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.

8/23/21, 9:10 AM

For many companies, having a LinkedIn page is just the first step in a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy. It can take a lot of work to ensure that the right eyes are seeing your posts, and sometimes this just isn’t possible without ads.

According to LinkedIn, 89% of B2B marketers turn to LinkedIn for lead generation. These marketers say LinkedIn generates more than two times as many leads than other social channels. It’s 277% more effective than Facebook for B2B companies and blows other social media sites like Instagram and TikTok out of the water.

Today, we’ll give you a quick overview of LinkedIn ads, and help you learn enough to get your company’s ad strategy up and running.

The Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Ads

There are many benefits to using LinkedIn ads, but it’s important to understand potential drawbacks as well.

LinkedIn ads have a very low barrier to entry, making it easy for even a novice marketer to get started right away. You can choose from various types of ads, including images, text, messages, and video.

Plus, the ad format isn’t the only way that you can customize your marketing campaign. LinkedIn’s targeting is unmatched, allowing companies to segment their ads using tons of different demographic details, including past or present employer, years and type of education, industry, certifications, and more. One con here though is that unlike Facebook and Google, you can’t target on LinkedIn by zip code or radius.

However, there are some potential pitfalls that new LinkedIn marketers should be aware of before they get started.

There is a minimum daily spend requirement on LinkedIn, which could be a drawback if you’re working with a limited marketing budget. It’s only $10 per day, but that adds up to $3,650 per year. If you’re just starting out, this could be a potential barrier to entry. Also, the more detailed you make your ad targeting, you increase the potential to have a higher cost per conversion.

LinkedIn also doesn’t have the same custom reporting capabilities as other advertising mediums like Facebook or Google. They do have a reporting dashboard, where you can customize the metrics you want to see.

Which Businesses Should Use LinkedIn Ads?

While there are definitely pros and cons to using LinkedIn ads, the best way to determine whether it’s right for your business is to just try it out. You can stop after a few weeks or months if you don’t get the results you’re looking for.

Generally, the businesses that have the most successful LinkedIn ad experience are those that are marketing to other businesses or professionals. Since so many people are on the site looking for professional connections, it helps if you’re advertising a professional or business-to-business company, rather than one that’s more consumer-facing.

Creating a Successful LinkedIn Ad Campaign

There are many different types of LinkedIn ads available for use today. Depending on whether you’re running an ABM/ABX campaign or more straightforward ads, you’ll want to tailor your format differently.

Every campaign starts with the marketer logging into Campaign Manager and choosing a campaign objective. The three objectives are:

Awareness
Consideration
Conversion

From there, marketers can create their target audience, then choose their ad format. There are a few different ad formats available.

Sponsored Content appears in a person’s newsfeed like a regular post. You can choose from regular blog posts, videos, single images, and more.
Sponsored Messaging is addressed directly to a prospect. They usually take the form of a message that’s customized to each recipient.
Lead Gen Forms allow you to collect high-quality leads using Lead Gen forms that are already partially filled in, making it easier for people to connect with your company.

Text and Dynamic Ads take a few different forms including text and images. Their flexibility allows you to promote jobs, pages, or even events on individual prospect’s pages.

Measuring Success with Metrics

Even though LinkedIn’s reporting dashboard within the Campaign Manager isn’t as customizable as some of its competitors, it still offers a lot of tracking tools and analytics. It allows you to track your most successful ads with a few of their most useful metrics, including clicks, impressions, and click-through rate.

If you’re looking to drive leads, you can also take advantage of conversion tracking metrics, like conversion rate, cost-per-conversion, leads, and cost-per-lead.

By examining these metrics closely, you can evaluate your ad performance and optimize them in the future to ensure that you’re targeting your ideal demographic.

LinkedIn ads are just one part of an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy. The more you know about the various aspects of LinkedIn marketing, the easier it will be to create a personalized strategy that reaches all your customers.

Hokuyo

AccruePartners

A Complete Overview of LinkedIn Ads