Search Engine Marketing & SEO

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Outbound or direct marketing is the strategy of pushing your message onto your audience using techniques like telemarketing, cold calling, trade shows, direct mail, email blasts, print and broadcast media ads.

These methods have become less effective in today’s world, as technology allows us to block advertising messages and people are doing more of their own research and listening to recommendations on social media to figure out which products and services they want to buy.

Inbound Search Engine Marketing Focuses on Getting Found by Prospects

Inbound search engine marketing allows you to pull in customers by creating content, optimizing that content for search engines, and promoting and sharing that content in social media; and is a more efficient and cost-effective marketing strategy.

Outbound marketing depends on the size of your wallet; Inbound marketing depends on the size of your brain. -HubSpot

SEO-driven leads have the highest lead-to-close rate (15%) among common lead generation sources.

Key Inbound Search Engine Marketing Strategies

What is Keyword Research?

A keyword is a word or phrase that a person enters into search engines like Google and Bing or social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to find information on the Internet. By optimizing your website and social media profiles around the keywords that are relevant to your business, you can increase your chances of getting found on the search engine results pages (SERPs) by people searching with those keywords.

Keyword research is the process of discovering relevant keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns on. There are several tools that help you discover potential keywords based on past search trends, search volumes, bid prices, and page content from related Web sites. These tools help you evaluate the relevance of the keyword to your business and the relative difficulty of ranking over your competition for the keyword.

Keyword research will help you understand how your online competition is using keywords, and will help you devise a strategy for choosing keywords that match your business well. The greater the volume of searches on a keyword, the more competitive it is, and the more difficult it will be to rank highly for that keyword. When optimizing your webpages for certain keywords, you will need to find a balance between relevance and difficulty.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO is the practice of publishing and marketing information in a way to improve search engine understanding of Web site content. SEO copywriting is a style of writing and formatting information to increase the exposure to search queries by enhancing the relevance of the document to the search engine criteria and algorithm.

There are over 200 factors used by the search engines use to match your webpage content with keywords that people use to find information on the Internet. SEO can be divided into two categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO includes page titles, page descriptions, page headings, anchor link text, image alt tags, and the URL structure of your website.

Use page titles with keywords: Because 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results, you need to do everything you can to nail one of those top spots. Optimize your page titles and use compelling meta data to get off on the right foot.

Create unique page descriptions: 75% of users never go further than the first page of search results. You’ve got to do what you can to stand out in the pack of results, and compelling page descriptions is a good place to start.

Optimize your image alt tags: 70% of the links search users click on are organic – not paid. Using keyword-rich alt text can help you rank higher so that you can capture some of that delicious organic traffic for yourself.

Off-page SEO includes the quality of inbound links to your webpage, social connections and interactions, and the perceived authority of your website. Off-page SEO is more difficult to control, but is believed to account for a greater percentage of your overall search engine ranking.

Search Engine Optimization: Capabilities and Campaign Objectives

1. Competitive Research

A. Domain Overview

i. Get a bird’s-eye view of your competitors’ SEO strategies
ii. Explore their referring domains and the keywords they’re ranking for
iii. Assess their performance on desktop and mobile devices

B. Traffic Analytics

i. Identify your competitors’ main traffic sources
ii. Uncover their top referring websites
iii. Analyze a competitor’s bounce rates, average session duration, and more

C. Organic Research

i. Analyze your main competitors in organic results
ii. Explore their most successful strategies
iii. Analyze if and how they appear in SERP features

D. Keyword Gaps

i. Uncover low-hanging fruit to skyrocket your ROI
ii. Find keywords targeted by your competitors but not you
iii. Compare up to 5 domains in terms of unique and common keywords

E. Backlink Gaps

i. Quickly identify the link building opportunities you’re missing
ii. Detect websites linking to your competitors but not you
iii. Compare up to 5 domains at a time

2. Keyword Research

A. Keyword Overview

i. Perform a thorough keyword analysis
ii. Get vital metrics: volume trend, competition level, SERP features and much more for every keyword
iii. Find related keywords and long-tail matches

B. Keyword Expansion

i. Get expanded keyword suggestions using different match types
ii. Dive into new topics from pre-arranged groups
iii. Discover longtails and popular question keywords
iv. Obtain the most essential metrics and SERP features for each keyword
v. Organize your projects into keyword lists

C. Keyword Difficulty

i. Estimate how difficult it is to rank for your target keywords
ii. Reveal the SERP features triggered by any keyword
iii. Compare up to 100 target keywords at a time

D. Organic Traffic Insights

i. Uncover the ‘not provided’ keywords from Google Analytics bringing traffic to your site
ii. Keep track of how changes in rankings influence conversions and user behavior
iii. Disclose high-potential keyword groups to reap even more benefits from your SEO

3. Link Building

A. Backlink Analytics

i. Conduct in-depth analysis of your and your competitors’ backlinks
ii. Unlock link building opportunities by spotting your rivals’ new and lost backlinks
iii. Weigh your link building progress against your competitors’

B. Backlink Audit

i. Review all the details of your backlink profile
ii. Locate and remove any toxic backlinks
iii. Integrate with GA, Search Console and Majestic data

C. Link Building Opportunities

i. Uncover the highest quality backlink opportunities in your niche
ii. Perform outreach and acquire links
iii. Identify newly acquired and lost backlinks

4. Rank Tracking

A. Position Tracking

i. Keep up with your local Google rankings on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices
ii. Gain insights from SERP feature analysis of Featured snippets, Local map packs, AMPs, and more
iii. Discover new competitors in your niche

B. SERP Tracking

i. Track SERP volatility across various countries and niches
ii. Get personal volatility estimates for your target keywords and location
iii. Stay informed of any changes

5. On Page & Technical SEO

A. Site Audit

i. Audit your website with 60+ on-page and technical SEO checks
ii. Delve into exclusive reports concerning AMP and HTTPs issues
iii. Check priority levels to fix the most beneficial pages first

B. SEO Content Templates

i. Create customized templates for SEO-friendly content
ii. Page by page data on improving keywords, structure and backlinks
iii. Analyze your best-performing rivals and adopt their successful practices

C. On Page SEO Assessment

i. Step-by-step website optimization
ii. Generate ideas on strategy, content, backlinks and more
iii. Focus on pages with the highest traffic potential

6. Content Marketing & SEO

A. Strategic Planning & Editorial Assistance

i. Publish informative, non-promotional articles on a regular basis
ii. Make sure that your message adds value to the recipient
iii. Consider creating longer-form content such as e-books, white papers and research reports; re-purpose content in different formats and channels
iv. Diversify your content marketing strategy with non-text media such as videos, webinars and slideshows

B. Content SEO

i. Avoid jargon that only your employees would understand
ii. Include words in your articles that your customers use to describe your business
iii. Host your content on your own website domain
iv. Include a compelling and keyword-rich article title
v. Include in-text links to relevant content and resources