Should You Have a Go at SEO?
Hot leads are ready to buy!
Everyone wants them, but few companies in the printing industry are using SEO to attract them.
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving website rankings so you will be found when a potential buyer searches for a company like yours, using a search engine like Google or Bing. SEO involves more than having a website hooked up to Google Analytics and requires skills and technology.
Most of all, SEO demands a strategy. What services do you sell? What keywords and phrases do buyers use when searching for a vendor? How do you structure your website so your company will be found when leads are ready to buy?
Five Basic Ways to Approach SEO
Hire an agency specializing in SEO: This can be pricey. If you have a big SEO budget, it is worth considering.
Hire an SEO freelancer: There are thousands of options available through online marketplaces such as Upwork or Fiverr. Before you hire anyone, however, I recommend you come up with a list of evaluation criteria.
Hire a marketing services firm: There are agencies that specialize in SEO, and then there are marketing services firms. For instance, my company is a marketing services firm. We provide SEO services to clients, but we view that service as one piece of a bigger puzzle. With a marketing services firm, you should get a more holistic view of how to achieve revenue growth.
Take a DIY approach: To execute an SEO plan effectively, you need people with the time, skills, and technology to do it right.
Don't do SEO: If you are not currently using SEO and have enough business, investing in SEO may not be a requirement for success at your company.
The Basics
When pursuing SEO, here are five basics to cover:
- Be sure your website has an SSL Certificate, is compatible with desktops, tablets, and mobile phones, and the pages load quickly.
- Content should be tagged so it is visible to search engines, and content should be regularly added to keep search bots happy while increasing site traffic.
- Search bots don't like broken links. Therefore, you should regularly run your website through a software solution to find and fix broken links.
- You should have a backlink strategy. Backlinks are links from one website to another. For example, if you are a member of an association, and your website is listed on their website, that listing qualifies as a backlink.
- Make sure SEO is turned on! I moved a website for a client to a new hosting platform after discovering its previous marketing services company had turned off all SEO reporting, making the website invisible to search engines. That crime had gone on for years.
Further Reading
As you consider SEO as part of your larger revenue strategy, here are two other Printing Impressions articles you may want to check out:
"Where Should Your Marketing Dollars Go?" provides an overview of SEO and nine other options for marketing investments.
"Are You Turning Off Prospective Buyers Before You Get a Chance to Quote?" looks at what happens once potential buyers arrive at your website—and whether it effectively helps you convert visitors into prospects.
SEO can help you get found by hot leads who are ready to buy now. While pursuing SEO is not an instant fix, if you want to get started on getting better results, there is no better time than now.
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Linda Bishop is the founder and president of Thought Transformation, a national sales and marketing consulting group helping printers and other companies achieve top-line growth through a combination of strategies, tools, training and tactics.
Her expertise includes all aspects of outbound selling and account acquisition, account retention and development, solution selling, marketing, and aligning sales processes with marketing strategies. Most recently, she published The ChatGPT Sales Playbook: Revolutionizing Sales with AI and believes AI will offer sales pros new tools for achieving revenue goals.
Before starting Thought Transformation in 2004, Linda sold commercial printing for seventeen years, working as a commission salesperson for the Atlanta division of RR Donnelley Company. She was one of the top performers in the Atlanta marketplace and had annual sales exceeding $9 million.
Linda has a BS degree in accounting from Purdue University and an MBA in marketing from Georgia State. She has written several books on sales topics, speaks nationally on sales and marketing, and has published many articles.
