Business-to-business marketers have three certainties: death, taxes and the need to spend on search.
What about search engine optimization (SEO)?
You know, driving traffic to your site through organic results. You have to admit there is a totally awesome feeling when your company scores a page one ranking on a high value word or phrase.
The pursuit of sustained success in organic SEO is kind of a mission impossible. Cue the theme music…someone call Ethan Hunt.
That’s because Google is constantly tweaking its search algorithm. Tag your content with lots of relevant terms is good. Um…strike that. It is now bad and your site will get penalized for it. How about linking to lots of third party sites? That works, right? Not anymore.
Google claims its motivation is to deliver better results for its users. That is part of it. The business case though has to do with good old fashioned dollars and the need to hit its quarterly financial projections. For this reason Google encourages marketers like you to bid on AdWords…lots of them.
Regardless of what a SEO consultant might proclaim, there is simply no way for you to game Google for an extended stretch of time. This doesn’t mean you have to be beholden to the search kings of Mountain View.
Here are three approaches you can employ for your company to be more findable:
- Produce, publish and promote thought leadership content on a weekly basis. Google will reward you for content independently shared or cited by third parties.
- Go for page one success on less competitive words and phrases. Google “Microsoft brand positioning.” Guess who comes up number one via its Modern Marketing Today blog?
- Set aside a portion of your search budget for content sharing services like Outbrain or Taboola. They are pay-per-click just like AdWords and the resulting traffic tends to be more qualified.
Interested in reading more about best practices in search? Check out this article authored by Strategic Communications Group’s (Strategic) digital team for Modern Marketing Today.