The terms inbound marketing and SEO are not interchangeable; however, SEO is a significant part of inbound marketing. And the two strategies can work together to achieve common goals, which include attracting, engaging, and converting the target audience to generate leads. We have detailed some of the fundamental tactics you need to incorporate SEO into an inbound marketing strategy.
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Blogging
Blogging is one of the most critical parts of any website. Not only does blogging provide insights and keep your (potential) customers interested, it can also significantly boost your SEO proficiency. Having a regularly updated high-quality blog post and topics relevant to your audience can make a significant difference in how your site performs in the search engines.
However, if you want to make sure your blogs are improving your SEO effort, there are some practice you need to consider. For instance, you shouldn’t be all focused-on keywords, and you should think before you write. You should also prioritize your headings as this help your target have the idea of what they are going to read next. Besides, try to explore the questions your target has because these will let you know which phrases and keywords you should research. The other factors you could also consider include investing in good plug-ins, updating often, and having more comprehensive contents.
Who is your target audience?
There comes the time when you need to start paying more attention to the content being consumed by your target audience. Who is your target audience? There is no direct answer to this question, but there are ways you can narrow it down. To start, look for a clue from your current customers and analyze their similarities. Then, check out your competition to see who they are targeting – check their customer reviews, look at their followers on every social media platform, and read blog comments. With that information, try to figure out how you can niche down or branch out from this group.
Next, outline the benefits of your service or product and establish the type of people who might be interested in what you have. Do surveys and determine the prospects that are thinking about what you have. Finally, based on all the data you can collect, create audience characters. Each character should represent an ideal customer. So, every time you want to create content that speaks to your audience, refer to these characters.
Intent vs. keyword optimization
Though Google is still trying to figure out how to refine their understanding of their user intent, this has come a long way in a short period. SEO elements that were once domineering in the past don’t have the same influence that they once did. Now, user behavior is taking over Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs).
As a marketer, you must take a step back and focus on customer intent and personas rather than creating a content strategy around keywords alone. You can also use Google Analytics and Google Trends to discover search trends, site flow, and queries to better understand intent.
Analyzing data and trends
Analyzing data and trends are the keys to search engine optimization. For instance, monitoring your ranking on a search engine is important to getting great results. To set a baseline for your performance, start by tracking the essential website metrics. For example, you can make little content changes and see if it will boost your ranking or website traffic.
However, do not make many unrelated changes concurrently so that you can keep track of what was responsible for the increase in performance. For more advanced data analysis and trends, it may be helpful to consult with third-party SEO agencies like Joel House Search Media for more insight in interpreting data.
Own a website
Before you start sharing and publishing your content, you should have a place where you can establish your relevance, authority and where your content can stay. A content website like Medium and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook is shared space. Publishing content on these channels isn’t guaranteed. So, your main focus when publishing contents should be on your own website.
Social Media
Though both social media and SEO are inbound strategies, both of them also rely on high-quality content to increase their popularity. While most entrepreneur and marketers agree that social media has a massive impact on SEO success, several people leave out the precise details. The ways you can use your social media profiles to influence SEO efforts include expanding external links, growing followers, and getting local.
However, Google is still in its early stages of understanding searching social websites and social signals, but it is catching up quickly. While social media alone cannot put your website on the first page, sharing useful, optimized content on social media can’t hurt.
Build an effective SEO content strategy
An effective SEO content strategy will help you generate more profitable traffic. Plus, it will help you to convert traffic from content search into qualified leads. Conversely, you should keep in mind that SEO content strategy is not about keywords only. Building an effective SEO content strategy is about research. It is also about understanding your audience and having knowledge of the expertise in your industry. Furthermore, it is about integrating the new information into your content to make it more appealing to your target.
Conclusion
Apparently, SEO is an essential part of inbound marketing strategy, and it can also define it. We have discussed some of the important tactics involved in integrating SEO into your inbound marketing strategy. And by keeping in mind and utilizing the above tactics, you will be on your way to setting up a successful marketing campaign.