How to use SEO to Generate High Quality B2B Leads

How to use SEO to Generate High Quality B2B Leads

Jun 23, 2021 | SEO, Web-marketing

SEO is an important and powerful tool for B2B marketers. But many businesses do not know where to start when it comes to SEO. It’s time to get on the ground floor with SEO in order to make sure that you’re maximizing all avenues for B2B lead generation. If you’re a B2B marketer, it is key to boost traffic and conversions from organic sources like online searches.

Today, many consumers and business professionals prefer to research about products and services on their own before contacting a company or making a purchase decision. The good news: relevant and compelling content marketing helps brands rank higher in search engine results pages which means more traffic and leads – 67% better than those who don’t blog at all. That’s why it’s import to start your company’s B2B SEO today.

In the B2B realm, many of your competitors are still hesitant to use SEO

While it is true that the competition and marketing success of consumer brands are at an all-time high online, many business-to-business (B2B) keyword terms are still underutilized by B2B companies. The hesitation from businesses stems largely from misconceptions about what they think will work or how much time it takes to see results. However, once these fears are overcome there can be tremendous gains made through optimizing content for search engines. Not only does optimization create brand awareness it also helps generate leads!

Keywords and Content

How can you check if your website is currently ranking for keywords in your industry? The first thing you should do to find search result rankings is make sure that the playing field on Google is level. Start by examining a depersonalized view of the keyword, which strips any pre-existing bias you might have in your personal history with it. This creates an unbiased search where you can analyze how people are interacting with that content online.

After you have completed a depersonalized search, begin to research where your website shows up on relevant search queries in comparison to your competitors. The ability to answer your prospects’ and customers’ common questions online is a huge opportunity for any brand. By doing so, you can make yourself authoritative on the subject of whatever question they have asked. It doesn’t matter if it’s about what product has certain features or why their favorite type of sports team stinks–if you are an expert in that area then people will turn to you before anyone else when looking up answers.

 

seo for b2b companies

 

SEO is a valuable tool to help increase the reach of your B2B content

Content is your best chance to build trust and confidence with buyers. Content for B2B specifically gives them the assurance that you are knowledgeable, competent, and trustworthy in their eyes.

It is easy to get lost in the crowd without combining content creation with SEO. Combining these two aspects of marketing can take your business from average to something special, as it will ensure that every asset you create has a larger reach and more value than before.

Thinks to factor in when beginning your content optimization are:

Creating the right content: You need to know who your audience is before you can create the right content for them. For instance, a CIO will be more interested in the tech specs of a product while a CIO may want more information about pricing and product update costs.

Determining Keywords: The decision of what keywords to input when searching is dependent upon the level at which users are looking. Initial searches may require very broad terms, such as “paper companies in Pennsylvania” while other searchers will know precisely what they want and search accordingly with more specific words like “paper companies in Pennsylvania who make 80lb linen white stock.”

Search Intent: Google’s algorithms are now so advanced that keywords alone will not do the trick. Content creators need to consider who their audience is and what they want from a search engine before crafting content, because different audiences require very specific information presented in unique ways.

Keep in mind that there are as many different types of decision makers out there and each one has their own interests.

 

b2b mobile seo

 

Always Consider Mobile When Creating B2B Content

The way we market our products has changed dramatically over the years. More and more, consumers are reaching for their phones to complete almost every task: from reading emails at work, ordering groceries online when they’re hungry on a Friday night, or even looking up directions while driving down unfamiliar streets.

While many business professionals work on a desktop at work, they still use smartphones and tablets — especially after work. Without optimizing your website’s design and content layout for different screen sizes, you may miss out on potential purchasers who research products off-hours.

 

It’s Never To Late to Start Using SEO

The best time to start focusing on B2B SEO is now. In this era of content marketing, you need a complete strategy if you want to make sure you are getting your market share and capturing and converting leads online.  Search engine optimization will help you achieve those goals. If you need help with your SEO program, please take a look at our SEO Packages.

 

Related SEO Articles

Seven Reasons Why Your Business Should Go SEO

Seven Reasons Why Your Business Should Go SEO

Apr 1, 2021 | Blog, SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important marketing strategy many businesses use to drive traffic to their website. Why?  In today’s digital world, the web is the place to go to gain leads for your sales department and grow your business through online sales. Funny that one of the most asked questions about SEO is…is SEO dead?

SEO is definitely not dead. U.S. companies are investing more into SEO than ever, spending over $80 billion annually. While social media, PPC, display advertising, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, search engines, especially Google, drive the most online traffic. In fact, 53% of all trackable website traffic comes from organic search, according to BrightEdge. When set up properly, SEO is one of the only online marketing channels that can continue to pay dividends over time, where advertising needs ongoing funding to send traffic to your site. SEO is not going to stop working anytime soon.

Seven Reasons Why Your Business Should Go SEO:

SEO Works!

SEO is effective and generates results. According to a recent study by BrightEdge, 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic. SEO is trackable so you can see what’s working and what’s not working. And with comprehensive analytics, you have the ability to drill down at a granular level and see demographic information and other engagement metrics for individuals who have interacted with your website. You can also set attribute values to your lead conversions, making it easier to see the return you’re getting from your SEO investment.

SEO Boosts Your Credibility and Authority

When you combine your SEO efforts with content marketing and create informative, valuable content, you have the opportunity to build trust and credibility with prospects on their buying journey, from the research phase through purchase to becoming a loyal customer.

SEO is Affordable

Inbound marketing strategies like SEO are much more cost-effective than outbound marketing strategies like cold-calling. SEO targets users who are actively searching online for products and services like yours, so the traffic generated to your site is more qualified. And leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO cost 61% less than leads generated from an outbound strategy.  SEO drives results that other marketing channels just can’t match.

SEO Drives Mobile Device Traffic

According to TechJury, the mobile market share worldwide is 52.1% compared to the desktop market share of 44.2%, and 40% of people search only on a smartphone, especially when searching for local products and services. What does this mean? Local search optimization is important, and optimizing for mobile is critical to ensure your ability to gain more opportunities to reach people.

SEO Gives You Access to the Online Market

Organic SEO is more important than ever. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an remarkable 44.0% year over year, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. That’s an incredible amount of business you will miss out on without SEO tactics in place to get you to page one of the search engines.

SEO Puts Your Name Out There

Your business needs to be on the web and not just on your website. Not having a good content profile will translate into lost business. Having a solid content profile means that your business has valuable content on its site and participates with other sites, including social media, forums, video sites, directories, etc. Search engines use updates to search algorithms to see where you are on the web, so having a content profile in place will ensure the search engines properly evaluate your site and presence on the web and deem it important.

Your Competition Is Using SEO

When your competition is aggressively using SEO, and you are not, someone will lose out, and it won’t be your competition. SEO is ongoing and needs to be actively managed. If you’re not on top of your SEO, another company will be, and they’ll pull ahead of you. Do not let your competition reign unchecked online. Get your business up to speed and start creating value (and clicks and customers).

Putting the work needed into developing organic SEO is more important than ever to remain relevant and generate more revenue. As a business, implementing SEO is one of the most important things you can do to build your online presence. It’s not only crucial for sales; it’s essential for branding, too. It’s now or never, and never might be too late. Check out Unreal Web Marketing’s SEO services today and see why SEO must be a part of your marketing strategy!

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Feb 9, 2021 | Blog, SEO

 

 

 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through your site, what actions they take, and what’s stopping them from completing your goals.

What is a conversion?

A conversion is the general term for a visitor completing a site goal. Goals come in many shapes and sizes. If you use your website to sell products, the primary goal (known as the macro-conversion) is for the user to make a purchase. There are smaller conversions that can happen before a user completes a macro-conversion, such as signing up to receive emails. These are called micro-conversions.

Examples of conversions

Macro-conversions:

  • Purchasing a product from the site
  •  Requesting a quote
  •  Subscribing to a service

Examples of micro-conversions:

  •  Signing up for email lists
  •  Creating an account
  •  Adding a product to the cart

What is a conversion rate?

Your site’s conversion rate is the number of times a user completes a goal divided by your site traffic. If a user can convert in each visit (such as by buying a product), divide the number of conversions by the number of sessions (the number of unique times a user came to your site). If you sell a subscription, divide the number of conversions by the number of users.

Conversion rate optimization happens after the visit makes it to your site. This is different from conversion optimization for SEO or paid ads which focuses on who clicks through to your site from the organic search results, how many clicks you get, and which keywords are driving traffic.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

If a user can convert each time they visit the site:

Imagine we own an ecommerce site — Roger’s Robotics. A user could make a new purchase each session. We want to optimize so they make as many purchases as possible. If a user visited the site three times, that would be three sessions — and three opportunities to convert.

Let’s closer at our user’s three sessions and how they behaved:

  •  Session 1: No conversion — user was familiarizing themselves with the site and poking around.
  • Session 2: User bought a shiny new antenna. This is a conversion!
  • Session 3: User came back and bought a new set of gears and a blinking light — another conversion! Even though they bought two items, this is a single unique order and thus counts as a single conversion.

To figure out our conversion rate, we would take the number of unique purchase orders and divide it by the total number of sessions.

To find out the conversion rate for your site, you’ll look at all unique orders divided the total number of sessions.

Calculating Conversion Rate by Sessions:

If a user can only convert once

Now imagine we owned a second site — Roger’s Monthly Gear Box. Our site sells a subscription for a monthly delivery of robot parts. A user could come back multiple times, but once they purchase a subscription, they won’t convert again.

Let’s look at an example user’s behavior:

  • Session 1: User came to the site for the first time to explore the service. No conversion.
  • Session 2: User subscribed to our monthly GearBox service– this is our conversion!
  • Session 3: User came back to read blog articles and poke around.

Our user here can’t convert each time they visit the site. So instead of looking at the number of sessions, we need to measure conversion success by the number of visitors. To figure out our website’s conversion rate, we would take the number of unique orders and divide it by the number of unique users.

5 Ways CRO benefits SEOs

While not necessarily directly related to attracting organic website traffic or ranking on a search engine results page (SERP), conversion rate optimization has distinct benefits for SEO. Those include:

  1. Improved customer insights. Conversion rate optimization can help you better understand your key audience and find what language or messaging best speaks to their needs. Conversion rate optimization looks at finding the right customers for your business. Acquiring more people doesn’t do your business any good if they’re not the right kind of people!
  2. Better ROI: Higher conversion rate means making more of the resources you have. By studying how to get the most out of your acquisition efforts, you’ll get more conversions without having to bring in more potential customers.
  3. Better scalability: While your audience size may not scale as your business grows, CRO lets you grow without running out of resources and prospective customers. Audiences aren’t infinite. By turning more browsers into buyers, you’ll be able to grow your business without running out of potential customers.
  4. Better user experience: When users feel smart and sophisticated on your website, they tend to stick around. CRO studies what works on your site. By taking what works and expanding on it, you’ll make a better user experience. Users who feel empowered by your site will engage with it more — and some may even become evangelists for your brand.
  5. Enhanced trust: In order for a user to share their credit card, email, or any sort of personal information, they have to genuinely trust the site. Your website is your number-one sales person. Just like an internal sales team, your site needs to be professional, courteous, and ready to answer all of your customers’ questions.

The Key to Successful Optimization

In order to optimize for conversion rates, you have to know where, what to optimize, and who to optimize for. This information is the cornerstone to successful CRO strategies.

If you don’t gather data, then you’re left making changes based on gut feelings alone. Guts are awesome! But making decisions on just gut feelings instead of rooting assumptions in data can be a waste of time and money.

The Analytics Method

This method, also known as quantitative data analysis, gives you hard numbers behind how people actually behave on your site. Start with a solid web analytics platform, such as Google Analytics. Next, add tracking for your conversions.

Using analytics-based CRO can answer important questions about how users engage with your site. Quantitative analysis provides information like:

  • Where people enter your site, i.e., which webpage they land on first
  • Which features they engage with, i.e., where on a page or within your site do they spend their time
  • What channel and referrer brought them in, i.e., where they found and clicked on a link to your site
  • What devices and browsers they use
  • Who your customers are (age, demographic, and interest)
  • Where users abandon your conversion funnel, i.e., where or during what activity do users leave your site

This information will let you know where to focus your efforts. By putting your effort into the pages most engaged with and valuable to your users, you’ll see the largest impact.

The People Method

Doing your quantitative analysis first is especially valuable if you have a large site with diverse content as it lets you know, from a numbers perspective, where to focus your efforts. But now that you know how users interact with your site, you can look into the “why” behind their behavior.

This people-focused method, known as qualitative data analysis, is more subjective. You’ll need the quantitative data discussed above to identify who you should be asking. You can’t optimize for all users, so optimize for your ideal user — that is, the user it’s most important to have as a customer.

Ways to get this data:

  • On-site surveys
  • User testing
  • Satisfaction surveys

Qualitative analysis helps optimize for conversions by providing information about users such as:

  • Why did they engage? Why did they originally decide to visit your site or navigate to a specific page? What about the page or product appealed to them?
  • What do they think your site offers that makes you different from competitors? Is there a feature or service offered by your company that makes buying from you a better experience?
  • What words they use to describe your products, services, and the pain points they address? How would they describe your product or service to a friend? In essence, how do they talk about what you do?

There are certain things that raw data alone can’t tell you about what brought a user to your site or how to make their experience better. But when you combine this information with your analytics data, you can gain a much better understanding of the pages on your site that present the best opportunities to optimize and engage the audience you’d like to target.

The Bad Method

This comes in many forms. Some not-so-effective CRO methods include:

  • Guesses, hunches, and gut feelings
  • Doing it because your competitor is doing it
  • Executing changes based on the highest paid person’s opinion

All these examples have something in common: they’re not data-based and might as well be random shots in the dark. It’s better to spend the time gathering and analyzing the data so you can create meaningful tests based on clear insights. Nobody loves running tests that fail.

Top Mistakes That Could Impact Your Responsive Mobile Conversion

Top Mistakes That Could Impact Your Responsive Mobile Conversion

Jan 31, 2021 | SEO

Almost ten years ago, nearly everybody who was accessing the web was on a desktop computer. In 2006, only two screen sizes were responsible for 77% of all internet usage.

This trend has completely changed. According to a research study conducted by Mobify, today, ten different screen sizes comprising tablets, smartphones, web-enabled TVs, netbooks, and laptops represent 77%t of total internet usage.

It is interesting to note that there is no single screen size that commands more than 20% of the market share. Nowadays, when marketers design their websites, they must consider different types of devices accessing the internet-from budget-friendly Android devices to smart TVs and high-end iMacs.

A responsive and user-friendly mobile design is the answer for a digital world where tablet and smartphone users demand an intuitive and feature-rich web experience that matches the one on desktop computers. However, implementing responsive mobile design is not the total answer. It may resolve the problem of screen-size layout, but there are other fundamental problems with the responsive strategy that many marketers ignore.

 The following are some common mistakes that could impact your responsive mobile conversion:

1. Outsized, data-heavy images

Images represent a major responsive conversion problem. Since a responsive website utilizes one markup for various devices, it is crucial to make sure that only big and appealing images are loaded to Retina iPad displays. In contrast, older smartphones get fast-loading images that have a low resolution.

For websites with rich images, the problems start with mobile page speed because of the size of high-resolution images rendered to an inappropriate device. Wasting valuable bandwidth when sending images to the wrong devices is essentially like throwing money away.

Below are three methods for optimizing images for all resolutions and screen sizes:

  • Resize images using imagemagick software to optimize their size.
  • Utilize Lossy Compression to minimize the size of the image totally while at the same time retain depth.
  • Use multiple servers to render images-ideally Amazon Cloudfront CDN.

By applying these hacks, you can increase your mobile conversion. This is because these hacks ensure that you can consistently convey the appropriate images to the right devices.

2. Poor page-loading times

Web pages with slow loading times face a big problem because slow-loading pages are annoying to users. An average retail mobile website in the US takes 6.9 seconds to load.

However, according to a study conducted by Akamai, 40% of users will leave a web page that takes over three seconds to load. In addition,64% of online shoppers that are unhappy with their website will move to another site the next time they shop.

Web-users will leave your site if they are forced to wait for a long time in order to view your web page content. Jakob Nielsen, the author of a book called Usability Engineering, says that people can tolerate a maximum of 10 seconds loading time before they abandon a page. Even a delay of a couple of seconds is sufficient to create a bad experience for the user.

Leading companies recognize that the performance of their website is crucial, and appreciating their users’ time can make them have a competitive edge in the market. This approach constitutes a major plank of Google’s commercial ideology.

Facebook designers value the time of their users more than anything else. In addition, they understand that quicker experiences are more effective and feel more natural. Users should not notice the performance of the website. 

3. Integrating long forms in your website

Many people don’t like to fill out long forms, especially on mobile. Avoid incorporating long and tedious forms that force users to type in a lot of information. Long forms discourage your users and harm your conversion rates when used for any transaction form. For example, Expedia lost $12 million due to using an irrelevant form field that left their users confused.

On the other hand, HubSpot (A marketing automation solution) increased their conversion rates by 50% when they cut the number of form fields on their site from four to three. Shorter forms are always better on the web- especially on mobile devices.

4. Not paying attention to the user’s goal on your mobile site

Responsive design will not solve all problems. Although having a responsive design solves a lot of mobile user experience(UX) issues, it does not always consider the user’s goals. Smartinsights.com notes that there is a 270% difference between mobile and desktop conversion rates. This is because people do not understand mobile websites.

When it comes to desktop computers, having many words and long titles has an impact that is sometimes completely different from what happens on mobile devices. Additional text on a mobile device will obscure that page and discourage the user from attaining their goal- which is usually the call to action.

Apart from the menu bar, it would be best to concentrate on helping your users navigate through your webpage more easily, particularly the call-to-action buttons. As you are designing your website, keep the mobile user in mind and ensure that their journey across your website is much easier, focusing on your conversion rate.

Conclusion:

Usage of mobile media is rising faster than TV, desktop, print, and radio. Today, more people than ever are accessing the internet using mobile devices. It is therefore critical to design mobile websites that are easier and more comfortable to use. A website that is hard to navigate annoys mobile users- causing them to abandon your site and search for other sites.

If you fail to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, visitors to your site will decline to fill your forms, ditch their shopping cart, abandon your site and conduct business with your competitors. Ultimately, this will hurt your conversion rate.

If you need any help redesigning your old site or creating a brand new website that will be compatible with all mobile devices, Let’s Talk!

 

Top Ways To Get Smarter With Your Content & SEO

Top Ways To Get Smarter With Your Content & SEO

Jan 15, 2021 | SEO

Despite the many ways Google has changed the search game over the last five years, one truth remains: content is the vehicle that drives your consumer interactions, engagements, experiences and, ultimately, conversions.  However, only 41% of marketers think their organization is clear on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like, according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Marketers aren’t just lacking confidence in their efforts; these are real and measurable deficits. In fact, only 20% of B2C and 50% of B2B content earns any engagement at all. That’s a lot of wasted effort and resources invested in content that ends up just floating around the web, winning zero business benefit for its creators.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at content through the SMART lens. SMART is a goal-setting framework in which S stands for Specific, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant and T for timely. Below explains how to apply search engine optimization (SEO) to your content within a SMART framework, giving you 14 concrete ways to make your marketing more effective and to win you more business.


S — Specific content wins every time.

Content is not about what your marketing team wants to say. It is about providing insight and information that your audience actually wants to hear.

SMART content is designed for a specific audience, based on your understanding of their needs, preferences and intent.

 1. Get to know your audiences

There’s much more to this than keyword research. Where do your consumers live online? What’s their intent when performing certain types of searches or engaging your brand in social? What action are they most likely to take at that point? Understanding the audience you’re writing for is the foundation on which SMART content is built.

2. Discover opportunities through topical research

How well do you understand the competitive environment in the verticals for which you’re creating content? Today, you’re competing for eyes and clicks. Your competitors may be other companies, but you could be competing for space in the SERPs against media brands, bloggers, influencers and more. Without that bigger-picture, bird’s-eye view of relevant search and social spaces, you’re flying blind.

Evaluating the content gaps not covered by your competition provides you with opportunities to create engaging content that speaks to people in the key moments that matter.

3. Choose content formats wisely

Which media will you incorporate to best illustrate your message, engage your audience and reach people across platforms?  Don’t limit yourself; a single piece of content can incorporate several types of media, including socially shareable images, quick video clips and embedded media, like SlideShares.  This gives you various ways to convey your message, but it also allows you to appear in different types of search results (like Google Images) and on different search platforms (like YouTube or SlideShare’s internal search), as well.

M — Measurable content delivers on the metrics that matter

Content marketers are getting better at proving the business value of their activities. Just two years ago, only 21% of B2B marketing respondents to CMI’s annual content marketing survey said they were successful at tracking ROI. Now, in 2017:

• 72% are measuring their content marketing ROI.
• 51% are using a measurement plan to provide both insight and progress toward the business goals.
• 79% are using analytics tools.

4. Choose metrics that matter and align with your business goals.

Which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) tell the true story of your content’s success? Ideally, you’re going to measure your content’s performance through the entire funnel, right from lead generation and audience-building to nurturing, conversion, sales and right on through post-sales to retention and evangelism.  Site traffic, lead quality, social shares, time on site and conversion rates are among the top metrics used by B2B marketers to determine content success. Priorities are similar for B2C marketers.

5. Make search engine optimization a core component of content creation.

Improve your visibility and key metrics like engagement, time on site, sharing and conversions with strategic content optimization. Apply readability standards and optimize title tags, meta descriptions, subheadings, images and text in line with current SEO standards. Keep visitors clicking and engaged with smart internal linking that both improves user experience and resurfaces your most popular, highest-converting content.

6. Accelerate with automation.

Machine learning is growing in importance in search, especially where data sets are large and dynamic. Identifying patterns in data in real time makes machine learning a great asset to understand changes in your customer base, competitor landscape or the overall market. Ideally, your content automation system will include reporting to tell you not only how each piece is performing but also make recommendations to help you focus on your most valuable opportunities.

Automation allows you to manage routine tasks with less effort so that you can focus on high-impact activities and accomplish business goals at scale.

A — Actionable content is always on & ready for activation

By actionable content, I mean that which is ready to answers users’ questions but also is valuable way beyond the initial period of promotion after publishing.

7. Empower your content creators with technical SEO support.

Last month, I wrote about the importance of balancing technical and non-technical SEO within your organization. If you want your content to perform its best, you need to support your creative team with a technically sound, optimized online presence.  Site structure and hierarchy, meta data, mobile readiness, internal linking, site speed, coding errors and other technical SEO factors can all affect your content’s ability to rank.  Further, they can affect readers’ ability to access and enjoy the content and then take next steps. Get your technical and non-technical SEO in order to set your content team up for success.

8. Optimize for activation across multiple channels.

Search engine marketing is the second-most commonly used paid content promotion tactic, next only to social advertising.  Push your content to social channels like Twitter and Facebook, but don’t forget other channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.  Ideally, you’re going to have some understanding of your audience on each platform and which channels will be most receptive to each new piece. Make sure you’re optimizing your social posts for the platform on which you’re posting — cutting and pasting the same post across all channels doesn’t cut it.

R — Resonate with content promotion in relevant channels

Even if you build it, they will not come until attracted. The competition for eyes and minds is fierce; increase the efficacy of your organic efforts and promotional spend by targeting the right people in the right places at the right time.

9. Amplify in social channels for early traction.

Low spend minimums on channels like Twitter and Facebook make it affordable to run experiments against different audience segments and see where your content resonates best.  Plus, that initial boost of activity gives your content authority and appeals to the social networks’ ranking algorithms, helping you get more organic reach. If you are tracking and measuring correctly, you can see which audiences are not only engaged, but converting. That’s where you want to allocate your content-promotion budget, rather than having some predetermined amount of spend per channel that runs its course regardless of performance for each piece.

10. Syndicate and use paid promotion to reach targeted audiences outside your existing network.

Syndication takes content you’ve already published on your site and republishes it elsewhere, exposing you to another publication’s audience. You might be able to find organic syndication opportunities, and there are plenty of paid syndication services like Outbrain, Taboola or Zemanta.  If you’re looking at large-scale syndication, read Danny Sullivan’s caution on using links in syndicated pieces first to stay on the right side of Google.

11. Don’t forget email!

Your consumers want to hear from you. In fact, 86% want to receive emails at least monthly from companies they deal with, a MarketingSherpa survey found in 2015.  Make your call to action (CTA) to click through and read the content crystal-clear. Avoid placing competing CTAs in your email, and resist the urge to try to sell in every communication. Your content is designed to do the work of helping them take the next logical step.

T — Tangible business results are derived from SMART content

KPIs like social interactions and site visits give you a great idea of how well your content performs in search and social, but you need tangible business results to prove value.

12. Make content profitable with CTAs that drive performance.

What action would you like readers to take? Which of your site’s conversion pages is currently converting best and generating the highest-quality leads? These insights will help guide your CTA selection, but remember, your CTAs should also match the consumer intent you’re targeting with each piece. Don’t forget to include embedded performance tracking for both site traffic and conversions.

13. Incorporate elements that support multiple business functions.

Make your content multidimensional with elements to build brand authority, inspire or educate on product (or service), encourage engagement and more.  Incorporate testimonials into your content, where they can serve the purpose of providing social validation within the context of an existing consumer experience. Develop author personas to give your content greater authority and build the profiles of key employees and executives.

14. Improve ROI with ongoing content management and optimization.

How much content does your organization have sitting on-site and around the web? Each piece is an opportunity for ongoing traffic and lead generation, but only if it’s kept in line with constantly changing SEO standards.  Updating your entire catalogue of content every time Google releases an update would be a task so astronomical in scope that it’s not even worth considering doing manually.

Bringing it all together
Intelligent marketers are beginning to move the needle on content performance by embracing SEO and content as one. While it is true that both disciplines have high degrees of specialization (for example, technical SEO or branded content), the most prolific and tangible results come from a combination of both.

 

Why Is Organic SEO Critical for Your Law Firm

Why Is Organic SEO Critical for Your Law Firm

Nov 6, 2020 | Blog, SEO

Today, more and more businesses utilize the Internet as a source to find new clients, including people seeking your legal services. According to the FindLaw U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey, 74% of all consumers seeking legal help visit a law firm’s website before taking action. That is a lot of potential business to lose if you don’t have a strong, well-managed online presence. That is why SEO for law firms is critical and why you need to work with an SEO company to ensure you are achieving the best results possible. 

Search Engine Optimization and How it Works? – For Law Firms

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility for relevant organic searches on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Of these three, Google is the market leader, with over 70% of the desktop market and a whopping 93% of the mobile search market (NetMarket Share). The statistics leave no doubt that Google is by far the dominant platform for online search. Statista reports that an astounding 92% of search traffic comes from Google.

The better visibility your law firm website pages have in search results, the more likely you will attract prospective clients to your business. Not only is it necessary to be in search results, but it is also critical to be on page one as 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines. Your goal is to get to the top three positions to get the most click-throughs (or potential business) to your site.

Search engines comb billions of pieces of content and evaluate hundreds of factors to determine which content is most likely to answer your query. They do this by finding and cataloging all content on the Internet, such as web pages, PDFs, images, and videos, via a process known as “crawling and indexing,” and then ranking it by how well it matches the query.

SEO makes it easier for search engines to find and crawl your law firm’s website.

SEO tactics include creating a mobile-friendly and user-friendly website, optimizing keywords and your site’s content, linking with other sites that have clout with the search engines, and making sure the code used on your site is friendly to the search engine crawlers.

SideBar: Organic search vs. Paid Search 

Whenever you type a question into a search engine, the list of links that appear below the links tagged as ads is called “organic results.” Organic results appear based on the quality and content of the web page. The difference between organic search vs. paid search is the cost. Organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, while paid search focuses on paid rankings created through Pay Per Click (PPC) programs such as Google Adwords. With PPC, your visibility disappears as soon as you stop paying for the campaign. SEO is what companies use to optimize their site’s visibility or rankings in organic search results. SEO may not promise the immediate impact of paid advertising, but it does have the potential to deliver long-term success after your initial investment.

 

SEO for Lawyers

How Important is My Law Firm Website for Online Success? 

No matter what industry you’re in, your website should be a well-designed, content-rich website. Online, it will be the first impression of your law firm for your prospective client. If it isn’t easy to navigate, outdated in appearance, or lacking in content your visitor will find useful; they will rarely come back again and will move on to your competition. Additionally, suppose your website is slow to load. In that case, it will hurt your rankings, and your conversions, as the search engines take the speed of navigating through your site into account when determining rankings. The best law firm websites retain visitors on their site and increase the time users spend on their site by continually providing fresh content that keeps their visitors informed and engaged.

 

How Do I Know What Keywords to Choose to Rank My Law Firm in Search Engines?

Keywords or keyword phrases are those terms and queries that searchers manually type in the search engine to find the products, services, or information they need. It is essential to choose the right keywords that reflect the legal services you offer and to build content on your site around those keywords.

For instance, if you are a DUI attorney, you would want to rank high for keywords such as DUI attorney near me or DUI attorneys in Pearl River, NY, if that is where your office is located. Additionally, you should offer content on your website that would describe the process of how your firm works through the DUI legal process with clients. Here is where an SEO company is beneficial, as they have the tools and research knowledge to help you choose the keywords that would work best for you and the writers to help you create engaging content.

 

Sidebar: Local SEO for Law Firms

Local SEO (Local Search Engine Optimization) is very important because it is one of the most effective marketing methods for lawyers, attorneys, and law firms. In local SEO, the goal is to get your law firm to rank in your local geographical areas for the types of cases you handle. Over 80% of local searches convert to customers (Search Engine Watch)

Lawyer seo keywords

 

How Long Will It Take Before SEO Works For My Practice?

Many factors determine how long it will take for SEO to work, including the level of competition for the terms you want to rank for and your geographic market. You may start to see improvements in your overall rankings in as early as three months, but it can take up to a year or longer for more competitive search phrases.

 

The Importance of SEO for Law Firms and Hiring an SEO Company to Get You to Page One

Online search is a critical marketing tool that lawyers, attorneys, and law firms have for attracting clients. The National Law Review reports that 96% of people seeking legal advice turn to a search engine. If you want to drive quality leads and improve your bottom line, you can’t afford to ignore SEO. But SEO takes time, requires a lot of attention, and is ever-changing and ongoing, which is why it is better to leave it in the hands of capable SEO experts. For instance, Google made over 3,000 updates to the search algorithm over the last two years, affecting search engine rankings.

Optimizing for Local Search for Lawyers – Google My Business Profiles

Google local results are based, primarily, on three key factors: relevance, distance and prominence. The Google algorithm will take these components into consideration in order to return optimal search results. When attempting to achieve local rankings for law firms, there are many strategies attorneys can use to make their Google My Business listing as relevant as possible. Here are some tips and tactics to help you achieve that first-place local ranking:

  • Distance:

    • Distance is the Google’s #1 factor when ranking for local search.
    • Google will consider how far each law firm is from the location term used in a search. If a location is not specified in the search, Google will calculate a distance based on what’s known about the searcher’s location.
  • Relevance:
    • Be specific when choosing your business category.
    • Make your description is as comprehensive as possible.
    • Add plenty of images and videos.
    • Include thorough service sections that target keyword phrases.
    • Make sure that your business information (address, phone number, etc.) is consistent with how it appears on your website and other listings online.
  • Prominence:
    • Collect high quality reviews to gain a high rating on your profile.
    • Acquire citations in online directories in order to help Google better understand how to categorize your law firm.
    • Amass backlinks pointing users to your website. These links act almost like “votes” to place your firm at the top of local search results.
    • Publish articles both internally, on your own website, and externally including backlinks.

Why You May Need SEO Today – Why Your Law Firm Needs SEO today

  • 96% of people of people who are looking for legal advice use a search engine
  • 74% of online visitors take action when arriving at a law firm website
  • 62% of legal searches are not branded (ex. New York injury attorney, Chicago law firm)
  • 72% of potential clients only contact one attorney

At Unreal Web Marketing, we specialize in search engine optimization, web design, PPC programs, and social advertising to help law firms succeed online. We track rankings for important keywords each month for law firms to identify when Google algorithm updates impact your rankings in the legal market. And we develop data-driven SEO strategies that will help give you an edge over your competition. Contact us today to speak with one of our SEO strategy specialists.