The Powerful Role of SEO in Inbound Marketing
There are several strategies recently borne into the digital marketing world—it can be difficult to keep them all straight. Whether you’re a novice in the industry or fine-tuning your knowledge of these newer concepts, we’ve got you covered.
Inbound marketing is not the same as SEO. In fact, SEO is part of a collection of inbound marketing methods.
If you’re interested in getting the most out of your marketing strategies, consider the role of SEO amongst your other marketing practices. The way these work together could be an asset to your company’s efforts.
Read on for inbound marketing tools and how SEO can fit into these methods.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. The goal of this strategy is to improve the visibility of your business’s goods and services when relevant terms are searched on Google and other search engines.
Essentially, you want your company to pop up on the first results page rather than the hundredth.
Doing this requires time and keywords. What words are unique to your organization? Which of them will often be used by a searcher? Can your company solve their problems?
Aligning your business with the correct keywords will organically increase the traffic to your site.
But you don’t just want digital “window shoppers.” You want these site visits to lead to an inquiry, a sale, a good review, and so on. That’s where inbound marketing techniques come in.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing has a wider scope on the buyer’s journey. Essentially, SEO is a fraction of the entirety of inbound marketing strategies. It drives people to the site, while inbound marketing works to gain leads and purchases.
It is a process that turns a simple Google search into a long-term “game” of sorts—with the goal of earning a customer.
The process can be slow. It starts with the initial search, in which SEO is involved to get a higher spot on search results. Now that you’ve attracted a user to click on your site, they become a visitor.
Alternative inbound marketing tools such as a landing page form offering a discount to first-time visitors are now involved. If they sign up for a discount code via email, now they’re considered a lead. You have their contact information for future emails on products and sales.
All of this work is to gain a sale, but it doesn’t stop there. You want loyalty from each customer, therefore you must entice them with a new call to action and more creative advertising efforts.
As you can see, SEO might not be enough to further your company’s reach. If you’re interested in more inbound marketing tools, there is plenty of software for marketers that can ease the buyer’s journey.
SEO Is the Bedrock of Inbound Marketing
Now you know how SEO and inbound marketing work together. SEO is a part of inbound marketing, but there is much more to inbound marketing than SEO.
If you liked this article, there’s more where that came from! Check out our marketing category for more reading.
