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A well-rounded marketing strategy requires a lot of moving parts, each of which must work cohesively and contribute to the success of the whole. 

Digital PR enhances your credibility as a brand. Solid human-focused content reinforces your authority in the eyes of consumers. Social media personalizes your brand.

But what about SEO marketing? How does search engine optimization improve your marketing efforts? 

Let’s break it down.

What Is the Goal of SEO?

SEO is the process of optimizing your branded content online. This includes website pages, sales pages, guest posts, and most additional forms of digital marketing content. SEO cleans up this content so that it shows up in search engine results. There are multiple forms of SEO, including:

It’s important to understand the differences and utilize the various forms of SEO as part of a larger marketing strategy. When done correctly, this can unlock a variety of benefits, including:

SEO also helps cultivate a sense of trust as consumers see your quality content appear in targeted search results over and over again.

How Does SEO Fit Into Marketing?

SEO is a search engine-centric activity. A quality SEO strategy signals to search engines like Google Search what kind of information your content contains. This allows these search tools to answer search queries by matching your content to users with related search intent.  

As an example, consider a plumber that creates a basic article on unclogging a drain. They use SEO best practices, such as including a target keyword phrase like “unclogging a drain” or “how to unclog a drain pipe.” 

“When a user asks Google “how to unclog a drain,” the search engine can easily find and use the plumber’s resource as a suggested answer on its SERPs. If clicked on by the user, the piece of SEO-optimized content generates organic traffic to the website.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the SEO Basket

SEO can feel like a magic trick. Given enough time (SEO often takes at least six months or more to really kick in), a well-optimized piece of content can generate a steady flow of organic traffic to a website for a very long time.

This can make it tempting to pour all of your resources into SEO content. But you have to resist that temptation.

Good SEO requires balance. SEO success should always come as part of a larger growth marketing plan

For instance, when investing in on-page and technical SEO, you also want to make sure you’re creating solid content that benefits your target audience. This means it should always prioritize the reader and only optimize for search engines after reader value has been satisfied.

Fortunately, there are times when you can overlap SEO and other growth marketing efforts at the same time. Digital PR often includes drafting guest posts on other websites and industry publications. Along with building brand credibility, this is a great way to invest in link building and generate value through off-page SEO. 

The important thing is to keep each SEO effort strong and balanced with other digital marketing initiatives. This will give you the greatest synergy and the best results over time.

Using Good SEO to Boost Your Brand

SEO is a powerful marketing tool. However, it isn’t the kind of investment you can make lightly. 

On the contrary, SEO best practices are constantly in a state of flux as Google and other search engines tweak their algorithms and change how they search for quality content. This requires ongoing research.

In addition, properly integrating SEO into existing marketing is tricky. It requires the ability to maximize on and off-page SEO without sacrificing the impact of other things, like your social media marketing or digital PR.

This is where working with an SEO company can be a game changer. An SEO agency can bring experience and bleeding-edge SEO knowledge to the table along with the tools to track and confirm that they are delivering results.

If your brand is coming up short in the SEO department, consider working with an SEO company. The targeted investment in optimizing your content can infuse your marketing efforts with a synergy that will continue to deliver results far into the future.

SEO is a great way to help a brand grow. Things like link-building and technical SEO are effective ways to enhance a brand’s visibility online. 

One of the most common tools associated with search engine optimization is keywords. If you’ve invested in SEO, chances are, you’ve done your homework when it comes to keyword research. 

However, as you’ve consulted Google Keyword Planner, considered your target audience’s organic keywords, and selected the best options for your brand, have you ever added competitive analysis to the mix?

Competitor keyword analysis is a great way to give you an edge over the competition and help you establish yourself as a leader in your industry. Here’s how to identify and make the most of competitor keywords.

Identify Your Top Competitors

It’s difficult to conduct competitor keyword research if you don’t know who your competitors are. You may already have a vague idea of the brands that overlap with and compete for your target audience.

If you want to invest in serious competitive keyword research, though, you need to be more specific. Take a closer look at the variety of companies within your industry 

Yes, it’s tempting to focus on the big dogs, but think twice before you put all of your energy there. Bigger companies will have more resources to fight over a specific keyword, which can be difficult to compete with. 

In addition, smaller and medium-sized companies that are thriving likely have found a different degree of success with their SEO. What target keyword is helping them survive and thrive? 

Identify several different companies that are doing their best. As you research, this will give you a larger industry snapshot of what keywords are trending with consumers. This will help you create your competitor keyword research strategy.

Find the Common Keywords

After you find competitor companies, you want to find the a relevant keyword that will allow you to compete within the SEO arena. That means it’s time to uncover the common keywords you’re fighting over. There are multiple keyword analysis tools that can help with this.

BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, and Semrush are just a few popular options. Each SEO tool comes with its own approach for how to find competitor keywords. Semrush, for example, offers an Organic Research Competitors report that combines identifying competitors and the keywords you battle over.

Find a keyword research tool that you’re comfortable with and begin running searches for common keywords. Once you collect data, it’s time to begin analyzing and turning it into an actionable SEO strategy.

Review Competitor Keyword Data in a Few Different Ways

Once you have collected your competitor keyword data, you have to interpret it. There are a few ways to do this to give you a well-rounded sense of how you stack up against the competition, SEO-wise:

By taking the time to conduct a thorough competitive keyword analysis and cross-examination of keyword data, you set the stage to get the most out of your competitor research.

Dig Deeper Than Single Keywords

Once you’ve identified a keyword opportunity, it’s time to dig even deeper. Look beyond single keyword ideas and phrases to consider the larger SEO elements at play.

As you identify important keywords, research long-tail iterations of those related keywords that have enough search volume to be worth pursuing. For example, if a coffee shop was investing in a local SEO keyword like “coffee shop Portland,” they might also choose to incorporate the long-tail keyword “ethically sourced coffee shop in Portland.”

You should also look for topics and themes that stand out. If a competitor is focused on a specific niche product or service that doesn’t relate to your company, you may be able to differentiate your keywords to focus on your unique service lines. 

Remember to look at your keywords, long-tail keywords, topics, and themes on a cluster level, too. Just because a competitor ranks for a good keyword doesn’t mean they’ve capitalized on it. If they don’t rank for similar or sub-keywords based on a high-ranking keyword, you may be able to take some of their search traffic through a quality content marketing strategy that establishes your brand as the true authority in that area.

Using Competitor Keyword Research to Up Your SEO Game

Whenever you’re pulling together an SEO strategy, remember to keep competitor analysis in the mix. An SEO agency can help you keep tabs on these metrics. By factoring in competitor keywords, you can expect to improve your SEO efforts.

By clarifying the search terms that your competitors are prioritizing along with normal audience and industry-related keyword research, you can ensure that all of the on-page content, social posts, and Google Ads you create are optimized and tailored to put your brand in the SEO spotlight.

SEO is a powerful marketing tool. Optimizing your content for search engines may be a concept that is always evolving, but it remains a critical part of digital marketing success all the same. 

An effective SEO strategy can reinforce your online visibility and increase your organic traffic. It can amp up your conversion rates and ensure that your content is ranking high on the SERPs for keywords related to your business. 

The question is, how do you know your SEO work is paying off? Here is how to measure the ROI of SEO.

1. Compartmentalize Your SEO Efforts

The first thing to consider when measuring SEO ROI is how to compartmentalize each SEO campaign you create. Establishing these boundaries helps you measure the effect of specific SEO initiatives. 

For instance, consider a project where you invest $20,000 in creating a pillar page and its accompanying sub-pages and additional pillar content. That should be a single SEO campaign that stands on its own. 

This makes it easier to track the effects of that campaign (more on tracking metrics in the next section). It also simplifies the task of comparing the impact of each individual campaign against others like it.

2. Measure the Right Metrics

Next up, consider what SEO strategy metrics you can measure. There are several key metrics you can consider here:

Setting up the ability to track each of these metrics is critical to creating a clearer picture of your SEO ROI.

3. Consider the Monetary Value of Each Metric

Once you have your metrics, you want to get a rough idea of what they are worth. In some cases, this is difficult to pin down. 

For instance, ranking for a keyword that is relevant to your brand helps with important things like traffic, visibility, and credibility. However, it’s difficult to put a specific monetary value on ranking for a keyword.

A rise in organic traffic is valuable, as well. But conversions are the easiest ways to put a real dollar figure on your ROI. 

For instance, if you have a 5% lead conversion rate (i.e., the number of leads that convert into customers) and your customer lifetime value (LTV) is $10,000 per person, you can calculate the monetary value of each conversion thusly:

LTV x lead conversion rate = $10,000 x .05 = $500

As a quick note, Google also offers the ability to track Assisted Conversions. These take place when SEO and an organic search result take part in a conversion without being the only interaction a consumer has with a brand before making a purchase. If you have this data set up, it’s wise to factor it into your conversion rate value, as well.

Once you have a value per conversion, you’re ready to measure your SEO efforts to ensure a positive ROI.

4. Calculate an Estimate of Your ROI

You can measure an estimated value of your SEO by using an ROI for SEO formula. This is a basic mathematical exercise that looks like this:

SEO ROI = (Conversion Value - Cost of SEO Investment) / Cost of SEO Investment 

In other words, start with your value per conversion times the number of conversions you’ve achieved (i.e., Conversion Value) in association with a particular SEO campaign. From there, subtract the cost of that SEO, and then divide the total by that same cost again.

In the above example, say you generate 50 conversions during an SEO campaign that costs $5,000. The Conversion Value would be 50 x $500 = $25,000, and the final ROI calculation would be:

SEO ROI = ($25,000 - $5,000) / $5,000 = 4

That means for every dollar you spent on SEO, you made four dollars in ROI. Keep in mind the compounding effects of your SEO efforts, though. And once you make it on the race track and are ranking well, you’ll continue to benefit from your efforts and the ROI can really begin to snowball. 

Why Is It Important to Measure the ROI of SEO?

As with most things in business, understanding the return on investment for your SEO matters. Search engine optimization is a powerful business tool — but that doesn’t mean it’s a magic bullet.

On the contrary, it’s perfectly possible to pour significant time and resources into an SEO strategy and see little-to-no impact. Even worse, you can have no idea whatsoever if your SEO is working.

Measuring how your SEO marketing is influencing your revenue gives you a factual confirmation of whether or not it is helping your marketing efforts.

It may not be a direct dollar-for-dollar calculation, like comparing a salesman’s salary to the amount of revenue they generate. Nevertheless, getting at least an approximate idea of how well your SEO is working to generate revenue for your brand helps you do two things. 

First, you can identify weak points and improve your SEO’s overall effect. Second, you can justify the SEO investment and help guide how much you should budget toward search engine optimization in the future.

Investing in Effective SEO

Content marketing is a multi-faceted activity that should always focus on your target audience above all else. With that said, it’s also important to prioritize SEO as you craft content. 

By cultivating SEO with a high ROI, you improve the quality of your content in the eyes of search engines. Hire an SEO agency if you need an expert's opinion. All of these factors can help boost organic traffic and can keep a steady flow of consumers visiting your site for the long term.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical part of an online presence. It gives you visibility in search engines, which is a critical part of a comprehensive growth marketing strategy. 

While it’s possible to engage in keyword research and work on linking all on your own, by and large, SEO can be a complicated activity. The worst part? When an SEO strategy isn’t done well, it can be ineffective and, at times, even harmful to your brand.

One simple solution is to work with a third-party SEO company. The question is, when is the right time to do so? Here is a quick rundown of what you want to have in place (both necessarily and ideally) before you start shopping for SEO agencies. 

The Foundational Stuff

If you want a third-party partner to help with your SEO campaigns, you ideally have two key digital marketing elements in place before you contact anyone.

A Working Website

The first and most obvious item on the SEO expert checklist is a website. Without a website, there’s nothing to optimize.

You can’t just have a website in development, either. You really should have a live, functioning online presence for your brand. A quality website design gives the agency data to analyze about what’s working and what isn’t for your site. Without that, it’s all a guessing game.

Google’s SEO Analytics Tools

Along with publishing a website, you need to get your site data up and running. Once your site is live, get Google Analytics plugged in and ready to go.

Along with the basic data that Analytics provides, you also want to set up Google Search Console. This gives you deeper insights into your organic traffic data right in Google Analytics’s dashboard.

The Ideal Stuff

A website and Google’s SEO tools are critical first steps. However, if you bring an SEO consultant in with just those two things set up, you’ll still have to spend a lot of time getting everything else set up. You can shorten this process by also getting the following elements in place.

Goals in Google Analytics

Setting up Analytics is helpful. But you can go a step further. Creating goals within the program helps you track conversions and understand what is working.

Don’t worry about jumping the gun with these. These goals are easy to edit and share with a third-party agency in the future. However, getting them set up proactively helps you clarify what you’re trying to accomplish with your SEO.

The Right Personnel to Reinforce SEO Initiatives

Working with an SEO partner may take a lot of the workload off of your plate. But your team still needs to hold up their end of the process. With that in mind, make sure that you have the right people to do so before onboarding an agency.

For example, you want someone in place to implement technical website optimizations on your end. It’s also a good idea to have someone who can make onsite content changes. 

This could be the same person or two people depending on your needs. You could set up a budget to outsource these responsibilities, as well. Just make sure you’re giving them some thought ahead of time so your SEO agency partner can be as effective as possible.

A Content Library (Blog)

A good SEO partner can help you start from zero content-wise, but you’ll likely get more out of the relationship if you have started the process of building up content. At the very least make sure you have a holding-place for the blog on your website.

Again, you have options here. You can launch a blog with in-house talent. You can also set aside the budget to bring on a freelancer or even develop your content plan and then see if the SEO team you choose can help you create the most important content.

It works well if you have in-house options to create that brand-focused content while the SEO agency can help with the SEO-focused content, which tends to be more educational and general, just like the SERPs like.

A Handful of Starter Keywords

Finally, try to pull together a list of a few words to help guide your initial SEO efforts. This doesn’t have to be comprehensive, but it can provide a starting point for the SEO agency that you work with.

Consider words that past customers have used to search for your services. You can also gather a list of known competitors. A good SEO company will do most of this work themselves, but having a basic list ready speeds up the process and gives the agency a starting point.

A Brief Word on Mindsets and Perspectives in SEO

The list above is a practical approach to prepping for an SEO partner. There’s another side to that coin, too: your mindset and perspective. Along with setting the stage logistically, here are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that you’re setting the right expectations internally:

If you set the right expectations, it’s much easier to have a healthy and profitable relationship with your SEO partner.

Setting the Stage for SEO Success

SEO specialists can work wonders for a brand. But they can't meet your SEO needs with nothing.

 If you want a partnership to accomplish your SEO goals, you need to invest in the right things beforehand. That way, you can rest in the fact that you’ve optimized everything and have given your SEO marketing the best chance for success.

SEO and inbound marketing strategy are two common aspects of digital marketing. But did you know each marketing method is closely connected?

Let’s break down the intimate relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and inbound marketing, what they can do for your brand, and what steps you can take to get the most out of these powerful marketing concepts.

What Is an Inbound Marketing Strategy?

Inbound marketing is a popular term in the modern marketing world. Unlike traditional marketing, the concept focuses on creating value for customers through your marketing activities. You can do this in a variety of ways by writing inbound marketing content such as a blog post, infographic, video, news article, and social media posts. 

In contrast, outbound marketing emphasizes things like television ads, billboards, and cold calls. These marketing efforts are interruptive in nature and don’t provide value.

Inbound marketing focuses on fostering engagement through targeted content. When done well, inbound marketing seamlessly presents itself to a potential customer. Quality content will make itself heard, seen, or otherwise consumed as a part of a positive experience consumers opt into.

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy, which makes it an interesting (and important) part of growth marketing in particular. With growth marketing, the emphasis isn’t on building a company quickly. Avoid tactics such as email marketing or influencer marketing. That’s called growth hacking, and it can lead to fast results that don’t last.

Growth marketing focuses on creating customer-focused growth that steadily builds over time. In that sense, inbound marketing is a major part of the “long game” that growth marketers have in mind as they set up frameworks and build out strategies.

What Is SEO and Why Is It Important for Inbound Marketing?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” This is the process by which marketers use tools like keywords, hyperlinks, and technical configurations to optimize your online content. When done well, SEO helps your relevant content organically show up higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This means more people see it, click on it, and visit your website.

SEO is an integral part of any inbound marketing strategy. It draws the ideal customer to your content when looking for answers to related search queries. When that content is well-designed, it answers their initial questions. It also encourages the reader to remember the brand that provided helpful, thoughtful content.

Good SEO attracts the attention of a prospect and establishes that you are a useful resource and can offer them value. At that point, it passes the torch to inbound marketing. This uses tools like gated content, samples, demos, and newsletters to encourage visitors to take the next step. From there, they enter your sales funnel, moving from awareness to consideration and eventually decision-making.

To put it another way, inbound marketing and SEO serve two separate but essential and complementary functions. SEO brings traffic to your content. Inbound marketing encourages those visitors to enter your sales funnel.

How to Work SEO Into an Inbound Marketing Strategy

The complementary nature of SEO and inbound marketing makes it easy to see how they flow together. But what can you do to make sure that happens with your own brand? Here are a few tips to help you ensure your inbound SEO is synergistically worked into your inbound marketing campaign:

Stay Focused on the Customer

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on SEO, inbound strategy, or both. You should always have the customer in mind. From choosing keywords to answering questions, make your target audience lie at the heart of every action and decision that you take. It's important to target existing customers and a new lead. 

Write for the Reader First and Search Engines Second

SEO is important, but it isn’t everything. In fact, it shouldn’t even be your top priority. As you invest in customer-centric content creation, make sure you’re writing for the reader first and search engines second. Don’t overuse keywords or optimize at the expense of readability or experience. Engage readers first. Then optimize content so search engines can find it.

Consider What Part of the Marketing Funnel You’re Targeting

Both SEO and inbound marketing target the entire marketing funnel — or they should. Often marketers get focused on the top of the marketing funnel. But remember, valuable content is helpful to your customers at any part of the customer journey. From brand awareness to how-tos and whitepapers, make sure everything is optimized and targeted for a specific part of your funnel.

Create E-E-A-T content: 

Remember that content marketing is central to any SEO strategy. As such, in order to have genuine value, it must clearly communicate that value to the reader. E-E-A-T content stands for “experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” These are four filters you should have in mind with every piece of content you create. Not only will it create more value. As consumers engage more, it will boost your SEO and attract more visitors, as well.

Creating Synergy With SEO and Inbound Marketing

When you can tap into the power of both SEO and inbound marketing, they can work together to create incredible results. The challenge is creating a growth marketing framework that unlocks the power of both at the same time.

 If you’re struggling to create an effective inbound marketing strategy, reach out. Our team at Relevance can help you make the most of these two potent aspects of growth marketing for your brand.

Marketing funnels are a common way to visualize the customer journey. Different marketers describe the funnel in various ways. 

Marketing funnel stages are often discussed in relation to sales, paid ads, and customer service. But what about SEO? Here is a quick rundown of how a solid SEO strategy can impact visibility across the entire digital marketing funnel.

What Is SEO Visibility?

If you’re asking yourself, “What is SEO visibility in the first place?” The answer is as simple as it sounds. If you’re ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages), then you have good visibility. SEO ranking means you’re getting good attention and traffic for your website and its content. Website visibility is important, as it makes your brand discoverable, even to those who don’t know you exist yet.

There are many paid and free SEO visibility tools, each of which functions as a different version of the same thing: an SEO visibility check to see if your content is discoverable by your target audience through search engines. These tools compare your content to an SEO visibility index and use that to create a content score. 

Each site’s score can vary based on what metrics it considers. Moz, for instance, provides an SEO visibility score definition that reads, “the percentage of clicks we estimate you receive based on your organic rankings positions, across all of the keywords you’re tracking in your Campaign.” 

While the specifics can vary, SEO visibility always revolves around the key concept of how much traffic and attention your SEO is getting you. High SEO visibility is a powerful thing. It’s also an organic marketing element that has an impact on all parts of the marketing funnel.

SEO Across the Sales Funnel

So, how does good SEO visibility impact the various stages of the marketing funnel? Let’s start at the top.

SEO is never more important than at the early stages of the marketing funnel. Good SEO visibility ensures that your content is showing up when customers are searching for solutions to the pain points that you address — even if they don’t know who you are. 

As they see your brand appearing in searches, they become aware of you and the odds of them engaging with your brand grows. Awareness leads to acquisition, which then leads to activation and retention (i.e., getting an established customer to use your solutions and then become a returning customer).

Once again, SEO comes into play here. Greater search engine visibility leads to a steady stream of brand reminders. Seeing positive feedback from other customers encourages engagement. Quality search engine optimization also ensures that you’ll be at the top of the list the next time the customer does a google search for the same or similar solutions that your brand can answer. 

Investing in SEO provides a perpetual and affordable way to maximize customer retention and improve the speed at which potential customers move through the funnel for the first time. This translates to better customer lifetime value (CLV).

Finally, there’s the referral stage. Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful all on its own. However, good SEO visibility reinforces this when a customer recommends your products to a friend, and they can immediately find that product online.

Improving SEO Visibility Across Your Funnel

Good SEO visibility can improve your reach and general awareness, facilitate decision-making, and turn consumers into repeat customers and even referral machines. If you aren’t experiencing these benefits yet, here are a few suggestions for how to increase SEO visibility:

There are many ways to boost your visibility through SEO. The key is remembering the comprehensive benefits that SEO visibility offers to the entire customer journey.

Using SEO for Comprehensive Brand Visibility

Remember, don’t invest in SEO services simply as a way to generate leads or create brand awareness. Build out your organic search content with the big picture in mind. 

If you’re struggling to see results, or even to know where to begin, our team at Relevance can be your SEO expert to help craft an SEO strategy that benefits every stage of your sales funnel. 

HowIt doesn’t matter if you’re a startup just getting off the ground or an established company scaling through growth marketing. SEO can help your company reach its goals.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is an effective form of digital marketing. Whether you want to invest in local SEO for your small business or national SEO to reach customers anywhere, SEO can increase your brand’s traffic, brand awareness, and overall digital presence. 

 But SEO is also complicated. Jockeying for position on search engine results takes knowledge and experience. Even then, you’re fighting an uphill battle at every step.

The Challenge of Achieving Good SEO

Anyone can include keywords in their writing or compose a guest article with a backlink. However, using those activities (and many others) to achieve genuine, synergistic SEO results is challenging.

The SEO world is always evolving. Updates and advanced technologies create new twists and turns. This makes SEO just as much an art form as a formulaic activity. 

However, it takes time to keep up with the latest trends, build unique strategies, and create brand-specific content. Learning how to use an SEO tool like google analytics to track progress and google search console to interpret results is no walk in the park, either.

Creating a dominating SEO strategy on your own is a big ask. That’s where an SEO company can help.

What Is an SEO Company?

SEO professionals help other businesses manage the search engine chaos. These third-party solutions work alongside client companies, learning the ins and outs of each brand’s marketing goals, products, and USPs (unique selling propositions). 

An SEO agency specializes in content marketing, too. It combines various forms of content — anything from press releases and digital PR mentions to social media posts, emails, and on-site content — to boost a business’s SEO and engage potential customers. 

The Benefits of Using an SEO Company

Understanding what an SEO company is can be interesting. But it doesn’t answer one important question. Why do you need this kind of support? Is it worth it to hire an SEO company? 

Here are a few of the primary reasons investing in a solid SEO team is well worth it. 

1. An SEO Company Keeps Your Search Engine Strategy Up to Date

Search engines are constantly updating their software and tweaking their algorithms. Each time, it ushers in a new wave of SEO adjustments to cater to the changes.

An SEO professional will keep up with these ongoing changes for you. As things shift, they’ll update your brand’s SEO campaign.

2. An SEO Company Saves You Time

From composing content to posting, scheduling, and strategizing, working on SEO for your company will take all of the time you can throw at it. And that doesn’t even account for all of the time spent learning the nuances of link building or deciphering the difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO techniques.

An SEO company takes on the brunt of this workload. That way, you and your team can focus on what your business does best without worrying if your SEO is generating organic traffic behind the scenes.

3. An SEO Company Is Cost Effective

A SEO specialist doesn't just save you time. They also save you resources (i.e, money).

For instance, the best SEO company goes beyond the grunt work that comes with things like content creation and link building. They bring a sense of purpose and focus to your SEO efforts. 

They build holistic strategies and create synergy by combining tactics, like digital PR and onsite content. This leads to more effective SEO  activity, which leads to better results and, ultimately, a positive impact on your bottom line. 

How Do I Find a Good SEO Company?

Finding a quality SEO services provider isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are thousands of companies claiming that they can offer you low rates and high traffic. 

Don’t believe the hype until you’ve vetted each company thoroughly. Here are a few questions to ask an SEO company before signing on the dotted line:

 Inquiring about things like results, track records, metrics, and other SEO strategy specifics can help you parse the great from the not-so-good as you search for the best SEO expert to work with your brand’s needs.

Search engine optimization consists of many different activities. This includes things like keywords, internal linking, page loading speed …and backlinks. While a SEO strategy mainly focuses on on-site content marketing and technical aspects, one of the most important off-site elements is building up a profile of valuable backlinks that connect to your quality content.

This is called link building, and it is a great way to increase your ranking online. If you’re aware of the need for backlinks to boost your SEO, but you aren’t sure what to do, here are some thoughts and tips on how to build a rock-solid SEO backlink strategy.

What Are Backlinks in SEO?

Backlinks are hyperlinks that point from one page to another. In SEO, a backlink exists when one site creates content with an embedded link that directs visitors to your website.

Backlinks also go by a variety of other names, including inbound links and one-way links. These reflect the incoming traffic element that makes a backlink so important.

Why Are Backlinks Helpful for SEO?

Google sees each backlink as a digital “vote of confidence.” In other words, a backlink is a third-party website signaling to the search engine that your content has value and is worthy of attention and priority.

Creating high-quality content is a critical first step of SEO. Backlinks take this further by alerting search engines to the fact that your content is a solid online resource for related search queries. This leads to search tools ranking your content higher in their SERPs (search engine results pages), which results in more traffic, quality leads, and a better conversion rate.

What Is an SEO Backlink Strategy

Backlinks are an essential part of any SEO campaign. Unlike on-site content, though, you can’t compose backlinks as you would create, say, a blog or webinar. So, how do you get a high quality link, then? 

The first answer to that question is that you don’t just want backlinks. You want quality backlinks from high-authority websites. Fortunately, there are many backlink techniques and tactics that can help you get these valuable inbound links. Here are a few common ones:

Research the Success of Others

The first step is to use a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to study backlink profiles. That means looking up the collection of domains and web pages linking to a website that ranks well for a particular word or phrase. 

Backlink profiles can help you see how others are ranking for the keywords that you’re targeting. You can use this information to inform your own link building efforts.

Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

Guest blogging is a popular form of off-page SEO. Often called “outreach,” this involved contacting other popular websites and then offering to write a piece of content for them as a guest author, aka a guest post. Typically, guest posting comes with a backlink. 

You can also use a social media site like LinkedIn to build links in the form of high-quality posts. Working with industry influencers is another great way to collaboratively create the conditions for quality backlinks.

Utilize Broken Links

A broken link is one that no longer clicks through to a live page. There are two ways to use this in your SEO strategy.

First, look for broken links on high-authority websites and ask if they’d consider swapping them out for a live link with the same solutions. Second, make sure your own links aren’t broken on your site so that no one can do the same to you.

Track Your Success

Backlink strategies aren’t effective unless you can track them. Use tools like Google Search Console to collect data and observe analytics in relation to your link building strategy over time.

Monitor your site’s traffic. Check your search rankings. Look for which pages are benefitting from backlinks and which ones need more help.

A Quick Word on Organic Backlinks

As you invest in a backlinking strategy, remember that the ultimate goal is to create organic backlinks. These are instances (whether you create them or not) where your links naturally make sense in other publications’ content. 

Organic backlinks come from offering genuine value to the reader and surrounding each quality link with appropriate textual context. They have relatable anchor text (the actual words hyperlinked) and don’t misdirect the reader as to their destination.

How Do Backlinks Play Into an Overall SEO Strategy?

Backlinks are a powerful off-site indicator that it’s worth visiting your content (or, in the case of search engines, directing users to visit your content). Even so, backlinks should never be your primary focus.

A quality SEO strategy incorporates backlinks into a larger plan that includes keywords, internal linking, and technical SEO. Even then, a good SEO strategy should just be one part of a larger approach to growth marketing that includes digital PR and a good content strategy as a way to simultaneously improve your company’s visibility, credibility, and authority across the interweb.

If you’re uncertain how to work all of these things together into a single, cohesive digital marketing strategy, you may want to work with an SEO company to ensure your efforts positively impact your bottom line. Whether you develop your strategy on your own or with third-party support, backlinking should have its rightful place as an effective part of your online marketing endeavors.

Organic SEO is a powerful way to gain authority in your industry. But how do you improve something that happens naturally?

Contrary to what the name implies, there are many ways you can influence the organic search traffic that comes from search engine optimization. If you’re trying to boost your SEO strategy, you want to keep organic SEO techniques in the mix.

What Is Organic SEO?

Most people are familiar with the term “organic SEO.” But coming up with a definition can be a bit confusing.

We prefer to define organic SEO by its results. Organic SEO strategy engages in activities that help your online content show up in search engine ranking. In other words, when you have good organic SEO, Google search and other search engines place the links and metadata from your content higher on their search engine results pages.

Why Is Organic SEO Important?

Organic SEO is a critical behind-the-scenes element of any effective digital marketing campaign. Once again, when done properly, organic SEO leverages the power of things like hyperlinks, keywords, search intent, and Google Analytics data to optimize your web assets.

Many people talk about organic SEO in terms of website traffic. But it also includes related items like CTR (clickthrough rate — that is, how often people who see your links click on them), heat mapping (where a person navigates to on a web page), and dwell time (how long a visitor spends on a site). 

Higher CTR means more traffic. Heat maps can help you position on-page content for optimal conversions. Higher dwell time means your giving visitors the content that they’re looking for.

When you track and optimize all of these organic search engine optimization elements, you can dramatically increase the impact of your digital marketing investments and your position in a search result.

What Are Organic SEO Techniques?

As you might expect, organic SEO happens organically. At least, that’s how it appears when compared to something like PPC (pay per click) advertising, where you pay for each click that your google ads and links generate. 

In contrast, organic SEO happens simply because you’ve optimized your content marketing enough for search engines to find it and offer it to searchers as a potential answer for their related queries. That means a search engine like Google is directing visitors to your content not because you paid for that traffic, but because of the content itself. 

While this appears “organic” on the surface, organic SEO is actually powered by fantastically sophisticated algorithms. These use certain indicators, such as user behavior, a keyword phrase, and backlinks, to decide what content to offer searchers. 

That means, if you know enough about how those algorithms respond to certain inputs, you can create content that is specifically primed to attract organic attention — something referred to as organic search techniques.

5 Organic Search Techniques to Boost SEO

There are many techniques you can use to improve your organic SEO. These typically fall into three categories:

 

 

Image describing technical, off-page, and on-page SEO

Here are some of the most common SEO tips and techniques that you can use to take your organic search traffic to the next level.

1. A Technical SEO Audit

Start by making sure (or hiring an SEO company to make sure) your site’s structure is sound. Test everything from website speed to navigation, mobile-friendliness, and accessibility.

2. Keyword Optimization

When creating content, consider the keywords that you should include. This doesn’t mean you should stuff your content with the same words over and over again. You always want to prioritize the user experience first. However, make sure you’re also deliberately using the best words and phrases related to your topic. Some upfront keyword research is key here.

3. Search Intent

The customer is always right. It’s a mantra used in sales — and it applies to SEO, too. What are your website visitors looking for? Say they search “work out” in an attempt to learn more about exercising. They’ll likely want something more informative than if they search the term “running shoes to buy.” Fashion quality content around the intent with which they’ll search for those answers online to be the most helpful.

4. Backlinking

Backlinking (also called “external linking”) is a powerful way to boost your website’s authority via other authoritative websites. This happens when you get a brand mention or have a hyperlink that points back to your site (or ideally both) on high authority publications. This digitally associates your brand with their pre-established search engine prowess, boosting your own site’s rankings in the process. It also signals to Google that whatever you have linked is a helpful resource, all of which Google appreciates.

5. Internal Links

Hyperlinks can also help your organic SEO right on your website. Internal links take place when you link to various pages across your site within your own content — like this. Think of internal links like a spiderweb. As you criss cross the various threads of your content, it strengthens the authority of the entire website, in addition to making it easier for users to find helpful information.

Mastering Your Organic SEO Strategy

Organic SEO is the lifeblood of many companies. As such, you don’t want to leave such an important part of your business to the whims of the interweb.

Use the suggestions above to weave organic SEO techniques into your larger digital marketing strategy. That way, over time, you will strengthen your website’s natural presence on the web and establish your brand’s high quality content as an authoritative and popular source of solutions for your audience.

Search engine optimization can be one of the highest-yield investments you make in your brand. But if you’ve spent much time with SEO, you know it’s both an art and a science.

Emphasis on “science.”

Because let’s be candid. A thoughtful, beautifully-written piece of content won’t pay the bills.

What will make you more money is more qualified website traffic. Crafting elegant content that’s backed by research and data will help you earn that traffic. And that’s what SEO is all about.

What are SEO tools?

It’s nearly impossible to nail the data-driven aspect of SEO without tools. SEO tools help you effectively deploy SEO techniques for your website. They provide research and insights to help you focus your SEO efforts instead of just shooting in the dark.

What is the most effective tool for SEO?

Although some platforms claim to be a “one-stop shop” for SEO, most marketers use a variety of tools to carry out their SEO strategy. The best tool for the job depends on your goal.

What kinds of research should drive your SEO plan? There are three big ones:

Here are the tools we recommend for each.

To evaluate current performance:

One of the best predictors of future performance is past performance. For assessing your current content’s performance, Google’s free products can provide all the insight you need. Use Google Search Console to learn which queries are already bringing users to your site. You can also see which keywords are earning impressions but have a low click-through rate. These are golden SEO opportunities.

To see which content is getting the most traffic and engagement, check out the reports in the Engagement tab of Google Analytics. Google Analytics has a learning curve, but you’ll get the hang of it after spending a bit of time with it. For step-by-step resources to mine meaningful data in GA, we love Analytics Mania.

For competitor research:

Knowing who your competitors are and what they’re doing is foundational for SEO. This information helps you determine where you need to cover the same bases as your competitors. And more importantly, it can uncover content gaps that are opportunities for your brand to shine.

For competitor research, you’ll want a third-party SEO search tool. SEMRush’s competitive research tool allows you to find some information for free. In most cases, you’ll need to pay for a tool to get substantial competitor data.

For keyword research:

Keyword research is an essential step in developing an SEO marketing strategy. The more you know about what your target audience is searching for and which terms they’re using, the better your keywords will perform.

Ahrefs has an excellent free keyword generator that can get you started. Just enter a keyword to see useful metrics like search volume, traffic potential, and keyword difficulty.

What 3 Google tools would you use for SEO?

If paying for sophisticated SEO tools is outside your budget at the moment, you can accomplish a lot with these three Google tools.

1. Google Analytics

Once you’re comfortable in GA, a world of valuable data opens up. Of course, you can see how users are engaging with your existing content. Here are a few other ways to use it for SEO:

Google Analytics

2. Google Search Console

GSC isn’t as notorious as its cousin Google Analytics, but it has a wide range of uses in SEO. In addition to query data, it also tracks backlinks to your site. This information is a great place to start when targeting publications to build future backlinks.

Google Search Console can help you identify technical issues that might impact your site’s search rankings, like broken links, duplicate content, and crawl errors. It will also alert you of any potential security issues such as malware or user-generated spam.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Many marketers use Google’s keyword planner for paid search campaigns, but you can also use the data for SEO. You can even enter your website to see examples of SEO keywords that match your existing content.

Build your data-driven strategy with SEO tools

An SEO strategy without data is… well, it’s not much of a strategy at all. Like many of the finer things in life, SEO strikes a balance between art and science. Between the tangible and the intangible. Luckily, there are lots of SEO tools out there to help you with the research portion of your plan.

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