In the year 2022 having an SEO marketing strategy for your business is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. Whether you’re looking to increase the number of leads coming through your website, wanting to grow your company, or need to increase your online presence, SEO marketing strategies can help you take your business to the next level.
What is an SEO marketing strategy?
SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, is focused on improving your website’s ranking in Google and other search engines’ list of results for any given keyword or search term.
Why is this important? Consider that over 25% of search engine users click on the number 1 ranking website for any online search they conduct. Or that once you venture past the first page of Google results the Click Through Rate (CTR) drops to less than 1%. (Source: SEJ)
It’s clearly essential for any organisation wanting to be found online to consider an SEO and content marketing strategy to improve their search engine results. Even for companies who aren’t looking for sales through their website and large corporations who operate largely through submitting tender applications or directly with vendors, an SEO strategy offers many more benefits than you may think.
Reasons why your business needs an SEO marketing strategy
1. Create Trust
In the world of SEO marketing you may come across this term “authority”. Google and other search engines use algorithms that prioritise authority building elements. From the speed with which your website loads to the number of backlinks it contains in its and to its content, there are a number of elements that contribute to the authority of a website.
But there’s another important element to this as well. Done correctly, an SEO content marketing authority can not only improve Google rankings but also create a more trustworthy web experience for customers and other visitors. A strong SEO strategy that reflects a deep understanding of the rules of search engines’ algorithms will simultaneously improve your online exposure through higher rankings as well as making it easier for visitors to trust you and your organisation. Whether you’re trying to grow sales or improve brand awareness, building trust is vital.
2. Focus on user experience
User experience, often referred to as UX in the industry, is very important. An SEO marketing strategy will incorporate your website’s design and functionality in a way that you’ll be encouraged to focus on the user’s experience.
Like building authority, UX is essential for not just improving your search engine optimisation, but for improving your website visitor’s overall experience. Your digital marketing strategy will focus on the needs of your customers and the needs of your business. If you want your website visitors to click through to certain pages, easily access resources or find certain information, you can do it all through an effective SEO marketing strategy.
Plus, the better your user’s experience the more likely they are to stay on your site for longer (which itself is good for your website’s ranking) and ultimately convert or contact you.
3. Better content
An SEO content marketing strategy forms an integral part of your overall optimisation. The content on your website is extremely important. After all, it not only shapes your communication with customers or clients and reflects your branding and authority, it is also influential in optimising your search engine results ranking.
Content can be anything from the copy on your website and blogs, to your social media posts, newsletters, videos and podcasts. Basically, if your audience reads or sees it, it’s content. An SEO and content marketing strategy focuses on improving your content so that the quality is not just better but more effective at driving traffic.
4. Important information
SEO marketing strategies also include a substantial amount of important information gathering. With the right digital infrastructure in place, you can track just about every detail of visitors to your website. You can find out how they found your website, what they view on it and for how long, when they leave, what device they are viewing it on, and key information about their demographics and geographical location.
This wealth of information provides useful knowledge for continually improving all aspects of your website and SEO. Understanding your audience and changing your marketing strategy accordingly is vital for ensuring long term success. The more information you have at your disposal, the better you can analyse the data and execute strategies to improve your website’s content and navigation.
Once again, this leads to both great trust and a better experience for your customers and builds authority for your website and business.
5. Attract the right visitors
A strong SEO and content marketing strategy isn’t just about increasing the cold hard numbers of website visitors and traffic. There’s no point investing time, effort and money into an SEO strategy that doesn’t bring point of sale customers to your doorstep, or entices the wrong type of search engine user to your website.
Whether you use SEO for local business to home in on a specific geographic location or optimise your content to focus on people with specific interests or intents, the right SEO strategy will increase more than just visitor numbers. It will improve engagement with your business, increase conversions, and enhance the overall quality of visitors’ experience and satisfaction with your website being the result of their search.
6. Complement other marketing
If growth and/or brand awareness is your key objective, an SEO marketing strategy offers more value than in and of its own advantages. What do we mean by that? It benefits other marketing initiatives in multiple ways.
Whether you’re investing in traditional marketing channels such as TV, radio or newspaper ads, or are executing a PR campaign, 21st century customers and clients go to one place more than anywhere else to engage with a business: The Internet. With SEO strategies in place, you can capitalise on the potential traffic and convert visitors effectively.
Even from a continuous improvement and development point of view, SEO is invaluable. Through the analysis of data you’ll be able to identify emerging trends and interests in the market. Knowing what sort of things customers are more likely to click on, what products or services they’re after, and even what sort of names of features are most likely to receive interest you can design your business’s offerings for ultimate success. The more you understand your target market through SEO, the better return on investment will be delivered to you across the board.
7. Stay ahead of the pack
Due to the fact that search engines are constantly changing and improving their algorithms for ranking results, best practice SEO is in a constant state of change. An SEO marketing strategy allows your business to adapt accordingly and work with the various updates as they happen.
Without a strategy, your business will be flying blind in a fast-paced digital world. With a strategy, you’ll be constantly monitoring the various changes and updates so that you can adjust your content marketing strategy, UX design, and SEO for local business activities accordingly. Remember: Google and other search engines put out hundreds if not thousands of updates a year! (Source: Search Engine Land)
8. Cost effective marketing
Investing in SEO is highly cost effective from a business point of view. While you can certainly put together your own basic SEO marketing strategies, it’s much smarter to go with the experts who are better positioned and able to ensure the return on your investment is worth it.
The ultimate results of any SEO strategy depend on a number of factors, but there’s no doubt that this marketing channel is among the least expensive overall, and especially when you consider the expected increase in traffic, sales, and leads.
Importantly, the trend towards online and digital engagement is only increasing. It’s simply not slowing down. Getting on top of your SEO as soon as possible is essential for maintaining a competitive edge in a market that is constantly moving. The sooner you put in place an effective SEO strategy designed and run by experts in the field, the sooner your business or organisation will find itself ahead of the curve.
9. Long term thinking
Many marketing channels–from TV ads to Google ads–are designed to improve your brand’s reach in the short term and/or immediately. While this is certainly a good thing for those running specials, sales or specific campaigns, it doesn’t offer long term value in the way that SEO does.
Search engines and search engine optimisation are going nowhere. Taking the long term approach to your marketing by investing in a robust yet flexible SEO strategy puts your business in as strong a position as possible not just in the short-to-medium future, but in the larger picture as well.
Where to now for your SEO marketing strategy?
SEO for local business, content marketing, strategies… It can all get a bit much for the digital marketing novice.
That’s where GO Creative comes in.
Our SEO gurus and experts are available to sit down with you and run through not just a free audit of your current website’s performance, but offer a tailored SEO marketing strategy for you and your business. What are you waiting for? Let’s explore the possibilities together today.
