I’m sure your inbox gets cluttered each week with the “We can get you to #1 on Google” SEO emails (just like mine does), and you’ve probably been receiving them for a long time. Based on feedback from client’s we’ve acquired after trying these services, they will leave you very unsatisfied. Their success will be measured by achieving a top rank for your company name or some obscure keyword that never provides leads or new customers. That’s best case. Most received no results at all except a debit from their bank account.
The biggest issue with the organizations who send these emails, beyond the fact they can’t deliver on their promises in a profitable way, is they are all focused on what I call “a sliver of a sliver” of what it takes to be successful online. They are either solely focused on technical on-page SEO, building links through less than trusted sources, or cramming keywords into a page hoping they’ve cast their net far and wide enough to capture a few visitors each month.
Fortunately the search engine algorithms have matured enough to prevent, and ultimately penalize companies who feel they can shortcut the system and “cheat” their way to the top of the search engines. It’s my hope (and probably yours) that they will continue to advance and make it easier and more efficient for you to find the exact information you’re looking for, exactly when you need it! You may not share my sentiments if you’re actively using, or have used one of these organizations in the past. Nobody can hide from Google, and their penalties can be extremely harsh.
That’s why I say, “Inbound Marketing is the new SEO.”
To support my statement, here’s a breakdown of the most important elements of Inbound Marketing and how each are tied to SEO.
Know Your Buyer Personas
The foundational element of Inbound Marketing is getting to know your buyer personas intimately and serving them the way they want to be served. I’m sure you’d agree that when you’ve done business with someone who you can tell has taken the time to know and understand your needs, that you’ve found the idea of giving them your hard earned money extremely compelling.
It’s important to understand your buyer’s motivations, concerns, and why they may resist choosing your organization as a solution to their problems. It’s also critically important to understand the specific questions they are turning to the search engines to answer. If you know your personas well enough, you’ll have the ability to conduct keyword research (key element of SEO) and identify the exact way they’ll phrase their questions when completing a search.
Serve Your Buyer Personas
By utilizing all the intelligence you’ve gathered on your buyer personas, you have the ability to serve them by delivering value and helping solve their most pressing problems. The most effective way to do this is to blog consistently while speaking the same language they speak. That means no industry jargon or acronyms. It also means creating content with the intent of connecting with humans, not tricking the search engines into ranking you higher.
Blogging is one of the biggest areas where marketing professionals push back. Yes it can seem daunting when your marketing department is already stretched thin, but the bottom line is 93% of all buying decisions start with a visit to the search engines. The most effective way is to create compelling content utilizing the phrases your buyer personas are using while searching for an answer. It’s not only important to blog, but it’s even more critical that the content you’re creating is compelling.
You Must Promote
The most famous line in the movie Field of Dreams is, “Build it and they will come.” It doesn’t work that way with blogging, or anything online for that matter. Sure, creating compelling content that is crafted in such a way that your personas can find it in the search results is important, but the most critical element in ranking is the amount of external sites that link back to your content.
This is an area where some of the slimiest of slimy companies put their clients in a bad position by artificially building links from less than desirable sources. I won’t get into all the nitty gritty on why all links aren’t created equal, but I will tell you that the links that carry the most weight are found in highly credible sites as well as social media. Inbound Marketing is all about engaging and delivering content to the personas you’re looking to reach, in the place where they are.
SEO is so much more today
SEO is no longer (and never was) about a single pronged approach to ending up in the search results page. It’s far more holistic, and if you’d like to have a stronger presence than your competition that ultimately results in more lead, more sales and more profit…the quickest way to achieve this is to embrace and execute a well thought out Inbound Marketing strategy!
Your #1 ranking is waiting for you. By downloading our content calendar template, you can start planning your inbound content.
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