* Timeline and Staging an SEO Project Rollout

With a well-planned SEO strategy, you DO NOT eat the SEO elephant in one big bite. In fact, you might only need the appetizer!

By Dirk Johnson

OK - here’s one of those money-saving SEO tidbits that you will probably never hear from the SEO consultant/guru crowd:

You may not need to do EVERYTHING related to SEO.

In fact, you might get by quite well with the bare minimum!

Why don’t they tell you this? Because it’s bad for THEIR business. If you really only need 10% of what they are selling to get results, then they’re leaving YOUR money on the table.

Instead, they use your lack of knowledge about SEO to their advantage. Scare tactics are common in this business.

If you are competing for highly competitive search terms, like “Hotels in New York City”, then , yes, you will probably need to “do it all.”

Instead, if you are competing for music lesson searches in a small-to-medium sized city, or maybe even a large metro area, then chances are that a basic SEO effort will yield excellent results. I see that a lot.

Like the Liberty Mutual Insurance ads say, only pay for what you need.

SEO Work Takes Place on a Timeline

An SEO project cannot be conducted “all at once”. Piece A has to be in place before you do piece B, etc.

This includes keyword research, competitive analysis, basic content development, link building, advanced content development, content promotion, and on and on. A major SEO project can become quite involved.

Music lesson Studios Are “Well Contained” SEO Projects

At the most basic level, a site needs well developed “focused landing pages” that can aim the search engines toward your site for the search terms that matter most to your business.

In the music lesson business, those search terms basically come down to the instruments that you teach, paired up with the names of all of the communities that you serve. For instance, this is a very typical search for music lessons:

Accordion Lessons in Arcadia IL

In music lesson business there is not much else that matters. The “keyword research” aspect is very straightforward, and the competitive analysis is usually a quick look at the rankings for those terms, and realizing that, yeah, there is room in there for me, too.

It’s really that simple. This ain’t rocket science, folks.

You can add qualifiers like “group lessons” or “adult lessons” and “best lessons”, or substitute the word “teacher” or “coach” (Google knows that teacher, coach, and lessons are all the same thing, btw) but overall, that’s what is needed for a lesson studio.

Build Your Pages and See What Happens

Now, for best results, there is a good bit of nuance involved in how to build those “focused landing pages”, which is all described in detail in the guidebook:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Private Music Teachers!

But even with a basic effort, by getting the pages titles, meta descriptions, headlines and content right, there is still a very good chance that you will improve your SEO rankings, significantly.

So much so that doing more is probably a waste of time and money. If you already rank#1 for a search term, then you can’t improve!

Yes, over time things can and do change. Mountains also crumble to the sea. So maybe you will eventually need to do more SEO work to compete in your market. You can’t improve, but you can protect.

Heck, you might rank in the #1 spot for YEARS, once you have some good basic pages in place.

You’re Busy, Right?

The bottom line is this…in this industry of music lessons, a very basic SEO effort will likely yield something. That’s probably because your competitors are not doing anything, and there’s a good chance that they never will.

So get your own site into basic SEO shape with some focused landing pages, see what happens to your rankings, and, if it’s good, live with it. Move on to your next business challenge, and know that, unlike your competitors, you have done something about all of this and got some value!

Is There More?

Sure. SEO can be a deep rabbit hole, and, again, SEO consultants do like to portray it as such, as in “you have to keep after it”, etc.

Maybe so, maybe not. Stage your project by first covering the basics and see what happens. If you need to do more, then maybe do it.

But don’t fall for the trap that you have to spend and spend and spend on SEO to get this done. That has not yet happened in this industry, in most locations.

Don’t Hold Yourself Back!

Using the SEO Guide for music lesson studios, you can either do all of this yourself, or if you don’t have time, or if you prefer to have someone else manage the basics of SEO for you, please contact me.

And, as always, if you want to get a quick review of your current website SEO condition, please contact me with your website address, and I’ll be glad to have a look and report back to you what I find.

Thanks again for tuning in!