Using SEO for Growth? Stop Looking for Hacks and Aim for Domain Authority

SEO for Growth: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers & Entrepreneurs, as indicated by the title, is written to help marketers, web designers, and entrepreneurs utilize SEO to grow their online presence. Unlike other SEO-focused marketing books, SEO for Growth doesn’t focus on the newest “SEO hack” to reach the first page in Google search results. This book focuses on establishing and maintaining a strong presence in a way that helps you, Google, and your next potential customer (or client) achieve your and their respective goals.

What is SEO for Growth About?

The path to SEO mastery in SEO for Growth begins with a shift in perspective and ends in a three-step process designed to help marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs establish domain authority. Domain authority should be the SEO goal of every business on the web. Why? As defined in the book, domain authority is a relative measure of how good your site will do in Google search engine results.

Why is this important to business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs?

Let’s say you own a pizza restaurant in Chicago, Illinois. If you want customers to find you online (now and in the future), you need to get as close as possible to the first page of Google’s search engine results. (Customers don’t often click on page 2 or beyond). To get to the first page, you need to establish and maintain domain authority. To get domain authority, you need a site with good content and a lot of online traffic (like a busy store), which encourages Google to list you in the top spot. Getting listed earlier on the Google search engine results increases your online presence and gives you a competitive advantage over other businesses lower down the list. SEO for Growth shows readers what to look for so they can integrate this process into their overall marketing.

Understanding these basics of SEO and how they relate to your overall marketing is the key insight of SEO for Growth. Even if you don’t want to spend hours learning SEO, the book contends, everyone in a business should understand how SEO works. Without that understanding, many business owners and web developers will continue to believe that SEO is a bag of hacks and a website is just a digital brochure.

Author John Jantsch is a consultant to small and mid-sized businesses, an author, speaker, and creator of the Duct Tape Marketing brand, which includes a book, podcast, marketing system and a consulting network. Jantsch has received numerous awards and mentions for his work including being featured by Forbes, Huffington Post and the American Express OpenForum.

Co-author Phil Singleton is a consultant in SEO and web design (who also happens to be a consultant in the Duct Tape Marketing Network). After founding a tech company in Asia ultimately reaching $10 million, Singleton launched his own brand, Kansas City Designs.

What Was Best About SEO for Growth?

The best part of SEO for Growth is the overall message that SEO is not an “add-on” or a “supplement” to marketing. SEO, the book reinforces, should be fully integrated into overall marketing efforts. That message applies regardless of your role in the SEO process. The book’s message is also coupled with a simple three-step path focused on sustaining SEO efforts rather than a simple “try to hack Google to reach page one” effort that is common in many marketing advice books.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?

While SEO for Growth is great for its practical approach to SEO from a business perspective, it spends a little too much time getting bogged down in some details about SEO business owners may not necessarily be interested in. For example, the book discusses the changes that Google made to their algorithm. While the book provides information about these algorithm changes from a unique perspective (helping readers understand why Google made them), more detail could be provided on the connection between those algorithm changes and the way businesses should market themselves and sell online in the future based on them.

Why Read SEO for Growth?

SEO for Growth serves as a guide to the “spirit of SEO” for business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs. Instead of trying to find a way to chase or trick your customers (or Google) using “SEO hacks”, the book gives expert advice on how to integrate SEO into a seamless marketing experience. It reinforces the need for SEO to be a seamless part of the integral customer experience. In doing this, it also outlines a pathway for an SEO-confused or SEO-ignorant business owner, marketer or web developer to increase their online presence, keeps their customers happy and keeps Google pleased. If you are looking for a deeper level of SEO strategy to integrate into your marketing, it’s a good place to start.

This article, "Using SEO for Growth? Stop Looking for Hacks and Aim for Domain Authority" was first published on Small Business Trends