Eric Maas is a managing partner at Fuelist Digital.
“Ninja,” “guru,” “secret sauce.” In my over 15 years of experience working in SEO, these are a few of the terms I’ve repeatedly heard used to describe the industry. These terms imply that there’s a mysticism to SEO, that it’s an out-of-reach concept that’s tough for “outsiders” to understand.
But those in the SEO world who perpetuate this line of thinking are doing so to the detriment of the industry. From my conversations with clients, I’ve found that the majority of people just want to understand what SEO is, what it can do for their business, and how they can get on the path to generating results.
Industry-specific slang and techy acronyms might have been flashy and favored pitches during SEO’s rise in the 2000s, but now clients understand that SEO is a business tool for business problems in their marketing and sales funnels—and it should be pitched that way. Moreover, that pitch must be accompanied by a focus on driving ROI for clients.
Be Clear On What SEO Is And How It Delivers ROI
In his book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, author Donald Miller argues that customers, not companies, should be positioned as heroes. Companies function as guides that help the heroes on their journey.
When SEO agencies position SEO as a mystical, complex concept, they are, in essence, doing the opposite of what Miller recommends—painting themselves as the heroes who step in and save the day rather than as the guides who work alongside companies to drive better business results. These SEO agencies risk equating their brands and industry with confusion, to the point that clients likely won’t understand the true business value of SEO and walk away.
A better alternative? Clarity surrounding the process, expectations and how integrating SEO between product management and marketing will result in an increase in ROI. Consider the fact that despite the importance of SEO in the digital age, some businesses still don’t have an SEO strategy. According to a 2020 survey from The Manifest, “70% of small businesses don’t have an SEO strategy in place.” When SEO firms get clear on what they do, why they do it, how they do it and the expected results, they can gain greater buy-in from prospective clients.
Drive And Track ROI To Do Right By Clients
Clarity on SEO is important, but SEO agencies must also drive and track ROI for their clients.
As I mentioned earlier, SEO is a business tactic that’s meant to solve issues in a company’s marketing and sales funnels. Ultimately, websites are a product, and SEO is akin to product marketing and product management.
That’s why the main metric SEO agencies need to focus on is the number of sales. Sales are the bottom line. Other commonly used SEO metrics, like organic traffic, keyword rankings, time on page and pages per session are important, but they are a means to an end, with that end being increasing the number of sales. For instance, SEO tactics might lead to a 30% increase in organic traffic to an e-commerce company’s home page, but the real test is whether any of that increased traffic leads to more sales.
Of course, there is a delineation between MQLs and SQLs. Especially in certain industries (B2B in particular), SEO agencies must work with their clients to determine at what stage in the pipeline an MQL turns into an SQL (and becomes the sales team’s responsibility). But by installing the right tracking and analytics tools, SEO firms can pinpoint which closed-won deals their SEO strategies initially brought in or influenced along the MQL-SQL journey. For example, a SaaS company’s customer might have been won over by a salesperson to sign a contract. But they initially discovered the company and spent time exploring the site due to technical SEO and content SEO strategies.
SEO goals and strategies will differ from company to company and industry to industry. A B2C e-commerce company that sells sunglasses would be more likely to “naturally” convert increased web traffic to more sales. In contrast, a B2B SaaS company will need to refine and activate its sales funnel. Regardless, SEO firms should remember that the end goal is to drive sales.
Additionally, what works one quarter might not work the next. SEO firms should routinely examine and fine-tune their strategies to continue generating the best results possible for their clients.
Holistic Approaches Win
Outside of the industry, some people might primarily equate SEO with keyword research, targeting and ranking via writing various pieces. But that is only one part of content SEO. Technical SEO is vital as well.
Content and technical SEO are holistic. A company can put all the content in the world on its website, optimize it for all the right keywords and get first-page rankings for those keywords. But if its website is slow or structurally problematic, users will likely get frustrated and leave the site before making a purchase. Google would also have a problem with such a site. The company crawls an astounding number of pages per day, and site speed is an important ranking factor.
My SEO agency specializes in both types of SEO. While it’s advantageous for SEO firms to have both content and technical SEO capabilities in-house, the reality is that many great firms focus on one over the other. In those cases, I recommend that they form strategic partnerships with firms that have the other of the two specialties, so they can refer clients as needed.
SEO agencies that can provide holistic approaches, be it through their own resources or partnerships, are better able to drive and increase sales for their clients, giving them high ROI—and a reason to keep them employed.
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