How do new clients find you?
Before the internet, they’d use word of mouth, a phone book, or an encyclopedia if they needed a product, service, or just a simple answer. Nowadays, they “Google it.”
When that happens, SEO is there to make sure your website appears at the top of the page.
But can you remember the last time you clicked on the second search engine results page (SERP) — or even made it to the bottom of the first page?
75% of people don’t. And that’s why you should invest in SEO.
Let’s discuss what’s involved in this collaborative digital marketing process, like the strategies and why they successfully drive up traffic and growth.
3 Essential Reasons to Invest In SEO
SEO is most successful when potential customers are there because they want to be there.
1. Immediately Connect With Your Main Customers
A basic goal of SEO work is to connect you with your niche customer looking for your product or service.
Since almost one-third of US consumers use the internet to search for local companies, you want to make sure they can easily find you.
For example, if a Tulsa resident is trying to find a plumber, and you’re a plumber in Tulsa, it’s a win-win if they end up on your website.
2. Drive Exponential Growth Through Awareness-Building
But the major, long-lasting goal of SEO is to drive exponential business growth through brand awareness in your field, beyond that initial sale.
What if your reader isn’t someone with a broken tub faucet and a flooded bathroom in Tulsa?
What if he’s just a guy with a leaky faucet looking for a couple of easy home solutions?
If your website has a helpful article on this topic — and keeps providing helpful articles — you’ll drive more traffic (a lot more than just eastern Oklahoma).
With Google viewing your article on leaky faucets as the best and putting it at the top of search results, you suddenly see tens of thousands of monthly sessions from organic searches.
That’s a lot of traffic that will lead to potential conversions.
Start with Awareness Content that discusses wide-ranging topics and then niche down to gradually more specific articles that hone in on various target audiences.
3. Get to the Top 3 In Search Results
Writing great SEO-centric content helps Google to see that you’re an expert on all things related to plumbing. Google then bumps you closer and closer to the top of the page for all search themes related to plumbing.
To garner that Tulsa audience, for example, you would then niche down to a topic such as “Should I Install A Hot Tub In My Tulsa Backyard?”
With that newly earned trust, Google will send these Tulsa residents concerned about seasonal relaxation to your site first.
Google Ads — Why Not Just Pay Google To Put Me On Top?
We’ll admit, SEO probably sounds like a lot of work.
We love making that magic happen. But you, understandably, might not.
You may have heard of one famous solution: Google Ads. In this pay-per-click (PPC) system, Google will put you at the top of the SERP of a major keyword.
Every time someone clicks on your paid search result, you give Google a set dollar amount for the privilege. It might be tempting if you’re a small business just looking for a few extra views.
If you’re new to the Internet marketing world, Google Ads can be a viable tool to draw in traffic in the short term.
But, according to 70% of online marketers, it’s not a sustainable long-term solution to generating sales compared to SEO.
You’ll get more website traffic, sure. However, that traffic comes at a premium.
Some industries may be able to generate clicks for as little as $2-$3/click. Other industries will see costs in the hundreds of dollars per click.
Not to mention, Google Ads are like a faucet. Turn it off, and the leads go away immediately.
And with no impact on rankings, a Google Ad campaign doesn’t contribute to authority for the long haul.
SEO Generates Relevant, Organic Results
On the other hand, search engine optimization is all about raising your website’s authority, meaning your online marketing dollars are going toward long-term growth. 61% of B2B marketers who have used SEO swear by it when it comes to generating consistent quality leads.
The first step in being an authority in a field is having relevant content for your readers they can find in organic search results.
When was the last time a paid Google result was actually helpful to you?
For most of us, they’re just more filler we need to scroll past to get to the organized, optimized answers from reputable sources.
The ones typically there because of SEO.
Related: How to Choose an SEO Agency
Long-Form Optimized Content
SEO is never one-size-fits-all.
It includes various types of content designed for specific purposes.
Intergrowth’s premium articles are longer pieces of content optimized for readers and search engines. We write the best resources on the internet, incorporate readability optimizations to provide a better user experience, and use innovative analysis techniques like term frequency, inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) to maximize your rankings.
Each article builds trust at the top of a potential sales funnel. The reader now heads elsewhere on your site, such as your products and service pages, to learn more about how you can help them.
Even if the reader doesn’t buy your product or use your service immediately, that trust you’re gradually building with multiple readers is noticed.
And like a movie studio talent scout watching a gifted local stage actor, Google will bring you up to the big time by raising your rank.
Is this done with quality or quantity?
Yes.
You need quality posts, but you need many of them so that Google sees you as an expert in your field, not just on one particular thing. This process will bring all your other posts to the top too.
Intergrowth’s team of expert writers, editors, and content strategists will keep those posts coming and your site’s authority on the rise.
Link Building
Being an authority in your field isn’t all autograph signings and selfies if you don’t have some influence on your own image. It’s important to cultivate yourself as a reputable brand that is trusted for the right reasons.
Who is linking to your website?
By having a say in the matter, you have a real ability to take over your competitors’ reputations in the eyes of the big search engines.
That’s where link building comes in.
How Do You Get Other Websites To Start Linking To Yours?
Well, you could reach out and ask them, one at a time. But surely you see the issue with that.
The results are low volume, time-consuming, and expensive to achieve a significant difference in incoming traffic.
Our plumber friend wants to be out in the field, installing pipes and fixing shower drains. Not emailing websites to see if they’ll spot him a link or two.
Intergrowth can help here too.
We already have strong, built-in relationships with thousands of websites. We focus all efforts on relationship building with the top 5% of websites on the internet — a number we continuously confirm through audits and a dozen quality control filters.
These cream-of-the-crop sites have earned the trust of Google that you need to drive significant growth.
A few of our favorite approaches are contributing new insights to their website and sharing unique resources we’ve created that we believe their audience will enjoy.
By being creative in how we help these top-notch sites, they’re happy to link back to the premium articles we’ve written for you, further establishing your website’s credibility.
Google sees other high-quality sites linking to you as a type of endorsement that they trust the information on your web pages.
You just sit back and watch your online presence grow and qualified leads increase.
Content Revamps
This may not be your first rodeo.
Maybe you’ve used “the other guys” or tried your hand at internet marketing in-house.
You’re the expert in your field, so you may already have your own blog on your company website. That’s awesome to hear!
In that case, our job is to connect your knowledge to the readers (and potential customers) who crave it.
We’ll take your previously published articles and run them through our editing and optimization process to raise their ranks on SERPs.
Some of the many marketing optimization strategies we have to enhance content revamps include:
- TF-IDF — Analyze which main keyword we’re ranking for and other terms Google sees closely related to your main topic that should be incorporated into the updated version of your article
- Readability — Break up large paragraphs to make the article easier to skim
- Subsections — Additional H2s and H3s to target other long-tail keyword queries and answer natural follow-up questions
- Featured snippets — Paragraphs or lists that stand out to you and search engines
- Inlinks — Add relevant links back to other articles or product pages on your own blog and website
- Anchor links — Links in longer articles helping the reader jump to particular sections to improve their reading experience
Content Revamps and Content Planning
Of course, when Intergrowth is working on your content marketing, we’ll sit down with business owners and discuss the SEO services we can provide in terms of the big picture — not one article at a time.
- What are your goals in terms of lead generation and growth?
- What areas of your business are you most interested in growing?
- Who are your main competitors?
- Who is your target customer?
- What metrics can we track together to objectively assess our performance over time?
These questions and more will determine our content strategy for new pieces like long-form and link-building articles moving forward.
But revamping will help put your already-existing content on the same page too.
Optimizing your blog with a cohesive SEO strategy also includes, for example, making sure it doesn’t have repetitive or competing topics.
Conclusion
SEO is the perfect way to enhance your website if you want sustained lead generation with ongoing return on investment. With long-form optimized content, link building, and revamps of older articles, you can raise your business website’s authority and bring in quality traffic.
Look no further than our results with Now, for whom we increased their organic traffic by 942.7% in just one year. Originally seeing about 800 sessions a month, we used the same exact strategies we’ve discussed to push that number above 8,000!
Let Intergrowth take you to the Top 3 on SERPs while you focus on your business.
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