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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
