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When it comes to digital marketing for startups, SEO has the best ROI of all efforts you can possibly engage in. The only thing that comes close is going viral on social media, but that is not nearly as predictable and nowhere near as sustainable or scalable.

Building a company requires playing the long game, and SEO is a perfect complement to that mindset. Organic search optimization allows you to drive traffic to your website you would otherwise be paying for. If done right, you can sustain that traffic for years or more. Here’s how to get it done right.

Research the Right Keyword Opportunities

SEO isn’t just about generating more website traffic, it’s about attracting the right kinds of visitors. Focus on “buyer keywords,” which are keywords that have the highest potential to turn into a customer, as they are the types of words and phrases your prospects are most likely to use when searching.



With SEO, it’s possible to get 1,000 visits and generate no leads/customers, or get 100 visitors and generate 10 leads, depending on the type of keywords that are getting the traffic. Start your research by talking to your actual customers (ideally) or least to customer-facing staff in sales and support functions.

As an example, if you’re selling a sales CRM platform, a keyword phrase like “tips for sales people” might be good, but a term like “tools to increase sales productivity” might be better. The best one to target is of probably “best CRM for sales” (though that is likely to be difficult to rank for due to high competition).



Many companies don’t have the budget to launch a full-scale digital marketing campaign. Startups and small businesses have to be clever enough to stay lean and still find ways to scale their business growth.

How to use SEO in our digital marketing programThat’s no easy task, and it requires a lot of sweat equity investment from the team—though not necessarily a lot of spending. Here’s how to use search engine optimization (SEO) and other digital marketing tactics to grow your business without a huge chunk of capital.

Considering that 93 percent of online experiences begin with search, and that even 82 percent of customers about to buy something in store will still research online, brands today cannot afford to overlook the importance of SEO and creating a strong digital presence. Many organizations, however, have to learn how to manage this with a small SEO team. Given the immense task of fully optimizing a site and elevating a brand across the web, this can feel challenging.

Fortunately, we have seen many organizations that achieve considerable SEO success despite a small SEO team by using an optimal strategy. Here is what we would recommend for those who want to take their optimization to the next level.

Understand the importance of training people in multiple disciplines
When it comes to building a highly efficient small SEO team, you want to emphasize the importance of cross-discipline training and cooperation. One of the challenges faced by small SEO teams is the variety of disciplines that go into building a solid SEO strategy.



In general, you need someone who:

Can manage the technical side of SEO to help you take advantage of opportunities in presentation with coding and schema markup

Will produce high quality content to help demonstrate the brand’s expertise and trustworthiness
Has the ability to do standard on-page SEO optimization to help the content rank as highly as possible

Understands how to use social media to engage with prospective customers and drive traffic back to your site to build engagement and rankings

A marketer who understands the overarching SEO strategy and content production who can create schedules and fit all of the different pieces together into a solid strategy.



On a small SEO team, it may be a challenge to create a fully equipped team with a member to fill every role. Instead, often a single team member needs to have the insight to fill multiple roles.


Offer opportunities for team members to receive training in various disciplines that the group needs. For example, provide your content writers with lessons and training opportunities to help them understand how to do on-page SEO.

Online, there is now a wealth of opportunities for brands who want to find training for different areas of SEO. Blogs, like our BrightEdge blog,  can help novice SEO professionals delve into different areas of specialization. Training courses and books can also help professionals learn more about how to drive success online.

Is there an intersection between content marketing and local SEO for B2B businesses? That’s what we want to explore in this piece. Google and Bing have leaned a lot into local SEO on their search engine results pages. It’s become a lot easier for local businesses to get a high placement on SERPs than in the past.

At first glance, local SEO might only seem like a B2C thing. The point of local search is to help the public find things nearby that relate to their interests. For instance, if someone is hungry they can look for restaurants on their phones and get results based on their location.

But the stereotype for B2B is different. It’s all done through phones and emails, not someone walking up to a storefront. Business decisions aren’t decided in an instant either, unlike deciding to look for some food. So why would a B2B business even want to look at local SEO techniques?



Quick Takeaways:

Know how Google defines a local business and what characteristics you share with one.
Doing Local SEO right gives you a lot of visibility on search engines.
Give a local flavor to your content, wherever you have or want to build brand presence.

Local Content and Search Advantages for B2B Businesses

There are plenty of tactics that you can use in the quest to raise brand awareness. Some choose to use paid advertising, others want to pay for billboards, and still others engage in email campaigns. Local content is another tactic. Local content is content that talks about something relevant to the local business area.

This kind of content is great for improving local SEO results because it gives search engines the confidence that your business is located in a region. “It really comes down to one question: would you advertise locally to acquire new clients? If yes, then you can utilize local content. If no, local content probably doesn’t make sense for you,” says Crazy Egg.

The process of creating local promotional content is very similar to creating content for a national brand.



Find something which resonates with your local residents
Create a piece of content that encompasses that + is better than what you’ve encountered up until then
Promote that piece of content using social media channels and platforms.

After assessing the results, repeat the process.

A catering company for business events might write something like “Top 5 convention centers in Spokane,” assuming they were in the Spokane area. Local content goes above and beyond general articles to provide information relevant to that area. Articles about local festivals and events, weather conditions, and the like are all possibilities.

Have you read sales pages that scream, “You don’t need to know SEO! Our software does it all!”

Solving your SEO writing woes with software sounds so easy. You wouldn’t have to worry about keyphrase usage, penning the perfect title length, or structuring links. Just feed in your copy and poof! instant optimization help! In fact, the sales copy for one SEO plug-in even says, “We walk you through every step: no need to hire or be an SEO expert.”

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Here’s the question: do you even need to know SEO if a plug-in can do it all? In other words—can you trust SEO writing tools, or do writers still need to know SEO? Here’s how to think about it.



Machines can’t replace humans (yet!)

SEO tools are extremely helpful and save marketers time. We rely on them every day. But their recommendations are just that: recommendations. The writer (or SEO) makes the final optimization call. Sometimes, it makes sense to follow the recommendations, and sometimes, it doesn’t.

For instance, I’ve received emails from my writing students asking, “The Yoast SEO for WordPress plug-in is telling me to [fill in the blank]. Should I do it even if it doesn’t quite work with the page?” The plug-in was telling them one thing, while their writing experience was telling them another.

Please know that I love and highly recommend Yoast’s SEO for WordPress plug-in and many other SEO experts do too. It’s a nice plug-in that handles a lot of the geeky SEO stuff behind-the-scenes. Plus, it allows you to preview the title and description, check your readability, and more. Heck, I use it on my own site!

But other than a quick check, I don’t follow Yoast’s checklist recommendations as gospel. Why? Sometimes, following the recommendations would mess with the copywriting flow. There may be a reason that I’m not using the focus keyword in the title or that I don’t include the focus keyword in the first paragraph. Or I choose to link a certain way.

I may not follow every recommendation, but I know the page’s SEO strategy is still sound.

At the end of the day, good SEO writing connects with the reader and converts. It’s not because it ticks off various “here’s how to optimize everything perfectly” boxes. Even Yoast admits it’s “nearly impossible” to get a “green bullet” for every checklist item.

Plus, some tools still use keyword density as a scoring item. This means writers are still matching the keyphrase exactly multiple times in order to satisfy a mythical keyword density. They don’t know any better. They’re just doing what the tool tells them to do.

Considering more than  90% of online purchases start with a search engine, and nearly 60% of B2B marketers say organic search generates more leads than any other marketing tactics, your number one digital marketing goal should be getting your site onto the front page of search engines.

7 tips for hiring an SEO consultant people should be able to find your blog or website with just a few clicks. Search engine optimization (SEO) practices have changed significantly over the years, but remain at the core of digital strategy.

Between Google’s history of algorithm updates and increased competition, running an SEO campaign by yourself can be harder than you think. That’s why many people seek the help of an SEO expert. But finding an SEO specialist with the right mix of writing ability, technical skill, and industry knowledge to get your website on the front page may not be easy.



You have to make sure you are on the same page (so to speak) and share the same view. Marketing agencies bring a diverse mix of talent, though they can end up charging a small fortune. If you run or manage marketing for a small to midisized business, an SEO freelancer might be the best answer for you.

But with the abundance of freelancers on the market, how can you make sure you find the right fit? Here are seven tips that can help you make the right decision.

Be Specific with Your Requests and Deadlines

Before beginning your search for the perfect SEO match, get as specific as possible about what you are looking for. Coming up with a description for your project will help the freelancer build a proposal for discussion.

Most freelance websites that connect employers with specialists allow you to put together a description of the project and let freelancers submit proposals you can choose from. A description should give information about your business, expectations, and deadline. Drawing up a clear description of your request will ease the communication between you and the freelancer and help you find the best match.

Get to Know the Person You Will Be Working With

Working with a person you just met online can be frightening, especially in today’s world. Giving access to your website can expose you to all sorts of issues. The online world sadly includes scams and frauds as well as legitimate service providers.

A reputable SEO expert should be able to answer your questions in a simple, straightforward manner. If you have any suspicions, you can conduct a background check to find more about the person, before sealing the deal. Some red flags might include asking for payment before the work is completed, not delivering original content or— if you contracted them through a platform—asking for money offsite.

Ask for References from Past Clients

An experienced SEO specialist should have no problem giving you a short list of clients they’ve worked with. Do a Google search on those clients, with specific keywords, and see if they show up on the first page. Don’t hesitate to contact them and ask for a reference.

Want more leads? Maybe… but probably what you really want is better leads. It’s 2019, after all – B2B marketers have evolved past “lead gen 101”. They need leads that contribute to pipeline. Leads that become closed deals and real revenue.

Plenty of research backs this up. But here’s just one example: 58% of marketers said their top priority was lead quality.

Only 46% said it was lead quantity.

Getting higher-quality leads is a great goal, but it means you have to think more strategically about your ppc lead generation advertising. You have to think beyond the first click – way beyond it. So while many of the tools we’ve listed here are expressly for ppc, a couple are for optimizing what happens after the click.



Some of these ppc tools may be brand new to you, some will be familiar. Some you may already use. We’ve also included a handful of tools that aren’t primarily known as pay per click tools – but if you know how to use them, they can really help B2B lead generation campaigns.

PPC Lead Generation Competitive Analysis Tools

SpyFu.

SpyFu can show you detailed information about your competitors’ SEO and pay per click campaigns, including keywords, estimated spend, estimated traffic, and even the ads they’ve run. It will give you suggestions for negative keywords, tell you who their top organic and paid competitors are, and more. SpyFu’s new tool, Nacho Analytics, even promises to basically show you your competitors’ analytics reports.



Ahrefs is another tool that has similar functionality to SpyFu. They’re primarily known for SEO, but because SEO and PPC are so complementary, you could easily find ways to optimize your ppc accounts with this tool. Same goes for Moz, which is also a terrific SEO analysis tool.

SEMRush.

SEMRush is another competitive analysis tool that can be used for both SEO and PPC. It can help you:

analyze your ppc strategy and your competitors’ strategies
organize your keywords into ad groups more effectively
find negative keywords (more on that below)
research your competitors’ keywords and ads

Great SEO can get sites to the top of organic search rankings, provide valuable traffic from long-tail or high-traffic keywords and play a crucial role in driving growth to your company. However, there is one pitfall to all the hard work that goes into ranking at the top organically. That pitfall is paid search. With pretty minimal effort and investment, competitors can start driving traffic from the same keywords you spent months attempting to rank for. That’s why the best digital marketers supplement SEO tactics with targeted PPC to yield top results.

How to make SEO and PPC efforts work together it's always important to remember that no matter how good your rankings, the top 2 or 3 or even 4 results are likely to be search or shopping ads. They will inevitably cut into the click-through rates of top-ranking pages.



SEO and PPC Work Best Together — Here’s Why

SEO strategies are often thought of as long-term and sustainable approaches to digital marketing. Fast advancements in rankings and increases in traffic are hard to come by. Strategies take months and often years of commitment in order to yield results. PPC management efforts, in contrast, can yield results almost immediately—but are costly in the long term. Balancing both long-term and short-term strategies is ideal.

Stopping the Competition:

No matter your ranking, it is likely that paid ads appear above your organic results. If you want to fully capitalize on search results, it is a good idea to supplement keywords of value with targeted PPC ads.

In addition, some companies love to implement “conquest” campaigns in which you pay for keywords that include your competitor’s brand in them. These can be costly, but potentially quite effective. Thankfully, protecting your own brand with PPC is relatively inexpensive, but then again, you’re spending extra money on something you probably rank for.

Actionable Tip: If you’re on a tight budget, or you have a client concerned with branded campaigns, drop the maximum cost-per-click significantly lower. AdWords likely won’t tell you how low you can go, and will suggest much higher, but because this is your brand and there is likely a much higher relevance to your ads and landing pages, you can significantly reduce costs without losing your position. Make sure to test this out to find the right balance and determine your optimal standing.



Keyword Research/Testing:

Use PPC results to determine the best opportunities for organic, long-term approach (this includes PPC tests for headlines, ad copy, landing pages and keyword optimization).

PPC campaigns can be a great way to test the potential value of creating content that can organically rank for the same keywords. Maybe there is significant volume, but if no one converts, PPC can help determine that.

If competitors are paying for keywords, it is likely that they have determined that those keywords have value. Checking competitors’ campaigns can give great insight into new keywords to target, as well as language that best converts.