Reframing the role of SEO in marketing strategy
The need for a better understanding of the client’s activity is even more present. And indicates new avenues that agencies should test and services that they could diversify.
“Agencies try to make a real effort to show how their services work together. There is this tendency to try to be more integrated. And, sometimes when you try to deliver an integrated solution, you find that they would need a CRM or CRO system that you hadn’t thought of until now, ”said Arianne Donoghue, Founder of Tempest Marketing.
Yet the challenge is to be more creative with less.
SEO, CRO and content
“Your SEO traffic doesn’t have to increase,” Walthour added. “But you can get the most out of your conversion – it supports all lead generation channels, even offline ones.”
So you can think about the ways a hybrid optimization approach can benefit your customer. Even at the keyword management level, you can compare opportunity scenarios against difficulty and assess their relevance based on sessions generated and conversion rates. This will help you organize targeted lists and focus on the ones that convert the most.
Or maybe there is an opportunity to optimize content at scale. You can start by creating a content audit and transform that service into another way to add value to the client’s business – spot content marketing opportunities, mix on-page content optimization with tactics. link building, and even improve user experience for higher conversion rates.
Take for example B2B companies. Their marketing and sales efforts were more in tune with events and referrals, but they are now more digitally focused. This is an opportunity for SEO agencies to help them better understand their client profiles and create strategies based on their information and transactional needs, as Donoghue mentioned in one of our conferences.
PPC for future SEO keywords
To keep the theme of short term results and long term vision, a mix of SEO and PPC services may be the answer for some clients.
Maybe you can create a PPC campaign for the keywords you are targeting for future SEO development. This way, you ensure that the need for quick intervention is met, while also building an effective scaffolding for your SEO campaign.
Or maybe you need to test some long tail keywords that will further inform your content strategy or future SEO efforts. With paid search results, you’ll be able to create more clarity on customer ROI and make quick adjustments to the overall strategy.
Link Building and Traffic Driven Public Relations
Research trends are essential in today’s market, as they identify demand and hint at new ways people behave online.
They’re also a good starting point for researching “hot topics” that a business can relate to their integrated SEO and link building efforts.
You can consider creating real short-term campaigns, optimized for traffic and / or PR results, that will help increase domain authority, while supporting your client’s SEO investments. This is where great customer data comes in handy – they have the expertise and information to create great content.
For example, Upswing adapted a retailer’s content strategy by mapping the personalities of buyers and how their behaviors changed during the pandemic in order to quickly respond to their demands for non-perishable products, as shown by queries from information.
Take on an advisory role
“Rather than a client coming in and asking for PPC / SEO services now, clients are geared towards making channel decisions,” Donoghue said. “It’s not just about marketing. How do you solve the real needs? “
With this big question in mind, SEO agencies can take the consulting route and use research data to help businesses determine where they stack up against their competition and clients.
An example could be the use of “people ask too” data to generate better FAQ pages for companies with high cost of customer service like airlines, telecoms, retailers, etc. It can also inform their training or internal processes.
Another example might be an analysis of the gap between your client and its competitors in terms of trending topics to exploit.
Now is also the time to use the advantage of your data as an agency and connect the dots – maybe you are helping your clients set up micro-targeting points within their ecosystem. brand, maybe it’s more about connecting search intent with emotion and the right message, maybe it’s more about highlighting the gaps in their digital marketing strategy.
Or as Vacarasu still says:
“Brands are knocking on our door asking to look good in the SERPs so that they can ultimately convert while being useful. However, it is not uncommon for them to come to seek to solve a very small aspect of these needs. So being hungry for what we can learn in the discovery phase can open up some incredible opportunities. “
She continues: “Our discovery methodology is designed to learn more about the brand than she knows about itself: discovery interview, questionnaire, preliminary keyword research, competitor landscape analysis, opportunity analysis. on-page and off-page. In other words, a pre-audit that helps us take a step back, advise and guide our future potential clients towards the best business decisions; even when these do not involve SEO solutions. And I guess that’s an appropriate change from these are our services, choose and we will help you at this is what we learned, here is how you can make the most of it all. “
For example, when a major player in the retail industry asked Upswing to edit content at scale, the agency leveraged its proprietary tools and know-how to spot a wider range. of opportunities and recommend an alternative audit and content optimization strategy that the retailer company does.
One last thing.
SEO campaign data can tell you about the health of your client’s business. Tracking the number of monthly sessions and conversions, and their trend, allows you to create a health scale for each customer and their campaigns:
- Good (green).
- Medium (orange).
- Bad (red).
You can also set triggers to be notified whenever the status changes from good to bad or vice versa, for quick intervention.
Keeping them up to date and explaining market trends and their own health with your particular data up close is another good step in becoming more of a consultant and business partner for them.
Summary
The market is settling in an uncertain environment and digital marketing is on the rise.
Yet because budgets are still stuck in a risk aversion mindset and rapid business results are demanded, SEO agencies need to further adapt their business:
- Adapt SEO strategies to the current context: Make SEO work harder with incremental optimizations (local SEO, Google My Business actions, etc.), re-predict realistic goals in the new search environment, use year-over-year search trends to adjust strategies.
- Reframing the role of SEO in marketing strategy: Advocate for conversion optimization, come up with a hybrid approach of short and long term tactics involving both SEO and SEM, reflect on the importance of content audits and content marketing right now, test SEO keywords with PPC etc.
- Assume an advisory role: Now more than ever, businesses need to understand what their users want, and research data can highlight it for them. Be a strategic business partner and show gaps in customers’ digital channels, proactively monitor the health of their business, and help them make informed decisions about their overall online presence.
With SEOmonitor’s forecasting module designed only for SEO agencies, we can help you strategize and identify realistic growth opportunities. You will be able to relate the possible scenarios directly to the business results in terms of additional traffic, conversions, etc.
And to strengthen your portfolio and constantly communicate with your customers, we have developed the Client Health Tracker – a feature to help you know which customers are struggling and which are growing and act quickly.
These are just a part of our solutions to help SEO agencies acquire, manage and retain more clients.
Join us on our journey to bring more transparency to the SEO industry.