Nearly 70% of marketers invested in SEO last year as part of their inbound marketing efforts, and for good reason - 68% of online experiences begin with search, and 61% of B2B marketers say organic traffic generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.
Once you’ve developed an SEO program, however, it’s important to maintain it. Given the highly competitive nature of SEO, “setting and forgetting it” can result in losses in short order.
Whether you need to sustain the top rankings you’ve already achieved or make advancements toward your SEO goals, these three areas should be part of your ongoing strategy:
Keep keywords fresh
Review your keywords regularly to ensure they’re still relevant based on changing buyer behaviors and business priorities. Launching a new product? Entering a new global region? Targeting a new buyer persona? Moments like this should trigger a keyword refresh asap.
Otherwise, refresh them at least once a year. From there, make sure the entire marketing and PR team is layering them into content - from eBooks and blogs to press releases and bylines.
Update website content
Updating your website regularly is key to an ongoing SEO strategy. Why? Search engines like Google evaluate content freshness in addition to quality. Populating the site with timely, relevant information will ensure it is regularly crawled and indexed.
When developing your content calendar, there are a few rules of thumb to keep in mind:
Create a mix of both short and long-form content - for example, blogs, landing pages, and educational resources.
Add a healthy dose of videos and images. Not only does this enhance the reader experience, but given user preferences for multimedia content, it can improve your Google ranking as well.
Don’t prioritize search engines over readability. Weave in keywords where they fit naturally into titles, subheads, and body of content.
Implement a backlink strategy
Increasing backlinks via quality websites is an often overlooked part of an ongoing SEO program for B2B tech companies. This is where PR plays a starring role.
For example, when a top-tier tech publication like InformationWeek covers your announcement and links to your website, it confirms your site’s value and helps boost your Domain Authority - in turn improving your site’s ranking and helping drive readers to it. The same can be true for obtaining backlinks on other types of websites relevant to your buyers, such as an award, association, analyst, product review sites and even partner or customer websites.
A strong SEO strategy can improve your site’s credibility, enhance your web users’ experience, and ultimately support inbound marketing and lead generation efforts. The key is ensuring the entire marketing team, including your external partners, is aligned on and working toward your SEO goals.