As Head of Client Services working across all services, each day I am asked a plethora of questions from the team and our clients. Some new, some old but there are a couple of questions that regularly come up.
This blog outlines some of the key questions I am asked and how I normally answer these. If you have any questions that are not listed below, feel free to pop us over an email and we can see how we can help!
“Why am I not in 1st position for this keyword?”
This is a question that I hear a lot, and not just from clients, it is present across forums, blogs and other marketing collateral online.
Although a very broad question it isn’t a bad one. It shows to me that the person understands the importance of ranking for keywords organically in order to increase presence across SERPs, thus boost traffic to the website.
The truth is that the result of any cohesive SEO strategy should be that the variety of keywords and rankings increase for your website across the board. But this shouldn’t be your only measure of success.
As we know there are around 3.5 Billion searches per day on Google, and around 16 – 20% of these are completely new. Therefore we need to think bigger picture, optimising for just the primary keywords isn’t enough. We need to create helpful content that adheres to all users across all parts of the buyer journey, in all different formats – including all facets of your business and industry.
Of course – you will still need a killer keyword strategy and a technically sound website. But our keyword strategy now should focus more on creating different types of content around “keyword clusters” (aka topics) in order to address the ongoing stream of new, long tail searches. If we focus on one keyword variant, we potentially miss the opportunity for other searches – and more importantly searches that haven’t even happened yet!
“Should I invest in SEO, PPC or Social?”
In the days when I was just starting out in digital marketing I specialised in SEO and still consider it my specialised skill, therefore this question for obvious reasons is always an interesting one for me!
Me aside, when I am asked this I always answer with a question back. We live in a culture that there are options of many digital touch points from research to purchase that each entices users across all stages of the funnel – in different ways. Of course we know this is ever expanding and no two users are the same. Due to this it is now more important than ever to stop siloing services and see how they can work in a more omni-channel, holistic view.
Therefore when asked this question, I generally reply with a rephrase of the question. Instead of asking “Should I invest in SEO, PPC or Social?” It is better to ask “Which should I priortise first SEO, PPC or Social”?
Now normally it is ideal to start with as many activities as possible to be present, however we understand that is not always feasible for all of our clients. Due to this, I generally work with the team and build a full bespoke marketing strategy which incorporates all of the services introduced at some point in order to adhere to their overall goal, and fix their current roadblocks.
“How will you measure success?”
The first thing we need to do is align. What are the clients measures of success vs ours?
Before objectives and KPIs are set, we want to first fully emerse ourselves with the business goals are from a top level picture – outside of our services.
This first step is really important. It is about understanding how the client is going to measure success. Is that a growth – revenue target? Is that an impression brand awareness target? It is from understanding their overall business objectives that we can agree on service specific KPIs that will work towards achieving that north star goal.
As I am sure we are all aware, these questions will change and evolve as the digital industry moves on and more advanced ways of working come to the forefront.
At Seed, we ensure that we stay up to date and on top of the latest tricks and trends so that we can ensure we are ahead of the curve at all times.
I wonder what will be next?…
