{"id":144053,"date":"2022-08-18T11:18:15","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T11:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=144053"},"modified":"2022-08-25T12:18:31","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T12:18:31","slug":"how-do-you-use-seo-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2022\/08\/18\/how-do-you-use-seo-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you use SEO to scale revenue and market share?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-144055\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share-1024x273.png\" alt=\"How do you use SEO to scale revenue and market share\" width=\"640\" height=\"171\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share-1024x273.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share-300x80.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share-768x205.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>When the economy and business take a hit, marketing is the first to suffer budget cuts<\/li>\n<li>If you are asking, &#8220;should I give up my SEO?&#8221;, this article is all you need<\/li>\n<li>Best-selling author and serial entrepreneur, Kris Jones shows you five ways SEO can help you achieve revenue<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of all the ways to start driving real growth and expanding a business, SEO might not be the first method people generally consider. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After all, SEO doesn\u2019t directly make you online sales, right? Isn\u2019t it just all about Google and showing up in position one? Is it just about vanity?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This kind of view is shortsighted and doesn\u2019t appear to take the whole story into account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We live now in a time when online markets have gotten so competitive that some people are still asking if SEO is dead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What\u2019s the translation of that question? \u201cDo I even stand a chance on Google anymore with all these competitors crowding up the SERPs? Should I give up my SEO?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The answer, of course, is no. SEO isn\u2019t dead, and you shouldn\u2019t give up on it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO is your way forward to scaling your revenue and market share. You just need to work harder at it than ever before if you want to play the Google game and get audiences to find and buy from you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, SEO really can drive your business growth, and I\u2019m going to show you five ways that you can use it to achieve that end.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>1. Stick with SEO long-term<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m going to start with an item that some people might have expected to see at the end: if you want to drive your business growth beyond just the next six months or year, you have to stick with your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.overthetopseo.com\/seo-services\/\">seo services<\/a> &amp; strategy long-term.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everything that I\u2019m going to talk about in this post\u2013every item, from website architecture to keyword usage and on-page page optimization, to creating great content, to building backlinks\u2013is something that will work for you, but only if it\u2019s given enough time to breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I understand that when times are tough, marketing can often be the first cost that businesses want to cut. After all, while it would be nice to be able to market yourself, is marketing really necessary to the business if you\u2019re losing money in so many other places?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the case of SEO (and marketing in general), the answer is a resounding \u201cyes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO keeps your business\u2019s online visibility evident no matter what the market looks like. And if you\u2019ve been in business long enough, you know that\u2013surprise!\u2013markets recover, consumers start spending again, and businesses once again become profitable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you stop your SEO during a downturn with the idea that you\u2019re going to be saving money, think of the harm you\u2019ll actually be doing to your business when no one can find you through an online search anymore, and that includes after your market has turned around again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See, SEO is a long game, it\u2019s for those with stamina, those with a vision that their business will survive for many years to come.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sure, downturns will negatively affect your bottom line, but only temporarily. Do you know what will really hurt, though? When your bottom line disappears completely, and your former place on Google gets swallowed up by all the others vying for your same audiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s what happens when you haphazardly cut your SEO after six months or a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you stay with it, though, when you ride out all the storms and still make room for <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2022\/03\/17\/heres-what-an-roi-worthy-search-advertising-budget-looks-like-in-2022\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">your SEO budget<\/a>, you can really start to win.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You\u2019ll benefit from seeing how your pages and other content are trending over time. You\u2019ll see how you created a post around certain keywords but how that post is now ranking for other keywords and should be reoptimized. You\u2019ll be able to continue building your backlink profile over time rather than letting it die after just a few months. And you\u2019ll see how keyword trends change over time and allow you to target different phrases on your most important pages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, you see, long-term SEO is the way to go if you want to be precise and up-to-date in your digital marketing approach.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>2. Use SEO to organize your website<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to make it easier for your business to scale its revenue and maximize its market share, you\u2019ll need to put some serious work into your on-page SEO. This has to start with a clean website structure arranged in a logical hierarchy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How your <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/07\/11\/seo-lead-site-migration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">website\u2019s architecture<\/a> is set up depends on what kind of business you are, but let\u2019s assume we\u2019re talking about a fairly large ecommerce website here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ecommerce websites usually make good examples of good and bad website hierarchies because of the volume of pages they typically have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, ideally, a website will be structured according to logic, or what will make its pages the easiest to find for users.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the case of <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2021\/10\/22\/how-to-use-pagerank-for-ecommerce-websites\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ecommerce websites<\/a>, good main navigation would show all the main pages at the top and then have each one open into a menu when you hover over it. The menus are where everything else would be neatly broken down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shop Now &gt; Categories &gt; Products<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Users could hover over \u201cShop Now\u201d to see all the product categories. This structure helps because it starts more generally as shoppers are still thinking about what they want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once they click on a category, they will be taken to a category page that will show all the products in that category. From there, they can find the product they need or filter the results to browse until they find something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s it, nice and easy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the kind of structure that will allow your website visitors to convert once they reach you. Remember that confused visitors don\u2019t make purchases, so it will pay to put some serious time and effort into simplifying your website structure if you haven\u2019t done so already.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clean navigation will help not only people to get around your site but also Google\u2019s search crawlers. When Google can understand your site in the same logical way as people, it may rank it higher than a competitor with messy website architecture.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>3. Target the right audiences with the right keywords<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that your website architecture is set up right, the next step in positioning your website to scale revenues for you is to use the right keywords to target the right audiences in the right places.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here the concept of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/12\/03\/intent-research-keywords-tips\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">keyword intent<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is key. There are businesses out there that get this all wrong, so it\u2019s worth mentioning here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the way, I can understand anyone out there who is looking for the connection between keywords and driving revenues, but these are the SEO details that allow people to find you on Google, and there\u2019s no way to make money from users who can\u2019t find you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ll stay with the ecommerce example from earlier. When you go to optimize your category and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2021\/01\/29\/eight-simple-steps-to-write-epic-product-descriptions-that-boost-conversions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">product pages<\/a> with keywords, you\u2019ll want to have intent in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keyword intent is something you should be thinking about at all phases of your keyword research.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The four main types of keyword intent are &#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Informational &#8211; \u201cI want to learn about something\u201d &#8211; \u201chow to start a website\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Commercial &#8211; \u201cI want to investigate things to buy\u201d &#8211; \u201cbest athletic items for 2022\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Transactional &#8211; \u201cI\u2019m ready to buy something right now\u201d &#8211; \u201cbulk printer paper buy now\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Navigational &#8211; \u201c Take me to this page on this website\u201d &#8211; \u201cWalmart privacy policy\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are personas attached to each type of keyword intent. Think of it as a classic sales funnel. Users enter it with a few needs but have to do some research before buying anything. As they move down the funnel, they become more focused on taking action.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ones who complete the funnel are the ones who end up buying something or filling out a form, basically just taking whatever action matters to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How does this factor into the keywords you target on your website\u2019s pages?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think of a category page on your ecommerce site. No one is buying anything from a category page. It may not even be possible to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, your keyword targets for those pages should be more commercial than transactional. Users who arrive on your category pages are thinking about buying, but not yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maybe your keyword target for a category page of printer paper is simply \u201coffice printer paper\u201d or \u201cbest office printer paper.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then, you\u2019ll want to get more specific on the product pages, which is where people will be doing the buying. If you find search volume around them, you want to optimize for terms such as \u201cbuy hammermill printer paper now\u201d or \u201chp printer paper 500 sheets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See how the product page keywords got more long-tail and specific? That\u2019s called going after intent, and it\u2019s the way to optimize each part of your website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That way, the right users will find everything they need from you, no matter where they are on their buyers\u2019 journey.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>4. Create (genuinely) amazingly useful content for every buyer persona<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, so you want to continue employing SEO to accelerate your growth and increase your market share. Then you will also need to jump head-first into the content marketing game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To an extent, this idea piggybacks on the keyword intent concept from earlier. Except that here, we\u2019re looking at intent from the content perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you have optimized and more or less perfected your website from a user-experience perspective, you might wonder what else you could actively be doing to bring in traffic to your website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content is your game at that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content is what drives traffic to websites, and it\u2019s always been that way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From one perspective, that\u2019s just common sense. What else would we do on the Internet if there were no content?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taken another way, though, how exactly do you devise a content marketing plan for a website? What do you write about? How does content bring in the traffic and sales you need to bump up your market share?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think back to keyword intent from above, specifically the informational intent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People typically don\u2019t navigate to a category page, product page, or other service page with purely informational intent. Traffic to those pages is more ready to do something than learn about something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Informational keywords apply more to blog posts that elaborate on topics about your business or wider industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/12\/03\/how-to-use-content-marketing-to-boost-ecommerce-conversions-and-user-experience\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since blog posts are often informational<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, that means you\u2019ll be targeting top-of-funnel traffic that\u2019s just learning about what you do and isn\u2019t ready to buy yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But since you\u2019re focusing on scaling revenue and market share right now, you can\u2019t lose sight of the fact that top-funnel traffic has the potential to turn into real customers for you. Blog posts are there to nurture the leads down the funnel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, if content seems like a slow or pointless game to you, I assure you it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s one of the main ways you\u2019re going to make it to the top.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>5. Build those backlinks<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finally, if you\u2019re looking to use SEO to drive your revenues and business growth, you\u2019ll want to pay lots of attention to your <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/12\/10\/six-strategies-guaranteed-to-help-you-build-more-backlinks-to-your-website\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">backlink profile<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As you probably know, links mean so much in SEO. The connections among pages and domains fuel how Google understands content on the internet. They are what build authority for websites.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why? Because Google knows that if people want to link to content from their own websites, the content must be trustworthy and worth ranking highly for people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Higher authority usually means higher rankings, and higher rankings mean more customers that you want will see you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But, you can\u2019t depend on the Internet just to find your content and link to it. You have to do the outreach yourself to get your name and content out there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you create good content, get in touch with others in your industry to see if their audiences might find it useful. Ask the webmasters if they would like to link to it for their readers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or, you could use an SEO tool to find broken external links on other sites and offer up your content as a replacement for those links.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whatever method you take, though, just be sure that you\u2019re getting backlinks from relevant sources. It won\u2019t matter if you get 10,000 backlinks from completely irrelevant sites. One backlink from a relevant site will count more for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The increased authority and rankings you get from your backlinking campaign should help you over time to sustain your showing up for the most relevant searches in your industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Bringing it together<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of these pieces are what you need to bring together and put in place to make the best use of SEO for scaling your revenue and growing your market share.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To the uninitiated, it can definitely seem like the tasks I mention here are not directly related to making sales and growing a business. But they are the moves that lay the groundwork for that growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keeping that long vision is how you really put SEO to work for your business.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Kris Jones is the founder and former CEO of digital marketing and affiliate network Pepperjam, which he sold to eBay Enterprises in 2009. Most recently Kris founded SEO services and software company\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lseo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-auth=\"NotApplicable\" data-linkindex=\"0\">LSEO.com<\/a>\u00a0and has previously invested in numerous successful technology companies. Kris is an experienced public speaker and is the author of one of the best-selling SEO books of all time called, \u2018Search-Engine Optimization \u2013 Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing\u2019, which has sold nearly 100,000 copies.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Subscribe to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/#newsletter-modal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Search Engine Watch newsletter<\/a><\/strong><strong>\u00a0for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Join the conversation with us on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/groups\/61126\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sewatch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>30-second summary: When the economy and business take a hit, marketing is the first to suffer budget cuts If you are asking, &#8220;should I give up my SEO?&#8221;, this article is all you need Best-selling author and serial entrepreneur, Kris Jones shows you five ways SEO can help you achieve revenue Of all the ways [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":144055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27694,5],"tags":[725,22],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-144053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roi-marketing","category-seo","tag-search-strategy","tag-seo"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":"Independent","tad_content_format":"Infuencer commentary"},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/How-do-you-use-SEO-to-scale-revenue-and-market-share.png","category":"ROI Marketing","timeago":"3y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144053"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=144053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}