Effectively Use SEO in Marketing
The main goal of each company that exists is to be found by those looking for a solution to their problem that that company provides. Even if you put out the best messaging, quality ads and are set up for easy conversion, if your company can’t be easily and quickly found as a result of a query search, you are missing out on hot opportunities. This is how we define SEO (search engine optimization).
What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When a company employs SEO (search engine optimization), they are optimizing their site on both the back end and the front end so that their site is served up by popular search engines as a top result to a query. When you go to Google, type something in and hit enter – that’s a query. The query results are the top linked sites Google delivers to you as an answer you may be looking for.) When you optimize your site for SEO, the result is often times higher traffic to your website which in turn leads to higher conversion. Understanding the answer to “what is SEO” naturally leads many business leaders to inquire about SEO in Marketing.
What is SEO in Marketing?
SEO in Marketing often includes a SEO strategy as part of a balanced marketing mix. Many in SEO Marketing know that it’s just as important as branding, vision and strategy, advertising, and remarketing as well as a website optimized to convert is the SEO strategy. For small businesses getting started with SEO Marketing, we recommend the following best practices:
- Set up Google Analytics. Setting up Google Analytics will provide your company with invaluable insights into your ideal customer (geographically, interests, behavior patterns, website workflow etc). This is one of the first steps in your SEO strategy because you will use this information to optimize your website
- Set Up Google Search Console and Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console. Setting up your Google Search Console will allow you to inspect your website to see if there are any errors with your site and to ensure that your urls are indexable (being found by Google crawl bots) and not being blocked by robots. (Your sitemap can automatically be generated if you use certain plugins on your WordPress website. Your sitemap tells Google which urls (pages, posts, categories etc) you want it to believe are the most important and important details about those urls)
- Claim Google My Business Listing. Claiming your Google My Business Listing will allow you access to a fuller profile on Google where you can display social profiles (once awarded), Google Posts and Geo-tagged photos and any events / updates.
- Employ local schema on website. Schema is a code you put on your website that helps search engines better understand important information on your site in order to serve up the accurate information as rich results.
- Write Keyword list. Maximize your messaging by ensuring that the content you put on your site contains keywords and keyphrases that are the same as what your ideal customer would make a query search for.
- Ensure that your Website is running fast. Speed is one of the top indicators that Google uses to determine if your website is a good answer to a query result. The faster a page loads, the longer a user generally stays on a page. We recommend employing plugins that optimize speed and caching on your site.
- Ensure that you have a good site architecture for your site. Think of an outline for an essay but for your website and it’s url’s. We recommend setting up a global menu for pages that you want the most traffic for and ensuring the hierarchy is correct so that there are no orphan pages (pages that cant’ be found easily for another page).
- Use the appropriate tags, categories, etc on each page. Use your keyword list for top ranking pages to set up a focused key phrase. Make sure that key phrase appears in the title, url, meta, h1 and multiple places within the content of your page including your first paragraph.
- Ensure a Mobile Friendly Website. As people spend more and more time on their phones, we know that more conversions will happen on mobile devices. Ensure that your website is mobile friendly by having the text big enough to read, buttons spaced adequately apart and a theme that is responsive to all mobile devices so that the elements display correctly.
- Write a list of top seo rich blogs. We recommend releasing 1 blog a week that contains at least 500 words and uses multiple keywords from your list.
- Have a Backlink Strategy. Backlinks are when other websites link over to your website. They provide credibility and therefore are considered valuable when ranking your site. Ensure you have industry-specific and target-demographic-specific pages so that niche businesses can link over to your page.
- Run deadlink / orphan page report and mitigate errors. Nothing says uncredible to crawlerbots like urls that don’t function properly or pages that can’t easily be found. Ensure that your website is up to date with these.
Ensure that you are on online, industry-specific directories with all information up to date. Because search engines determine credibility through consistency, it is imperative to ensure that your name, address, phone number, and other relevant information are all up to date on appropriate directories.
SEO Services and SEO Companies in Iowa
When looking for SEO companies in Iowa, you need a SEO company that is able to provide you with SEO services that meet your goals and your budget. Many SEO companies offer SEO services in tiers or packages. For example, our SEO Marketing packages are in 3 tiers:
- Technical SEO Setup: We’ll help you jump start your business’ local search appearance through on page SEO. With the BANMAR SEO SET UP, we’ll help your business clean up technical errors, submit your clarified listing to Google and help your website’s appearance to stand out amongst your local competitors. Your business will have the proper framework for good SEO and be set up for regular monitoring.
- Basic SEO Monthly Subscription. Even the basic level of SEO should maintain your SEO health and continue to build upon your strong foundation. They should offer ongoing monitoring and technical SEO correction so that you can increase your brand’s visibility and traffic.
- Pro Monthly SEO Subscription. In addition to the offerings in the basic SEO subscription, the Pro subscription provides you with access to additional reporting, SEO campaign monitoring and improved website optimization.
- Elite Monthly SEO Subscription. Fully customized SEO strategy with monthly report detailing performance (keywords, traffic, page speed etc). In addition we fix broken links, troubleshoot Google Search Console Errors and Optimize performance for a leading reputation locally.
Beginning to rank is a long term strategy. After you begin to rank locally with Iowa SEO, you are then set up to rank nationally. Your SEO strategy should always include to rank locally first (Iowa SEO) and grow out from there.
Looking for SEO support from a SEO agency? Our full service Marketing agency can help you include SEO as part of your balanced marketing mix. Learn more here.
Looking for SEO support from a SEO agency? Our full service Marketing agency can help you include SEO as part of your balanced marketing mix. Learn more here.
