02
Organic search and SEO
If you plan it right, organic channels can feed a steady stream of direct marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) that have reached out with contact or demo requests, while also driving website traffic and content request leads at the top of the funnel. Search engine optimization (SEO) threads throughout the prospect’s journey, influencing their experience at multiple stages – but it can be tricky to optimize.
Progress can be slow in the world of organic search, and you might not see any improvement from optimization work for six to nine months.
But, in return, you’ll see higher pipeline conversion rates from prospects converting on long-tail keyword searches.
To judge success, measure the amount of traffic that is hitting your website and combine that with engagement metrics and lead qualification and opportunity conversion rates, paying particular attention to pages with high-intent topics.
The top of the first page of search results is priceless real estate – and ensuring your content contributes to your SEO is vital if you want to make your home there. To capture highly relevant traffic at all stages of the prospect journey, you should focus on:
Blogs
Guides and eBooks
Product-related content, such as data sheets
Free trials
Demo requests
Because search engines want to serve users the best results for their queries, competition for high-quality SEO-friendly content is incredibly strong.
Start off with keyword research relating to your company strategy, value proposition, and its associated pain points to get an idea about what topics your audience is keen to learn about. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, or Ahrefs are good starting points for discovering popular search terms and their search volume to guide your content strategy.
Always start with your audience and then backtrack into keyword research. I'd suggest never doing either keyword research or content planning in isolation.
It might be tempting to stuff your content full of keywords, but Google will penalize you for doing so. Now, you’ll need to integrate them more strategically into your content to maintain readability and coherence.
Keyword stuffing impacts user experience too. If readers feel overwhelmed by buzzwords, it's unlikely they'll stick around – and high bounce rates negatively influence your ranking.
Use long-tail keywords to answer a specific query. They usually have a lower search volume, but can deliver higher conversion rates as they're higher in search intent.
When researching, audit the People Also Ask, More to Ask, and predictive text fields, as these make great headers for articles by answering direct search queries.
Search engines favor websites that regularly publish new and engaging content and provide value to their users. SEO never stops.
You may have the best piece of content in the world, full of unique insights and helpful advice – but if search engines can’t find it, readers aren’t interested in it, or it’s pitched at the wrong audience, it won’t help you achieve your goals. Instead, focus on creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content that addresses user intent and provides value; search engines will reward this type of content.
Long-form interactive content thrives here. You can flesh out your content with more targeted keywords, influential speakers, and thought leadership to get your message across. It also allows you to include more engaging components to encourage your readers onward.
On-site and technical SEO play a huge role in helping you bring relevant, high-quality traffic to your website. Once you’ve got the writing out of the way, optimize your content across the page title, meta description, URL, headlines, images, and body content.
Beyond keywords and copy, SEO also involves creating a clear path for your prospect through your site’s architecture, making the most of your site’s internal linking structure through strategic backlinking, and adapting your content journey in response to prospects’ behavior on key pages.
To get started on auditing your site, finding keyword trends or volume, and spying on your competition, we've found nine free SEO tools to try.
Explore our in-depth, step-by-step approach to positioning yourself as a leader in your industry.Read now
