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.
INSIDER: A Marketer's Guide to Different Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs)
In the competitive world of business tools, marketing automation platforms have leapt to the front of the pack: 51% of companies are currently using them. Marketing based on “gut feelings” and hunches has long been obsolete. Looking retrospectively at how marketing efforts impacted the previous quarter’s sales is also just not good enough. On the other hand, marketing automation platforms (MAPs) give marketers the ability to design, implement, and track marketing efforts with a view to what’s currently working and what is likely to work in the future.
How MAPs Work
The platforms are focused on helping companies form data-based marketing plans. They take tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, website personalization, social media marketing and lead generation and management and combine them under one umbrella. You can also use many to develop and store marketing content such as ads, video content and infographics. You can then use these assets to bolster your marketing campaigns. The best way to know which platform works best for your needs is to gain an understanding of what these tools have to offer. Here are some of the top MAPs, some of their features, as well as their pros and cons.
HubSpot
In many ways, HubSpot is king of the mountain when it comes to MAPs. HubSpot is designed to leverage marketing automation to increase traffic and convert leads. HubSpot helps automate the process of making your website an effective marketing mechanism. HubSpot analyzes your site and tells you how to attract more customers. You get access to tools for increasing the word count of marketing material, adding meta descriptions, and configuring titles and images.
HubSpot also integrates a CRM system with customer contact features, like email and chat. You can connect with customers over live chat and provide instant information to help them along the sales funnel. Using the CRM, you can rate customers according to how close they are to making a purchase.
Pros:
- Easy to use. HubSpot is intuitive and user-friendly
- Large resource library. With HubSpot Academy, you can learn how to use the platform, grab quick answers, watch videos and even earn certifications.
- Great customer support. HubSpot’s customer support is filled with helpful marketing professionals.
Cons:
- Hefty onboarding fee. HubSpot costs at least $600 up front, and that can go up to $5,000 for its Enterprise features.
- Configuration-heavy. You can’t just open HubSpot and use it out of the box. You have to configure a lot of settings before you can really get the ball rolling.
- Requires a lot of tweaking. Each setting needs to be configured just right to avoid making a mess of your marketing. For example, a minor oversight could result in way too many emails flooding your contacts’ inboxes.
Marketo
While HubSpot can also be used as a standalone CRM, Marketo is specifically designed for marketing automation. Marketo helps marketers incorporate multiple devices and mediums as they automate their campaigns. With Marketo, you can use a stack of digital channels like mobile devices, websites, video, email, and search-based ads to compose a campaign.
Marketo also offers users the ability to track and nurture leads, analyze campaigns, optimize their sites for search engines, and engage in social marketing. In addition, Marketo integrates with a CRM, and because it’s built on Google Cloud, it’s easy for everyone on the team to access the information they need.
Pros:
- Flexible. With the right knowhow, it’s easy to custom-fit Marketo to a wide range of businesses.
- Seamless integration with sales. Marketo allows users to easily share information about prospects, their behavior and how the organization has communicated with them with members of the sales team.
- Marketer-friendly control. Marketo puts control in the hands of marketers, allowing them to create professional-looking landing pages, emails, campaigns and more and tweak them as they see fit.
Cons:
- Tech-heavy. Marketo has a learning curve, and non-technical users may need to be patient as they get used to it.
- Inflexible reporting. Marketo doesn’t make it easy to develop custom, detailed reports.
Pardot
Pardot packs in a lot of the features of HubSpot but with a unique user interface. You can manage your leads using Pardot’s scoring system, which helps you prioritize during the nurturing process. Generate email marketing campaigns that automatically interface with your CRM. Pardot even provides real-time alerts about the behavior of users that allows you to track their activity.
Pros:
- Easy landing pages and forms. The landing pages are both simple to set up and easy to customize.
- Reporting. Pardot provides a broad range of reports from the effectiveness of email blasts to marketing campaigns to Google paid search campaigns.
- Salesforce integration. The sales team can input new data from leads that gets automatically sent to Salesforce where it can get managed as part of a pipeline.
Cons
- Cumbersome email builder. The email builder lacks the ease and features of other marketing automation platforms.
- Lack of contact management features. Managing big groups of contacts is a challenge and when you have a list of contacts, your options are limited to the basics like adding and removing or tagging.
Adopting a marketing automation platform gives your organization a chance to make the most of leads and streamline the design and implementation of marketing campaigns. Where Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot and others really shine, however, is they give you tools to evaluate how successful your marketing efforts are. With MAPs, you don’t have to wonder whether you’re hitting your targets; you can use concrete data to evaluate your campaigns and then adjust them to maximize their impact.