No company in the Digital Age can survive for long without an SEO online marketing strategy.
It’s well-known that when people – both in the B2C and B2B world – are in need of a solution, they turn to Google for help.
When that happens, does your company show up?
5 Elements Your SEO Online Marketing Strategy Must Include to Succeed
If not, then now’s the time to change that by creating an SEO online marketing strategy that will take your company up Google’s rankings and right in front of your leads.
1. Premium SEO Software
The first thing every SEO online marketing strategy absolutely must have is premium software.
By all means, read articles on how to do keyword research. They’ll give you a better understanding of how Google and your audience assess keywords.
But don’t try to compete with other marketers who are then using premium software to do the actual heavy lifting. Not only will they have a much easier time finding the best possible opportunities. They’ll also be able to find them much, much faster.
Fortunately, your two best options are incredibly affordable: Ahrefs and SEMrush. Pick one and then get busy familiarizing yourself with it until you find it incredibly easy to use. The more comfortable you are with it, the more potential it will have for powering your strategy to success.
2. An Editorial Calendar
The centerpiece of a successful SEO online marketing strategy is an actual editorial calendar. This often gets lost in the mix, though. Once you start using software, it can be easy to focus solely on finding keywords and pumping out content.
However, even with the right software on your side, you need to have a long-term plan in place. Successful content marketing that turns search engines into lead-generation machines can easily take six months. It often takes a year. Having an editorial calendar will help your team stay focused on the future.
Furthermore, it makes it much easier to assign out tasks either to your in-house team or any freelancers you’ve hired and give them sufficient time to work on these pieces, so they’re true assets, not hastily put-together articles.
3. A List of Guest Posting Opportunities
One of the easiest ways to cut down on the time it will take to start seeing results from your content is to look for opportunities outside of your site.
That’s right: your company’s SEO online marketing strategy shouldn’t just focus on its own website. Instead, you should be actively engaging in what’s called blogger outreach, which involves looking for opportunities to post content on other companies’ websites.
There are two main reasons that this practice deserves to be a priority.
The first is fairly simple. The more your market sees people from your company covering topics they care about, the better. More and more, your business will appear to be an authority. As time goes on, prospects will think about your site the moment there’s information they want to know about.
This is also a type of social proof. When your content shows up on trusted websites, it’s like telling your audience, “The site you trust trusts us, so you should, too.” Again, it’s great for bringing people to your site, but that kind of trust can make for easy conversions, as well.
That’s all well and good, but the reason it’s also an SEO tactic is because Google loves backlinks. So, when you write a post for another company and they link back to your site, Google takes this as an endorsement of sorts. It tells them that your site must be worthwhile if another worthwhile site is linking to it.
Keep a list of potential guest-posting opportunities and then begin networking. Over time, try to check each one off your list, return to the best ones for more posts, and look to continue adding other sites.
4. Constant Monitoring of the Competition
At some point, your SEO online marketing strategy will begin taking off. Again, it could take six months. It could take nine or more.
If you remain consistent, though, it’s only a matter of time.
When that happens, it can be extremely tempting to start the celebration and never stop it. You can become so sure that your newfound strategy is a silver bullet, that you forget all about the competitors who have now realized you’re a threat to their rankings.
Don’t let them surprise you by suddenly fighting back.
Instead, you should use those aforementioned platforms to actively track your competition, so you know the minute their traffic starts increasing. When that happens, just use the software to look at what they’ve changed and then use that information to quickly catch up.
5. A Review Process
Finally, something as important as your company’s SEO online marketing strategy deserves constant attention, which means a regular review.
For example, once a month, go back over all the content you’ve posted and look at what’s done best for organic traffic. Those topics and keywords probably represent opportunities to attract even more.
Don’t stop there, though. Another really good practice is to review your published content for opportunities to add new internal links. This will help visitors find new pages on your site. Any inbound links coming from posts on Google’s first page will also pass along some of that SEO, as well.
Always review the entire process, too. Do certain topics take more time? Are some topics attracting traffic that never converts?
At least once a month, look for opportunities to improve your strategy further.
The Most Important Advice About Your SEO Online Marketing Strategy
The most important element of a successful SEO online marketing strategy is patience.
As we already covered, starting from scratch can easily take six months before your company sees results.
Even then, it could be many months before you reach your initial goals.
Stay patient, though. Stay focused on the above advice. Marketers that constantly get distracted and chase new methodologies are the ones who never get anywhere.
Instead, start today, keep consistent, and brace yourself for all the traffic you’ll receive when your strategy pays off.