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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of digital marketing. Like other aspects of digital marketing, SEO work takes time. Money, competition, algorithm changes, and testing all explain why it can take a long time, months at least, to see a substantial return on an SEO campaign. Two of the most important ranking factors simply take time to develop. Planning for 2022 with these things in mind will raise the odds of getting satisfactory results.

Time to Build Trust and Authority

The longer your site has been around, the more likely the content is to be considered valuable, or authoritative. A study by Ahrefs found that 60% of pages in the top ten on Google were at least two years old. If nothing else, being around for a couple of years gives you plenty of time to develop other measures of your content’s value to web surfers.

Domain authority is a technical name for the perceived value of your content. The nature of your content plus outside indicators of page quality, like inbound links and shares on social media, count for quite a lot, according to Moz. You can speed up the process of getting those shares and links, but aggressive networking can only do so much. It takes time to build quality links and trust. You might want to schedule more time for networking online in the next 12 months.

Algorithm Changes Can Hurt

No matter how well this link building works, algorithm changes can still hurt your ranking. A ranking factor might drop in importance while another one becomes a little more important. If you invested lots of time and effort on something that just became less important, then some of your pages can drop off page one. This can translate to a substantial drop in traffic because few web surfers go past page one of the search results. Algorithms can and might change in 2022.

The Cost of Search Engine Marketing

Ranking for keywords technically doesn’t cost any money but everyone getting significant traffic is investing money in SEO work. They either have in-house SEO people or they contract out their work. Keyword research is a potentially time-consuming or expensive undertaking, depending on how big your site is and how many keywords you want to compete over.

Content costs money as well. Posting several pieces of useful content will also raise your domain authority and build links. Other sites often link to non-competing sites that offer great information. This is a key lesson to learn about SEO – keyword usage isn’t everything.

Competition Always Exists

Competing businesses are also using various SEO tactics to get their pages as high up as possible. This means your efforts to compete on a given keyword might not pay off. You might find yourself on page one this week and down on page four of five in a month thanks to a determined effort by a couple of competing firms.

Finally, the sheer volume of competition can be daunting. If you want to raise money for homeless people or sell accounting services, expect stiff competition for rankings. Many companies will be investing in higher-value keywords like “tax accounting” and “business tax accounting” so edging out the page one and two players will be tough.

Targeting the obvious keywords is necessary, but not sufficient. You need to have a strategy for the not-so-popular “long tail” keywords that people who use your service or product might type into a search engine. Take some time to conduct some research and re-evaluate your keyword usage.

To have a shot at winning the SEO game for 2022 you need to design and implement a comprehensive strategy that includes quality backlinks, great content, and the right keywords. If your business or nonprofit needs SEO help, don’t hesitate to get in touch.