SEO as a critical and cross-cutting inbound marketing strategy

Written by Fernando Maciá

As an online marketing strategy, SEO today goes far beyond positioning objectives for certain keywords and the application of titles and goals to achieve those objectives. It is a cross-cutting strategy that interrelates with the rest of the customer acquisition, conversion and loyalty strategies. Therefore, more than as a specific action to optimize a Web site, SEO should be thought of as an attitude that should permeate the work of the different teams and professional profiles related to improving the performance of the site. From those who design the information architecture to those who analyze traffic data, from content marketing to improving conversion.

(Note: this post is the transcription of the presentation SEO as a critical and transversal activity of Inbound Marketing that I presented during the Innova Bilbao 2016 congress).

Inbound marketing: the trendy concept

Inbound marketing
is the new buzzword in digital marketing. Those who defend it argue that it is a marketing “.aligned with the user’s interests and that gains their attention without interrupting themas opposed to the one they label as “…”.interruption marketing“In other words, everything that companies do to impose their message on their potential customers and that is perceived by them as an intrusion in their flow of activity.

Regardless of whether we agree more or less with these epistemological debates, the fact is that access to the Internet exposes any user to an exponentially growing volume of information that is increasingly difficult to digest. This is what has come to be known as “
infoxication
“i.e., intoxication due to information overload.

And within all this volume of information that we have to discriminate and filter on a daily basis -what we are interested in and what we are not- advertising is presented to us as another type of communication that is increasingly intertwined and intertwined with the genuine content that really matters to us.

In just 60 seconds, an Internet user is exposed to more than 3,000 advertising impacts. And in this information-saturated environment, many companies struggle to gain notoriety through strategies that bring little or nothing to their potential customers.

For example, so-called“content curation” is turning the Web into an echo chamber where a few pieces of original content are republished over and over again generating multiple impacts on all types of social media. To achieve visibility, they resort to black hat SEO strategies, to increase the frequency and size of banners and to
banners
to the purchase of followers to pretend to have a social influence greater than the real one…

In the latest study
Surfers on the Net 2016
According to the AIMC survey, participating users stated that they were more annoyed by advertising on the Internet than in other media (38.5%); a majority (80%) said they had little or no agreement that advertising on the Internet is more interesting than in other media – despite the increasingly attractive multiple formats and growing reliability in user targeting – and a similar percentage stated that they pay very little attention to online advertising, despite recognizing that it is necessary for the Internet to develop. Sixty percent cite advertising as the main problem in the use of the Internet and it is precisely the advertising pressure that promotes some users to stop using media such as Facebook and switch to other ad-free platforms such as Whatsapp.
It is clear:

“When advertising comes in the door, users escape out the window.”

Within this saturated environment, SEO as an online marketing strategy has always been aligned with the user’s interests. In SEO, we always start from a first action of the user who, with his search, indicates an interest in finding a content, a product, a company, a professional, a brand…

SEO is never intrusive: it always tries to offer the best response to the user so that he can satisfy the need that motivated his search. So goes an old saying in SEO:

“When your customer is the one looking for you, selling is easier.”

SEO:

• It is an inbound strategy par excellence
• Never interrupts, always starts from the user’s initiative and interest.
• We only wait for the customer where he looks for us (in the SERPs).
• We start with the analysis of who the customer is and how he/she will look for us.

That is why SEO, understood today as the way to optimize our visibility to our potential customers, presents multiple points of connection with the rest of digital marketing strategies. Let’s see.

SEO is information about the customer

In SEO, we basically start by studying our demand and adapting our online offer. Who are our customers, what are their needs, how would they search for us on the Internet?

In order to properly optimize a Web site, we must start with a thorough analysis of the
conversion funnel
and the user’s entire purchase decision process. SEO provides valuable information that allows us to understand how a buyer of a GoPro camera, for example, arrived at that purchase decision. Maybe it all started after watching a YouTube video of some action scene, or reading a comment on a forum. For almost any act of purchase, there is an initial“moment of inspiration” whereby the user begins to become aware of a need.

From that moment on, the future customer will search the Internet for sources that will allow him to shape his purchase decision. You will look for documentation, analysis, comparisons, user opinions, etc. and little by little you will mature your decision until you get closer to the moment of conversion.

The sources that a user consults will vary depending on the type of product or service, the cost and risk involved in the final choice, the user’s own psychology…

To help us understand the process, there are three key questions we can ask ourselves:

• What motivates the user’s purchase decision?
• What is holding back that purchase decision? What are your concerns?
• What does the user need to know in order to make a purchase decision?

If we answer these three questions, we will be in a much better position to understand the user’s need, the sales arguments that we should use to connect with their buying motivations, the information we should include to counteract their potential objections as well as the additional content that can put them in contact in the different micro-moments that make up the entire conversion funnel.

When working in SEO, we must:

• Analyze our target to identify what our users like and/or care about.
• Use sales arguments that connect with their buying motivations.
• Prepare counter-objections to anticipate their potential objections.
• Identify what they need to know for their purchase decision: anticipatory, related, informational searches…
• Generate resonant content and try to viralize it in social networks.

SEO as a fundamental basis for information architecture

In any SEO work, a basic step is to make an analysis of the most popular search patterns for an industry. We analyze, for example, how people search for hotels, travel, flights, toys or shoes. This tells us which are the main features that users use in their searches. For example, when looking for hotels, it is essential to know where the hotel is located.

A simple analysis with Google Keyword Planner of the term “flowers” for example, indicates that “flowers at home” or “online florist” would be the most popular terms at a generic level. The main product groupings would be determined by the pattern “bouquets from [tipo de flor]”. That is, “bouquets of roses” or “bouquets of tulips”, as well as by arrangement types: “flower arrangements”, “flower centers”, “wreaths”, etc.

By using similar product categories in the information architecture of your Web site to those used by potential customers in their searches, you increase the chances that the resulting pages will be better adapted and positioned for those searches.

SEO is interrelated with Information Architecture:

• Search patterns indicate the product features that users search for most often
• This helps us to establish families that fit these patterns.
• This similarity favors positioning in popular searches.
• From the search potential, we will have a share(CTR) influenced by our positions.

SEO and content marketing: what content to generate and how to generate it

Throughout the customer’s purchase decision process, what is now called the“customer journey“, different queries will normally be concatenated to respond to the different motivations, objections and information needs that the user feels he/she must consider before making a purchase decision.

Depending on whether it is a reflexive or impulsive purchase, the number of queries and the time and effort that the user will dedicate to this process will be more or less prolonged, more or less exhaustive.

By anticipating all of these inquiries, we are identifying multiple opportunities to make ourselves visible to the customer throughout their purchase decision process. This is very important because it would allow us to get in touch with the customer in much less competitive searches and then accompany him in his purchase decision process, responding to his motivations and concerns, until he is ready to buy.

Likewise, knowing their information needs allows us to design a content marketing strategy that can go beyond a simple blog: glossaries, user forums, tutorials, user guides, testimonials, success stories… there are many formats and types of content that can respond to each scenario. If we analyze user behavior well, we will know in each circumstance what is the best content and the best format.

To make their purchase decision, users try to:

Document your purchase decision:

• Technical characteristics
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Comparisons
• Approvals, compliance with standards
• Demonstrations
• Information, data…

Justify your purchase decision:

• Opinions of opinion leaders recommending such a decision
• Favorable comparisons (your decision)
• Testimonials
• Favorable opinions from other users or customers
• Studies and analyses favorable to your choice

Confirm your purchase decision:

• Reaffirmation of the election in social networks
• Confirmation in user forums
• Discover critical content with other options

Share your purchase decision on:

• Specialized forums
• Social networks
• Web 2.0 (comments, votes, ratings, user reviews)
• Testimonials
• Recommending and guiding other users

SEO is competitive intelligence

SEO interacts and provides very valuable information also in the analysis of the competition. With tools such as Sistrix or SEMRush we can analyze in which searches my competitors rank and with what content. I can analyze these searches by potential (how many people use each of these searches monthly on Google) traffic and, in addition, I see what has been the content strategy used to achieve these positions. Were you positioned with a product family page, with a post, with a user guide, with a help page, with a video…?

By analyzing the customer’s buying motivations, possible objections and concerns, as well as the type of information they will need to make their purchase decision, we can attack the positioning of the competition not only with pages oriented to position themselves well, but also with content oriented to accompany the user in their purchase decision process up to the conversion pages.

This additional content is also much more likely to be viralized and shared on social networks.

Competitor positioning, then:

• Helps us to identify our competitors’ content and popularity strategies
• Tells us what traffic they may be getting
• Helps us identify interesting searches that we might not have considered
• It allows us to counter-attack with more and better content.

SEO helps me to better manage my content to adapt to seasonal patterns of demand

In SEO, one of the most interesting analyses is that of seasonal search patterns that we can extract from Google Trends. With this Google functionality, it is easy to identify at what times of the year there is a higher demand for certain product families compared to others. For example, if we compare searches for the appellation of origin “albariño wine” with searches for “champagne” we see that albariño is a type of wine that is searched for mainly in summer, while champagne is a search that registers its maximums coinciding with the Christmas season. These are, what we call, seasonal searches:

By determining when demand for a certain product will increase, we can anticipate by placing it as a featured offer on the home page, generating additional content on the blog, activating PPC campaigns, etc. that are in tune with that demand trend. Given that not all the content of a Web site is positioned equally, we can determine at any given moment which content we should concentrate our positioning efforts on: improving on-page relevance, including highlighted links in the menu, placing a product offer in the home page, generating related content, obtaining new external links to that product family, etc.

Seasonal patterns:

• Indicate when a product family or a specific product should be highlighted in the home page.
• Allows you to focus on greater popularity with an internal interlinking strategy…
• Favoring it with a privileged situation in the IA

SEO tells us what our readers are interested in in an online media website.

In media SEO – such as that applied to online magazines or newspapers – SEO can help us identify topics of interest to users, as well as popular search patterns. We can take these suggestions into account when approaching certain articles as well as when writing headlines. In this way, we will achieve content that responds to readers’ interests and searches and that is similar to their usual search patterns:

To research what readers are interested in, we can use Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends and even Google Suggest as in the screenshot above.

In online media, SEO:

• Tells me what topics users are interested in
• Indicates when interest in a news item spikes
• It gives us clues about how readers search for each piece of content, which helps us write better headlines.

SEO or social networks: better when they work in synergy

Although we tend to refer to SEO and social media as two means of acquiring qualified traffic for a Web site, there’s actually a lot to be gained by SEO and social networks are aligned and we can maximizing synergies potential they offer us when planned in a coordinated manner. For example, it is difficult to link to product pages or product listing pages. On the other hand, tutorials, user guides, testimonials, success stories or documented answers to frequently asked questions are usually disseminated on social networks without any problems.

If we properly answer the three questions we posed earlier – what motivates, what concerns and what information our potential customer needs to make a purchase decision – we will know what kind of content can resonate with our community. We will plan a calendar of topics that we will develop and, with each new publication, we will use our social networks to disseminate the new content.

In addition, we can expect that part of these social media mentions will have an effect on the CTR of the results, or influence the personalized search results for our community, which could eventually have an effect on the ranking for anonymous searches as well.

To achieve the best results between SEO and social networks:

• We should concentrate on generating social profiles that are becoming more and more senior.
• We should build social profiles that acquire thematic authority: coherence, persistence, influence, engagement…
• We should promote communities involved and interested in our product, service, brand…

SEO and AdWords as complementary inbound strategies

On new sites, it is difficult for an SEO strategy to get organic traffic off the ground quickly. Unless you are a media website, generating new, relevant and original content on a daily basis, it will usually take a few months before the volume of natural traffic starts to become significant. This is why it is common to invest in pay-per-click advertising programs to attract traffic quickly. However, there is much more we can do with an Ads campaign to improve organic positioning as well.

For example, with Google Ads we do have access to the searches that generated traffic to the Web site, and we can even compare the quality of the traffic generated by each type of search, each type of ad or landing page. If we structure our campaign in such a way that there are groups of ads targeting different products, or presenting different sales arguments, we can, in a very short time, know which ads and landing pages generate the best conversion.

We will also be able to see which sales arguments the demand is more sensitive to: offers, free shipping costs… and with this we will be able to try to fine-tune our SEO strategy.

Coordinating an SEO and Google Ads strategy makes it easier for us:

• Identify the best keywords and landings pages that generate more conversions
• Obtain user behavior data in a very short time, to refine positioning or conversion.
• To know the real traffic potential for each search
• Identify the most profitable searches
• Include new terms not initially contemplated in the SEO strategy.
• Identify purchase motivations and associate to specific searches and landing pages

To take advantage of all the synergies between SEO and Google Ads it is advisable:

• Structuring campaigns around purchase motivations by highlighting competitive advantages
• Link ads to landing pages with powerful CTAs
• Better analyze KWs to focus on SEO positioning
• Which searches generated the best results? (lower CPC with higher CTR)
• Which ad has worked best? (higher CTR even if it has some CPC)
• Which landing page generated the best conversion?
• Can I transfer the strategy to SEO? (lowest CPA)

We could go on and on including points of connection between SEO and other online marketing tactics. For example, with data analysis, with usability, conversion… Since SEO is essentially demand analysis and adaptation to customer needs, virtually anything we can do to better position a piece of content will be naturally aligned with a greater customer focus.

This is why SEO should be considered not as a one-time activity of optimizing a Web site but as a process of analysis and continuous improvement that should be shared among all the work groups related to a Web site.

Because, in short:

SEO is too important to be left to SEOs. 😉