Are you feeling overwhelmed by the constant demand to stay active on social media, yet not seeing the results you want? If so, it might be time to shift your focus to a more sustainable and impactful strategy: SEO marketing.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is all about making your online content more visible and appealing to search engines. This helps you attract more organic traffic – traffic that comes naturally from search engines without the need for continuous active promotion.
Just last week, someone dropped into my DMs looking for help. When I asked how she’d found me, she sent me a link to a blog from 2020 that had come up when she Googled “burnout and overwhelm.”
This is the magic of SEO marketing – content you created ages ago can still bring in new leads and clients.
The Social Media Struggle
One of the biggest challenges with traditional social media is the limited lifespan of a post. On Instagram, a post might only be visible for a few hours and shown to just 2% of your audience (less the bigger your following).
It can be really deflating when you’ve spent time and effort creating it and only a small percentage see it. This is often why so many business owners feel burnt out and question whether it’s even worth it!
Now this is not to say give up social media … but it’s simply to think about how you can use SEO marketing + traditional social media to expand your online presence to bring in more leads and ultimately sales.
What SEO can do
SEO marketing isn’t just about improving your search engine ranking. It’s about establishing a solid online presence that earns you traffic day after day, without the relentless effort required by social media.
With SEO marketing, you get:
- Longevity: Your content keeps working for you long after it’s published. It can attract visitors for months or even years as I’ve experienced.
- Targeted Reach: SEO helps you reach people who are actively searching for information related to your products or services, leading to higher conversion rates.
- Cost-Effectiveness: While there is upfront work involved, SEO is less costly than ongoing paid advertising campaigns or spending your valuable time constantly feeding the social media engines.
SEO is ideal for time-poor business owners, as it helps the content you produce work harder for you without the constant hustle on social media.
Types of SEO Marketing
Here are 4 of the most common types of SEO Marketing:
- Blogging: Blogging is a cornerstone of SEO, helping boost your site’s ranking by providing fresh, relevant content. Search engines favour websites that are regularly updated with valuable content that people are searching for. Some of my highest-performing blogs are ones I wrote 3-4 years ago and still drive traffic to my website.
- Pinterest: Often overlooked in SEO strategies, Pinterest functions like a visual search engine. By optimising your pins (think great visuals and focused descriptions), you can drive substantial traffic to your website. This platform is especially powerful for businesses with visually appealing products or content. You can also share video content on this platform, which is very platform – see my examples here.
- YouTube: The world’s second-largest search engine, owned by Google, helps expand your reach. Videos often appear in search results and can drive traffic directly from YouTube, as well as serve as content on your website or blog. Tip💡Recently, I’ve grown my YouTube audience by repurposing my IG reels into YouTube shorts.
- Podcasts: While podcasts themselves aren’t indexed by search engines, the content surrounding them can be. Show notes, transcripts, and embedded podcasts on your website can all be optimised for SEO to attract more listeners and traffic. Even though my last season aired earlier this year, I still get daily listens to my Thriving Woman Project podcast, which leads to growing my audience, as they download my opt ins and join my mailing list.
Incorporating SEO into Your Marketing Funnel
To better understand how SEO fits into your overall marketing strategy, let’s take a look at the marketing funnel:
Cold Marketing (Top of Funnel)
- Low Touch: Blogs, Social Media, Podcasts, Pinterest, YouTube
- SEO Focus: Attracting new visitors with valuable content optimized for search engines. Creating informative and engaging content like blog posts, videos, and podcasts helps draw in a broader audience who are in the awareness stage. Keywords used here are typically more general and geared towards capturing interest.
Warm Marketing (Middle of Funnel)
- Medium Touch: Emails, Workshops, Facebook Group
- SEO Focus: Engaging and nurturing your audience through targeted email content and community-building. Content at this stage is more focused on providing deeper value and solutions, nurturing leads by answering specific questions and addressing pain points. Keywords become more specific, reflecting the audience’s increasing intent to find solutions.
Hot Marketing (Bottom of Funnel)
- High Touch: Offers, 1:1 Calls, Events
- SEO Focus: Converting leads into customers with persuasive content that highlights your expertise and solutions. This is where you turn leads into customers with compelling offers, detailed product/service information, and clear calls to action. Keywords at this stage are highly specific and conversion-oriented, targeting people ready to make a purchase or commitment.
For more about your Marketing Funnel – read my blog: Mastering Your Marketing Funnel: Strategies for Making More Sales here.
Repurposing Content for Maximum Impact
One of the most effective strategies in digital marketing is repurposing content. As Google owns Youtube and partners with Pinterest, it is so much more effective to utilise these platforms to increase your engagement.
This not only saves time and effort but also amplifies your SEO efforts to:
- Increase Content Lifespan: Turn a single piece of content into multiple formats, each with a chance to rank in search results. For example, a blog post can be transformed into a video for YouTube, a series of Pins for Pinterest, or a podcast episode.
- Reach Broader Audiences: Different platforms attract different audiences. Repurposing content across these mediums maximises your visibility and engagement. The key is to think where your ideal audience is hanging out. For more tips on this – see my blog: ‘Mastering Social Media’ here.
- Enhance Link Building: More content across various platforms means greater opportunities for internal linking and earning external links, both crucial for boosting your SEO rankings.
Getting Started with SEO
Transitioning some of your efforts from the fast-paced world of social media to the structured, impactful world of SEO can significantly change how you attract and retain customers.
In the Thriving Biz Club, we put a focus on SEO with modules covering blogging, Pinterest, and YouTube for your biz. When you join the club, you get access to these sessions, as well as my four-part framework for growing a thriving and sustainable online business.
For more tips and advice to grow your online biz, you can download my Digital Marketing Roadmap Guide here.