A few stakeholders cannot comprehend the value of incorporating SEO into your marketing strategy. Utilize this guide to make an undisputed business case for SEO.
Scientists might tell you that the last dinosaurs died about 65 million years back. However, they’ve not seen your boss.
The essence of the term “old school. She’s the type of person who only acknowledges email because she believes that the internet is only a trend.
She’s also the one who makes the decisions and also the one who holds the budget. What can you do to persuade her about the value of SEO?
What is the best way to build an argument for including this in your existing marketing strategy and allocating the resources needed to help it succeed?
If only there were any kind of guide to reference… Ah, wait. We’ve got the answer.
Why SEO should be a part of every marketing plan
By 2024 American customers will spend $870.78 billion online, roughly 19% of all purchases. This isn’t counting all in-person sales influenced by internet analysis and public awareness.
Simply put, every company requires a website.
Additionally, websites with no users are not of any use to anyone. Every business must incorporate SEO into its marketing strategy.
This article will guide you through an easy-to-follow guideline to create an argument for business that will allow you to add SEO to yours.
What are the reasons You Have A Business Case?
The business plan is the formal explanation to undertake a project. It assesses the advantages, costs, and risks of different alternatives and offers a reason for a particular solution.
Small businesses are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their day-to-day activities and avoid business matters.
Without one, you’re likely to waste money on projects that offer no value, lose sight of the project’s objectives, and struggle to establish the right priorities.
This isn’t something you wish to do to SEO, especially when the goal is to convince others of its importance.
It is essential to have a strong business plan to support an argument, one that outlines the following points:
The chance.
The issue in the current system is that it’s not working.
The solution.
This doesn’t need to be excessively long; actually, staying brief is better.
But it is important to clearly define the goal and vision that you want to achieve with the SEO strategy, the information to back up your assertions, and the technology tools you’ll require.
You must include financial projections on the costs and returns on investment and return on investment, usually on a month-by-month basis for the initial year, and details about when you think your SEO project will be cash-flow positive.
Making Your SEO Business Case
In this section, we’ll walk to guide you through this process and assist you to come up with a proposal that your boss must approve of.
Conduct An Audit of Websites
Like every good plan, the business case must begin by conducting an investigation. It is a must to conduct a thorough web audit to give your team a performance baseline.
Review your SEO’s current status and plan If you already have one.
Discover what’s driving traffic to your site.
Do you have keywords that are common that bring traffic to your website? What are the pages that visitors land on the most?
Discover the opportunities that your most valuable pieces of the content offer.
Examine both on-page elements such as keywords density optimization, images that are optimized headers, URL names, as well as off-page aspects like the quality of backlinks, structure of the internal site linking, as well as the 404 error.
Understanding where you’re beginning from can help you accurately predict the outcomes that your SEO campaigns results will bring.
Are you intimidated by this method? Don’t be. There are various free tools that you can utilize to audit your site that will provide you with the data you require.
Do A Competitive Analysis?
SEO is a zero-sum game. The traffic you’re getting is the same as the traffic you’re competing with. And vice versa.
In this regard, you must understand what they’re doing to understand why they’re ahead of you and find ways to steal clicks away from them.
However, be aware that your largest SEO competitors might not be the most significant competitors in your industry; they could be tangentially related to companies that use similar keywords.
Determine who you’re up against using the help of an SEO competitor analysis. It is important to ask (and respond to) questions such as:
- What keywords do competitors rank for?
- What keywords aren’t being used effectively?
- What are they doing to promote their content?
- Which is the SEO strategy?
- What content is on their pages optimized?
- Do they have a good quality backlink?
- Are they using paid advertisements? In what way?
- Are you unsure where to locate all these details?
In addition to the useful articles you’ll see on this site, there are several important tools that you can utilize to find out what your competitors are doing.
Make Your Voice heard Based On Your Intent.
In the digital age, it’s easy to overlook the fact that real people are on the other end of your marketing campaigns and that you’re not only making content for search engines.
It is important to determine your audience’s persona and study why this person is visiting your site. You must determine:
- Who are the typical targets?
- What are they looking for?
- What words or keywords are they looking for?
Many people find it beneficial to design a character or characters that they can talk to directly via information.
For instance, an online store selling hardware might have a fictional character named Jim based upon an imagined customer.
Jim is a middle-aged man living in the Midwest. He’s got a good job but doesn’t have enough money to pay an expert to do house repairs. So he carries out things by himself. He is proficient with tools. He is a man of the family who loves barbecue, sports and watching TV.
If you imagine Jim as an actual person, Some writers can communicate directly with Jim, using a language Jim is at ease with. This, in turn, will result in more effective outcomes.
It’s not necessary to get this much. However, the more you learn about who you’re trying to reach, the more effective the results of your SEO campaigns will be.
Make a Monthly Content Plan
Once you’ve identified the people you’re searching for, it’s time to plan how you can get in touch with them.
Plan out a month-by-month schedule that outlines your content.
Choose what you’ll concentrate on. It could be a topic such as a holiday season or a brand you’d like to promote. There’s no need to be within the same subject matter, but it’s simpler to plan an entire month of content when everything is related.
Review your calendar for key dates for events, new launches of new products, and affiliate marketing.
With this knowledge, now is the time to develop a high-level content strategy that outlines the broad idea of what you’ll be working on for the entire month.
Plan out your promotions and other important content, such as blog posts.
Aren’t you sure what you should prioritize? We can help you with that.
Do you want to go more into the depths of SEO and design a strategy that will last throughout the year? There’s a free eBook that is exactly what you require.
Make a list of your Keywords.
Of all the SEO components, perhaps the most important one is keywords.
The basis for an entire SEO strategy is to tell the search engine what content is about and why it’s the ideal solution to their needs.
How do you determine the most relevant to your objectives? When you have completed your SEO business plan, You should be equipped to recognize them.
You can employ many methods and tools, starting with making a list of subjects pertinent to the content you write.
Create an initial list of keywords and then utilize a keyword research tool to find other keywords.
Since you’ve already identified your users’ intent, this can aid in locating long-tail keywords.
Also, the previous work you did studying competitions can be useful in helping you determine which keywords are performing best to their advantage, so you could use them on yours.
Develop the Workplace Relationships You Have
If you’re now equipped with the strategy for a successful SEO strategy, now is the time to start gathering the necessary resources to implement it.
There is no need to employ an SEO expert or engage an outside company to begin (though this could be a great idea) since you’re likely to already have the elements you’ll need in your business.
Marketing Sales, IT, and marketing must all be brought into the team.
Some people might be unsatisfied with what they believe to be more work. Make sure you explain that you’re in the same boat and all working towards the same goal.
Establish relationships with them by demonstrating how their contributions can help make your SEO project more effective.
Spend some time teaching them about the process, and make sure you emphasize their importance in each role.
Make your case stronger by presenting facts and data
In the final analysis, most executives care only about one aspect: Does it yield the required return on the investment?
This is the great thing about SEO. It provides numerous facts that you can use to prove that the work you’re doing is worth it and profitable and that it’s also paying off.
There’s plenty of evidence to prove the need for an SEO strategy.
In this case, you’ll need to mention that Google is the main reason for 92% of all web searches and over 267 million visitors across the U.S. alone. And 56% of all traffic to the web originates from mobile devices.
If you’re trying to promote an element of your paid campaign to your SEO strategy, make sure you mention that for every dollar the company spent on Google advertisements, they generated an average of 2 dollars in income.
This information allows you to tell an intriguing story that covers more than just the black and red on the balance sheet and also encourages the purchase.
You can track and measure your success.
SEO is a long game that cannot yield immediate benefits. It is important to be clear with your stakeholders at the very beginning.
With a well-planned strategy and good old elbow grease, you’ll shortly begin seeing tangible outcomes.
Google excels in providing factual help using the most important metrics, such as:
- Organic traffic.
- Keyword rankings.
- Click-through rate.
- Rate of bounce.
- Conversion rate.
Time spent on the page.
If you carefully track your performance, you’ll understand the areas and how you’re doing, as well as identify areas to improve.
Conclusion
SEO is an investment that can be beneficial for any business. However, it will require an upfront investment in budget, time, and resources.
Although the results may not be predetermined, SEO is certainly one of those areas where you will get the results you put into.
If you make an unplanned plan with no thinking, you’re not likely to achieve high-quality outcomes with an organized approach.
However, by putting together a well-designed business justification in favour of SEO and highlighting its benefits, it is extremely difficult for even the most stoic boss to dismiss its importance.
From expanding your customer base to generating new sales, there’s no doubt that a well-planned strategy can help you achieve your company’s objectives.
