With businesses and consumers going digital, SEO marketing is no longer an option. It’s a requirement. After all, if you’re not visible online, you’re missing out on potential customers and sales.
Google is the most popular search engine, handling over 3.5 billion daily searches. That’s a lot of people looking for information, products, and services online. In fact, 40% of revenue is driven by organic traffic.
But what is SEO in digital marketing? Simply put, it’s the process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google. By making sure your site is easy to find and navigate, you’re more likely to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), which means more people will find and visit your site.
Of course, SEO is just one part of a successful digital marketing strategy. To really stand out online, you need to take advantage of other marketing channels as well, such as email marketing, social media, and paid advertising.
In this guide, I will discuss the basics of SEO Marketing and provide some examples to help you get started.
In this Guide:
- What is SEO Marketing?
- What is the Role of SEO in Digital Marketing?
- What are Examples of SEO Marketing?
- How to Do SEO Marketing?
What is SEO Marketing?
SEO, also known as search engine optimization (SEO), is the process of optimizing your website for search engines. The goal of SEO is to improve your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), which will ultimately lead to more traffic and conversions.
There are two components of SEO: on-page and off-page optimization.
On-page Optimization is the process of optimizing your website’s content and structure to make it more visible and easy to find for search engine crawlers. This includes things like title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, keyword research, URL structure, keyword optimization, image optimization, external and internal links, identifying crawl errors, fixing broken links, and speed improvement, among others.
Personally, I believe that a technically optimized website can take you so far in SEO. This is why I always stress the importance of on-page optimization. There are a lot of repercussions when it comes to having a poorly optimized website, such as low rankings, high bounce rates, and decreased traffic. It can also leave an unsatisfying user experience on your site, leading to high abandonment rates.
For example, if your site is loading too slowly, that will impact your rankings as Google now considers website speed as a ranking factor, especially on mobile. If your site is difficult to navigate, that’s going to frustrate users and increase your bounce rate, which will also negatively impact your rankings.
Content is another important on-page factor, as it’s what helps you rank for specific keywords. If your site is lacking in content or if the content is not relevant to what people are searching for, then you’re not going to rank high in the SERPs.
Google’s E-A-T update also placed a stronger emphasis on content, specifically when it comes to your website’s credibility. So if you want to rank high in the SERPs, make sure that you’re creating high-quality and relevant content that adheres to Google’s Guidelines.
Off-page optimization is the process of improving your visibility and authority by acquiring high-quality backlinks from other websites. This is done by creating great content that other site owners will want to link to, as well as through link-building tactics such as guest posting and social media outreach.
Link building can be difficult and time-consuming, so I recommend first focusing on creating great content. If you create something truly valuable, other site owners will want to link to it—this strategy is called “passive link building”.
However, sometimes you must be more proactive in your link-building efforts, especially if you’re trying to rank for a very competitive keyword. This is where active link building comes in. Active link building is when you actively seek out opportunities to get links from other websites. For example, you can reach out to other site owners and ask them to link to your content, or you can guest post on other websites.
Both on-page and off-page optimization are important for ranking high in the SERPs. However, I believe that on-page optimization is more important for website owners just starting out with SEO. This is because it’s easier to control and optimize your own website than it is to control what other people are saying about you online.
SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it’s worth it if you want to improve your visibility in the SERPs. If you’re just getting started with SEO, I recommend focusing on on-page optimization first. Once you’ve got a handle on that, then you can start working on off-page optimization.
What is the Role of SEO in Digital Marketing?
Organic search is one of the main sources of traffic for most websites on the internet, which is why SEO is so important. It’s estimated that organic search accounts for 51% of all website traffic.
While social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are great platforms to establish your brand recognition, Google and other search engines are the go-to platforms for decided customers. And when I say decided, it means that the customer has already recognized the problem they have on hand (awareness stage); read a handful of information (research phase); they understand what is needed to solve the problem, and is committed to acquiring the solution (consideration stage), and now they are ready to make the purchase or hire your service (decision).
Customers go directly to search engines for two things: they want to know what exactly is out there that provides said solutions to their pain points, or they already know who you are, and they want more information about your products and services. Either way, they are on Google because they want to take some form of action related to what they searched, which is most likely to affect your bottom line.
This is where SEO comes in. The role of SEO is to make sure that when people are searching for your product or service, they can find your website easily on the search engine results page (SERP). More specifically, you want your website to appear as close to the top of the SERP as possible because research has shown that people are more likely to click on the first few links.
As the Huffington Post once said, “The best place to hide a body is page 2 of Google”. This means that if your website is on the second page or worse, you’re essentially invisible to potential customers.
SEO is important for digital marketing because it helps you:
- Drive traffic to your website
- Improve the quality of that traffic
- Increase the number of leads and sales generated from your website
- Boost brand awareness and recognition
- Improve the ROI of your marketing campaigns
- Establish your website as an authoritative source of information
If that still doesn’t convince you of the importance of SEO, consider this:
- 95% of search traffic goes to the first page of search results
- 89% of marketers say SEO successful
- 85% of retailers feel SEO and paid search are most effective for getting new customers
- 6% is the average close rate of SEO — that’s eight times higher than traditional marketing
These stats show that if you’re not ranking on the first page of results, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic. And if you’re not ranking in the top five, you’re really missing out.
SEO should be a key part of your digital marketing strategy because it helps you improve your visibility and reach potential customers who are actively looking for what you have to offer. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in the SERPs, resulting in more visitors, leads, and sales.
What are Examples of SEO Marketing?
Now that we’ve talked about the role of SEO in digital marketing let’s take a look at some examples of SEO marketing.
- It’s a Writer’s World
I’ve got to pat myself on the back here, of course. LOL! For years, I’ve built my personal brand and business by ranking for terms like “SEO specialist in the Philippines”, “content marketing specialist in the Philippines”, and other variations of those keywords.
Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been actively writing content for my blog, and I’ve seen a significant increase in traffic and the number of keywords ranked. Upon checking my own stats, May 2022 was the best month yet for organic users, which grew by 66.26% versus the previous month and a 66.67% increase in new organic users.
To recent date, I was able to rank my site for major keywords like “content marketing services in the Philippines” and “content services Philippines” in the top 10. On US search, I am currently ranking within the top 10 for keywords for mentioned keywords and including “content writing outsourcing Philippines”.
- Photo Editing Service
This photo editing service reached out to me for content writing services with the goal of increasing their organic traffic and driving leads. Their team’s strategy is to boost content production in the hopes of ranking higher in the SERPs.
So far, we’ve published over 20 long-form blog posts, and their organic traffic has increased by 36.13% in the last quarter compared to the previous quarter. The number of new organic users also increased by 43.11%.
- Personal Injury Lawyer
This personal injury lawyer has contacted me for SEO and content marketing services, intending to improve their organic search visibility. They have recently redesigned their website, and we are in the process of optimizing their site for search engines.
In addition to on-site optimization, we are also working on content audit and optimization, which aims to improve their current site’s content, ensuring it’s competitive and optimized for target keywords.
We’ve managed to increase the site’s organic impressions, and the number of keywords ranked by 39.21% compared to the previous quarter. We’ve also observed growth in total organic clicks by 58.85%. This can be attributed to our optimization efforts to add keywords in the meta and header tags.
In terms of organic traffic, we’ve seen an increase of 25.66% in organic users and a 22.71% increase in new organic users in the second quarter. With the new optimized content, we’ve improved the bounce rate by 11.88%.
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How to Do SEO Marketing?
While there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to SEO marketing, there are certain steps you can take to ensure your campaigns are successful.
1. Perform keyword research
Keyword research is essential to SEO marketing because it allows you to determine which keywords to target in your SEO campaigns. There are a number of free and paid tools you can use for keyword research, such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
2. Optimize your website for search engines
Once you’ve identified the target keywords for your SEO campaigns, it’s time to start optimizing your website for those keywords. This will involve adding keywords to your website’s title, meta, header, and content.
3. Create high-quality content
Content is also an important factor in SEO marketing. To rank for your target keywords, you need to create high-quality content that is relevant to those keywords. This can include blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos.
4. Promote your content
After you’ve created high-quality content, it’s time to promote it. This can be done through social media, email marketing, and guest blogging.
5. Analyze your results
Finally, it’s important to analyze the results of your SEO campaigns so that you can make the necessary adjustments. You can use tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs to track your progress and identify areas for improvement.
SEO marketing is all about improving your website’s visibility in search engines. Improving your visibility on Google search is necessary to ensure your website is seen by potential customers. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by all of the different ranking factors and SEO strategies, but by following these simple steps, you can create a successful SEO marketing campaign.
