SEO, on the other hand, is one of the most effective channels in generating organic traffic and building online awareness, making it a very important aspect of a company’s digital marketing strategy.

In this guide, we will learn about how we can use SEO strategy to improve organic traffic, generate leads, and ultimately, drive revenue. But first, let us discuss some key facts of why SEO might be relatively unique compared to other niches.

Whether it’s a B2B company selling SaaS (Software as a Service) solution or you are a direct-to-consumer company, ensuring you have a proper online presence can either make or break your business.

Building 7-Figure Companies With SEO

Learn how founders, CEOs, execs and thought leaders use SEO and Content Marketing to grow B2B, SaaS, technology and startup companies from zero to 7 and 8-figure revenue.

How Incapsula Doubles Their Business Year Over Year With SEO, Content Marketing and CRO

Content Marketing and SEO are the main customer acquisition channels that helped Incapsula achieve:

• Market Capitalization: $1.5 billion
• Protects: 5,000,000+ websites
• #1 customer acquisition channel: Content Marketing and SEO
• Year over year growth: 100%

Learn more

How Content Marketing and SEO Helped BuildFire Become a 7-Figure ARR SaaS Company

Content marketing, the first page rankings on Google and SEO helped BuildFire to grow to where they are at right now:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customers: 1000, Powering over 10,000+ apps in the App Store
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Organic Traffic: 140,000 visitors/month

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How SEO Helped Time Doctor Become a 7 Figure SaaS Company and Generate 20,000 Trials Per Month

SEO and content marketing are the only lead generation channels for Time Doctor and helped them to generate:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customer Acquisition: 20,000 trials/month, 7000 customers/month
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Revenue growth: 10% MoM

Learn more

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is essentially a series of optimizations made inside and outside our website, so the site can rank higher in Google’s and the other search engines’ SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

SERP ranking, however, isn’t and shouldn’t be the end goal of SEO strategy. Instead, it’s just a means of an end in increasing organic traffic. More website traffic, in turn, will help us in achieving other objectives like generating more leads, building digital awareness, and getting more conversions.

Google, as the biggest and most popular search engine, is obviously the main focus of most SEO strategies, but we can also target other search engines like Bing or Yahoo!

We can divide SEO into two different categories: off-page SEO and on-page SEO.

On-Page SEO refers to optimizations that are done inside your website, which can include optimizing your content, the website’s technical (coding) performance, and other aspects.

Off-page SEO is optimizations done outside the website, which mainly involves building the site’s credibility, trust signals, and authority by getting more backlinks/inbound links (more on this later) and social signals.

To be clear, we need to implement both types of optimizations to achieve the desired SEO results.

How exactly? We will discuss it below.

How SEO Actually Works

To really understand how SEO works, we have to discuss several different elements:

The SERP

SERP stands for Search Engines Results Page, which is, the page displayed by the search engine when we search for a specific query.

For example, when we search for “SERP” query, this is the SERP page:

The objective of SEO strategy is to achieve a higher organic search ranking, and if possible, the #1 ranking spot. In the above example, that is the spot right below the “People also ask” box.

It’s very important to consider the fact that 95% of users won’t go past the first page of SERPs. So, getting on the first page of Google SERP is the most important priority of SEO strategy.

However, Google’s SERP has significantly evolved since its actual launch back in 1996, more than two decades ago. Back then, it was pretty simple: paid search ads on top and organic results right below them.

Here is how the SERP for the query “when is the 2025 election” is today:

As you can see, it’s way more complicated. On the above example, there are several different elements included in the SERP:

1. Featured snippet box to inform us about the Date (the direct answer to the search query)
2. Knowledge panel on the sidebar. In this example, a result from Wikipedia
3. The “People Also Ask” box featuring 4 questions
4. The “Top Stories” section featuring video results

Only after all of these elements, we are presented with the organic search result.

What will this mean? Organic ranking is now not the only available objective/priority for SEO strategy. We can also aim to get ranked as a featured snippet or to be featured on the “People Also Ask” questions.

The Anatomy of the Ranking Process

How does Google (and the other search engines) actually rank the websites as the search results?

Understanding the answer to this question can significantly help in really understanding the concept of SEO.

First, according to Google’s own statement, its mission is to deliver the most relevant and reliable information for the human audience. SEO strategy is, to put simply, a way to optimize our website and our content to align with this mission.

So, Google rank content based on its relevance and reliability in meeting the user’s search intent, and here is how the ranking process basically works:

1. Google and other search engines involve the use of web crawlers or search bots, essentially an automated software that will visit all the different websites on the internet. Thus, we often refer to this process as “crawling the page/web”.
2. Google then add the crawled pages to its index. This process is called the indexation process.
3. Based on its algorithm  (more on this later), Google considers all the different ranking factors and shows the most reliable and relevant results from its index when the user enters a search query.

We will have a more in-depth discussion on the ranking algorithms and especially ranking factors/ranking signals below.

Top SEO Ranking Factors in 2025

To be clear, Google features a very complex ranking algorithm and will take account of more than 200 different SEO ranking factors. However, back in 2016, so quite recently, Google basically confirmed its top three ranking factors: Link Profile, Content quality, and User Experience metrics.

1. Link Profile

It’s important to understand that a website’s link profile is not only about backlinks, although backlinks are indeed the most important element of the link profile. Instead, there are three different types of links that will affect your site’s SEO performance:

• Internal links: links from one page of your site to another page(s).
• Outbound links: also called outgoing links, which are links from your pages to third-party websites
• Inbound links: more commonly known as backlinks, links coming to your page(s) from third-party sources

As established above, inbound links are the most important of the three in determining your site’s ranking.

We can think of inbound links or backlinks as the vote of confidence in the digital world. When a website links to your content, they are saying that your page is reliable, credible, and trustworthy. When the link is coming from a relevant, high-quality website, it’s like getting a recommendation letter from a famous person in your industry (read: it’s very valuable).

Nowadays the quality of the backlinks is significantly more important than quantity. In fact, getting too many low-quality backlinks at any given time might get your site penalized by Google.

While inbound links are the most important of the three, that’s not saying outbound links and internal links are not important:

• Outbound links and proper internal linking structure can help improve your site’s relevance. Linking to an authoritative site, for example, can tell Google that you are a legitimate content creator for a specific topic. A proper internal linking practice can also help Google with the indexation process.
• Proper external links essentially tell Google about the niche/industry you are in, the topic you are covering, the potential competitors, and so on. In short, you are helping the search engines to index and structure the whole internet.
• Linking to relevant content (that is already ranking) can provide additional value for your audience (which can indirectly affect ranking).
• When you link to others, you let the other party notice your site and your content. In the future, they might return the favor and link your content. In short, this can be the start of a fruitful relationship.

2. Content Quality

The quality of your content is the center of your SaaS SEO strategy, period. No amount of SEO optimizations and state-of-the-art strategy can help low-quality content. Think of SEO strategy as a way to amplify the performance of high-quality and relevant content and not the other way around.

In the past, SEO content is solely about optimizing the content for the target keywords, and thus we aim for a certain keyword density. It’s very important to understand that today, SEO strategy is no longer solely about keyword optimization.

Instead, the most important thing to focus on is whether your content can meet the user’s search intent. In general, there are four different types of search intent:

• Informational intent. The user is simply looking for information. For example, a user might look for information about SEO by using the “what is SEO” search query. In this case, we can provide educational or informational content to meet this user’s needs.
• Transactional intent. Here, the user is searching for a product/service with the intention to buy. Nowadays, however,  people might search directly on Amazon when they have transactional intent. This intent is usually identified when the user uses “buy” in their query.
• Comparison and Investigation. The user has the intention to buy in the future or is considering to make the purchase by comparing different products/services, check for online reviews, etc. When a user uses queries like “compare” or “review”, it is a strong sign they are having this intent.
• Navigational intent. Users with this intent are trying to get to a specific website. For example, we might type “Instagram” in the search bar for convenience’s sake.

In a software company environment, the user can have all four of these search intents with various queries, so it’s very important to develop a wide variety of content to cover all of these intents.

Google is getting better and better at recognizing how content can cater to a specific intent. Google BERT, the latest algorithm update, allows Google to better understand the context of long-tail, complex queries.

Content optimization for SEO is a very complex subject, but in general, it’s about being better than the other ranking content. Do a quick Google search of your target keyword (more on this later), and analyze the top-ranking pages (if possible, analyze all pages featured on the first page of the SERP). We generally have two options:

• Develop better, longer, more in-depth content than these competitors.
• Be different, and cover the keyword from a unique angle.

Which one is easier? In most cases—if the opportunity presents itself—, being unique is relatively easier, but not saying it’s easy.

Content quality and relevance are extremely related to backlinks (as discussed above). Good content will always get linked, sooner or later. On the other hand, no amount of promotion can help low-quality content that is not relevant to get authoritative backlinks.

3. User Experience Metrics

To reiterate, Google search’s mission is to provide relevant and reliable search results for its user, and the Google search algorithm is constantly being improved to achieve this mission.

One of Google’s major improvements in accordance with this objective is the introduction of Google RankBrain. RankBrain is Google’s first AI-based algorithm that is launched in 2016, and with its machine learning capability, Google is now getting better at measuring and recognizing these user-experience metrics in real-time:

• Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors that leave your site after viewing just one page (single page visit). It can be after one second or one hour, what matters is they leave after just a single page.
• Dwell time: that is, how long a visitor spends on your site. They can view just one page or 100 pages, but this metric is about the total time spent.
• Click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of users that click on SERP results and visit the website

These three metrics combined, essentially provide Google with the information whether your site is relevant for the user, according to the user’s search query and search intent.

Summary: It’s All About Content

To summarize, all three metrics above are centered on one thing: your content quality and relevance. As we will discuss in the rest of this guide, content optimization will be the center of B2B SEO strategy.

Step By Step Guide To SEO Strategy

Step 1: Define SEO Objective

It’s very important to remember that SEO is not a cheat engine or holy-grail tactic to beat the search engine algorithm, but as established above, it’s a series of optimization to align our site and our content with the search engine’s mission to provide more relevant information for the users.

On the other hand, we have also mentioned that SERP ranking shouldn’t be the end goal of SEO strategy, but just a means to an end for objectives like:

• Organic traffic: referring to unpaid website traffic coming from clicks on SERP results. Even if organic traffic is not your end goal, you simply can’t get anything on your site without any traffic. So, in most cases, organic traffic should be one of your main SEO objectives.
• Brand presence: with more people visiting your website and consuming your content, you can improve brand awareness and (perceived) credibility.
• Generate more leads: the website is still the most important lead generation device. The main idea is to convert some of the organic traffic into qualified prospects.
• Sales conversion: pretty self-explanatory, generate more sales on the website. Especially important for eCommerce sites or sites with an affiliate marketing objective.
• Online reputation management (ORM): maintain a positive online presence, mainly by ranking well on branded keywords.
• Customer support and education: publish and promote informational content that can help educate your audience about your product/service or your niche/industry.

You can chase more than one SEO objectives, but make sure that all your goals follow these important principles:

• Specific: the objective must be clear and comprehensive, and can be communicated easily with your team members
• Realistic: that is, attainable. If necessary, break down big goals into smaller milestones to give yourself (and your team members) a sense of achievement with each milestone
• Measurable: define KPIs and measurable metrics for each objective. We should be able to measure the SEO campaign’s performance and progress in accordance with the target objectives.

Make sure to define and list proper objectives that align well with your marketing goals and overall business objectives. For example, if your company’s marketing objective is to generate 30% more leads, then your SEO campaign should aim to help this objective.

Step 2: Site Audit For SEO

The next step is to assess the site’s current state in relation to SEO performance.

We do this by performing an SEO site audit to figure out current on-site and off-site optimizations, as well as technical SEO factors.

Site audit for SEO is a very broad subject on its own, and we won’t give it much justice discussing it here.

However, here are some of the important areas to check in this step:

1. Check Your Site’s Crawlability and Indexability

As we’ve established above, not indexed by Google=your site won’t rank at all, period.

So, make sure Google can crawl your site properly, recognize all of your content pages, and index all of the pages properly. Here are some important things to focus on:

• A proper XML sitemap that lists all your pages
• Make sure your URL is accessible and use HTTPS/ SSL security
• Proper optimization of your robots.txt file
• Use Google Se0arch Console and check your site for possible crawl errors

2. Proper URL Optimizations

We have briefly discussed the importance of enabling HTTPS above, and a secure website URL is now an important SEO ranking factor. Also, pay attention to potential issues like:

• Linking to insecure pages
• Make sure to use canonical URL on your original content to avoid duplication issues
• Make sure your URL is readable, short and to the point. Ensure both the search engines and the human audience can properly understand the URL. Include your target keyword when you can, but do it naturally
• Make sure your SSL security certificate is valid
• Check all your pages and your content, and make sure they are all secure

3. Title Tags and META Descriptions

Title tags and META descriptions are the information displayed on the SERP search result.

For example, for the query “what is software company”, here is the top result

“Software company – Wikipedia” is the Title Tag of the page, and below the URL we can see the META description of the website as the snippet.

As you can see, this information will ultimately determine whether or not the user will visit your site (click-through rate). As discussed, CTR is now an important ranking factor. Various SEO tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Screaming Frog, among others, can help us analyze all the various page titles and META descriptions.

The main principle in optimizing these titles and descriptions is to include your keyword(s) as naturally as possible and focus on delivering comprehensive, valuable, and engaging information for the human audience.

4. Content Structure and Optimization

Use proper header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc. ) to ensure easier indexation by Google. A proper structure will let Google know which aspect of the content is the most important or least important.

Check whether embedded images are properly optimized, such as:

• A comprehensive, descriptive filename
• Properly compressed so they don’t slow down the page
• Have proper alt texts or alt tags, to provide information about the image to the search engine
• Links to the images should work as intended

Again, SEO tools with audit features like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help find and troubleshoot image optimization issues.

5. Mobile-Friendliness

It’s no secret that since 2015, Google only prioritizes mobile-friendly sites to rank. If your site is not yet mobile-responsive or mobile-friendly, it will significantly hurt your chance to get ranked and featured as a rich snippet.

Use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to assess whether your site is already mobile-friendly. We will discuss how to ensure your site is mobile-responsive further below as we discuss on-site optimizations.

6. Load Speed

Your page’s load speed will affect dwell time and bounce rate (as discussed above, both are ranking factors). According to Google, if your site loads longer than 3 seconds, more than half of mobile visitors will bounce.

There are various factors that can affect your site’s load times, from image sizes and compressions, proper usage and amount of scripts, server response time, and so on. Again, we will further discuss how to improve our site’s load speed in the on-site optimizations section below.

You can use various tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix to help assess your page’s current load speed and identify potential issues.

7. Structured Data Markup

Structured data or schema.org markup is essentially a practice of assigning properties and attributes to all the different elements in our page/content, to provide Google with the relevant information about your site’s content.

The main advantage of implementing structured data markup is that your site is now eligible to be ranked as a featured snippet. However, proper structured data markup implementation can also help with crawling and indexing purposes.

Again, you can use Google’s structured data testing tool to check your site’s current state regarding structured data markup.

Again, SEO site audit is a very broad subject, and this shouldn’t be an all-inclusive list. The main idea is to figure out our site’s current state in relation to SEO performance, so we can plan our SEO strategy ahead.

Step 3: Keyword Research and Keyword Optimization Plan

One of the key aspects of SEO strategy is finding the right keyword(s) to target. Although we have mentioned that SEO today is no longer solely about keyword optimization, the right keyword research is still very important.

With that being said, here are some important considerations for proper keyword research:

• Understanding your target audience: their needs, behaviors, pain points, and especially, the search intent. The better you can understand your audience, the better you can find your target keywords.
• Always refer back to your SEO objectives and goals. That is, these keywords must help you achieve the objectives and not the other way around. For example, if your SEO objective is to generate more leads, then, in general, you’d want to aim for keywords targeting informative intent to attract potential prospects.
• When trying to find your keyword opportunities, here are the important principles:
  • The keyword must be relevant and valuable for your target audience, according to their search intent(s). We can usually evaluate the monthly search volume for the keyword to measure this aspect.
  • The keyword, no matter how popular/relevant for the target audience, must also be relevant for your business/industry.
  • Based on the available resources and your objective’s timeline, the competition for the target keyword must be manageable. Some SEO tools might be able to measure this aspect via metrics like keyword difficulty or similar ones.

There are various keyword research tools that can help you in this aspect, from free ones like Google Keyword Planner and UberSuggests to premium, all-in-one SEO tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, among others.

Make a list of all the possible target keywords and set your priorities. If required, divide them by your SEO objectives and possible search intents.

Step 4: SERP Analysis

More than 40% of search queries now involve a featured snippet in their SERPs, positioned above the top organic spot. There’s also the “People Also Ask” box just below it, and the knowledge panel on the side.

In short, it’s quite possible that the top organic spot is not the only available ‘target’ for your keywords: while being featured as a rich snippet might not guarantee organic traffic (zero-click search), it might provide various benefits in achieving your SEO objectives. For example, being featured as a rich snippet for key questions and definitions related to your niche can be a really good branding opportunity.

On the other hand, it’s also important to find keywords with a high potential organic click-through rate (CTR)s. They should be your main priority in generating organic traffic to achieve your SEO objectives.

So, do a Google search for your target keywords and analyze the SERPs (or you can use various tools to help you). This practice will be related to the next step.

Step 5: Competitive Analysis

SEO is, by nature, a competition where you try to rank higher than your competitors, so competitive analysis should be an important part of the whole SEO strategy.

The most basic thing to do here is to Google your target keywords, as discussed in the previous step and check the ranking competitors. Check at least the top 3 competitors for each keyword, but if you can, check for all the sites featured on the first page of the SERP.

Check how the content pieces are structured, how optimized (SEO-wise) the content is, their approach for the keywords, and so on. Imitate and improve upon what they already did well, and fix what they did wrong. Our job is to beat these competitors, and there are generally two different ways to do it:

1. Create a (significantly) better content: more in-depth, longer, and better than all of these competitors’.
2. Be different: take a unique stance and cover the keyword from a different angle.

Being unique—when the opportunity presents itself—, is generally an easier approach (but that’s not saying it’s easy).  When you are targeting a very popular and competitive keyword, creating just a slightly better content simply won’t do the job.

For example, when the target keyword is “best software company in India”, the first page of SERP might be filled with pages with lists covering the top 10 to 30 software companies in India. In this case, would creating another “top 10” list cut it? Probably not. Your list must be significantly better, or you might need to create a really big list covering 50 or even 100 different companies. Pretty hard? In most cases, yes.

On the other hand, if you can find an opportunity to use a unique angle to cover the keyword, you might get more attention, get more backlinks in the process, and climb the SERP faster.

Step 6: Content Strategy and Planning

Content is the core of SEO strategy, period.

This statement is even more relevant today: Google’s ranking algorithm is getting better in understanding the quality of your content, and its relevance to the target keyword and the search intent.

To be frank, there’s no shortcut in getting the desired SEO results besides actually having high-quality and relevant content. SEO optimizations will only amplify the performance of an already performing content and on the other hand, no amount of tactics and optimizations can help a low-quality content.

So, a proper content marketing plan will significantly help your whole SEO effort. Here are some important areas to consider when planning your content strategy:

1. If you have a content development team, decide the PIC for each content (for example, writer A for content A, etc.)
2. Refer back to your target keywords, and plan how you’ll expand each of them into actual topics.
3. Plan the channels where you are going to distribute the content:
   1. Your own blog
   2. Guest post opportunity on third-party sites
   3. Publication platforms like Medium and other sites
   4. Video streaming platforms like YouTube for video content
   5. Email newsletter
4. Plan a schedule of when you are going to publish the content (and how frequent).
5. Develop a content calendar that lists:
   1. Date of content publication
   2. Content creator (author)
   3. The topic or working title
   4. Target keyword
   5. Description of the content
   6. Content objective
   7. Publication/distribution channel
   8. CTA and lead magnet plan (if any)
   9. Ideas/references/mood board
   10. Working status (WIP, published, etc.)
6. Execute and evaluate the content plan:
   1. The overall tone of the content, its quality, how it compares against the competition
   2. The content’s performance according to the objective(s)
   3. The overall execution of the editorial calendar

Depending on the performance, you might want to adjust your content plan according to your SEO objective.

Also, remember that it’s about your content quality and relevance to your human audience. Include your target keywords naturally, but don’t focus on keyword density. Focus on delivering comprehensive content with good readability.

Step 7: Link Building

It’s no secret that backlinks are the most important ranking factor in SEO. As we have established above, the quality of these backlinks is more important than quantity.

The quality of your backlinks, in general, directly proportionate to the source site’s authority. You can use various tools like Moz’s Domain Authority checker to check the authority of the source sites.

Again, the secret of getting high-quality backlinks is the quality of your content. If your content is good and contains relevant information, you will get linked sooner or later. On the other hand, no amount of effort can help low-quality content without substance—at least, without getting penalized—.

There are, however, tactics and methods we can use to amplify the performance of your quality content, such as:

1. Promoting Your Content

Yes, the quality of your content is extremely important in getting these backlinks. However, no matter how good your content is, it won’t bring any value—SEO or otherwise— when nobody actually knows about it.

Content promotion is arguably even more important than the content creation process:

1. It obviously helps in generating organic traffic to your website, which can help in achieving your SEO strategy goals and marketing objectives.
2. Proper promotion can also help in generating more backlinks in the process. More backlinks will improve SERP ranking, which in turn, will also generate more organic traffic.

Thus, promote your content via all the available channels, and whenever you can, aim to get inbound links or backlinks in the process. For example, when you work with influencers to promote your content via influencer marketing, you might also ask them for a backlink from their website.

To summarize, use all potential channels to get high-quality backlinks.

2. Create Linkable Content

Think about it, what’s the reason to provide a backlink to another site? Typically, here are the most common reasons:

• Citing a source site when we make an informational claim (i.e. 30% of surveyed users are…..)
• When we use a term that is related to the content but might not be understood by all of your visitors. For example, in this content covering SEO, we might need to provide a link to another site when we first mention “ranking factor” or “backlink”
• When we include images, infographics, etc.

So, we can simply include these types of information and data in our content:

1. Original, previously unpublished information like an original research report, datasheet, case study, etc. is very linkable
2. Visually aesthetic images, infographics, and photos
3. Data roundup content, when done properly, can generate a lot of backlinks

Remember that you don’t need to be too aggressive in getting these backlinks. Focus on quality, not quantity, and in general, you’d only need to build 3 to 5 high-quality backlinks for each page.

Step 8: Social Media and SEO

While social signals are not a direct ranking factor for SEO, they can indirectly affect your SEO performance.

As we have discussed, link profile, content quality, and UX metrics are the most important ranking factors, and social media performance can help in all three:

1. Social media is where the audience is with more than 3 billion daily active users. More social media exposure will translate to more opportunities to get backlinks
2. Social media is a great place to conduct market research so you can better understand your audience. Meaning, it can help you in developing better content.
3. Social media can allow you to promote your content directly to those who have developed an interest, so it can improve dwell time and minimize bounce rate.

So, how should we optimize our social media content to help your SEO, here are a few tips:

• Post regularly and maintain the quality of your content. Make sure your social media profiles are active.
• Maintain a consistent image/tone for your profile. When opportunities present themselves, include a link to your content.
• Use relevant bio for your profiles.
• Make sure your posts are engaging. Use attractive images when you can.
• Proper, appropriate hashtags.
• Make sure your content is shareable and social media-friendly

Step 7: On-Site Optimizations

In general, there are three important aspects of achieving SEO success:

• Making sure your content is valuable so it can get high-quality backlinks and get a lot of engagement from the audience
• Making sure your site is performing as intended to improve user experience, keeping your site visitors as long as possible (higher average dwell time.)
• Ensuring Google can crawl and index your site. When your site is not indexed, it won’t rank, period.

The first aspect regarding content is mainly covered in the previous steps. This step, on the other hand, is about the second and third aspects.

While on-site website optimizations are very broad subject on its own, here are some of the most important things to focus on:

• Your site’s load speed:
  • Use a website template that is optimized for speed
  • Leverage browser caching
  • Make sure to use proper image and file compression
  • Reduce the use of redirects
  • Improve server response time (might involve changing to a better hosting service or a dedicated server.)
  • Minify CSS and remove render-blocking sprit
• Make sure your site is mobile-responsive.
• Ensure your site is indexed faster and properly by Google. You might want to follow this guide.
• Implement proper structured data markup. This can provide Google with more information to index your site and allow your site to be viable for a featured snippet.
• Optimize the content structure
• Optimize your site’s structure and interface (layout, navigation menus, etc.)
• Test everything regularly on as many devices as possible.

Optimize your site so both Google and the human audience can recognize the contained information properly, and also make sure to maintain content quality.

Step 8: Evaluation and Re-Optimization

The last but not least step is to evaluate and monitor your SEO campaign’s progress.

It’s very important to understand that SEO is a long-term game and not a get-rich quick scheme. In general, it would take 6 to 18 months of continuous efforts before we can see any significant result (i.e. featured on the first page of SERP).

Thus, it’s very important to monitor your SEO performance by evaluating these key areas:

• SERP ranking for each keyword. It should climb progressively overtime. If there’s a sudden decline, you should adjust your strategy.
• Organic traffic. Should also increase steadily according to ranking performance.
• Impressions and organic reach.
• Conversion rate, especially when the page involves lead magnets or CTAs.
• User experience metrics: dwell time, bounce rate, organic CTR
• Page load speed
• Mobile responsiveness
• Link profile, especially backlinks profile, but also outbound links and internal linking structure
• Content structure, layout, readability

Evaluate your site and your pages according to these key metrics (and more, depending on your SEO objective), and adjust your strategy accordingly.

SEO FAQs and Tips

What Is SEO

Stands for Search Engine Optimization, is essentially a series of optimization of your website (both on-site and off-site) to rank higher on organic SERP by optimizing three key areas:

• Making sure your page’s content is valuable and relevant for your human audience
• Optimizing user experience and engagement, to keep site visitors for as long as possible
• Ensuring Google can properly crawl and index your site by optimizing the technical factors of your site

The main objective of SEO strategy is to improve organic traffic to the website.

What is SERP

Stands for Search Engine Results Page. The page displayed by Google and the other search engines after you enter a search query.

SEO VS SEM

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, which includes both SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) search advertising.

PPC VS SEO

PPC advertising is paid ads displayed on the top of SERP for a certain keyword/search query. The term PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, referring to the pricing model for the advertising where the user only needs to pay for the ad each time someone clicks on it.

Why SEO is Important?

Getting more website traffic remains one of the most important goals to pursue for any business, and SEO remains one of the most effective approaches in generating more (organic/unpaid) website traffic. You might want to check this article on the importance of SEO for a more concise answer.

Are SERPs Personalized?

In some cases, yes. Google does track various things related to your online activity from your device’s location to your search history to browsing and purchase history, and can provide a personalized search result for the user. You can search in a private browser window or incognito window to get the ‘original’ SERP.

Is SEO Dead?

Seemingly every year, there are always news and articles proclaiming the death of SEO, but in truth, SEO is alive and well.

It’s true, however, that SEO has significantly changed over the years, and some SEO strategies, tactics and practices are really ‘dead’, that is, used to work but don’t work anymore. For example, keyword stuffing used to be the common practice in pre-2011 SEO, but can get us penalized nowadays.

There are, however, SEO practices that still work effectively, including those we have discussed above.

End Words

Whether you are a B2B company targeting professionals from other companies, or a direct-to-consumer B2C company, SEO should be the core of your digital marketing strategy.

Getting website traffic is very important in a tech-embedded software environment, and hiring an SEO expert remains one of the most effective ways of generating organic traffic. In turn, more organic traffic can translate to more converted prospects and ultimately, more sales conversions for your website product.

The post How To Create a Successful SEO Strategy appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

Of course; theories are important. That’s the foundation of marketing education, and all practices are built upon that foundation. But when you have so many options to make digital marketing education more approachable and fun, why wouldn’t you make an attempt to do so?

University professors know that traditional teaching methods no longer work. When they teach marketing, they have to bring technology and practical work into the process. 

Let’s see how you can do that. 

Tips for Teaching Marketing to University Students

Experiential Learning Is the Key Approach

Today’s students expect highly engaging methods of education. The didactic approach, which was the golden standard in lecture halls around the world, is no longer applicable to marketing education. 

Christy Price, a psychology professor at Dalton State College, analyzed the learning behavior of Millennials and came down to a few important conclusions:

• They prefer active learning methods based on research. They learn more effectively when the professor stimulates them to conduct research and form conclusions, when compared to the old-school approach of processing information that they get during a lecture. 
• Millennials want to learn relevant things. If the professor doesn’t relate marketing theories to examples from current culture, they won’t be interested in the lecture. 
• They want a less formal educational environment. Today’s students want to interact with their professors. 

What does this teach us?

Instead of teaching lectures, the professor should only give hints and encourage the students to conduct research. They can give recommendations for exploring marketing examples from popular culture. When the students conduct research, they can discuss the results in a laid-back manner, through fun presentations and discussions. 

The teacher should also encourage the students to learn through practical projects. We’re not talking about essays and research papers. Let’s get to that point. 

Group Projects Are Better than Essays

Essays are not relatable to the future of a marketing student. They are writing essay for scholarships and university applications because they have to. But when they start attending courses and the professors demand more essays, it’s a huge disappointment. 

The format of these assignments is outdated. We can’t expect students to be excited about researching real cases of marketing and writing about them in the stiff 5-paragraph form. We have to make assignments more exciting for them. 

Team projects are much better! You can ask the students to partner up by their own choice. They will investigate a particular marketing campaign in depth, and they will present their findings through a PowerPoint presentation. This is the type of practical research that makes a real difference in their knowledge. 

To make things even more fun, you can ask the teams to come up with their own marketing strategy and execute it throughout the semester. For example, they can start their Facebook or Instagram pages on any topic and try to get as many followers as possible. Then, they will discuss their methods in front of the class. They will figure out what worked and what didn’t work. They will get inspired by the practices of other groups, so they will do things differently for their next project.  

Online Learning Is Great! 

It’s no secret that when the students don’t get what they need at university, they turn to eLearning for digital marketing. Google offers awesome courses through its Digital Academy. Most universities share their courses through Coursera and similar platforms. So if you fail to deliver what they expect, they will find a way to get the knowledge. But for a professor, that’s a failure. 

That’s why you should make all your lectures fit this format that students are looking for. They want to access the lessons at their own pace. Instead of taking notes in class, they would love to access the same lecture online when it’s studying time. 

Do your best to create a curriculum that’s suitable for an online course. Then, share all lessons on YouTube or any other platform, so your students will listen to them. This is how you share knowledge beyond the lecture hall, and you provide a more accessible lesson format for your students. 

Teach Content Marketing

Your students have to be aware of the classic marketing theories, so of course you’ll cover the marketing mix theory, Ansoff’s matrix theory, and all other traditional methods that still work to some extent. 

However, you also have to teach about contemporary marketing and compare it to the traditional methods that were used in the past. 

When your students get out of those desks, they will probably engage in content marketing strategies. You want to prepare them for that future. They should know all theories and practices, but they should also be encouraged to follow new trends and experiment with their own ideas. 

You can discuss the most interesting current cases of content marketing in the lecture hall. Ask your students to do their research and suggest discussion starters. You can create a private Facebook group for the students to join, so you can take this discussion there. 

Make Them Skilled at Analytics

Does your course cover digital marketing analytics? It has to! Without the right tools and strategies for analyzing the results, a marketing campaign is never complete. Current and future marketing experts must monitor the performance of their campaigns all the time. 

Teach your students how to use the most important tools, such as Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. Assign them projects that include creating a marketing strategy and analyzing its results with these tools. Becoming a great marketer is all about the experience. If university doesn’t provide that experience, what’s the point of getting a degree in marketing? 

Make your classes useful. Teaching analytics is a must!

Students Expect a Lot; We Have to Deliver!

Marketing is not taught through books and lectures. The students have to know some theory, so they will understand the psychology of buyers. However, they won’t care to memorize all this information just to do well on an exam. The professor should inspire them to implement theory into practice, so they have to shift the type of projects they assign. 

Did you get any great ideas on how to make your next lecture more interesting? You can start by assigning a team project that triggers an experiential learning process. Then, your students will analyze the results and you’ll discuss them together in class.      

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In fact, the success of your overall marketing strategy depends on it.

Research shows that organic searches account for over 70% of all traffic to websites that sell business services. Paid searches account for only 10%.

What does this mean?

It means that unless you’re well-versed in SEO, you need to hire someone else to build up your online presence. PPC alone won’t cut it.  But what’s the best way to ensure that the people you hire to improve your ranking are competent?

The answer is a lot more complex than you think.

In this article, we’ve outlined some of the most important steps you need to take before deciding on an SEO expert.

Keep reading to find out how to pick the right person or agency for your website!

Ignore Snake Oil Salesmen

When you sift through your SEO options, you’ll begin to notice a trend.

Many SEOs say that their techniques ensure a spot on the first page of Google. Now, if you think that’s an overly bold claim to make, then you’re right. Google’s exact algorithm is a mystery—even to the most knowledgeable SEO expert.

The tech giant has many reasons to protect its search engine’s algorithm from competitors like Microsoft.

In order to improve the quality of its search results, Google can (and will) enact penalties as it sees fit.

From year to year, Google averages more than one algorithm change per day. Anyone that claims to have knowledge about all of these changes is peddling snake oil.

That said, an expert SEO will definitely be able to help you improve your rankings.

By how much? It depends on various factors.

In very rare cases, it may be possible to guarantee a high ranking if you’re targeting a genuinely simple keyword. But a legitimate SEO expert will only make such a claim after reviewing your site and business.

In most cases, however, if you get an email with a title such as “Guaranteed first page ranking on Google”, your best bet is to mark it as spam and move on.

Ask About Their Process

You want to start any discussion with a discussion about your goals.

Lay them all out on the table so both parties can determine if they’re a good fit for one another. Be as specific as possible. Ask your prospective SEO expert to explain the process they’ll use to accomplish your goals.

But don’t stop there. You need to dig a little deeper to find out who’s serious about helping you rank high. While it’s great to know the process, you also want to know the reasoning behind it.

In order to find this out, ask them to cite reasons for why they use a particular process.

Ideally, these sources should come from Google. This is the only source you can trust 100%.

Look at Their Track Record

Research shows that almost 70% of consumers look at online reviews before buying.

Now, you most likely won’t find many online reviews on your potential SEOs.

However, what you can do is ask them to provide information about businesses they’ve worked with. Every successful SEO expert has a list of former clients that they can refer to. In fact, the best SEOs are itching to show you because they’re proud of their work.

They probably won’t let you review their entire list, but they should be able to give you a glimpse of it. Additionally, they should be able to share long-term results.

A great way to check this is to ask about how long they’ve worked with their longest client.

Businesses love to stick with successful SEOs, so anything less than 12-24 months is worrisome. That said, make sure the clients they provide are real businesses.

Reach out to those businesses, and see if they’re willing to share their experiences.

Inquire About Communication

Before investing any money into an SEO expert, you must ask several questions.

These questions will help you find out which SEO is the best fit for your business. One of the first things you want to ask is how often the SEO will contact you, and how. See if they prefer to communicate through email, Skype, or phone.

Whatever the communication channel, it should align with your preferences.

Also, make sure that experts will be available when you need to talk to them about important issues. You need to be able to reach your SEO during emergency situations, no matter how rarely these occur.

Lastly, find an SEO expert that has a similar communication style to your own.

If your conversations feel awkward or hard to understand, go with a different option. Communication is vital when formulating a successful SEO strategy.

Find out How they Deal With Penalties

Google does its best to fight spam and promote high-quality content.

They usually do this by altering their algorithm on a regular basis. Other times, they opt to do it manually. As mentioned earlier, this often leads to penalizing sites that break their rules. Although it doesn’t happen often, penalization is still a possibility.

When penalties rain down, it can be hard to recover.

And if you’re hiring someone else to head your SEO strategy, you need to know how they plan to help you survive Google updates.

You should find out how they plan to avoid penalties in the first place. Ask for detailed answers. Be wary of those that shy away from this topic.

Most competent SEOs have solid strategies for dealing with issues related to penalization.

Make Sure They Provide Detailed Reports

Full SEO reports should occur month-to-month, and they must be timely and detailed.

You can ask for a different frequency, but a monthly schedule tends to be the norm in this industry. Within these reports, you should see several things. First, you should find rundown of all activities

Your SEO expert should also provide an update on the rankings of your primary keywords.

Most importantly, the report should have a section showcasing increases in search traffic. This helps you keep tabs on how good (or bad) of a job your SEO is doing.

While your prospective SEO’s monthly report may contain other pieces of info, the ones mentioned here are the most important.

Engage in an in-depth conversation about this topic early in the selection process. Once you decide on an SEO expert, compare what they deliver during the first month to what they promised.

If the first report is neither complete nor timely, it might be time to take your business elsewhere. It’s best to double-check the accuracy during the first month as well.

Keep in mind that these reports are serious business. They provide the best way to track the progress of your SEO strategy.

Pay Close Attention to Link Building

Link building is one of the most important steps in building a respectable online presence.

It just so happens to be one of the most difficult to pull off on your own. Any SEO expert worth their salt will include link building in their packages. If you see anyone offering hundreds or thousands of links for a few bucks, don’t even think about it.

When an offer seems too good to be true, it usually is.

Low-quality backlinks have a higher chance of harming your ranking than helping it. You’re looking for high-quality links, not spam.

However, a knowledgeable SEO expert can lay out a multi-step plan for building links. They might not be able to get too specific out the gate, but they need to provide some steps.

Consider Price and the Structure of the Contract

Price is not necessarily a great indicator of service quality.

Of course, you want to choose an agency or freelancer within your price range.

That said, stay away from anyone who makes too many promises for a low cost. Also, you may run into some unorthodox payment schedules. Many people and agencies charge month-to-month, but it varies. When deciding on an SEO expert, find out what happens if you need to break the contract for whatever reason.

It’s important to shield yourself from any early termination fees. Keep in mind that these fees are often well-hidden in the contract.

Contracts without extra fees protect you against companies that provide lackluster services. Plus, it takes a while to see significant results with SEO.

Therefore, any additional flexibility is nice to have when you don’t know what lies ahead.

You’re Now Ready to Hire an SEO Expert

The process of choosing the right person for the job can seem like navigating a minefield.

The last thing you want to do is invest a bunch of your money and time in a service that doesn’t work. But using some of the tips outlined in the article will help you to differentiate the experts from the imitators.

By asking the right questions, you can slice your chances of choosing the wrong person or agency for the job.

Remember to stay away from those who promise too much for too little. Instead, consider people or agencies that provide realistic and direct answers.

Contact me if you are looking for a trusted SEO consultant for your business.

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