Creating an effective SEO-integrated marketing strategy can take time. And will need consistency and measurement. But this article will look at how you can get started in a few easy steps.

What is SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way of making your product or services related to your business discovered on search engines such as Google and Bing through organic means.

Any online marketing strategy should have at least an SEO-incorporated strategy.

Why SEO?

Not every traffic is good traffic.

You don't want someone searching for Web Design Services coming to the site of your Interior Design services.

SEO acts like a focus lens, It brings in quantitative organic traffic that is relevant.

Everyone that visits your site they have something that they are looking for. Make sure it's what they are looking for through SEO.

SEO integration into your marketing strategy

The main focus of any good marketing strategy is to make sales and simultaneously create a long-term relationship with the customer.

SEO is the king of long-term marketing strategies.

Of course, you have branding, content, email marketing, and social media presence, they matter, but SEO rules them all (all grues them together).

SEO creates a discoverable cache of who and what you are as a business, it provides credible insight into what your customers search for when they come to your site.

To build a lasting relationship with your customers, it will take not just social media posts, but a detailed SEO strategy aimed at improving your website search engine rankings.

Bring in qualified traffic through sub-SEO strategies such as On-Page SEO, Off-page, content marketing, link building, and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).

This can be a daunting task, there are a lot of pieces moving around, and finding a coherent strategy or method on how to execute any idea may seem impossible.

But the following steps will help you get started. First, we define our marketing strategy components and then we execute them.

Marketing Strategy Components

Let's look at what marketing strategy components are.

Marketing strategy has different components depending on whom you ask. I will summarize these components and look at only the essence of every good marketing strategy.

A simplified marketing strategy has the following practical and easily executable marketing components, with no need for clutter and fuzzy terms.

1. Buyer Personal (Target)
2. Your Brand Message
3. Marketing Channels
4. Conversion methods and tactics

Let's take a look at each one of these.

Buyer Persona

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, guide product development to suit the needs of your target customers, and align all work across your organization (from marketing to sales to service). As a result, you'll be able to attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business who you'll be more likely to retain over time. Hubspot

Essentially this is the target customer that is likely to buy from you.

Your buyer persona may look like this:

1. A working-class woman under the age of 35
2. Uses Microsoft Office word
3. Prefers Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter
4. Works in finance
5. Prefer to take phone calls, get an email, or having face to face for communication.
6. Has at least attended college education.
7. Their main focus is Lead generation
8. The main challenge is people management.

Message

The message that you will need to construct for your customers should be delivered on time.

Think of Nike's “Just do it” campaign message

Marketing Channels

A marketing channel will help you distribute the message to your potential customers, with measurable results. Such as website, social media, etc

Conversion Tactics

This includes sales channels and promotions and other ways to convert customers.

Integrating your SEO into your marketing strategy

You have your marketing strategy which has a brand message, an audience, marketing channels, and measurable tactics to convert your target audience. Now to integrate SEO, you have to include the following in your marketing strategy.

Keyword Research

Do your keyword research.

This will help you discover what your target audience is looking for, and what phrases or words they are using to search for products and services in your industry.

A list of relevant keywords and search phrases that will help you craft content that your target audience will be interested in.

This will help you position your content for discovery.

Pay attention to long-term keywords, most users don't use single-word queries when searching online they use sentences, usually in form of questions or statements, called Long-tail keywords, such as the “best sporting shoes”, “how to make banana pancakes”, “best cupcakes for school kids” etc.

Long-tail keywords are three words or more.

Long-tail keywords are very powerful, they provide insights into user intent and drive relevant traffic to your sights, not just quantity but quality.

Targeting such key phrases will help your content be more visible. Because it directly addresses the user's pain points, providing information on a subject of interest.

The key thing is to be relevant to the user, these are signals search engines look for and care for. This can help you boost your SEO.

Create Content

Am sure you have heard of this Bill Gates quote before, Content is king, admittedly, it is an old overused term, but it is still relevant today. Without content, it becomes difficult to demonstrate or show value to your customers.

After you have identified your keywords, you need them to guide you in your content strategy for your targeted customer.

Before creating content, know what your customers search for, and do your research on Google trends or other tools to help your general topics that are relevant to customers.

Your content should not just be text on a page, but provide value and properly inform your readers about the subjects.

If you can not archive that your content engagement will be minimal, and you will lose potential customers. Be insightful, add data to your articles, provide testimonies, and show the benefits of your product or service.

Apply Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website's technical aspects and ensuring that modern search engines can crawl, index, and render it. This means improving your website speed and optimizing your overall architecture and readability.

Your website needs to be mobile-friendly, fast, and free of duplicated content. This is far from being an exhaustive list, but it's a start.

This can be accomplished by collaborating with your website developer, and webmaster and using tools such as Google Search Console.

No matter how good your content is, or well thought you put into the words if your website is slow, does not render well on mobile, and search engines are not able to crawl it you will have difficulty ranking in any search engine.

Technical SEO is a fundamental step in ensuring that your website ranks high on search engines.

Coordinate SEM and SEO

when it comes to search engine results ranking, other than SEO there is also SEM.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the act of using paid strategies to increase search visibility. It's paid results or advertisements that show at the top of the search engine results; which are usually based on search queries where there is high commercial intent.

SEM and SEO are played in the same field, but how bit differently. While SEO focuses on organic traffic, SEM is focused on paid search results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a powerful tactic to drive traffic to your website. Both SEO and SEM activities are designed to get relevant consumer attention through search engines, resulting in an increase in qualified traffic that converts into leads and sales.

Doing SEO and SEM doesn't mean you have to work separately, as both activities can be used together to increase search presence and develop long-term strategies.

Integrating SEO and SEM into your marketing strategy is easy at best as the website content is key to both, so it's important to make every word count towards search results.

Alternately SEO and SEM are valuable tools to use when building a marketing campaign. When integrated, these strategies are efficient in lead generation.

Conclusion

I hope this will help you get started on integrating SEO into your marketing strategy.