Optimise your Business with Search Engine Marketing
Use Search Engine Marketing to Drive Momentum
Welcome to our deep-dive into the weird and wonderful world of search engine marketing; an in-house investigation into the abundant opportunities for business to capitalise in the digital age - regardless of industry or scale.
If the array of technical terms we use here are somewhat unfamiliar to you - don't worry too much - things will clear up as we go along - hopefully highlighting a fairly logical sequence to the process as a whole.
The key term we are exploring here: search engine marketing, is actually a broad umbrella category for many of the modern best-practice guidelines around content creation, combined with search engine optimisation tactics or SEO for short.
“Our approach to search engine marketing is a ground up practice - designed to suit and adjust to your business needs over time.”
In general, what we are talking about in this article is the way in which search engines can be used as a digital marketing tool for business in a couple of different, yet complementary, ways.
One of these we've alluded to already and involves optimising your written content for search, while another leverages popular search terms or queries to create a strong base of advertising visibility, often referred to in digital marketing spaces as an AdWord campaign or SEM campaign.
The two categories are not mutually exclusive, however, with both often used in unison to great effect and individually depending on circumstances, industry and budget etc.
And, with a bit of strategy entwined in your approach: both elements either together or separated can be used to generate powerful marketing opportunities, visibility options and return on investment (ROI), for both you and your enterprise.
So, let's get our diving gear on and get ready to head down into the depths of all things marketing in the digital underworld!
As a dedicated and fairly specialised SEO content agency; West Coast Content as a business exists in the realm of complex algorithms and data streams.
From this perspective, we love to weigh in and explore ideas around content and copy written with a hidden payload of expertise, authority and trust or E-A-T on-board.
This means that for business, the humble word has become so much more powerful in the modern age, than ever before.
That's not to discount the ancients who assembled their own alphabets, languages and so forth - it's simply a reference to the capacity for optimised content to not only engage your audience in the traditional sense, but to also educate and inform search engines around your topical expertise, and to the value which you bring to a specific search engine results page, or SERP.
It's this direct and adjacent topical relevance that will, in turn, drive your page up the rankings, and provide the best opportunities for SEO success.
While the 'organic search’ approach can be an absolute game-changer for businesses of all shapes and sizes; the alternative option of running paid ads can often yield fast results, aligning with your available budget and generating some interesting data-sets for you to move forward with.
The first thing you might notice with either approach is the level of competition that exists out there in your sector - be it super strong or totally achievable - it's this knowledge that can provide solutions and strategies for the future.
Whether you're endeavouring to compete with the big boys for a highly competitive search term, or looking to skip over the crowd with a pay-per-click PPC advertising campaign; what we hope to do in this article is to highlight ways in which you can achieve your desired results in a way that works for you.
Is Search Engine Marketing Suitable for your Business?
Regardless of the business that you’re in, the startup project that your bootstrapping, or the large enterprise that you work for; applying a strategy to the way you produce written content for your workplace can have a huge effect on both the way your audience and customers view your business - alongside the way in which a search engine will choose to index your content - based on multiple factors including the aforementioned E-A-T.
Through a strict content marketing lens, and without paying too much attention to Google and co; regular and commonly themed content is the way to educate and inform your target audience, ensuring that in their eyes your reputation is strong and trustworthy, leading them through your doors as they progress through their own sales funnel or buyers journey.
When you combine your content marketing strategy with at the very least, an awareness of SEO best practice and what search engines are looking to provide in terms of a search result, then you can begin to expand your focus and start to incorporate keyword phrases, and more importantly adjacent topics into your written work.
This planned-out approach serves two purposes:
You begin to create inherent brand messaging, that is more likely to resonate with your readers.
While in-turn building up reputation and authority with the digital tastemakers who over time - who will recognise and reward your website and pages with higher rankings, more impressions and greater, more qualified, sales leads.
Make no mistake about it, whether you're a big fish in a small pond in the business world, or a startup business leveraging SEO, reaching the top of the SERPs for a high volume search term can be an absolute game-changer. If you're currently in the startup phase: achieving a high ranking can even be the makings of your venture for the foreseeable future.
Consider someone looking for a particular variety of tea, available to buy locally in their city. Now imagine they have 100 friends who every month of the year, allowing for seasonality, are looking for their own individual or similar varieties of tea via an online search engine - which is where 90% plus of online experiences begin.
Now the fun bit, imagine that your product page featuring the dozens of tea’s that you supply is able to scale the rankings and into the top half of page one on Google.
Provided your user experience (UX) is up to scratch and your content is engaging and enjoyable; you’re looking at potentially hundreds of qualified, that is people who are looking for what you’re selling, sales leads every month.
An absolute gold-mine of opportunity no matter which way you cut it.
Achieving your Search Engine Marketing Goals
There are, as always, the quick and dirty avenues you can take when trying to get your blogs, articles or service pages to rank well on search.
These approaches can often involve bulk-cheap link building schemes through sites like Fiverr and so-forth; and come guaranteed to give you a quick boost in performance - before an even steeper drop-off as the algorithms detect the low level of quality to your backlink profile.
These link building ‘farms’ are not only frowned upon by the webmasters but can also harm your rankings over the medium to longer terms, by associating a bunch of random and sometimes sketchy websites with your own.
If it wasn’t abundantly clear: this is not a sustainable approach for a reputable business to take.
While it might seem tempting, try to resist the urge to short-circuit the system by working with these operators, as in the long run, the ROI just isn’t there.
Instead, let’s take a look at some of the modern best-practice solutions when it comes to optimising your search engine performance in a sustainable way - undoubtedly aligned with the vision and mission of your business venture.
Developing great content, either in-house or by using a dedicated SEO content creator can often be an excellent investment to make. There is no substitute for top-quality content when it comes to the online space, and it is so often overlooked, that just focussing on the quality of what you publish will elevate your business above the pack.
Avoid dodgy link-building schemes that sound too good to be true.
Repurpose long-form articles and content for dissemination via social channels.
Search engine content needs to encompass a few different elements to be effective: including relevance across adjacent topics - closely related to your core target term - while remaining readable and engaging to your audience. This will allow your work to start attracting social shares and organic backlinks, as it starts to become amplified across the internet and be seen and read widely.
A ground-up strategy like this is the best way to start building up your authority as a brand; while establishing your field of expertise when it comes to the world of search.
Great content, published regularly, and optimised for the correct adjacent terms - or designed to service customers while in a specific zone of a sales funnel - will generate results over time that are hard to fake.
By creating pieces of content that match, guide and encourage users on their journey and as their search intent evolves, you can possess the most powerful content marketing tool there is. Educating potential clients on one hand, while building your reputation as a provider of topically relevant and substantial information on the other.
This is what remains at the heart of any good content strategy.
Of course, there are other ingredients that go into the whole SEO pie, some technical, some on-page and others like backlink building can also play important roles depending on the level of competition you face.
But, with the building blocks of a strong content marketing strategy in place: everything else can be added on as time goes by and as the data begins to guide your tactics.
To achieve your goals, you’ll need to come up with a plan that encompasses most or all of the above elements into your search engine marketing outlook.
Maybe your goals are super-ambitious, or maybe you’re looking at a more achievable set of metrics and not necessarily on world domination.
So start with the basics:
Write great content for real people - avoid the plagiarism swamp
Research your topics for depth and related sub-topics
Get your on-page SEO right with optimised meta titles and descriptions
Amplify your work across all available social channels
If you are so inclined, there are a few options with regards to software and across the price spectrum that can help you in optimising content, and when creating those all-important content clusters.
Market Muse is at the more pricey end of the scale, but the results delivered can be worth their weight in gold should your organisation be ready to take the next step.
Surfer SEO is another and fits into the more budget-conscious end of the scale. These tools not only help with specific on-page optimisation around a head search term but also to apply a strategy to your more broad content creation strategies across your domain.
By establishing the clusters of interrelated and interlinked content, you are highlighting your expertise in more than one way - while you provide consistent valuable information to those who are looking for it.
So don’t wait, the best time to kick off your writing schedule is today. And by utilising some of the AI software out there, you might be surprised at the results you can generate - even over the short term.
Why Should Businesses use Search Engine Marketing?
As we discovered earlier in the piece: more than 90% of online experiences begin with the help of a search engine!
That’s huge.
Considering the fact that you can actually target your SEO campaign towards the most relevant search terms for your business, means that the potential to tap into a river of highly qualified leads is very realistic.
These potential customers are already displaying their intent in searching for a product or service that you offer, and if you can meet them at their exact location in the buyer's journey with the information they want, your positioning to attract their business is high.
Another concept we mentioned briefly above was content clustering.
This tactic has become widely accepted as best practice when trying to compete across SERPs and with those in your sphere of work.
Broadly speaking, content clustering consists of a pillar page, which touches on a range of topics from a very high level, before surrounding this page with smaller more detailed pages focussing on relevant adjacent topics and designed to meet specific user intents also.
This is the way to highlight the breadth and depth of your knowledge across a certain area or broad topic region, and in the eyes of a search engine, that’s trying to best solve the queries of its users.
Matching user intent is critical.
Each search term can, and almost certainly does, contain multiple search intents within it.
If your examination of a particular SERP shows that your top-ranking competitors are doing so with a services page, then don’t try to blow them out of the water with a 5000-word thesis on the technical detail of a subject. This would be counterproductive, as you have missed the intent within the term, which as a service page, is informational/transactional.
Save the lengthy blog posts for use as a pillar page, one from which you can then branch out while detailing your dedication and knowledge in the field.
As uptake of search engine marketing grows amongst businesses from small to large - you don’t want to have to start from scratch as everyone else steams ahead. It’s ok, you can start now and start small with your own strategy - putting in the foundations for future expansion when time and resources allow you to pursue more options in depth.
Try putting your company’s mission statement into a well-worded blog post or article. Push this out in a condensed format across your social media channels, and keep an eye on your Google Search Console for the incoming data around impressions and search queries.
This data can also help you in setting up a google ad or search marketing campaign by providing healthy keyword and targeting information.
This method is a superior way forward when compared against the antiquated approach of keyword research first, using third party and inaccurate tools, before attempting to base a proper campaign on this “scraped” data.
The world of organic SEO has changed over time - and the industry best practices now reflect the preference for quality and informative content, directly aimed at solving a problem and by matching user intent in the same regard.
If your business is interested in sharing your knowledge with the public, and establishing respect through the publication of real and valuable information, then search engine marketing could be the right approach for you.
Not Sure How to Use Search Engine Marketing?
For a free strategy session, and to discuss the ways that SEO copywriting services Perth can enhance the digital prospects of your brand, then reach out to West Coast Content today for a one-on-one conversation.
Our team is dedicated to doing things a little differently to the masses of ‘specialists’ out there. We are doers and prefer to create than simply theorise until the cows come home.
Our search marketing campaigns are built from the ground up, bit by bit, piecing together a solid strategy for each client, that’s tailored and adjusted to suit their business model.
We are creative writers at heart; complementing our natural skills with an understanding of digital marketing and SEO best practices - to drive results for businesses of any shape and size.
Our content marketing strategies are aimed at providing valuable information to your audience; building trust in your organisation through awareness that you present authoritative and helpful information - free of charge.
This can be as simple as starting to optimise your social media posts to better align with brand values; while also amplifying the more detailed elements of your content marketing strategy. By bringing all of these elements together you can start to see the shape of your own stories begin to emerge and take form.
Once this process begins: our digital agency can then elevate your brand via the strongest touchstones - while eliminating wasted time and resources by removing aspects that don’t suit you and are underperforming regularly.
This hands-on process of trial and error is what separates our content service from the pack, and means that you can be sure what we are providing you with is uniquely suited to the ambitions and situation of your business: both at this moment in time and through a more future-focused lens.
