Anyone who has built and launched a website has likely encountered an oft-repeated acronym: SEO (search engine optimization). And while you might not have ever done SEO yourself, you've benefited from it in the past: Every day, search engines like Google employ complex algorithms to sift through more than 400 billion web pages and deliver the most relevant results.
Website owners like you use SEO techniques and strategies to get their websites to the top of the search results for relevant user queries. But SEO is not a one-time endeavor — Google and other search engines change often, and ongoing SEO ensures your website stays in front of the people you want to reach. Just as a physical storefront requires regular maintenance and updates to stay competitive, your website needs ongoing SEO to remain visible amidst the ever-changing digital landscape.
The ABCs of SEO: What is Ongoing SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Don't let the techy jargon intimidate you. HubSpot — considered one of the gold standards for SEO and digital marketing advice — defines SEO as simply a collection of strategies and tips that "expand a company’s visibility in organic search results'' and help "drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue."
SEO Connects the Search Engine Algorithms With Your Website's Content
Regardless of your website's goal or industry niche, all SEO techniques have one thing in common: They look at ways to optimize your website's content, keywords, and links to help search engines rank your website higher in the search results when someone searches for something related to your keywords, content, or brand name.
According to HubSpot, SEO needs to address the key factors that all search engines use to determine the value of your website's content — and therefore how high in the search results your website or specific landing page should appear:
- The intent or meaning behind why someone is searching for a specific term or question
- The relevance between what someone searches for, and the content on your website
- The quality of your content (for instance, a website about physical exercise written by certified personal trainers is deemed by Google to be higher quality than a website where the articles are written by non-experts)
- The performance of your website, such as how long it takes a page to load and whether it works well on mobile devices
Static SEO Versus Ongoing SEO: Why It Matters to Stay Fresh and Keep Your SEO Updates Current
As users' web behavior changes and technology evolves, search engines proactively adjust their algorithms.
If you aren't conducting ongoing SEO maintenance and upgrades, a well-optimized website today can quickly become obsolete tomorrow, causing your search rankings to drop and attracting fewer organic visitors. Google itself updates its algorithms several thousand times per year, including significant "major" changes every few months that dramatically change how it crawls and ranks content. For example, Google's infamous Panda update changed how it ranked how-to lifestyle content on the Internet, causing one major content publisher to lose a whopping $6.4 million of traffic and advertising nearly overnight.
How Ongoing SEO Influences Your Website Strategy
Staying abreast of changes to SEO techniques and strategies provides important guidance to your content, marketing, and overarching website strategy. For example, it can dictate or influence:
- How much content you publish, and the content's format, length, and focus
- How you incorporate other forms of media on your website, including images, video, and audio
- How you organize content on your site, including landing page layouts and your site's navigation
- What keywords and target users your website focuses on
Embrace the Power of Ongoing SEO
Caroline Forsey, an expert in thought leadership and marketing content, looked at the survey results from more than 400 of the world's leading web analysts to predict the biggest SEO trends of 2024. According to her data, some of the top changes in SEO strategies this year include:
- A heavier emphasis on expertise, meaning the content on your website should come from experts in your related field (including bylines and author bios that demonstrate the author's credentials and experience on the topic they're writing about)
- A renewed emphasis on first-person, credible content, especially as more websites generate high volumes of low-quality AI content (Google itself has announced upcoming changes to tackle low-value articles created by AI)
- A priority on websites that are deemed trustworthy, such as e-commerce sites with well-rated customer service, or content sites that do a good job of citing trustworthy research and statistics
- Bonus points on content that is creative and original and doesn't simply rehash content found on other sites
Of course, these SEO trends will inevitably change every year, and ongoing SEO will keep you competitive no matter what Google, Bing, and other search engines do. No matter your website's industry or content strategy, ongoing SEO requires that you:
- Focus on keeping your content fresh and high quality, including new blog posts or regularly refreshing and updating old product descriptions or articles
- Conduct keyword research often, since the terms or phrases that your core audience uses will evolve over time
- Maintain your website's overarching performance, such as mobile-friendliness as mobile devices evolve, and page load speed
- Build a diverse portfolio of high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites within your niche, which may include outreach campaigns, getting others in your industry to write guest blogs, and participating in online forums or communities
- Keep on top of technical and performance metrics, such as scanning your site for broken links (and fixing the links you uncover) and using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and conversion rates
- Stay on top of algorithm changes so you can adapt your SEO strategy in real-time
Some website owners think of SEO as the first step of their promotional strategy. But it's less a first step, and more an ongoing journey to ensure you, your brand, and your content stay relevant in such a competitive atmosphere. Whether you choose to go it alone and take a DIY approach to SEO, or you choose to consult with a digital marketing and SEO agency, check in often and make sure your SEO evolves as the world around you evolves.
Choosing a digital marketing agency is a big step for a B2B company. During your initial consultation, the goal is to establish rapport and determine if it's a good fit and you will work well together. You’ll also want to be armed with some baseline information to establish the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Here are five things you should have in line before meeting your digital marketing agency team.
1. Set Your Budget
If you underfund your marketing, you will not get the results you are hoping for. It's important to gather all your internal stakeholders and set a realistic budget.
Setting the budget ahead of time helps get everyone on the same page. Every company has a very different budget and breaks it up in different ways to establish the marketing strategy. It helps to also know what you are currently spending on marketing, even if it is nearly nonexistent and largely unplanned.
In 2022, 66% of B2B marketers said their budgets were going to increase, and 24% said budgets would stay the same. On average, B2B companies spend around 9-10% of company revenue on marketing efforts.
2. Define Your Digital Marketing Goals
Part of setting your budget will include defining key goals you expect to accomplish with your marketing. Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals is one way to increase the chances of success.
A SMART goal is:
- Specific: Don’t be vague; use numbers, percentages or statistics to define what you want to improve.
- Measurable: Choose goals that are something you can objectively measure and establish your key performance indicators (KPIs) for each one.
- Attainable: Set goals that are within your power to achieve and something you can accomplish with digital marketing strategies.
- Realistic: Don’t expect viral visibility or shocking change—set realistic goals that are within reach and based on current analytics.
- Timely: Always give your goals a deadline and establish checkpoints for larger goals. An ending point allows you to measure your success (or failure) and reassess as needed.
Marketing goals can support company-wide goals, but they will have their own objectives and KPIs. Your goals should also work hand in hand with other departments, like sales and customer service.
3. Establish Priorities
Which goals should take primary focus in your strategy? Prioritizing goals helps you put your manpower towards the most important tasks and allocate your budget to the proper resources.
While you might have several great goals laid out, always know which ones are the most important. Priority could be determined because of timeliness, date, deadlines, company needs, milestones, cost, buyer behavior, industry trends, and more.
4. Identify Challenges
Being realistic about the goals you establish will help you create more effective strategies. Outline challenges that will stall progress or interrupt your strategies so you can plan ways to navigate them.
Challenges could include issues like:
- Resource constraints
- Ineffective strategies
- Budget limitations
- Changing consumer behavior
- Team knowledge or skill
- Struggle to stand out
- Organizing and analyzing data
- Adjusting strategies to improve
- Leadership buy-in
- Time limits
One challenge you might not even notice: B2B companies tend to push specific products in the best interest of their company, forgetting about the buyer. As a B2B company, you still need to target the buyer and provide them with value in order to earn their trust.
5. Clarify Expectations
Finally, before you sit down with a marketing agency, you need to know what you expect moving forward. For example, how do you envision division of labor? Will your team be doing some of the legwork, or are you looking for a team that can completely take over the marketing strategy and run with it?
Never make assumptions about how things will be done or what will be covered. Clarify and define everything! Most companies work with multiple clients who all have different goals, perspectives, preferences and expectations. You save time and hassle by outlining what you are after before even meeting with the agency.
The more you believe you know what is “normal” or “common sense,” the more likely you will be on a different page from the team you hire. Instead, lay out all your hopes, dreams, fears and expectations before you even meet with the team. Then, let them walk you through their typical process and available solutions.
Schedule the Meeting
If you are organized and upfront from the start, it will be much easier to tell if the marketing firm is well-suited to meet your needs.
At Synchronicity, we are passionate about helping B2B brands achieve their goals by establishing a stronger marketing plan. If you think we would be right for your company, we’d love to schedule a quick chat!