SEO

In 2020, the Internet is everything. As the younger millennials would say — that’s it, that’s the Tweet; pure and simple. If you want to do business in today’s world, there’s no avoiding online marketing and advertising. The businesses that don’t use the virtual world quickly go the way of the dinosaurs, because their competition won’t make the same mistake.

Indeed, it’s incredibly important to utilize the Internet as a tool for lead generation. After all, most consumers that want to find a service provider or a product vendor will search online first. But how can you make sure that you come out on top when it comes to search engine rankings? And what is the importance of an SEO audit for your business? We’ll explore all of this in detail below!

What Is SEO

Just in case you don’t have a passing knowledge of the world of digital marketing — SEO is an acronym referring to search engine optimization. If that seems like a mouthful, don’t worry; we’ll take a step back and explain it all.

As in the olden days of analog marketing, the first step to success is considering and shaping your customers’ journey. In other words — how do consumers interact with your product or service?

If people want to buy the newest Converse sneaker in 2020, they’ll simply type “newest converse sneaker” into Google, and voila — they not only learn what specific product they’re looking for, but they also get results on the nearest vendors and their prices.

Google is indeed the marvel among search engines, with complex algorithms that determine which website should rank the best for every single keyword you type in. But at the end of the day, these algorithms are a set of rules. And that’s where SEO comes in, to make sure that your website follows as many of these rules as possible, ensuring the highest rankings in your niche.

SEO Audits

Keeping all of the above in mind, SEO audits represent the regular practice of reviewing your website’s status in the context of SEO. Once you perform your first SEO audit, you will learn of the most glaring mistakes that prevent your website from achieving higher rankings. However, there are reasons why SEO is a long-term strategy rather than a short-term fix — and we’ll take a look at all of the factors that point you towards the importance of regular SEO audits for your business.

Changing Algorithms

If you consider everything that we’ve said so far, you may be thinking — but why should you ever perform more than one SEO audit? After all, if the first one finds all of the relevant issues regarding your website, where does the need for the next SEO audit come from?

The first and primary answer is — because Google doesn’t stand still.

Of course, search engine optimization is performed for other search engines as well — such as Bing or Yahoo; but Google holds such a lion’s share of the market that “googling” has become a bona fide verb for finding things online.

And big search engines make constant changes to their algorithm, meaning you can’t just adapt your website to the current norms once and call the whole thing done. On the one hand, Google continuously strives to make its user experience as good as possible — that’s the company mindset that allowed them to rise to the top, after all. But more importantly for your business, Google doesn’t want you knowing *all* of the rules that govern their ranking algorithm. If the search engine had rules set in stone and everyone knew them, gaming the system would be far too easy. And at the end of the day, Google wants its search results to be as organic as possible, meaning that the most relevant companies appear for the right search keywords.

So, what does this mean for the importance of an SEO audit? If you want your business to rank high on Google and keep that position, you and your SEO experts will need to continually follow new tendencies, track the latest changes Google makes to their algorithms, and adjust accordingly.

Avoiding Errors

Conducting an SEO audit doesn’t just mean reviewing and altering the content on your website. In reality, SEO efforts can be of enormous help on the technical side of things as well. Once an audit is complete, you’ll learn if you need to deal with a bunch of broken links, bad redirects, or 404 errors. If any other technical issues are negatively impacting your website’s traffic, an SEO audit will reveal them quickly.

Staking Out The Competition

SEO audits aren’t all about your business and its website either; they are also useful when it comes to the competition. Just like you perform an SEO audit on your website, you can do the same on your competitors’, gaining valuable insight into what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. Plus, you can learn what keywords your niche competitors are trying to rank for; chances are you should focus on the same ones as well.

Or, if the competition is too strong, you could optimize for a different set of keywords that they’re ignoring; the possibilities when it comes to an online marketing strategy are practically limitless. And as in all other aspects of running a business, knowing what your competitors are up to always brings a nice advantage.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, the importance of an SEO audit for your business cannot be underestimated. The logic here is pretty straightforward — if your business is going to succeed despite its competition, it needs to have a visible online presence. And to do that, optimizing for search engines on a constant basis is an absolute necessity.

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No matter your industry or focus, you’ve likely heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s absolutely essential, after all, since it directly affects your search engine results pages (SERP) rankings. Chances are you’ve likely also heard of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, since it’s been booming in the past decade. However, many people, from marketers and business owners to simply marketing enthusiasts, often don’t fully grasp how the two relate. Indeed, you can use CRM to improve SEO in quite significant ways. If the two seem unrelated, this article’s just for you.

What is CRM?

In short, CRM software is a potent tool that does what the name promises. Namely, it tracks and optimizes every aspect of a company’s relationship with customers, from Facebook marketing to customer support inquiries. It offers a consolidated database for collected insights that’s accessible to all your employees, and it offers an array of other tools. Let us briefly note them.

Core CRM features include a centralized database, lead and contact management tools, sales automation and analytics tools, and sales pipeline management tools. Apart from such core features, CRM may specialize in the following:

• Operational CRM – service, sales, and marketing automation
• Analytical CRM – predictive modeling, profitability analysis, and customer segmentation
• Collaborative CRM – interaction and channel management

Furthermore, commercial CRM solutions may focus on specific industries for additional efficiency, whereas moverstech.com focuses on the moving industry, as the name implies. Similarly, other CRM solutions focus on particular industries and can meet their specific needs.

How to use CRM to improve SEO

Having discussed the above, let us delve into how you can use the power of CRM to improve SEO and drive traffic to your website. There are many subtle ways to do so, but here are the most significant ones.

Keyword optimization

SEO begins with the most fundamental step; keyword research. There are many ways to do so without CRM, of course, but CRM offers insights into your specific business and customers.

To elaborate, lead analysis and lead scoring tools can let you know exactly where your leads are coming from. Some general keyword research into your market and competition can naturally help, but keeping a closer eye on your own leads can reveal even more. Namely, you may track the performance of individual keywords, landing pages, and even secondary channels. In turn, you can inform your marketing efforts accordingly and streamline your content strategies.

Relevant content

Next, we should examine how you may use CRM to improve SEO in terms of the content itself. Your content may already be resonating with customers, but analysis through CRM can offer notable room for improvement.

An extensive database comes with the invaluable asset of an accessible trove of data. Whether you’re using basic or analytical CRM, you can analyze traffic, engagement, and retention metrics and adjust your content accordingly. Thus, you can accurately pinpoint which types of content work best for your customers, whether seasonally or continuously, and produce more of it. Not only does this improve your marketing content effectiveness, but it also boosts your SEO; Google and other search engines value quality content. Providing quality content to your customers gives search engines all the right signals to consider your site trustworthy and qualitative, which in turn makes your site seem authoritative in its field. All of those factors directly improve your SEO and your SERP rankings.

Optimized operations through multiple locations

Furthermore, we should analyze an issue multi-location companies face; lacking internal cooperation and fragmented SEO efforts. CRM can indeed tackle this issue as well, simply due to its definitive goals.

In short, multi-location businesses face the following concerns that affect SEO:

• Data collection and customer segmentation
• Lead management and profitability analysis across multiple locations
• Internal collaboration and customer input channels

All of the above can jeopardize your SEO efforts. CRM can make your job easier simply by consolidating a comprehensive database of your operations. It can help segment your customers for each individual location, account for location-based factors, and gauge topical and circumstantial factors. Moreover, it can consolidate your communication channels, both internal ones and those for customer input, streamlining your operations, and increasing customer satisfaction. This depth of data analytics and improved communication can help you create high-value content for each individual location while ensuring your teams collaborate towards a common strategy. Even in this case, then, you can use CRM to improve SEO across multiple locations with relative ease.

Augmented Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies

While SEM is not technically SEO, the two definitely coexist in many marketing strategies. Specifically, SEM can produce short-term benefits depending on your budget, while SEO can collect insights from it and ensure long-term benefits. On this front, too, you may use CRM to improve SEO by improving SEM strategies.

To ensure the highest possible return on investment (ROI) in terms of SEM, you’ll need to know the following as you create your content:

• A laser-focused profile of your most profitable customers
• Your products or services that perform the best
• Seasonal and circumstantial factors’ effects on your business

Lead analysis and sales metrics collected by CRM can inform your SEM strategies on all of those fronts. With an extensive, consolidated database at your fingertips, you can craft ideal customer profiles, note your best-performing offers, and account for seasonal trends. With this knowledge, you can optimize your SEM strategies, which in turn will boost your SEO.

Online reputation management

Finally, CRM can help you curate an excellent online reputation. SEO does hinge on a site’s trustworthiness, after all, and customer reviews affect it noticeably.

Through CRM data, you can boost your social media activity and even reach out to advocates of your business. You can then incentivize them to leave positive reviews and provide positive exposure, increasing your visibility and inspiring brand loyalty. 

Conclusion: use CRM to improve SEO on many fronts

With all of the above in mind, it should now be clear that you can use the power of CRM to improve SEO in many distinct ways. Both are invaluable assets to use on their own, but using them together can enhance your operations dramatically.

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