WHAT DO SEO AND INBOUND HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

I’m sure you’ve heard of SEO and might have even tried to optimize it on your website, or a blog post, at some point. Probably the first definition that comes to your mind is the generic “Search Engine Optimization”, adding words or phrases to the back of your site to help Google and other search engines know to call it up when someone types words related to your business.

However, SEO can be so much more than that, and it ties right in to the Inbound Methodology of putting your customers first. By focusing on what a potential customer is thinking or needing, and understanding how they will look for answers to their questions, you can drive traffic to your site and make SEO have maximum impact.

Understand Your Search Engine

As with all Inbound methodology, the first thing you should be doing is building SEO that is user-oriented and will bring customers to your brand, rather than waving your company in their face and hoping that they magically like your product. SEO is the bridge that runs between your website and the rest of the Internet. It tells customers you exist and gives them the opportunity to stumble upon your products or services.

Search engines are much smarter now than they used to be. A user can type in “why is my dishwasher not working”, the way they would naturally ask a question, and get relevant results or blog posts detailing out possible solutions. Before, the search engine would have picked out every word literally, making users have to type strings of words without context, like “troubleshoot dishwasher problems” in order to find what they need. This also limited the number of options on the SEO side, and also led to keyword stuffing and other issues that cluttered up websites and made them less user-friendly. Now, search engines look past the literal wording and understand the intent of what the user is looking for.

Remember Your Buyer Personas

Which brings us to our buyer personas! This foundational piece of Inbound Marketing is important to optimizing your SEO.  You need to be thinking about what it is that your potential customers will be typing when they are searching for something related to your product, or have an issue that you could help with. Think in terms of their language, and keep phrases stated as simply as possible. You don’t want huge, dictionary-length words that someone would be very unlikely to use in normal speech.

Do your research. Go do some fishing in Google yourself! Type in keywords that you think potential customers would be likely to use, and see what other phrases or side topics come up. Go for long-tail keywords, phrases that are more specific to what you sell, rather than broad topics that everyone is fighting to use. For example, instead of using the words “plant fertilizer”, try “organic fertilizer for succulents and cacti”. It is easier to rank for specific keywords because there will be fewer businesses trying to use them.

Next Steps

Don’t stop there! Good SEO is more than just keywords. Here are some of the other areas that you can use to maximize potential.

  • Have strong links to outside resources. This fits into the Inbound Methodology of creating relationships in order to build and satisfy your customer base, and gives you connections in your industry. This will help boost your ranking in search engines and show that you are a valuable resource for your customers.
  • Distribute your keywords naturally throughout the titles and phrases of your site pages. Make your site readable and informative. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past!
  • Optimize your site for mobile viewing (as we discussed in a previous post). Making your site mobile-friendly is one of the top things you can do to give customer satisfaction and make Google happy!

CONCLUSION:

The last thing to do is always analyze! Always go back and check out the impact of what you’ve done, tweaking or totally changing things if you need to in order to get the best results. Good SEO should hit every part of the Inbound cycle: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. Choosing the keywords that people will enter when searching for information will attract them to your business, having good SEO on blog posts will show them why your business is a resource for them, and creating a user-friendly experience for customers browsing your website will help entice them to want to work with your company! SEO is a great way to use Inbound Marketing to bring your customers to you, and form life-long relationships!