Top Tips for SEO in 2019

SEO is of course still the most cost-effective channel for delivering direct B2C sales, but it also has strategic impact beyond this. Here Kevin Lee reminds us that there are 5 ways SEO is strategic in 2017: Branding Impact SEO and public relations aren’t the same thing, but they share the same goal: to increase the general visibility and favorable public impression (which is why so many SEO agencies have added “PR” to their service offerings, while PR agencies have added “SEO” to theirs). Increasing awareness is a high-level strategic marketing goal. Today, online reputation management always includes a tangible SEO component. As such it represents a key component of any influence-building campaign. Market Share Defence Organic listings in the SERPs don’t only increase your traffic and revenue, they take revenue from the competition. In B2B, where customer lifetime value is high, investing in high-quality content optimised for search should be a strategic goal. Any time an acquisition opportunity in search (paid or organic) is missed, chances are that opportunity is going to the competition. SEO, in other words, is a strategic asset — with offensive and defensive value — in the battle for market share. Lowering Digital Media Costs In many verticals paid search costs can reach £10 a click. (In the legal field, paid clicks can exceed £100.) Favourable organic positions materially reduce these costs, freeing up ad spend which can be deployed against segments that would otherwise be unaffordable. That’s an important, material and strategic impact of SEO that’s often missed. New Product/Service Development Search (both paid and organic) is a real-time, massively scaled focus group in which one can (with enough data) perform an accurate predictive analysis of what customers are looking for — and, in some cases, invent products for which there’s search demand (but no product yet). There’s huge potential upside in this kind of “virtual focus group” research, which in some cases has the potential to be more valuable to the organisation than old-style qualitative consumer research studies. More efficient (non-search) media campaigns Searchers often are compelled to begin query sessions because of exposure to some other marketing touch point (for example, a mention in a news story, in a TV drama, a remark of a friend or other offline event). Search traffic can therefore be used as a barometer of other media’s effectiveness. Search behavior can also reveal patterns in one’s...