Focusing On SEO Alone Just Isn’t Enough. Here’s Why.

Over the last two years, consumers have experienced continuous change in their working and personal worlds.

Demanding simplicity in increasingly complex times, consumer behaviors changed, search engine algorithms continued to evolve, and so too must the strategies that surround and support SEO.

While SEO is critical, reliance on search alone to reach your market isn’t a winning strategy.

Instead, the importance of connected and dynamic digital-first strategies – as adaptable as the consumers they aim to engage – is now crystal clear.

Understanding that the consumer journey is no longer linear.

To engage with consumers effectively, marketers need to step back and rethink strategies, building dynamism into the foundation of their client experience approach.

And while SEO alone isn’t enough – the challenges within the sector are many and varied.

But in short, it’s fair to say that SEO is complex and constantly changing – SEO insights provide a real-time picture of the changing consumer voice, which can be leveraged to inform any number of digital strategies.

Beginning with these insights marketers can build plans that are fulsome, multifaceted, and complimentary, connecting with consumers across multiple channels and touchpoints.

In this post, we’ll explore why the most effective marketing teams aren’t putting all their eggs in one basket – because they know focusing on SEO alone isn’t enough.

Content Marketing

Why content marketing?

High-quality content remains key to visibility. It is a critical component of the modern marketer’s integrated plan.

Truly great content is naturally engaging. It answers top-of-mind questions throughout the consumer life cycle, and consumers seek it out across any number of platforms.

From ebooks and podcasts to how-to videos and feel-good social posts, content marketing has evolved from blogging alone.

When marketers and communicators work closely with SEO, using insights from search terms and placing consumers at the very center of their content strategy, they have the best foundation for success.

Mapping out the consumer journey – and the digital touchpoints throughout each stage – provides an opportunity to build a client experience strategy supported by quality content that connects with consumers across platforms, in multiple channels, and touchpoints.

The scope of content marketing is limitless, as is the ability to personalize, and that is a recipe for winning.

Creating a holistic strategy that connects content marketing and SEO is the new table stakes.

Digital Advertising And Pay Per Click (PPC)

Because SEO is constantly changing, and every business is different, investing the time and effort to figure out what works best for your business can be expensive.

Remember, while separate channels with distinct attributes SEO and PPC share a common goal, attracting consumers to your website.

Approaching search holistically, ensuring SEO and PPC complement each other, will help you to navigate the changing environment, pivoting as needed in real-time.

By combining forces and sharing learnings your team will have the opportunity to drive growth and improve budget efficiency in the process.

Building integrated dashboards that provide insight into both organic and paid search results supports a fulsome view of keyword trends.

Leveraging the right data can support key insight discovery, providing the real potential to improve performance.

The example in this article looks at how PPC and SEO data can be combined to apply a cost savings lens to marketing budget cuts.

By combining organic performance metrics, such as impressions with PPC conversion data, opportunities to improve performance can be identified visually using charts and graphs.

Identifying keywords with high CPCs (costs per click) and low organic visibility, and then combining that data with insights can provide the foundation for a strategic pivot that sees you cut budgets in areas you can sustain a downturn while propping up performance with strong organic visibility.

Relevance is key, and when we step back and look at the trends we can map based on SEO data, we can begin to think about the value that SEO data can bring to digital advertising through targeting.

When we think about ads in the traditional media space – OOH (out of home), print, radio, and television – we talk about reaching certain demographics.

But demographic groups are large and varied. The Gen Z audience, for example, ranges from age 5 to 25. And what may be relevant to a certain individual within a broad demographic will range dramatically.

A study conducted by Google and Ipsos in 2020 found that video advertising based on consumer intent has significantly more impact than advertising based on demographics.

Providing consumers with pertinent ads, focused on their needs and wants, rather than their demographic alone, drives engagement, brand lift, and ultimately sales.

Social Media

The numbers are clear: With more than 1 billion monthly active users across the top seven social networks, social media presents incredible opportunities for engaging consumers worldwide.

There is no question that social media sites are highly authoritative, as such setting up branded profiles across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter has the potential to secure additional search results, supporting your SEO goals.

Beyond SEO, whether your social media goals are to increase brand awareness, build engaged communities, or simply sell products and services, social media platforms provide a critical method of sharing information and promoting business.

If you’re rethinking your social strategy, consider these recommendations on where to focus your attention for 2022.

If you’re just getting started plan for integration from the outset and consider strategies that support SEO performance.

Whatever your goals are, ongoing performance tracking is key – social media testing, learning, and pivoting should be a continuous process.

Creating a flexible social strategy is arguably much simpler than planning for dynamism in other marketing and advertising spaces, as social media channels provide a plethora of targeting options, with both free and paid options, and settings can be changed simply – so there’s no need to set it and forget it.

Take advantage of the flexibility!

Brand Management

Every interaction a consumer has with your business, whether marketing, communications, virtual or person-to-person engagement, contributes to overall brand perception.

In the digital space, managing your reputation is especially critical.

If you don’t manage your reputation online, your SEO efforts will be wasted. Why? In short, consumers trust user-generated content.

Online reviews help you to build a good reputation, going back to SEO, this is incredibly important to local results.

Let’s think through the search process.

When a consumer searches for your brand, product, or service, your website may be one or two of the results displayed.

Other search results may include social and review sites showcasing what others are saying about you, whether negative or positive.

Proactively managing your reputation online, through review sites and social platforms specifically, allows you to control the narrative.

Mistakes happen; how a business responds to consumer feedback has the potential to change consumer perception.

By engaging in conversation, you have an opportunity to correct any misinformation, and to accept responsibility where issues have arisen.

If you aren’t monitoring search results with your brand reputation in mind, you’re simply missing an opportunity.

Email Marketing

Great email marketing provides an opportunity for brands to engage consumers in their space on their time, fostering relationships with prospective, current, and past customers, in a highly controlled environment.

Segmentation options are essentially endless, from interests to demographic detail or user experience trigger-based. You’re limited only by your team’s creativity and the data you’ve collected.

You can choose to deploy emails based on trending topics of the moment and again, it’s something that’s easy to keep a pulse on leveraging SEO data as the voice of your customer.

Perhaps you also want to send emails based on the customer life cycle.

Both options provide a highly customizable and personalized experience.

Emails can be triggered based on any number of engagements with your site (helpful “you left something in your cart” emails come to mind!), or you may choose to set and forget a time-based strategy that sees key evergreen content from your site pushed out to new subscribers.

Whatever your strategy, email marketing provides a simple and cost-effective opportunity to drive traffic to your site.

Additionally, as is the case with social media platforms, the ability to test and learn presents the opportunity to maximize spending based on proven results.

And that’s just the kind of dynamic strategy we like.

To take your email marketing to the next level (and boost your SEO efforts in the process), check out these top tips.

Conclusion

Building client-centric strategies means meeting consumers on their terms.

By starting with the voice of the client, and leveraging SEO insights in real-time, marketers can reimagine the possible, connecting with consumers across channels – digital and otherwise.

An integrated digital marketing strategy has the potential to increase brand awareness through a strong digital presence.

It can enhance conversion rates and drive real value by connecting content and brand messaging across platforms, leading to higher and faster returns on investment.

The current day consumer is connected. Shouldn’t your businesses’ client experience and marketing strategies be, as well?

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