Search marketing is rapidly becoming a critical component of many organizations’ marketing mixes. With its relatively low cost and significant ROI, search marketing best practices are a valuable tool for any marketing professional to deploy in their business.

Below, you’ll find a quick-start guide to launching your search marketing program. With the techniques and tactics outlined below, you’ll be able to leverage search marketing best practices to generate more business and foster growth in your organization.

Why Search Marketing Matters

With over 615 million devices using some form of adblocking, traditional online advertising is reaching a smaller percentage of your audience than ever before. Marketing professionals need to diversify their digital marketing mix and find new ways to reach their audience online.

As a result, search marketing has emerged as an effective way to engage potential customers through quality written content in the form of blogs, landing pages, and other elements. This type of content is highly effective and economical in driving sales; experts have noted that businesses with blogs generate 130% more leads than those without blogs. Additionally, search marketing can cost up to 62% less than traditional online advertising while generating three times the leads.

What Search Marketing Can Do For Your Business

A well-executed search marketing program will establish search ranking superiority for your website. Simply put, your website will appear higher and more frequently in results from search engines like Google, increasing the traffic to your site from potential customers who are already interested in your business’ products and services.

Leveraging search engines through effective search marketing practices will allow you to build a consistent traffic source over the long term. While it requires a steady output of content over time, search marketing has the potential to create consistent, repeatable results for your organization.

Steps to Search Marketing Success

1 – Keyword Research

Like most marketing practices, search marketing begins with your audience. Think about your ideal customer: what are they searching for when they are looking for your company’s products and solutions? What words or phrases are they likely to type into Google? These phrases are your organization’s “keywords,” and they are the backbone of any effective search marketing strategy.

Thorough research at this stage will get your organization the best results. Tools like Moz’s Keyword Explorer and Google’s Keyword Planner are invaluable in generating keyword ideas, discovering what your potential customers are searching, and planning what you will build your search marketing content around.

2 – Create Content

Once you’ve thoroughly researched and selected your targeted keywords, the next step is to create high-quality content with topics centred around them. Creativity is key in developing engaging content; for example, if one of your keywords is “Home Renovations,” you could write a blog titled “Three Reasons to Renovate Your Home” or “Home Renovation Trends for 2020.”

Well-written, compelling content will showcase your expertise and demonstrate your subject matter authority to both potential customers and search engines. Not only will your audience appreciate the added value your content provides, but Google and other search engines will take notice of your activity, leading to higher search rankings and more traffic to your website.

If you’re building your organization’s search marketing program from ground zero, your focus should be on blog posts and other long-form content. Once you’ve established a solid base of engaging content, you can begin to create landing pages targeting specific customer types with strong calls to action to drive sales.

3 – Create MORE Content

Both your audience and search engines value high-quality content published consistently over long periods. Search marketing programs are most effective when content creation is an ongoing process; demonstrating consistency and reliability in your marketing efforts will yield stronger results over time than one-time campaigns or infrequent posting.

Marketing professionals know that content creation can be a time-consuming process. If creating high-quality content is taking time away from your organization’s other marketing efforts, consider using a digital marketing agency with a dedicated search marketing program to ensure you achieve consistent results from your search marketing.

4 – Constantly Evaluate Results

As with any digital marketing strategy, search marketing efforts are most effective when their results are tracked and continually optimized and improved. Tools like Google Analytics and Moz will allow you to monitor your search ranking, see what content is the most popular, and will enable you to refine your strategy to achieve consistent results.

Constantly monitor what content achieves the best results, and don’t be afraid to post multiple blogs with a similar subject matter. While it may feel redundant to create numerous blogs around the same keywords and topics, both your customers and Google will appreciate a wide variety of content demonstrating your expertise in your field.

Final Notes

Search marketing is a long-term digital marketing strategy. It is reliant on search algorithms to process your content and determine your page’s ranking, which may take up to several weeks or months. Patience will be necessary, as well as publishing a steady stream of engaging content. However, with appropriate planning, comprehensive research, and creative content, search marketing can become one of the most beneficial elements of your organization’s marketing mix.