How to Create an SEO Strategy for Modern Marketing

An SEO strategy helps brands position themselves within the digital ecosystem. A strong SEO strategy will use data, technical SEO, and user intent to create content that answers the user’s needs and is easily found by prospective visitors.

1. Video content. Video is versatile and you can reach audiences in many ways by leveraging it. It’s important for your brand to discover both how to create video content and how to make it successful. More and more consumers are seeking video content rather than written.
2. Webinars. Webinars are informative and are a great way to build trusting relationships with consumers. If you don’t know much about a topic, you shouldn’t create a webinar on it. Therefore, creating webinars will help your brand look like an industry expert – especially if the information follows E-A-T guidelines.
3. Podcast. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular – especially while so many professionals are on the go. They’re easy to access in the car, on a train, walking, etc. Being able to listen in on industry experts anywhere, at any time is convenient and worth looking into.
4. Featured snippets. If you’re page is ranking well anywhere in the first SERPs page, it’s a good day for your post! Google is adding more featured snippets than seen before and scoring one of them will get you more clicks and more traffic. Optimize for them! You can track your featured snippet success within Data Cube.
5. User-generated content. User-generated content, like reviews and testimonials, are important for boosting both your page ranks and the trust consumers have for you. Spend time getting to know your users and ask them for reviews. It’ll go a long way.
6. Search intent. Understand the buyer’s journey. Search intent is important because searchers will start with a simple search and end up on your page from that. In order to be there for them, you have to understand what they’re looking for – hence search intent.
7. Partner operations. Building partnerships with brands that can assist you in promotion can also assist your SEO. Gaining backlinks to credible sites will increase exposure to your site.

The modern SEO strategy

Digital ecosystems puts you in a position to focus on driving business value eliminating frustrations with outdated, legacy B2B solutions. It’s important to maintain a great relationship with your customers and to always be better today than they were yesterday. A digital ecosystem adds true value to those relationships and consistently helps you meet customer SLAs, quickly surface exceptions, and provide fast remediation to ensure your business stays on track.

The marketers working for these companies must also accurately target the user intent of their prospective visitors when they make particular queries, allowing them to create content that is highly relevant for the target audience. What types of content should marketers be focused on optimizing? Below are some options:

1. Perform keyword research. Going in blind while creating content is not a good strategy. Performing keyword research to understand which keywords are worth optimizing for, which have larger search volumes, which one’s competitors are ranking for, etc. is a good strategy. Begin your SEO efforts by doing keyword research. 
2. Title tag optimization. While the content on your page is the most important ranking factor, your title tag does matter. Be sure to include a well-thought-out keyword in your title and use it to introduce readers to the rest of your copy.
3. Meta description optimization. Meta descriptions are not ranking factors. However, you should still optimize them accordingly to attract users to click on your link.
4. H1 optimization. Your H1 is your most important headline and you should only have one H1 on page that indicates what your page is about.
5. Internal linking and anchor text optimization. Internal linking is a great way to boost several pages at once. If one page is doing well, it has a better chance of helping the other pages linked to it, too. Be sure to choose the right keywords as anchor text. Don’t force it – but try to use keywords that indicate what you’re linking to.
6. Image optimization. A file name and image alt text are both image SEO efforts you should focus on. Make sure you’re descriptive enough that if your image is found, your content is easily understood.
7. Content optimization. Finally, the most important part of boosting your rankings and bettering your SEO is having great content that’s informative and unique. Include keywords throughout your copy but be sure to avoid keyword stuffing.

Understanding user intent for SEO strategy

User intent has taken center stage for successful SEO strategies. The goal is to optimize the content for users so that there is an increase in retaining your market along with converting them into customers and clients as well.

To push towards the improved understanding of user intent and creating a better user experience, brands must also consider the changes in how users interact with the internet. We have already seen the rise, and now dominance, of mobile usage, online chat boxes, and voice search. 

The newest marketing trends that many will have to keep in mind for 2021 are:

1. Retention marketing. Market to existing customers and continue to bring them back, year after year.
2. Content marketing. Create a content calendar to assist in continuously creating content that consumers want to read and interact with.
3. Interactive content. Retain users by creating interactive content. Users only have an attention span of eight seconds – therefore quiz questions, games, videos, etc. could assist in keeping them on your site.
4. Chat boxes. Since it’s less common a consumer can reach a business by phone, adding a chat box to your site will allow consumers to reach out and get answers ASAP.
5. Nostalgia marketing. Reintroduce past products to the market with nostalgia marketing by leveraging new and old trends combined.
6. Voice search marketing. More consumers are looking to use voice search. It’s predicted to be the future of online marketing.

Bringing in the technical side of an SEO strategy

When it comes to the technical aspects of SEO strategy, companies want to make sure that they are utilizing all their strategies in order to speak to their audience. Three factors to consider when dealing with the technical aspect of SEO strategy is:

• Know what you want to communicate. Your vision, value, topics, and issues. Things that your business stands for and passionate about.
• Know what people are searching for. Use keyword research as an opportunity to study and target large audiences, the market demand, and interest online.
• Understand what Google favors. Review the first page to better understand what Google deems to be the most relevant answer and try to replicate something competitive.

Your SEO strategy will help drive your organization and your content forward by making your material discoverable by the search engines and the visitors themselves. Developing an SEO strategy, however, requires careful forethought and planning. You must understand the pain points and interests of your target audience while creating content that both aligns with user intent and incorporates the latest best practices in technical SEO. Brands that master this balance find themselves rewarded with a strong, profitable marketing strategy.