yourself wondering, “is search engine optimization really worth my time?” when developing your SEO marketing strategy?
There are more than 400 million active websites in the world. Unless you own an exceptionally popular brand, you can’t expect your target audience to naturally find your website on the internet.
Instead, you have to reach them through the right channel at the right time. That’s why it is essential to build an SEO marketing strategy even before you launch your business site.
Without search engine optimization, your website will lose its voice amidst the online clutter of mediocre websites. Even if you publish the most outstanding credibility content, it won't attract the right readers unless you've optimized it using target keywords. Whether you’re promoting an ecommerce site or a local bakery, it’s high time you prioritize website search SEO marketing.
But what is SEO marketing? Let’s find out.
Table of content:
- SEO marketing definition
- How does SEO marketing work?
- Why is SEO marketing important?
- SEO and content marketing
- SEO marketing success stories to inspire you
- How to build an SEO marketing strategy: a step-by-step guide
- SEO marketing tools
SEO Marketing Strategy Definition
Simply put, search engine optimization refers to a set of techniques aimed at driving increased organic traffic from other search engines to your website. In other words, it helps improve search engine rankings on Google search results for relevant keyword searches and relevant content. When implemented correctly, a good SEO strategy helps attract qualified website visits from people actively searching for information related to your product or brand.
SEO marketing involves steps like website audits, keyword optimization, and site code refinement. These efforts help to optimize your website’s structure and site performance. Ultimately, SEO techniques make it easier for search engines to understand what your site is about, improving site authority in the process.
Typically, you can divide SEO marketing into three components:
- On-site SEO (e.g., page titles, page copy)
- Off-site SEO (e.g., website links from credible sources)
- Technical SEO (e.g., site speed, website structure, technical optimization)
How Does SEO Marketing Work?
Search engines such as Google and Bing strive to deliver the best search experience to their users. That's why they use bots called spiders or crawlers to scan the internet and index new site pages regularly. Whenever a search engine spider comes across a new web page, it stores the web page in a relevant index (database). If a web page has been recently updated, the spider updates the same information in the corresponding index.
- Page content quality
- Website speed
- Mobile-responsiveness
- Content relevance
- Website architecture
After this analysis, the algorithm decides how relevant website pages should appear in the search results. If you've used SEO marketing to optimize your website's content and structure, the algorithm will likely rank it higher. Unless your website appears in the top search results, it won't attract too many visitors.
Why is SEO Marketing Important?
SEO marketing is essential because over 87,500 search queries occur every second, and most people start their journey by searching online. By prioritizing Google search console and content optimization techniques, you can capture the attention of people who are actively looking for solutions. This approach allows website owners to attract potential customers who are more likely to convert.
Also, 87% of today’s shoppers use digital channels to start searching for a new product. That means whenever they want to buy something new, they likely resort to search engines for valid and reliable suggestions. Now imagine the number of conversions and sales you could drive by reaching these consumers exactly when looking for such information on search engines.
That's why SEO and digital marketing have become wholly intertwined. A good SEO strategy positively impacts all other aspects of your digital marketing campaign, including existing content, social media, etc.
If you're still wondering whether you need to prioritize SEO marketing, check out a few more benefits of SEO marketing:
- Qualified website visitors: A solid SEO strategy attracts the right people to your site who are interested in your product or relevant website content.
- Amplified brand awareness: High-ranking ranked websites increase visibility and build trust. When your site appears in top search results, it reinforces site authority and credibility.
- Increased credibility and trust: A higher ranking in Google search results signals to users that your site owner cares about providing credible content.
- Long-term results: Once your site ranks high on the SERPs, it can maintain that position if you use white hat techniques and perform regular content updates.
SEO and Content Marketing
SEO is to content marketing what peanut butter is to jelly and macaroni is to cheese. You can’t build a successful content marketing strategy without focusing on SEO.
For instance, you need to identify relevant and trending website keywords to optimize your blog posts. You can even use these keywords to craft social media captions and research relevant hashtags.
Likewise, you need relevant, well-researched, and valuable content to implement your SEO marketing strategy. In the absence of high-quality content, you can't retain the attention of website visitors, and that would impact your SEO too. Good content also helps you attract genuine backlinks from authoritative websites, thus boosting your website's search engine ranking even further.
But enough about the advantages of SEO. Let’s take a look at some brands that have actually benefited from it.
SEO Marketing Success Stories To Inspire You
In this section, we’ll take a look at a few companies and marketers who have successfully used SEO marketing to skyrocket online traffic and revenue:
- Columnist Andrew Dennis used optimized content creation and used backlink building to attract 100,000 visitors to his brand new website, Siege Media, within the first twelve months.
- SEO expert Mario Deal quadrupled a client’s website traffic within six months using techniques such as website audit, guest posting, and anchor text optimization.
- Singapore-based blogger Leanne Wong used a 5-step SEO marketing strategy to skyrocket her website to the first and second position on relevant Google search results.
By now, you should have a better idea of all the fantastic things you can accomplish with a rock-solid SEO marketing strategy.
Can’t wait to build one for your website? Here’s how you can get started.
How to Build an SEO Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
SEO marketing isn’t just about finding relevant keywords and randomly including them on your website. It requires significant time, effort, and resources to build an excellent SEO marketing strategy. Also, you need to use a plethora of tools for keyword research, competitor analysis, etc. It’s equally important to monitor your website and determine whether the SEO strategy is headed in the right direction.
Here’s a simple step-by-step guide to help you build a powerful and effective SEO marketing strategy:
1. Perform a Thorough Content Audit
Before you start outlining a new SEO marketing strategy, it’s crucial to find out where your website stands. Use StoryChief’s Content audit tool to monitor your website traffic and identify gaps in your existing SEO marketing strategy.
Grab your free SEO analysis today. No more hassle of switching tools and getting overwhelmed with keyword rankings data, just actionable SEO insights at a glance.
2. Know Your Audience
When you think of SEO marketing, you can’t ignore the importance of understanding your target audience.
You need to have a clear idea of their problems and pain points. It goes without saying that you should also identify relevant demographic parameters such as age group, gender, household income, location, etc.
You need to have a fair idea of their online behavior and spending habits as well. Apart from Google Analytics, you can use social media analytics, social media polls, live Q&A sessions, and online surveys to conduct audience research.
Using all this information, you’ll be able to create content targeted towards them.
3. Pick the Right Keywords
This step is likely the most critical in building an SEO marketing strategy. Simply put, keyword research helps you identify terms and phrases your audience will use in their search queries.
It's essential to identify relevant and popular keywords in your niche. If you've identified the questions your target audience is likely to ask, part of your job is already done.
You can run a simple Google search for one of these questions to identify keyword variations. Alternatively, you can use keyword research tools such as:
Once you've selected potential keywords, validate them in terms of competition and search volume. That will help you determine whether a particular keyword is worth targeting at all. You should also focus on voice search queries as well as local search queries and long-tail keywords.
Try AI Keyword Generator free to discover untapped keywords for your content.
4. Perform Competitor Analysis
A simple tactic of boosting your SEO game is to find out what your online competitors are doing right. If it’s working for your competitor, it’ll also likely work for you.
The first step is to run a simple Google search and identify your competitors. Next, you can analyze their SEO marketing strategy by entering their website URL into competitor analysis tools such as:
- SpyFu
- Site Explorer by Ahrefs
- BuzzSumo
- Similarweb
- MozBar
5. Publish Outstanding Content
The fate of your SEO marketing strategy depends on the quality of the content you create. Whether you're writing blog posts or product descriptions, make sure you include relevant keywords in the content. However, it is vital that you stay away from black hat SEO practices such as keyword stuffing. Instead, you should strategically place the keywords in sections such as:
- Page title
- Meta title and description
- Subheadings
- Introduction and conclusion
- Image alt text
This can all be overwhelming, we know. That’s why we’ve designed StoryChief in such a way that you can quickly figure out if your post is SEO-optimized. All you have to do is enter your target keyword, and we'll guide you through the SEO optimization.
And that’s not all!
To help you improve the quality of your post, we've also incorporated a readability guide. This guide will update as you write your post on the platform. It'll help you identify gaps in your writing, such as transition words, passive voice, and more.
6. Attract High-Quality Backlinks
Check your competitors’ inbound link profiles and find domains that link to their websites. Approach the owners/admins of these domains to explore link building opportunities.
You can also monitor relevant blogs in your niche and look for broken links. Likewise, you should leverage guest posting to grow your audience and build authoritative backlinks.
And the best part?
Your readers may link back to your website if they find your blog posts valuable. It can help in improving your SEO too.
7. Optimize Site Architecture and Performance
Use internal linking to create a seamless website architecture. Also, check your website’s navigation and ensure that it’s easy to move from one page to another.
What’s more?
It’s critical to ensure that there are no broken links on your website. Finally, make sure your website is fast and mobile-responsive as well.
SEO Marketing Checklist
- Perform a content audit: Use Google Analytics to evaluate your current website performance and website factors.
- Know your audience: Understand your target demographics to create customized content for them.
- Pick the right keywords: Effective keyword optimization helps you reach people through keyword searches relevant to your niche.
- Analyze competitors: Look into competitor content to identify successful strategies.
- Publishing content: Quality new content with the right target keywords helps increase your site authority.
- Build high-quality backlinks: Seek website links from high-authority sites to improve credibility.
- Optimize your site: Ensure that site code and site speed meet industry standards, and that page titles and title links are optimized for search engines.
SEO Marketing Tools
Here are a few tools you can use in different stages of your SEO marketing strategy:
Final Thoughts
To summarize, here’s a brief outline of the step-by-step SEO guide:
Convinced SEO marketing is worth it yet? We thought so! To help you navigate through the tricky waters of SEO and content marketing, turn to StoryChief. Our start to finish platform will have you creating and posting the best content to your website and social media channels in no time!
