When we think of SEO strategy, we usually focus on developing great content to drive visitors to our website in order to collect data, which will be used to optimize our SEO strategy to drive visitors to our website and rinse and repeat. However, what is often forgotten in our desire to drive traffic is the reason why we’re doing all of this in the first place: Sales.
Remember the goal of SEO is to create conversions or a sale; content is the method to attract visitors, and you use your site analytics to analyze user interactions with the content. What is the mechanism to determine which areas of your organization your content should focus on? Sales. In fact, successful SEO requires communication with your sales department that goes beyond letting them know there’s been a conversion from Adwords or the bounce rate has increased. While these are important pieces of information to share, very often the sharing between SEO and other departments including sales, is one way.
Here’s the thing: SEO is a function of marketing. Its goal is like that of all advertising - and make no mistake, SEO is advertising - to let potential clients know what your business is offering and more importantly, why they should call you and not the other guys. Successful SEO will have your organization be one of the answers when a searcher asks Google a question relatable to your business. If your organization doesn’t appear as part of the SERP (search engine results page), something is seriously wrong, and you need to evaluate your SEO strategy.
There are technical SEO best practices you should verify are optimized, such as page titles, meta-descriptions, user-friendly web design, H1 tags, and a few others to ensure you get the best results. Those are merely standardized tools in the SEO toolbox; real insight needs to come from understanding how and what searchers (your potential clients) are looking for. This type of insight can’t come from reading a blog about SEO techniques, it has to come from a source that is intimately familiar with your customer base, and that source will be your sales department.
Best practices to utilize your sales department and optimize your SEO:
- Due to their proximity and engagement with your clients; sales are plugged into what potential customers are interested in. Take advantage of their insights by encouraging them to experiment with search terms related to services you want to focus on. By taking on the role of a potential customer, your sales department can locate shortcomings in your SEO, allowing for further optimization.
- When a potential customer contacts your sales department for more information, don’t just see it as a sale, but also as a mini ‘focus group.’ Take a moment to ask if they remember how they found your website. You’ll be surprised at what terms people use to find your website, many of which may not be fully represented or even mentioned on your site. When utilized, these insights are opportunities to optimize your SEO further to address the needs of potential customers better. You may think you need to rank on the first page for a keyword or phrase your competitors show up for, but in reality, your prospects are searching for something else entirely.
Successful SEO is SEO which is personalized to what makes your business unique, which is why ‘borrowing’ your competition’s keywords is generally not a successful SEO tactic. After all, how can you show your business is unique when all you’re doing is mimicking what the other guys are doing? While your competition’s keywords can provide you with a good place to start your research, they need to be altered to better fit your business. You shouldn’t put your blind trust in these keywords. Instead, take them into careful consideration - there’s no guarantee that your competition was diligent when they determined their keywords.
Your sales and marketing department will have the insights from their client communications and interactions to assist your creation of content to optimize your SEO efforts better.
Don’t let such valuable insight go to waste or be lost - take advantage of your best resource to customer satisfaction, engaging content and effective SEO, your sales department! Need advice on for your website’s SEO? Contact us today!