To many marketers, SEO has always been considered a bit of a mystery. No matter how many tactics, techniques and methods you know and use, the fact that the rules and algorithms are constantly changing mean that you have to always be on your toes.
When trying to make the connection between this continuously evolving entity and your inbound marketing strategy, the link is not always clear. However, as time goes on, the more important this link is becoming.
In fact, it looks like SEO may become one of the most important aspects to consider when it comes to inbound marketing.
Today, we’ll explore the ins and outs of SEO and how it directly correlates with your inbound strategy, enabling you to take back control of your marketing efforts.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Just for the purposes of this article and so we’re all the same page, we’ll briefly touch on what inbound marketing is.
In short, this is the name given to all your strategies, techniques and methods that are used to draw in customers and clients to your website and business.
There are multiple ways you could approach this, for example, a content marketing campaign, and social media drive or through email marketing.
As the term suggests, ‘inbound’ refers to all the customers and traffic that are coming towards you and your business via your implemented marketing tactics.
Why is SEO Important in an Inbound Marketing Strategy?
In reality, there are countless reasons as to why SEO is important in today’s marketing world and especially for your strategy. All your content needs to be optimised for it to be effective. For example, let’s take a look at your content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing
You may produce blog posts, video content, news and opinion articles as well as all the copywriting for the pages on your website. All this text needs to be optimised. Otherwise, it’s simply not going to rank highly in the search engines.
In some cases where you haven’t checked, you may even find that you’ve broken some of the setup SEO guidelines and your website is now being penalised for its illegitimate practices, such as plagiarism.
There are many ways that you can boost your page’s SEO ranking through your content. You need to be providing valuable headlines and blog post titles. We cannot stress enough the importance of headers, and subheadings, in your content.
You’ll also want to consider the length of your content posts. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to aim for a post to exceed the 500-word mark. However, it’s statistically proven that content posts with around 2,000-words will perform better in the search engines.
Of course, this will be purely dependent on the topic that you’re writing about. You’ll also want to consider aspects such as plagiarism since this can be very common and occur by accident but can harm your SEO ranking dramatically.
Social Media Marketing
Any marketing that you conduct through your social media pages directly affects your SEO ranking, according to Kissmetrics’ blog. If you’re directly linking from a social media page that has a high credibility and lots of followers, this link is going to boost your page’s SEO ranking.
Likewise, if you’re linking back to a social media page that has been reported for negative reasons, such as spam or a majority of illegitimate followers, such as paid ‘proxy’ followers, you’re going to receive a poor SEO ranking.
It’s important to consider how your social media profiles directly affect your SEO ranking. A 2013 study carried out by Moz showed that pages with more Facebook likes, Retweets and Google+1’s tended to rank higher in the search engines page.
Even the posts that you post on your social network feeds need to be optimised. This means including the right keywords in the right places and implementing high-quality links. This is because they will be all be monitored and analysed by the algorithms of the search engines.
Each post will need to be written to the highest possible quality possible. You could always use the help of professional writers, such as the ones found at UK Top Writers, ensuring that your posts meet this benchmark.
Tips for Social Media Marketing
As above, if you compare one social media page that has 100 followers and one that has 1,000,000, the latter is going to reach the top of the search engine result pages. This is why it’s so important to boost your and grow your follower counts, using both paid and organic methods.
Surprisingly to many marketers, locality also plays a huge role when it comes to SEO ranking. By using your location and sharing information on local events, you can help your pages to stay out against the crowd, earning yourself some prestigious SEO points.
It’s also important to remember that SEO and search engines is still a relatively new thing and the concept of how it’s going to work is still being developed. However, it’s worth noting that this is concept is quickly developing and soon it could easily be one of the most important focuses that marketers have.
Email Marketing
You think about email marketing, SEO isn’t usually a proceeding thought for most marketers. However, the content you send in your emails is vital to securing a high ranking.
For example, if you’re running an email marketing campaign to promote your products, the chances are that you’ll have a landing page set up for each product. These landing pages may include blog posts, articles and images.
Craig Copp, an SEO-specialist at UK top writers, states, “Other aspects of email, such as your provider, can also make a huge difference. HubSpot listed the benefits of using a dedicated IP in your email marketing. The most important is that you can look into your email account so you can monitor your delivery, click-through and bounce rates.”
Not only will monitoring these statistics enhance your overall email marketing campaign, but it will also directly affect your SEO ranking. As you can see, it’s vital that you produce the emails in your inbound marketing to the highest quality possible.
Producing Quality
It may feel time-consuming trying to run a business and create high-quality email content but not doing so can risk your business’s credibility and will actively push customers and leads away from your pages.
In short, don’t risk sending poor-quality emails. If needed, you could invest in the services of professional writers, such as the ones found at Best Australian Writers, who can write your emails on your behalf.
The Importance of Keywords
Using keywords for SEO practices has changed an incredible amount from when it was initially developed. Nowadays, you’ll want to be considering how you use keywords in every aspect of your inbound marketing strategy, including your emails, content, copywriting, social media posts and everything else that is a part of your strategy.
The best way to go about this is by creating a list of keywords through researching. You’ll need to be on the lookout for which keywords rank the highest in your chosen search, as well as considering things like search volume and keyword competition.
Once you’ve created your list, you’ll need to always refer back to them when creating content for your website. Using your keywords in the right places will help you to dramatically increase your SEO ranking that can help your pages to be found easier on the search engines.
Finding the Balance
However, it’s crucial that you maintain a balance when it comes to putting keywords into your content. You don’t want to flood or overflow your content with these keywords. Although it can be extremely tempting to do in the hopes of boosting your ranking, it will only get our penalized.
What’s more, content that is crammed with keywords will probably be unreadable, potentially causing your leads to having a poor experience when engaging and reading your content. Always remember that the main aspect of SEO is giving your leads the best user experience possible.
It’s All in the Details
It’s easy to overlook many details when you’re trying to focus on all areas of marketing. However, it’s important that you take your time to ensure that everything is done properly and efficiently. Otherwise, the consequences could be dire.
Regarding your inbound marketing strategy, this means looking deep into your content, whatever form it’s in, to ensure perfection. Let’s imagine you’re reading a book. If it was full of errors, such as typos, spelling mistakes, bad grammar, poor punctuation and the sorts, you’d put it down and not read it again.
It’s exactly the same for your content and Google knows this. If your articles and blog posts are riddled with errors, you’re going to be giving your users a poor experience which will directly influence your SEO ranking.
When producing any content for your inbound marketing strategy, double, even triple, check it to make sure it’s absolutely perfect for your readers. When checking your content, you can use websites and online resources, such as Via Writing and State of Writing to learn and refresh yourself on the best practices.
SEO and Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
As you can see, mastering SEO is vital to the success of your inbound marketing strategy. At first, it may seem like a lot to handle and consider but, with practice, it will all fall into place, guaranteeing to take you to new heights of success.
Let us know your thoughts below? Do you implement these SEO strategies already? Do you have a question about anything listed above? Leave a comment below to start a conversation that could change your marketing strategies forever!
Brenda Berg is a professional with over 15 years of experience in business management, marketing and entrepreneurship. Consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs at Top Canadian writers. She believes that constant learning is the only way to success. You can visit her personal blog at Letsgoandlearn.com
