Where Does SEO Fit in the Small Business Marketing Stack?
SEO. You keep hearing about it, right?
Is it still important? Does it even work anymore? Should we use it? How do we use it properly?
We’ll answer these questions in this article.
SEO Lives in One Part of Your Marketing Stack…But Influences the Others
Short version: Yes, yes, yes, and it depends on your overall marketing stack.
We know that’s not sufficient, so let’s go through SEO’s value in greater detail. First, we’ll group the marketing stack into three parts:
- On-Site (content marketing, blogging)
- Advertising (digital ads, podcasts, video)
- Relationships (social, email)
SEO is part of the On-Site group…though it influences the other two as well. In fact, SEO interconnects with all elements in the marketing stack of today.
How? By giving you terms you can use in all marketing elements, across all channels.
Why? This shapes your conversations to the readers’ interest. Your customers want something. Most of the time it’s a solution to a business problem.
They may not know the best solution. So what do they do? They go looking for available solutions.
Where do they go? Search engines, YouTube, social media, asking their networks, etc.
What do all of these have in common? The customer will use similar terms in their search. They may know what a term means; they may not.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you want to publish an article on your blog. You get a little traffic right now, but you want the blog post to gain some traction out there on the Web. Bring people in to read the post…a lot of people.
How do you determine what the blog post should say?
Chances are you’ve heard the term “keyword research.” This is one of the central practices of SEO…and it’s how we’ll make this determination.
Now, you don’t need expensive tools or arcane tech knowledge to do keyword research…though they sometimes help speed the process up! For now, all you need is a little time and feedback.
How do you get them? Here’s one way.
- Go to your search engine of choice. Type in a one- or two-word phrase related to the blog post’s topic. Let’s use, “business development” as an example.
- Now, look at the window that pops up. In Google, this is called “Suggested Terms.”
- You’ve seen it before…but did you know these terms all come from Google’s search history Which means they’re all terms people have used in the past. Terms they believed relevant to the topic. Terms they would use to find blog posts on said topic.
So you’re looking at a group of potential SEO keywords for your blog post. Right on your screen. For free!
- Copy them down, and try again. Enter another term – could be from the Suggested Terms list, could be from your post’s outline or subtitles.
- Copy down the Suggested Terms again. Repeat a few more times, until you have a list of at least 100 unique keywords.
- Now you have a nice meaty list of potential SEO keywords. Go through these and match the best ones to the blog post’s topic. You can use these in any of the following places:
- The blog post’s headline
- The blog post’s subheads/subtitles
- The blog post’s body content
- The blog post’s meta description
- Any social media posts you make to share the blog post
Should you use keywords in all of those places? You can, but don’t overdo it. Stick to one keyword (or one group of keywords) per piece of content.
That’s another “secret” of SEO – Always write content for humans first, THEN modify for search engine friendliness.
Which brings us back to where SEO fits in the small-business marketing stack.
Use SEO Throughout Your Marketing Channels – But Stay Consistent
SEO is a process – an ongoing process, all throughout every marketing channel.
Use it every time you update your website.
Whenever you create social media posts.
In every email you send out.
In all of your digital ads, cross-platform.
You can even use it in non-digital marketing channels, such as print ads or flyers. (More on that in a later post.)
How do you do this? Through keywords and metadata.
Keywords we’ve shown above. Marketing-savvy businesses collect a big list of keywords relevant to their audiences, and use the list to influence the topics & angles their marketing campaigns take.
Metadata is like a backstage assistant, working in the background to bring SEO value to marketing efforts.
As long as you keep the process going, SEO will continue the background work…boosting all other marketing actions.
SEO Informs the Whole Marketing Stack – Here’s How to Leverage it for Your Business
To learn more about SEO, we suggest you check these resources:
Or, if you don’t have that kind of time, call Full Stack! We have SEO experts with decades of experience, who’ve mastered the long-term process necessary for big search results.
What was the last SEO update you made? How well did it work?
