What makes a good SEO campaign?

By Hema Dey, CMO and SEO Geek

Many people view SEO as that voodoo or magic that miraculously happens with a stroke of luck! I was just interviewed by a few people about SEO and their first question to me was does it really work. It made me smile because these were intelligent business folks who really wanted an honest answer, they were also folk who have been burnt spending a lot of money on SEO but not seeing a good ROI or any for that matter.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and my focus is primarily to get my clients rank on the first page of Google, because Google is the dominant search engine by far. Not to say Yahoo or Bing don’t matter, but as a priority Google rules first. In my interviews I asked them what are your goals with investing in SEO? Many just looked at me blank, some said to get more sales and the others were errrrr that’s what we were told to do to get our website more traffic.

So why SEO?

SEO is an marketing engineering process that marry’s up your brand, communication and search engine rankings, all of which must work in tandem with another. For example you might be selling a service that is focused on family law but now your SEO person ranks you as a personal injury attorney. Sure you might get inbound calls but your not getting the leads that matter to you. Another example could be that you are a family lawyer but you have a long list of practice areas that you offer but your SEO person is only focused on one or two keywords and they are services that don’t yield a good use of your time. Of recent times I was talking with a VP of a merchant service provider who offer credit card processing services. He showed me some of his analytics and it revealed clearly that they were ranking one for only e-check processing which is something they don’t really do!

What makes a good SEO campaign boils down to applying these fundamentals in marrying up brand, communication and keyword strategy. Remember SEO is about pleasing two audiences, one the human and the other the bot. So with that in mind here are some tips for you:

• The game plan

The game plan is simple, its sales for many, for law firms its retainers, call it whatever you want, the game plan is sales. In many of my strategy sessions I ask the question, how many customers do you have? Answer: errrr I will need to check. What was your annuals sales last year? Answer: errrrr I am not sure. Many business owners don’t know what the numbers are and its a worry. Why would anyone invest in SEO or anything marketing without understanding what the game plan is. Once the numbers come on the table for review with me, its an eye opening experience for most people I have met. It gives me as a strategist the confidence to prescribe next steps in terms of where the investment should go into SEO or digital marketing, what areas to focus on and how to positing branding and communication based around what is selling, what makes the money for the business and how well the business can handle inbound calls or additional leads.

• The competition

So the game plan is now clearly set with the business owner but the next challenge is to understand macro economic factors and threats to a business which is clearly the competitor. A good SEO person will study this landscape to ensure they understand and map out as much as possible from online intelligence, what the keyword strategy is and what are they ranking for. It sets the challenge, the pace for the race to the first page of Google.

• The margin review

Once the competitor study is done, it sets another scene for the business owner and SEO campaign. The priority will start to shift now based around what areas to focus on as priority, that will yield sustainable profits. It may be that as a family law attorney the investment in more specialized areas like international child custody attorney or child custody and become the best rank in these areas so you yield focused leads, have more meaningful consults around these areas, gear your team up for such inquiries and work and convert the appropriate lead into a paying client. Same thing applies for any business, most business owners want it all, but the marketing budget does not permit so why implement a scatter gun approach when you can stay focus on higher margin services and products?

• The talent your select

SEO talent is hard to get. Many say they can SEO – yes but rank you for what exactly? Choosing a SEO person for your firm is tough because there are so many to choose from. This should be your check sheet and ask yourself these questions:

a. How much time has this person spent understanding my business, my competitors and my brand?

b. Do they know how to marry Brand Strategy with SEO? [ Read our blog on B2B SEO HERE

c. Are they focus on content rich SEO or is it all a big secret as to what they are going to be doing for you?

d. How are they connecting the dots with sales?

SEO is not some magical thing that happens, but it is a process, a marketing engineering process that should be customized for your business. A good SEO person will apply the marketing planning process to create a winning outcome and rank you on Google Maps, Mobile and Desktop. If you need an audit done, let me know. My team and I can tell you right away, where the pain points are, we can either act as your SEO police or perform all SEO for you. Contact US HERE