Why SEO Should Never Be Ignored as Part of a Growth Marketing Mix
Growth doesn’t happen on its own. However, neither is paid marketing always the answer when it comes to growth. It is often tempting to push SEO to the side in favor of the fertilizer(s) that is Search Engine Marketing and other paid marketing tactics. However, there are a number of benefits of SEO being a foundational part of a growth marketing mix, especially when paired with a contextually appropriate paid marketing channel. We will go into that as well in this article. However, our fundamental premise here is that growth marketing works best when SEO is at the forefront of growth marketing fundamentals. THis is what will explore here in this article.
What Is Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing is the process of using data to maximize your marketing strategies to drive, well, growth. We go into more detail on growth marketing in other articles, but what you really need to know is this: Growth marketing involves all the usual traditional and digital marketing tactics but uses them in a highly scalable way to get results fast.
The truth is SEO is foundational in every single approach. The web has never been more competitive than it is today. Old advantages and keyword-stuffing tactics are clearly things of the past. The best content wins, SEO matters.
It is extremely shocking how many business owners push SEO or organic search to the side and focus on the immediate or more predictable path of paid search or paid social. Not to bash any other channels, they all have their place and they have a way of working together but SEO should be foundational.
If there is a sudden shift in the market (ex; a pandemic, right?) and people are spending less when it comes to ad responsiveness, with SEO you can still seek out those people who are still actively searching for your product or service. At the end of the day, discoverability is the name of the game. SEO helps by interacting with your potential buyers by meeting them where they are in the journey. Organic search allows your business to capture new users of your offering who may not have ad-associated interests and have prequalified intent.
The Role of SEO in Growth Marketing
Put simply, the role of SEO in growth marketing is to create growth. Obvious, right? But the not-so-obvious idea with many business owners or operators as mentioned earlier is that SEO does in fact drive growth.
Since growth marketing involves tapping into any and all marketing tactics, it makes sense that SEO also has its part to play: to create growth and to support growth. Let’s break that down.
Why SEO should be considered an essential part of your growth marketing tactical mix
SEO is and has always been a growth channel. Though SEO is a bit of a slow cooker compared to the Instant Pot which growth marketing is often looked at, both have always had one goal: more sales and more revenue. More eyeballs on the product, more customers, more retention. SEO just happens to do it through the systematic and strategic creation of content that works to put your brand at the top of the SERPs.
But done well, that low-and-slow cook does boost traffic, increase leads and conversions, and create relationships between brands and customers that drive retention (in a way that SEM and other forms of PPC do not). If your SEO isn’t creating growth, it might be time for an SEO consultation.
The SEO strategies/tactics that create the most growth include the following:
Keyword research and mapping
Strategic content creation
Optimizing existing content and web pages
SEO as Part of Growth Marketing Fundamentals
So much abput SEO is about creating world-class user experiences — experiences that make it easy to find and use your website. For this reason, the second role of SEO in growth is to support your work in other channels.
Even the most well-conceived campaigns will fall flat if your website is a mess. But if you have an effective SEO strategy, it’s likely that your website is clear and has a cohesive user journey that’ll make it easy for prospective customers to go from click to convert. Experiences like these are non-negotiable parts of good SEO, which is why SEO is so foundational to growth marketing.
In our experience, the SEO tactics that best support growth are the following:
Technical SEO
On-page SEO
User experience optimization
The Role of SEO in Growth Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should definitely be part of solid growth marketing fundamentals that every business should pursue. The role of SEO in growth marketing is primarily to increase organic traffic and subsequent leads generated from that traffic. Pretty simple in theory but this is executed across a wide range of SEO tactics. Here are a few:
Keyword Research & Content Production
On-Page Optimizations of Legacy Content
Conversion Rate Optimization
Technical Issue Resolution
Competitive Analysis & Targeting
Authority Funneling
Crawl Restrictions
If you’re starting from scratch and need to build up your audience, and get sign-ups, or subscribers it can be easy to pull the paid search/social lever to get predictable ROI. The truth is, you can get some of the same predictability with SEO. A solid content plan that lays out the associated traffic can be used as a way to set benchmarks for overall growth.
Understandably, businesses need to see that return on investment — especially early in their development. Even if you can’t dedicate a lot of resources to it, try to get a baseline organic presence so it can naturally build over time. This will give you a solid foundation to stand on once more resources can be allocated to that side of marketing.
How is SEO Part of an Overall Growth Marketing Funnel
Investing in SEO can look a lot of different ways. In any configuration, your focus should be on building a content marketing foundation or growing an existing plan. Build your content marketing foundation or grow an existing plan.
Ranking #1 for a keyword is like having free ad space. If you’re sitting at the very top of search results you’re essentially investing in content once, and as long as you maintain and optimize for new competition, that’s continued ROI.
As you rank for additional keywords, that associated traffic can be given a dollar amount that it would take to replace that organic traffic with ads or paid channels giving your overall investment a chance to double, triple, or quadruple?!?!
How To Build an SEO Foundation as Part of a Growth Marketing Strategy
A strong SEO strategy is the best practice when it comes to startups. When launching a new site, or preparing to pursue content for the first time, it’s going to take some time for your first set of rankings to come through. After your site generates some authority, rankings will become easier and quicker over time if executed properly.
How to Use SEO in Order to Create a Strong Growth Marketing Framework
1. Removal of Technical Barriers
An SEO foundation starts with a clean website with all major technical issues identified and resolved. An upfront SEO audit is always a good thing but if you want to remain competitive and proactive instead of reactive, you should have someone dedicated on a weekly basis to oversee looking at all organic signals:
Auditing Sources
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Speed Monitoring
Ranking Monitoring
Proactive metadata optimizations
Optimizing your website for search engines involves a range of tactics that are designed to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site, and to improve your website's relevance and authority in the eyes of search engines.
Some of the key elements of website optimization include optimizing your website's technical structure, such as ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly, has fast loading times, and has a clear hierarchy of pages and content. It also involves optimizing your website's on-page elements, such as your website's title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and images, to make sure that they include relevant keywords and provide context to search engines.
Another key aspect of website optimization is link building, which involves building high-quality, relevant links from other websites to your own. This can help to establish your website's authority and credibility, and can ultimately help to improve your search engine rankings.
By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your website's visibility in search results and attract more traffic to your site. However, it's important to keep in mind that optimization is an ongoing process, and that search engine algorithms are constantly evolving. As such, it's important to stay up to date with the latest best practices and to continue monitoring and adjusting your website's optimization efforts over time.
2. Proper Tagging & Analytics Tracking
In addition to a clean technical slate, all tagging and analytics should be in place to properly track improvements, declines, and shifts in organic signals. Pursuing SEO without proper tracking is going to prevent a team from gaining insights as to tests that they should or could run, and how users/search engines are interacting with your site.
Measuring the success of your SEO efforts is essential for understanding how your website is performing in search engine results and identifying areas for improvement. Analytics tools are a key component in tracking the success of your SEO efforts, as they provide insights into how users are interacting with your website and the impact that your SEO strategies are having on your traffic and conversion rates.
Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, can help you track a range of metrics related to your website's performance, such as your website's traffic, bounce rate, time on site, and conversion rates. By monitoring these metrics over time, you can identify trends and patterns in how users are interacting with your website, and adjust your SEO strategies accordingly.
In addition to tracking website performance metrics, analytics tools can also help you track the success of your keyword and content strategies. For example, you can track which keywords are driving the most traffic to your website, which pieces of content are generating the most engagement, and which pages are converting the most visitors into customers.
By regularly monitoring your website's performance using analytics tools, you can identify areas for improvement in your SEO and growth marketing strategies, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your website for success. However, it's important to keep in mind that analytics tools are only one piece of the puzzle and that it's important to combine data with human insights and intuition to create a holistic and effective SEO and growth marketing strategy.
3. Pillar Page Content Strategy
Execution strategies differ from company to company but ideally, all content marketing assets should have an associated template, naming convention, folder structure, review process, etc. Keep this organized as this is often the first thing to fall out of regulation.
Creating high-quality, engaging content is a crucial component of any successful SEO and growth marketing strategy. Essentially, it involves creating content that provides value to your audience, is well-written and informative, and speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience.
When creating content, it's important to consider what type of content is most likely to resonate with your audience. This might involve conducting research to understand your audience's interests and pain points or reviewing your website analytics to identify which types of content have performed well in the past.
In addition to creating content that is tailored to your audience, it's also important to optimize your content for search engines. This involves incorporating targeted keywords and phrases into your content, as well as optimizing your content's title tags, meta descriptions, and other on-page elements.
Keyword research is a crucial part of any successful SEO strategy. Essentially, it involves identifying the keywords and phrases that people are searching for in relation to your business or industry, and then incorporating those keywords into your website and content to make it more visible to search engines.
To conduct keyword research, you'll typically use specialized tools that allow you to identify which keywords are being searched for the most frequently, as well as related keywords that might also be relevant to your business. You can then use this information to create a content strategy that targets these keywords and to optimize your existing content to include them.
By incorporating targeted keywords into your content, you can improve your website's visibility in search results and attract more traffic to your site. However, it's important to strike a balance between optimizing your content for search engines and creating content that is engaging and valuable for your audience.
Ultimately, the goal of conducting keyword research is to create content that not only ranks well in search results but also resonates with your target audience and helps to drive growth for your business.
By creating high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your audience, you can attract more traffic to your website, establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, and ultimately drive growth for your business. However, it's important to remember that creating quality content is an ongoing process and that it requires a commitment to consistently creating and publishing content that is valuable and relevant to your audience.
4. Brief Creation
An SEO brief is critical to inform the writer of important SEO signals that should be placed throughout the content. There are elements that can be strategically determined through the brief creation process that can give businesses an edge in generating the traffic that is needed to attract potential customers needed to generate growth.
5. SEO Review
Right before we hit the publish button, an SEO-inclined eye should give it the final sign-off so content can be officially launched. This is just to ensure that the best possible early results/signals can be given off so that they can be adjusted if needed or left alone.
6. Monitor, Rise, Repeat
If the upfront research and content planning are sound, you should start to see traffic benefits from your efforts. Ranking takes time and can differ depending on the saturation or competition of the area, and this can differ not only depending on the particular topic but from keyword to keyword within the same topic.
Executing SEO as part of a Growth Marketing Tactical Mix
The pillar and cluster model highlighted above, time and time again, has proven true, in large part because it provides for super-targeted and specific efforts.
The execution of the content in this way builds authority in the area you’re trying to grow due to the bi-directional linking between pillar and cluster topics. As your content naturally accumulates more authority and elevates in rankings, it will acquire backlinks. These backlinks are a signal to Google indicating others are referencing your work when conducting their own research.
As these backlinks accrue, your overall site domain will start to elevate. This can have a lot of implications for your overall organic presence and can assist in ranking for more difficult keywords and the speed at which you rank.
Your overall ranking allows you to not only educate your potential customers, but it provides them a path directly back to your services, via topic clusters that derive from pillar pages. Along their journey, they get more and more familiar with your brand and some even trust you before they get on the phone with you. Your customers usually don’t need to be educated while they’re on the phone, they can do all this research from their phone. Why not answer their searches?
Backlinks & Social Proof
Building backlinks and social proof is important to any successful SEO and growth marketing strategy. Essentially, it involves establishing your website's authority and credibility by getting other reputable websites to link back to your content, and by building social proof through reviews, testimonials, and other forms of user-generated content.
Backlinks are essentially a vote of confidence from other websites that your content is valuable and informative. The more high-quality backlinks your website has, the more likely it is to appear higher in search engine results, as search engines view backlinks as a signal that your website is credible and authoritative. A well-executed backlink strategy can involve creating high-quality content that naturally attracts links, reaching out to other website owners to request backlinks, or even guest posting on relevant websites to build relationships and earn backlinks.
Similarly, social proof is an important factor in building trust with your audience and establishing your website as a thought leader in your industry. By encouraging reviews, testimonials, and other forms of user-generated content, you can demonstrate to your audience that your brand is trustworthy and reputable.
To build backlinks and social proof, it's important to focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that is valuable to your audience. This will make it more likely that other websites will want to link back to your content, and that your audience will want to share and engage with your content.
By building backlinks and social proof, you can improve your website's search engine rankings, attract more traffic to your site, and ultimately drive growth for your business. However, it's important to keep in mind that building backlinks and social proof is an ongoing process and that it requires a commitment to consistently creating high-quality content and building relationships with other websites and your audience.
Leveraging local SEO to attract customers in your area
Leveraging local SEO is an important strategy for businesses that want to attract customers to their area. Local SEO involves optimizing your website and online presence to show up in search engine results for location-based queries, such as "coffee shops near me" or "best restaurants in [city]".
To leverage local SEO, it's important to create location-specific content and ensure that your website and online profiles are optimized with local keywords and phrases. This might involve creating dedicated location pages on your website, including your business address and contact information on your website and social media profiles, and claiming your business on online directories such as Google My Business.
By optimizing your website and online presence for local SEO, you can increase your visibility in local search results, making it more likely that potential customers in your area will find your business when they search for relevant keywords and phrases.
In addition to optimizing your website and online presence, it's also important to create a positive reputation within your local community. This might involve encouraging local reviews and testimonials, sponsoring local events or organizations, or partnering with other local businesses to cross-promote each other's services.
By leveraging local SEO and building a positive reputation in your community, you can attract more customers in your area and drive growth for your business. However, it's important to keep in mind that local SEO is an ongoing process that requires a commitment to creating high-quality, location-specific content, building relationships with other businesses and your local community, and regularly monitoring and adjusting your strategies based on performance metrics.
Incorporating SEO into your social media marketing strategy
Incorporating SEO into your social media marketing strategy is an important way to increase your visibility and drive traffic to your website. While social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not search engines, they do have search functionality, which means that optimizing your social media profiles and content can help you show up in search results and improve your reach.
To incorporate SEO into your social media marketing strategy, it's important to optimize your social media profiles with relevant keywords and phrases. This might involve including target keywords in your profile bio, as well as in your profile name, URL, and individual posts. Additionally, using relevant hashtags and location tags can help increase the visibility of your content in social media searches.
Creating high-quality, engaging social media content that incorporates target keywords and phrases is also essential for SEO. By creating content that resonates with your audience and includes relevant keywords, you will increase engagement, drive traffic to your website, and improve your social media and search engine rankings.
Another way to incorporate SEO into your social media marketing strategy is by using social media to build backlinks to your website. By sharing links to your website on your social media profiles and in your social media content, you can drive traffic to your website and improve your website's search engine rankings.
Overall, incorporating SEO into your social media marketing strategy is an important way to increase your visibility, reach new audiences, and drive growth for your business. However, it's important to keep in mind that social media and SEO are both constantly evolving, and it's important to monitor and adjust your strategies on a regular basis.
Content Marketing Geared Towards Your Customers
The whole point of keyword research is to identify the questions or ideas your customers are wondering about. Produce content to target those searches and provide a way for them to enter and progress through the funnel. At a very high level this is what this would look like end to end:
It boils down to meeting your customer where they want to be met. You create very little friction during this process because they are already seeking out the information in hundreds if not thousands of searches every month and other content is competing for those customers.
By implementing a comprehensive SEO content strategy, there is little doubt that the quality of traffic and leads will be exponentially higher from organic signals than from paid signals. Yes, paid is still needed due to the immediacy of those looking for what it is they are searching for, but the interactions from organic are just that. By putting automated nurturing in place and allowing contacts to segment themselves, you can be more targeted, communicate with real potential customers, and save money, time, and effort.
Implementing an SEO Structure as Part of a Growth Marketing Playbook
Developing a long-term SEO strategy that aligns with your growth marketing goals is crucial for businesses that want to achieve sustained growth and success in the online marketplace. A long-term SEO strategy involves setting clear, measurable goals and developing a comprehensive plan for achieving those goals over time.
To develop a long-term SEO strategy that aligns with your growth marketing goals, it's important to start by identifying your business's unique strengths and value proposition, as well as your target audience and the key search terms and phrases that they are using to find products or services like yours. By conducting thorough research and analysis, you can develop a clear understanding of the competitive landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation and growth.
Once you have a clear understanding of your strengths, target audience, and competitive landscape, you can begin to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes both on-page and off-page optimization tactics. This might include developing high-quality, engaging content that incorporates target keywords and phrases, optimizing your website for search engines, building backlinks and social proof, and leveraging local SEO to attract customers in your area.
It's important to keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process that requires ongoing monitoring, measurement, and adjustment based on performance metrics and changes in search engine algorithms and industry trends. By regularly reviewing and updating your SEO strategy and tactics, you can ensure that you are staying ahead of the curve and positioning your business for sustained growth and success.
Overall, developing a long-term SEO strategy that aligns with your growth marketing goals is a complex and ongoing process that requires careful planning, analysis, and execution. If you’re looking for a foundation or need to right the ship, implementing a foundational SEO strategy could, and in fact, should be your north star. Using the above guide, we have no doubt that you can build the foundation for a comprehensive and successful content marketing strategy with excellent SEO ramifications.
However, if you are looking for outside growth marketing expertise to help you get started and create an SEO strategy that is aligned with a growth marketing-focused approach, why not schedule a free, no-obligation, growth marketing consultation with us today? Our growth marketing specialists forward to speaking with you and learning more.