercial car suppliers, car accessories business owners etc. And the geography would again depend upon which area they are catering to.The message that the website should spread is, why car owners or mechanics or anyone who owns a car, should come to them for car maintenance.
You get the picture, right?
The SEO basics like the title, Meta tags, the content, images etc. should convey the same message. The message should be so clear that a relevant visitor should feel and know that they have come to the right place.
Since no two websites are the same, the content cannot be the same either. Even if your competitors are selling similar products and services, your content needs to be different and unique. Why else will someone come to your website? If your message is clear, when visitors come to your website prepared for something, they won’t be disappointed. SEO works on the content, ensuring that the uniqueness of each website comes through clearly.
SEO will need to differ in the way it applies itself for each website, one can’t have the same set of factors working across every website, and SEO needs to be customized for every website. There is a subtle yet critical difference in how SEO implementation happens for each website, since each website is unique, and each business is different, SEO needs to be customized keeping in mind the requirement and objective for each business.