SEO Guide For a Marketing Manager 2023
Marketing managers everywhere – you know the ultimate business goal is to drive revenue for your company. And that means utilising search engine optimisation so that your website shows up at the top of search results every time someone searches for your products or business.
As you’ll know, the online world is unbelievably important when it comes to targeting the right customers, and with more people searching online for information and services than ever before, it means you need your SEO campaigns to be killer.
This is why we’ve curated a guide that speaks directly to marketing managers. From creating optimised content to how to earn more backlinks, the SEO performance of your website will thank you from the bottom of every organic lead’s heart.
Why is SEO Important?
Let’s start with why SEO is such an integral part of any marketing manager’s job. As an umbrella term, search engine optimisation is what makes your site more visible. And you know what that means? More traffic to your business’ website and more opportunities to turn internet browsers into customers.
Plus, the fact that 93% of all online experiences start with Google or other search engines, it’s basically gospel that when people are looking for products or services that your company offers, they’ll begin their search online. This means you’ll want to be in their virtual eyesight. It’s also true that 95% of search traffic goes to the first results page, which makes it even more important that you rank high and stay there.
The Best SEO Strategies For Marketing Managers
You already know that there are many sections to SEO – it’s not just a one-size-fits-all kinda thing. Here are some of the best strategies marketing managers can use both individually and combined to boost SEO performance:
Content Creation
You simply cannot rank without content, but you know that, right? Having optimised copy and SEO-friendly articles that are informative, authoritative and trust-worthy will increase your website’s visibility and earn you more visitors. We even wrote an article about how to create such content, including tips on keyword research, and how you can optimise meta titles and descriptions.
Keyword Research
Your SEO strategy requires in-depth keyword research that is targeted at your audience. Make sure you incorporate them into your content, titles, meta tags, etc.
Search Intent Optimisation
You’ll most likely have heard of search intent, which is basically just writing for your audience. When people use Google, it sends them to the content that suits their queries the most. So, you need to make sure your content is search intent optimised so users can find your copy amongst thousands of other competitors.
User Experience Optimisation
If your web pages aren’t interesting or do not directly address what internet users are looking for, Google will penalise your site and it won’t rank highly. Make sure everything on your website is clearly linked to your product, service, or business, which means everything from content to images to page design to navigation is related to the information you’re providing.
Page Speed Optimisation
The role of any search engine is to provide searchers with the best and most relevant content to their query, all at a record speed. Google considers UX (user experience) when deciphering how high or low to rank a page, and as well as quality content, page speed is also taken into consideration. And when you find out that one in two people abandon a site if it takes more than 6 seconds to load, you’ll probably want to inch this up on your priority list.
Internal Linking
This SEO strategy has a plethora of benefits. It helps Google index and crawl every page on your website, and it lets you link to other pages on your site to keep your audience interested and there for longer.
The 5 Types of SEO Your Business Should Take Advantage Of
There are 5 separate SEO categories, and each is just as important. Let’s break them down:
On-Page SEO
Also referred to as on-site SEO, this is when web pages are optimised to improve a site’s ranking on search engines and earn organic traffic. As well as publishing high-quality and relevant content, on-page SEO also includes optimising HTML tags (title, meta, header), headlines, and images. It also counts for ensuring your site is top-notch when it comes to trustworthiness, authoritativeness, and expertise.
Off-Page SEO
This strategy refers to all of your tactics that are not related to your website. Past search engine optimisation approaches interchangeably used off-page and link building, but nowadays, there are so many off-page SEO hacks you can use. These include:
- Social media
- Content marketing
- Brand building
- Digital PR
- Citation building
These strategies help users and search engines to understand your website more clearly, which then also increases your site’s relevance, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness.
Basically, think of it like this – your website is on-page SEO, and another platform or site is off-page.
Technical SEO
This category does what it says on the tin. It improves all of the technical aspects of your site in order to boost page rankings in the SERPs. Technical SEO focuses on making sure sites are faster and easier to crawl, as well as understandable for search engines like Google.
It’s integrated with on-page SEO, as most of its targets aim to improve aspects of your website in order to increase rankings. Off-page SEO doesn’t come into play here because that category focuses on finding exposure from external sources.
Local SEO
Probably no need to explain it, but we might as well. Local SEO is a strategy that helps businesses become more visible in local search results. As a marketing manager, if your business has a physical location or it serves a specific geographical location, your website can benefit from this strain of SEO.
There’s a section on our ‘How to improve website visibility on Google’ blog that talks about becoming verified on Google. It mentions how it can be a great help for businesses who are looking to take advantage of Google Maps and Google My Business.
Ecommerce SEO
The search engine optimisation of an online store is classed as Ecommerce SEO. An example of a part of this strategy is writing long descriptions on every product page featuring relevant keywords. It’s also acquiring backlinks from relevant websites which can help boost the position of your store’s rankings.
SEO Can Help You Achieve These Marketing Goals
SEO can do a lot for helping you achieve your marketing goals. Most of the time, one successful strategy can help to create a domino effect that will accomplish the others. SEO can help marketing managers benefit from the following:
Improve Search Results Rankings
Improving your search rankings for your most crucial keywords is up there when it comes to importance. When your site pages are optimised in the right way, i.e. optimising the UX of your pages and writing for search intent, they will organically start climbing in the ranks.
Increase Website Traffic
As you rank higher in Google for key terms, you’ll notice your website traffic improves, too. This means more people will visit your website for answers to their queries, which allows them to learn more about your business and become interested in the services or products you offer.
Improve Brand Awareness
Now your rankings have boosted and your web traffic is thriving, naturally, you’ll notice an improvement in brand awareness. As more people visit your website, the more people will become familiar with your brand. And the more you appear higher up in search results, the more your audience will expand and people will get to know you.
Increase Conversions and Sales
So, now you’ve got these three things on the incline, the next inevitable marketing goal is increased conversions and sales. It makes sense that the more attention your website receives in the SERPs, the more services or products you will sell.
Increase YoY Revenue
It’s no secret that the above marketing goals achieved will lead to more revenue for your biz. For a long-term strategy that will YoY boost the money you make, SEO is the best option.
Why Should You Invest in SEO?
As a marketing manager, your role is to select the best marketing techniques and strategies that will elevate your business to success. Here’s why picking SEO is majorly important:
ROI
Of course, your return on investment will depend on varying factors like your industry or investment. But for marketing managers seeking a long-term solution that will drive and increase ROI for years to come, SEO is your best bet.
Why? Because when it’s done right, your business will benefit from the continuous increase in conversions, traffic, and brand awareness.
It Works With So Many Other Marketing Strategies
SEO is often the main man and the basis of any marketing campaign. This means that other strategies in the marketing umbrella will only complement it. For example, when you combine SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC), you will literally run the search results. Organically ranking content will increase via your SEO efforts, and sponsored PPC ads will provide you with a platform in search results to earn top ad space.
SEO and web design combined will allow you to use the latter to take advantage of SEO micro-strategies including engaging graphics use, navigation bar design, etc. SEO and content marketing go together like chips and gravy because every piece of copy you create can be upcycled to create other important strategies like social media marketing, email marketing, etc.
Long Term Results? Yes Please
If you want long-term results, you need to take the long-term approach, and SEO is the best way forward if you do it right. While an SEO strategy that comes out smelling of roses takes time and effort, it definitely won’t go unrewarded.
Typically, it can take 6-8 months before you start to see results so don’t think that it’s not working in the meantime. But, if you want to give your SEO campaign the best chance of success, you can add fuel to the fire by doing the following:
- Constantly updating and adding new content to your site. Your updated content needs to match search intent.
- Regularly doing keyword research.
- Link to new site pages so Google can crawl them.
- Create evergreen content.
- Regularly check analytics.
Benefit Your Biz With SEO
OK, hopefully, you’ve got the gist of why SEO is so important for marketing managers, especially in 2023. Even if you take a little bit of knowledge away from this guide, you’ll be one step closer to reaching your marketing goals.
