Here are some tools that business owners can use to optimize their websites and bring in more revenue
Small businesses face unique challenges when it comes to their marketing operations. For one, very few have dedicated personnel to manage marketing campaigns (there may be few team members wearing many hats). They might also have limited financial resources, making it difficult to subscribe to the latest and best marketing tools.
But running a small business also has its advantages. There is often far less competition within a small niche market, and successful marketing campaigns are significantly less expensive. Similarly, amazing results can still be achieved even with a small repertoire of marketing tools.
If you’re looking to increase organic traffic to your business via Search Engine Optimization (SEO), here are some cost-effective software solutions to have in your toolkit.
1. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is Google’s own SEO keyword research tool. Although Keyword Planner is primarily used to identify keywords to target with Google Ads, the same data can be used to inform your organic keyword strategy for your website.
Use Keyword Planner to find keywords your target audience may be searching for, validate the search volume and competition level for each and discover related keywords that can help you reach people interested in your products or services.
Cost: Free
2. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is another Google-hosted SEO tool, but specific to your website performance and analytics. GSC measures your website traffic, identifies site issues and allows you to monitor your ranking keywords. Sign up for GSC using your Google account, add the code to your website, and start tracking. This data will allow you to make improvements to your website that can help increase your organic traffic.
Cost: Free
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is perhaps the most widely known SEO analytics tool, and for good reason. For one, it’s fed by first-party data directly from Google, making it one of the most accurate analytics tools. Also, it allows you to implement conversion tracking to monitor what actions users take on your website, whether filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, purchasing a product, etc. You can also monitor traffic from other channels, not just Google, such as referral traffic, direct traffic or social media traffic.
Cost: Free
4. Yoast (WordPress only)
With WordPress being the most popular Content Management System (CMS), it’s only fitting to mention Yoast. Yoast is a WordPress-specific SEO plugin that allows businesses to add essential on-page elements to their sites, including meta titles, meta descriptions, keywords and internal links. Once activated, the Yoast plugin displays a score (red, yellow or green) to reflect the degree to which your website is optimized. Some alternatives to Yoast include RankMath and SEOPress.
Cost: $99 per year
5. Semrush
Semrush is one of the best “freemium” SEO software options, with a wide range of keyword research functions, site auditing features, content optimization tools and more. Like Google Keyword Planner, you can research keywords relevant to your service or product and even discover the keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can audit your site for on-page and technical SEO issues and receive an easy-to-follow report on how to fix them. Semrush also includes backlink analysis, listing management and local SEO tools, which are not available via Keyword Planner or Google Analytics.
Cost: free (limited); paid starts at $129.95 per month
6. SpyFu
SpyFu is a small-business-friendly competitive keyword research tool. Its complete SEO marketing suite includes a Pay Per Click ad analyser, robust historical data, competitive analysis tools, backlink outreach and even custom reporting. SpyFu is a close runner-up to Semrush, as it provides a range of helpful SEO features at an affordable price. However, Semrush is often the preferred option, given that it includes on-page, off-page, and technical SEO tools (the trifecta).
Cost: free (limited); $16 per month (annual plan)
7. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is not explicitly an SEO tool but rather a “search listening tool,” but it made the list because it is supremely helpful when it comes to small business content strategy. And content is one of the most important drivers of organic traffic. AnswerThePublic allows you to search for a primary keyword and discover a “web” of questions and/or topics to turn into blog posts or web pages.
For example, say you sell dog toys online; some topic ideas generated could include “Are dog toys machine washable?” or “Which toys are safe for dogs?” These might make interesting blog posts that appeal to the interests of your target audience.
Cost: Free
8. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is an industry-leading website crawling and log analysis tool. Its purpose is to imitate a Google web crawler, “crawl” your website and identify any issues hindering its organic performance. Such issues might include broken links (404 pages), missing page titles, oversized images, unused JavaScript and many others. Addressing these issues can help you speed up your website, make it more discoverable by real search engines, and increase your organic rankings, leading to more site traffic. Screaming Frog is best paired with a keyword research tool like Semrush to ensure a holistic SEO strategy.
Cost: free (limited); paid starts at $259 per year
So now what?
In small business marketing, the challenges are unique, often stemming from limited resources and personnel juggling multiple roles. SEO can feel intimidating, especially to small business owners facing limited technical and financial resources. However, the advantages of operating in a niche market with lower competition and cost-effective campaigns are undeniable. To harness these benefits, businesses can leverage powerful yet budget-friendly SEO tools. Elevate your small business’s online presence with these tools, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and visibility. So, dig in, get optimizing and start seeing the organic payoffs for your website.
Entrepreneur & CEO Jason Hennessey is an entrepreneur, internationally-recognized SEO expert, author, speaker, podcast host and business coach. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student and practitioner of SEO and search marketing.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing visibility and traffic to websites by improving their rank in search engine results pages.
While there are multiple time-consuming strategies utilized to improve SEO, sponsored links offer a more direct route by carrying websites’ targeted messages directly into the top portions of search engine results with ads created from certain keywords.
Though it can be beneficial, there has yet to be an agreed-upon consensus regarding its effectiveness for SEO improvement.
This blog post examines auditing sponsored links as one aspect of SEO management by covering overarching benefits and drawbacks, important factors to consider before lowing budget resources on paid search options, and alternate strategies that should also be carefully incorporated alongside out paid methods for improved organic ranking and reach overall.
Sponsored links are displayed advertisements paying for prominent display on a search engine. They can take the form of either pay-per-click ads or flat rate fees and are placed separately from natural, organic search results with clearly designed headers.
In the link building realm, sponsored links are typically paid-for ads via a backlink that is (or should be) marked with a rel=”sponsored” tag.
Customers who click through sponsored link visits yield revenue to its creators while providing potential customers quick access to relevant content mentioned in the sponsored text link itself.
Companies relying on these timely linked pages typically experience faster acquisition of marketing leads, higher website viewership, and greater profitability from within their revenue streams gained though voluntary organic search means.
Differentiating sponsored links from organic search results
Sponsored links refer to online advertisements that appear on certain websites, usually displayed as a separate box of results below the natural search engine result pages (SERPs). They are identified by an accompanying notation or symbol stating they are an advertisement/sponsored link.
Ideally, sponsored links allow businesses and organizations to quickly present users with relevant solutions using keywords that match the interests or needs of the target consumers. In contrast, organic search engine results provide unbiased combinations of keyword matches based purely on relevancy algorithms unprompted by advertising efforts.
Popular platforms offering sponsored link opportunities
Sponsored links are advertisements that appear on search engine results pages alongside organic results. They can be differentiated from organic search engine rankings in a few ways.
Firstly, sponsored listings display visible extensions such as “Ad” and use language to identify them as paid promotions.
Secondly, sponsored links lead to paid content or promotional landing pages rather than traditional web pages with accumulated content.
Thirdly, depending on the platform utilized they may offer additional features such as increased size and more prominent placement. Finally, organic search ranks websites based on relevance to key phrases while sponsored listing allocations depend partially on chance and time intervals specific to buyer’s budget constraints.
Sponsored links present a unique opportunity to greatly increase visibility and exposure for websites, brand names, products and services. When employed strategically on popular platforms such as Google AdWords, companies are able to position their best-performing content above organic search engine results that would otherwise appear lower in the search rankings.
Increased visibility, therefore, works towards achieving higher click-through rates from users either actively or passively searching online using relevant keywords embraced through PPC optimizations which work in unison with SEO factors.
Increased visibility subsequently leads to boosted performance levels as well as enhanced reach throughout varying networks ensuring brands remain highly visible and tangible across multiple channels of communication.
Potential for targeted audience reach
Sponsored links allow businesses to develop a targeted campaign with specific messaging that prioritizes connections with users that would most likely show active interest in the product or service. Advertisers can target their audience based on location, habits and other attributes through sophisticated targeting options available through sponsored link campaigns.
Having an accurate advertising strategy helps to make sure certain messages are sent to only relevant audience and ads are intelligently displayed at opportune moments resulting in more predictive responses from customers.
In addition, by ensuring detailed targeting of ads potentially time-consuming manual labour required can be reduced significantly while simultaneously enhancing marketing results with various budgets.
Accelerated traffic generation
Sponsored links offer the potential to drive accelerated traffic generation, especially when it relates to targeting more specific audiences. Unlike organic long-term getting techniques like regular SEO strategies, sponsored link visibility can be achieved instantly with faster and direct results.
Additionally, clear direction is offered using location settings or advanced keyword searches which allows for a controlled influx of user volume. Through this method, advertisers are able to reach out to their ideal demographic group in real time with quick effective timing since many people are now online actively searching and browsing.
Improved brand recognition and authority
Sponsored links provide an excellent opportunity to leverage brand recognition and authority on a search engine. As noted by SEO experts, branded queries are great opportunities to generate leads and enhance conversion rates.
When done correctly with knowledge of keyword and marketing research, daily budget and market insights, sponsored links can often yield positive results that help businesses have higher SERP visibility via organic spot as well as get own share in the pricey paid search auction while competing against other bidder’s money bids for relevant keywords slots.
Cons of Utilizing Sponsored Links for SEO Improvement
When considering using sponsored links to improve SEO, cost considerations and budget constraints are key detriments. Utilizing sponsored link campaigns for SEO improvement requires substantial upfront costs as well as ongoing campaign maintenance fees which can quickly add up.
Additionally, industries with entrenched players tend to have much larger marketing budgets dedicated to paid advertising than smaller businesses due to the costly nature of performance bidding.
Cost is a particularly important factor to consider for digital marketing campaigns since insufficient funds due can result in ineffective initiatives leading to little-to-no return on investment.
Risk of dependency on paid advertising
Sponsored links are expensive and one could suffer from decreased ROI if their SEO requires extensive utilization of such services.
As more of the marketing budget is poured in sponsored links, it runs the risk of becoming a dependency that can become hard to sustain over time.
This may also cause an interruption in search presence for certain keyword queries when campaigns are paused due to Budget constraints, costing further organic visibility for SEO optimizations.
Ethical implications and potential negative user perception
Sponsored links can create ethical implications if utilized in a dishonest or misleading way. The use of sponsored links to promote or offer information, products, or services that may not align with the mission and values of an organization or brand might be viewed as deceptive.
Furthermore, consumers could develop negative perceptions about these practices, which could compromise their trust in the company promoting them. Sponsored links should never outshine appropriate organic SEO techniques as users value higher quality online content even more than visibility alone.
Uncertain long-term impact on organic search rankings
Sponsored links can provide short-term gains with increased traffic and improved brand visibility. However, the long-term impacts of relying heavily on sponsored links may be an issue to take into consideration.
Google algorithmologies are constantly changing and some major algorithm updates have resulted in a loss of organic search ranking for specific websites. It is difficult to predict future changes which could affected paid search performance, causing sites that rely heavily upon sponsored links for SEO improvement to see substantially reduced results.
Factors to Consider Before Employing Sponsored Links
Comprehensive analysis of SEO goals and strategy
Before beginning to use sponsored links for SEO goals, it’s essential to do a comprehensive analysis of the strategy in place. Start by evaluating existing content and appearing on how relevant and useful it is to the audience or demographic likely to answer your ad.
Furthermore, you need to predict possible outcomes of using sponsored links and make sure they would support the overall SEO goal through certain metrics such as website lead generation rate aimed activity increase after this channel implementation.
Evaluation of available budget and cost-effectiveness
When deciding to use sponsored links for SEO enhancement, it’s important to evaluate the available budget as well as cost-effectiveness. Knowing how much money can be allocated for Ads will help determine if managing a sponsored link campaign is feasible.
It’s also important to analyse how effective different channels and platforms are performance-wise in order to optimize the impact of each individual chosen Ad and maximize conversions given a specific budget.
Last but not least, ROI (Return on Investment) should be optimized from sponsored link campaigns – can enough money be earned back from sales or merely from brand recognition? Taking all these factors into account before opting in will save time, resources and provide better long-term effects from employing Sponsored Links.
Researching target audience and platform compatibility
Researching target audience and platform compatibility is an important factor to consider before employing sponsored links in enhancing your SEO performance. Understanding the needs, interests, and demographics of your visitors can help you determine where and how to best invest in sponsored links.
You should also research the platforms that offer sponsored link opportunities; learn what types of content formats they support, geographic availability and other technical requirements that may be necessary for each channel.
Balancing sponsored links with organic SEO techniques
Before investing in sponsored links to improve SEO, it is important to assess whether your strategy includes the correct balance of organic and paid techniques. It’s recommended you create a outline of expectations, organic keyword targets, and current performance gaps in order to focus on utilizing an optimal combination of both options.
To optimize performance outcomes, sites should connect their sponsored link campaigns with website analytics and measure perceived value versus costs accurately across ongoing goals. This data enables business improvements and adjustments so that a venue can consider making continual refinements going forward and achieve maximum promotional success.
Alternatives to Sponsored Links for SEO Enhancement
On-page optimization and content quality improvement
On-page optimization and content quality improvement are essential alternative strategies to sponsored links when it comes to SEO enhancement.
On-page optimization involves in-depth keyword research and the application of those keywords throughout the website (title tags, headlines, etc.) for better indexing by search engines.
Quality content is also important in that it communicates information effectively to users without looking spammy or automated and keeps them engaged over time. These methods do take longer than sponsored links but improve credibility with organic rankings in the long run.
Building high-quality backlinks
Building high-quality backlinks is an effective alternative to sponsored links that can be utilized for SEO enhancement. Backlinking helps send direct traffic to your website and sours further credibility with search engine algorithms improving rankings over time.
A mix of strong anchor texts, trusted sources, targeted audiences and varied link types should all be addressed when creating a successful backlink strategy. Additionally, finding internal link opportunities allows your own web pages to benefit from the increased SEO boost providing a more efficient use of time and resources.
Utilizing social media platforms and influencer collaborations
Using social media platforms for SEO enhancement means creating, sharing, and monitoring content. This includes optimizing website hierarchies with keyword placement, link building from quality external sources, and providing thoughtful posts and commentary – including the engagement of influencers.
Influencer collaborations open up entirely new channels for businesses to tap circles that were otherwise inaccessible or achieved with difficulties.
From organic reach among commenters on relevant feeds to actively timed sponsored posts related to the services a business has on offer – leveraging relationships between real people adds credibility and gold-lined star power that is tremendously useful when seeking potential customers’ attention away from paid advertising routes.
Conclusion
Depending on individual goals and strategy, sponsored links can be a very useful tool for SEO improvement if used correctly. Advantages include increased visibility and reach, accelerated traffic growth, enhanced brand recognition, etc.
However, such benefits have to be considered in the context of budget constraints/cost-effectiveness and ethical concerns. Therefore, an effective evaluation of available options is necessary before determining whether the use of sponsored links is worthwhile for any given SEO project in question.
Nate Nead is the CEO & Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting company that provides strategic advisory services across multiple disciplines including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade Nate had provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital procurement, technology and marketing solutions for some of the most well-known online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and SMB clients alike. The team is based in Seattle, Washington; El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.
Stay up-to-date on the latest in search engine optimization. Learn about SEO strategies, best practices and the latest updates to Google’s ranking factors.
The Gist
SEO best practices still matter. To show up in search engine results pages (SERPs), following search engine optimization (SEO) best practices is necessary.
Still Google’s world. Google dominates the global search engine market with 84% market share, making it crucial to consider in an SEO strategy.
High-quality content. On-page SEO involves optimizing visible elements such as content, which should be relevant and high-quality, with expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines in mind.
When someone wants to search for a product, look at videos or read about a topic, they go directly to their preferred search engine. And if you want to show up in said search engine results pages (SERPs), you’ll need to follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.
As we delve into best practices as of February 2023, our primary focus will be on Google. Why? Because it has dominated the global search engine market since its inception in 1997.
Google doesn’t share its search volume data. But experts around the web estimate the search engine sees anywhere from 40,000 to 99,000 search queries every second. For one day, that could amount to more than 8.5 billion searches.
SEO, which companies use to maximize content marketing efforts, ultimately breaks down into three categories:
On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
Technical SEO
Let’s take a look at some core components of these three categories and how SEO professionals can aim to follow best practices.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO, also called on-site SEO, refers to the optimization of elements that you can see on-page, such as:
Content
Content is at the core of on-page SEO, and it’s what many people focus on when first optimizing their SEO strategy.
Relevance and quality are more important than any other Google ranking factor.
Google actively penalizes thin content that offers little to no value to searchers. While in the past it used to consider pages as a whole, it now looks at and ranks subsections within pages to match queries.
When you’re working on your content creation strategy or overall SEO strategy, consider these questions to determine if you’re headed in the right direction:
Do you have a target audience in mind that will find your content useful if they come directly to you?
Does your content demonstrate expertise that comes from firsthand experience?
After reading your content, will someone feel they’ve learned enough about the topic?
If you’ve answered yes to these three questions, you’re on the right track.
Some content worst practices to stay away from include:
Creating content specifically to attract people from search engines
Utilizing extensive automation to produce lots of content on a variety of topics
Summarizing what other content creators have said without adding additional value
Writing to meet a particular word count or because you’ve heard Google’s algorithm prefers a specific word count (it doesn’t)
Creating content that promises to answer a question that has no answer (for example, suggesting you know the release date of a movie that has no confirmed release date)
E-A-T Guidelines
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. This concept became a core part of Google’s algorithm in August of 2019 and continues to play a significant role today in evaluating content.
The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website
The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website
E-A-T plays a part in websites of all types, including gossip columns, satire websites, forums and Q&A pages. How a website meets E-A-T guidelines will depend on the type of website. Some topics or industries will require less formal expertise than others.
For example, a news website with high E-A-T articles will convey journalistic integrity, contain factually accurate information and utilize robust policies and review processes with included sources.
A site containing scientific topics, on the other hand, should be created by people or organizations with the appropriate scientific knowledge or expertise and represent established scientific consensus.
When it comes to establishing E-A-T for your content, think about the page’s topic and what expertise is needed to achieve the purpose of that page.
Search Queries
Search queries are the words and phrases people use when using search engines or smart assistants. These words and phrases shift based on the search intent — the “why” behind the action.
Types of search intent include:
Informational: The searcher is looking for information, wants to answer a question or learn how to do something. The best way to target an information query is to develop high-quality, SEO-focused content that provides helpful and relevant information to the user. Position yourself as a source of information people can trust.
Navigational: The searcher is looking for a particular website or page. For example, they might type “YouTube” or “LinkedIn.” You can’t typically target navigational queries unless you own the specific website or page the person is looking for. But you can make sure you claim the top results spot for your brand’s own navigational query.
Transactional: With this search intent, the user wants to make a purchase. The query might include a brand, product or service name or a generic item, such as “coffee maker.” You can target these search queries with optimized product or service pages. You can also use pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to target these search terms.
By understanding search intent — which might include keyword research to best understand which words the target audience uses — companies can better craft content to meet needs and win more readers.
Links
You should include two types of links within your website or web page content: internal and external.
Internal links redirect to another page or piece of content on your website. For example, on an article about the latest chatbot trends, you might link to a related article about how chatbot technology works.
External links direct readers to a page that is not yours. These links should be highly relevant webpages or sites with high expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T).
Link building is also important — getting other websites to link back to your website or piece of content. These links signal to Google that your website is valuable enough to earn a citation, allowing content to rise in search rankings. We’ll talk more on these later, in off-page SEO strategies.
Visuals
Visuals (videos, gifs, pictures, infographics, etc.) are a large part of online content.
If you plan to use visuals on your site or pages, you’ll want to ensure that they’re:
Large and high quality (beware of large image file sizes, however, which can cause slow loading)
Relevant to the content
Shareable
Placed high on the page
Have a relevant file name
Have alt text, which aids visually impaired users
If you’re using video content, include a video transcript. Not only will a transcript make your content more accessible, but it will also make videos more “scrapable” by search engine bots.
Meta Title & Meta Description
Your meta title (the alternative title that shows up on Google) tells search engines and searchers what your content is about and what keywords to focus on. This title should be relevant to your content, include at least one word or phrase from your keyword research and be no longer than 60 characters.
Search engines don’t factor meta descriptions into your ranking — but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.
The meta description is the ideal place to let Google and searchers know what your page is about. As a result, you’ll see higher click-through rates.
URL & Slug
Including your keyword within the slug of the URL — the last part of the URL that identifies the unique page — is a small bonus to SEO. However, if you can’t do so in a sensible way, it won’t be a big hit against you.
Ensure that your slug matches the title of your content. For example, if your blog post is about customer experience, your URL might be: www.yourwebsite.com/blog/all-about-customer-experience
Another thing to keep in mind is that shorter URLs receive high click-through rates than longer ones. A shorter URL comes across as more trustworthy and authoritative to users.
Other best practices for URLs include:
Avoid using dates in your slugs (for example: “2022-customer-experience-best-practices”
Use the hyphen between words in your slugs
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to optimization strategies that don’t involve the content on your website. Some of the most vital off-page SEO tactics include:
Link Building
As mentioned above, earning backlinks from other authoritative sites can position your website or web page as trustworthy and increase your rankings on Google.
You don’t want to get backlinks from any site. In fact, getting backlinks from link farms — a group of websites that all link to one another to increase organic search rankings — can result in a penalty from Google. Google also penalizes any site that gets caught paying for links.
Some link-building tips to turn to instead include:
Create high-value content that others want to share
Promote your content via social media, which leads others to sharing it
Submit your website to business directories
Promote your content via paid campaigns, which may lead others to link to it
Look for relevant content on other sites that contains broken links, and send an email with the suggestion to use your content as a replacement
Ask people in real life to share your website or content on social media
Brand Building
Google rewards well-known brands. And branded searches (your company’s name, domain name searches and product searches) will lead right back to your website.
Google offers a great tool, Google Trends, that allows people to track interest in a topic, such as a brand, over time. SEO professionals can also use this tool to track searches for specific products or services.
Social Media
Social media plays a big role in how people learn about brands, websites and content. As of 2022, there were 4.59 billion social media users worldwide — a number expected to grow to 5.85 billion by 2027.
You should have a presence on the social media channels that matter most to your target audience.
Facebook: More than 2.9 billion monthly active users (MAU)
YouTube: More than 2.5 billion MAU
Instagram: More than 1.4 billion MAU
Not only should your profile include pertinent information about your brand (what it does, where it’s located, contact methods, the website, hours for in-store operation, etc.), but you should also post original and engaging content regularly.
For instance, if you offer a specific product, you could create educational content on how to use that product or answers to frequently asked questions. You can also encourage user-generated content from your community.
Encourage users that read and engage with your social media content to visit your website or web content to learn more.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is exactly what it sounds like — it refers to the technical aspects that play into your website and web pages, like page load speed and responsiveness.
Google Search Console is an ideal tool for monitoring and maintaining SEO health. It can measure traffic, generate reports, including a technical SEO report, and fix issues.
Technical SEO includes:
Site Speed
Loading performance is part of Google’s Core Web Vitals, which measures different aspects of the user experience. A website or page should only take 2.5 seconds or less to load the page’s main content.
To ensure fast website load speeds, you should:
Choose a fast hosting option
Choose a fast domain name system (DNS) provider
Keep the use of scripts and plugins to a minimum
Use small image files (without creating pixelization)
Minify your site’s code
Compress your webpages
Mobile-Friendliness
As of the second half of 2022, mobile traffic accounted for more than half of global web traffic. Not only does a mobile-friendly design make for a better user experience, but it’s a significant ranking factor for Google.
If you’re unsure of your website’s mobile accessibility, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Most brands accomplish mobile-friendliness by using a responsive web design, which adjusts itself automatically depending on the type of device a person is using.
Google also offers a guide on customizing website software for companies that use content management platforms (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla or Squarespace.
Beyond using a responsive design, companies should also pay attention to how content and assets behave on-page for mobile users. Layouts that shift when a person is trying to read content or interact with the page are a significant part of Google’s Core Web Vitals.
SEO professionals can monitor these movements with a metric called cumulative layout shift (CLS), which measures visual stability and quantifies how often these shifts occur. Core Web Vitals recommends that pages maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less.
XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap helps search engines understand your web pages while crawling them. It tells them:
Exactly where each page is
When a page was last modified
Which pages hold the most priority
How frequently a page is updated
Some hosting platforms create an XML sitemap automatically. If your chosen platform does not, you’ll want to look into using an XML sitemap generator.
These tools also track the general SEO performance of your site, allowing you to:
Test your site’s mobile-friendliness
Access search analytics
View backlinks to your site
Search in 2023: SEO Strategy Remains Top Priority
People want content that is high-quality and relevant to them. If you want to appear in their search results, it’s essential to pay attention to changing SEO trends and tactics.
Google continually updates its algorithm, meaning how they rank your site or content will depend on your use of the latest SEO strategies. With the latest tips above, you can ensure your content meets essential Google ranking factors and shows up in search results for your target audience.
Michelle Hawley is an experienced journalist who specializes in reporting on the impact of technology on society. As a senior editor at Simpler Media Group and a reporter for CMSWire and Reworked, she provides in-depth coverage of a range of important topics including employee experience, leadership, customer experience, marketing and more. With an MFA in creative writing and background in inbound marketing, she offers unique insights on the topics of leadership, customer experience, marketing and employee experience. Michelle previously contributed to publications like The Press Enterprise and The Ladders. She currently resides in Pennsylvania with her two dogs.
Search engine optimization (SEO) enterprise tools perform a host of functions. These tools can be invaluable in your marketing slack, from keyword research to site error detection.
But which among the platforms available in the market suits your organization’s unique digital marketing needs?
Answering this question as part of a large organization is important. You need a platform that considers your company’s size to help you launch and implement a well-coordinated SEO campaign.
So, if you’re facing the same problem in your organization, this post is for you!
It lists the enterprise SEO tools that can help you create a well-developed SEO plan from the ground up, no matter how big your company is.
Semrush
Semrush is one of the most recognizable names in the SEO industry, and it’s easy to see why.
Its vast array of highly versatile enterprise SEO features will help solidify your digital marketing strategy. But don’t take our word for it. PCMag ranked it as “excellent.” And actual users on TrustRadius, have given it a cumulative score of 9 out of 10.
Features
With the Semrush enterprise SEO platform, you get immediate access to 55+ nifty tools that have been carefully designed to accomplish various tasks, such as:
Keyword research – It helps you find the best and most relevant keywords. Next, filter them according to search volume, difficulty, and others. You can also see which keywords your competitors are ranking for.
On-page SEO – Run a website audit to spot issues so you can fix them immediately. It also tells you how to improve the SEO score of your site pages to improve their rankings.
Competitor analysis – Find out how much organic traffic your competitors are getting. Also, monitor how the competition leverage paid search and social media to their advantage. Then use the gathered data to help you make better marketing decisions.
Content marketing – Brainstorm content topics and create optimized content for each. Then manage your content strategy by filling out your editorial calendar with these topics.
Local SEO – Automatically distribute your business data to reputable local online directories. And optimize your Google Maps listings for local search.
Pricing
Subscription to Semrush starts at $119.95/month. The enterprise SEO Business plan, priced at $449.95/month, is available to large enterprises and agencies. It includes 40 projects, 50,000 results per report, and 50,000 keywords to track.
Frase is an AI-powered enterprise-grade SEO platform allowing content creators to create briefs and optimize content quickly and easily.
This enterprise SEO software also helps content teams create SEO-focused content in half the time. This is because its AI content features expedite the research, writing, and optimization process for you.
Features
Frase helps teams amplify the effectiveness of their enterprise SEO efforts with these features:
Question research – Frase removes the need to spend hours researching questions on Reddit, Quora, forums, search engines, and other resources. You type in a keyword, and Frase returns a list of questions within seconds.
AI-generated content briefs – Unwilling to spend copious amounts of time creating briefs? Don’t know how to create a content brief? No problem! Frase can automatically create a content brief based on your search queries in seconds.
Templates – Frase offers various templates to help expedite the writing process. These include Content Brief, Best Post, Listicle, Alternatives, and more.
Answer engine – Frase Answers is a chatbot that helps deliver content to site visitors asking questions on your website. It crawls and analyzes all your site’s content and shares them as answers to their questions.
Pricing
Frase has three pricing tiers. All three include an AI writing plan that can generate up to 20,000 characters per month:
Solo – $14.99/month, one user seat with the ability to write and optimize four articles.
Basic – $44.99.month, one user seat with the ability to write and optimize 30 articles.
Team – $114.99/month, three user seats with the ability to write and optimize unlimited articles. Each extra user seat is an additional $25/month.
You can also get the Pro add-on for $35/month to unlock more features, such as:
MarketMuse is an enterprise SEO platform that boosts website ranking in search engines through data-driven content optimized for your target audience. It uses patented artificial intelligence (AI) technology to accelerate content research and development.
Features
To help your SEO team create remarkable content, MarketMuse offers the following features:
Automated inventory collection and audit – You can automatically collect, organize, and analyze your pages for better accessibility.
Content metrics – MarketMuse offers AI-powered metrics such as Authority, Content Score, User Intent, and Personalized Difficulty. These help enterprise SEO and content teams identify and leverage the best content opportunities.
Content briefs – No more guessing which types of content get the most search traffic. With MarketMuse’s content briefs, your team can confidently produce comprehensive content that addresses user pain points.
Optimization – With MarketMuse’s AI-powered text editor, content creators get real-time feedback on content quality and how well they cover a topic. This way, you produce content that search spiders would want to index.
Pricing
MarketMuse has three subscription tiers. And Optimize, Research, Compete, Questions, and Connect are available applications for all tiers.
Free – At $0/month, one user can execute 15 queries per month and work on 10 projects. A query happens whenever you enter a URL or focus topic into a MarketMuse application and press “Run.”
Standard – Priced at $7,200/year ($600/month), this subscription plan allows one user to export data, perform 100 queries per month, and complete an unlimited number of projects. Each additional user costs $99/month.
Premium – This plan starts at $12,000/year ($1,000/month). It comes with on-demand content audit capabilities, managed topics tracking, domain analysis, unlimited queries, unlimited projects, a dedicated account manager, and workflow/platform training for teams.
Botify is another enterprise SEO platform worth considering. It enables executives, content teams, and technical SEO professionals to prioritize the SEO tasks that yield the most impact. It can be leveraged for various use cases, including:
Keyword research
Keyword tracking
Site migrations
Mobile SEO
JavaScript SEO
Content analysis
Features
Botify offers essential enterprise SEO features that can maximize the potential of your online assets:
Botify Analytics – All the data you need about your websites from various search phases—crawl, render, index, rank, and convert—is available here. There’s also an option to import log files for additional crawl insights. From here, you can analyze your site’s bounce rate, conversions, and other SEO metrics.
Botify Intelligence – Powered by machine learning, the tool lets you identify technical SEO and content opportunities prioritized by impact. It also has an early warning system for catching SEO issues before they become real problems.
Botify Activation – Faster, autonomous implementation of SEO initiatives such as quick and easy submission of new and updated pages. This allows for faster content indexing.
Professional Services – Need help making the most of Botify to power your SEO strategy? You can tap its SEO professionals for various enterprise SEO services, such as site migration, understanding how JavaScript impacts your website, and more.
Pricing
Botify offers three subscription plans:
Essential – For websites that want end-to-end SEO data plus prescriptive recommendations for better performance
Pro – For organizations that get the bulk of their revenue from organic search
Enterprise – For organizations with complex, large, or multiple websites
Botify doesn’t list pricing on its website, as each package is unique to each customer’s needs. Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote.
Conductor
Built for enterprise SEO, web, and content teams, Conductor tracks search and content performance. It is a search engine optimization tool that integrates with a wide range of technology tools, including:
Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
Project management platforms such as Asana.
Consumer intelligence tools like Talkwalker.
Other SEO tools, such as Semrush.
And so many others!
Features
This enterprise SEO software offers powerful features such as:
Keyword explorer – Helps with research into keywords (organic and paid), topics, demographic insights, audience sentiment, competitive research, social insights, etc.
Content guidance – Provides AI-powered recommendations for creating content that resonates with your target audience.
Digital presence tracking – Monitors the visibility of your digital assets across channels. This includes search engines, social media, press coverage, owned content, and earned media.
Technical SEO – Assists with ensuring your website is technically sound and provides the best user experience possible. Choose between ContentKing or Lumar for real-time technical monitoring.
Chrome extension – Free SEO tool that delivers advanced SEO intelligence about any page. Insights include page fundamentals such as metadata, media, technical SEO, and many more.
Pricing
Conductor builds unique enterprise SEO subscription packages according to your needs and budget. Contact their sales team for a custom quote.
BrightEdge
BrightEdge is a comprehensive enterprise SEO tool offering an impressive set of features from search, content, social, and local. It provides SEOs and digital marketers with the actionable insights necessary to boost website visibility and increase search traffic.
Features
This enterprise SEO software provides the tools your SEO team needs to more effectively and quickly optimize website content. Below are other things it can do:
Demand discovery – Create a list of target keywords that delivers the best results. You can then determine which search queries generate the most organic traffic to your site.
Content creation and optimization – Receive SEO suggestions on boosting content relevance and visibility. And you can monitor existing pages for potential errors and fix them before they become critical issues.
Content performance prediction – Identify which content type ranks for a search term before writing it. Then estimate the impact of your content initiative so you can better prioritize tasks and campaigns.
Results measurement – Generate website performance reports to help communicate to stakeholders for high-value keywords and best-performing content.
Pricing
Pricing information is not available on the BrightEdge website. Call their sales hotline to get a custom quote.
Linkdex
Another enterprise SEO tool that deserves its place on this list is Linkdex. It aggregates insights from various channels like search engines, social networks, and influencer marketing. This way, all the data you need is available via a centralized enterprise SEO platform.
Features
Linkdex carries many features to help enterprise SEO and marketing teams maximize their SEO efforts. These include:
Visibility and crawl analytics – Compare multiple domains using domain and keyword filters. Crawl thousands of pages, even your competitors, to uncover performance issues and opportunities to optimize your pages.
Ranking intelligence – Get better insights into your (and your competitors’) keyword rankings. Then analyze the search traffic value and ranking of any page to gauge how you’re faring against competitors.
SEO reporting and forecasting – Using Linkdex data, create smart, insightful SEO reports with just a few clicks. Next, turn data into smart forecasts to better communicate your content marketing and SEO efforts.
Author discovery – Using targeted keywords, find influencers and the people behind high-ranking content. Reach out and build relationships with topical influencers to boost your website’s authority.
Content strategy – Comb through various SEO data like technical SEO, analytics, social, rank, and link. This way, you can create content that’s highly shareable and link-worthy.
Smart SEO alerting – Create custom alerts through email or in-app so you know immediately when to take action. Fix lost or broken links, investigate significant traffic drops, enact appropriate changes, etc.
Pricing
Linkdex offers three subscription plans:
Starter Package – For $600/month, you get 10,000 rank tracking credits and 20 content and link credits. Linkdex SEO tools for research, task management, and workflow engine are also unlimited.
Power Users – This plan has the same features as the Starter Package but with more credits. It includes 25,000 rank tracking credits, 45 content, and link credits. Starting price is $1,200/month.
Enterprise Users: Discounted custom plans are available for enterprise users. Contact the sales team for more details.
Pitchbox
Looking for an enterprise SEO platform to help you build quality backlinks, boost visibility, and increase credibility? Then, Pitchbox is for you.
Pitchbox is an email outreach platform for building backlinks using various link building strategies more effectively.
It’s an end-to-end link-building and prospecting tool that increases team productivity.
Features
Pitchbox enables enterprise SEO teams to build links at scale through the following features:
Prospecting – Take advantage of built-in targeting and prospecting features to identify the best link building opportunities in less time. Find relevant blogs and articles in any niche. You can also import domain lists and other data from other SEO tools.
Outreach and follow-up – Reach out to prospects at scale using smart templates. You can also schedule your messages and follow-ups to reach prospects’ inboxes at the right time. This way, you receive more responses and close more deals.
CRM – Aggregate all link-building and prospecting data and information in one place. Segment leads by relationship status, SEO metrics, age, etc. This allows you real-time visibility into your pipeline, making it easier to turn opportunities into wins.
Reports – Pitchbox reports provide deep-dive insights into the performance of your campaigns and how they’re progressing. Track team activity and identify monthly, quarterly, and yearly trends.
Pricing
Pitchbox doesn’t provide pricing details on its website, but some review sites say plans start at approximately $500/month. Contact their sales team for more information and a private walkthrough.
Quattr
Quattr is an AI-driven enterprise SEO tool that empowers digital marketing teams. With it, they can leverage data-driven SEO insights to boost their search rankings and capture highly targeted traffic.
If you need help maximizing the tool’s power, Quattr’s SEO Concierge team is available for personalized consulting.
Features
Features you get when you subscribe to Quattr include:
Competitive trends – Quattr identifies which pages on your website are underperforming and provides optimization suggestions. It gives you real-time visibility into your market share and how much traffic competitors are getting.
Ranking factors – This enterprise SEO platform tracks your site’s ranking based on various SEO factors. Plus, it shows how you’re doing against competitors. And if you identify any problems, you can fix them directly from the Quattr platform.
Prioritized keyword recommendations – Quattr’s recommendations let you optimize your content to rank them higher in SERPs. You can then preview how your changes improve your site’s search performance. If the results are positive, only then should you implement them.
Usability recommendations – Unlock the technical insights necessary to improve your site. To do this, fix any issues surrounding accessibility, performance, and mobile-friendliness.
Pricing
Quattr has not provided any pricing details. The amount you pay will vary greatly depending on your enterprise SEO requirements. Contact their sales team for more information.
SearchMetrics
Another notable contender on this list of enterprise SEO tools is SearchMetrics. It helps enterprises:
Identify market opportunities to increase sales from organic search using actual data from the search engines.
Build comprehensive plans tailored to boost search engine rankings and visibility.
Implement and monitor those plans.
Perform competitor analysis for benchmarking and outranking them.
Track performance and tweak as needed.
Create reports for management to justify SEO spending (and get funding increases, if necessary).
Features
The SearchMetrics Suite allows organizations to take control of their search revenue via features such as:
Research Cloud – Run a competitive analysis to identify content gaps and factors enabling winning content. Then launch real-time ranking performance monitoring and search visibility auditing to uncover more SEO opportunities.
Content Experience – You can create topic-aligned briefs to help write your content. Refer to its real-time Content Score to further optimize your content. There’s also Topic Explorer, a WordPress plugin to help you identify the topics people are searching for.
Search Experience – Enterprise SEO users like yourself can track top-performing keywords and ranking dips and analyze URL performance and competitor search features.
Site Experience – This web crawler alerts you and other enterprise SEO agencies to risks and opportunities for improving site performance.
Pricing
The SearchMetrics website doesn’t provide pricing details. A PCMag review, however, says their plans start at $69/month. But this was from 2019, so the amount may no longer apply. Contact the SearchMetrics sales team for more details.
seoClarity
Last but not least on our list of market-leading SEO platforms is seoClarity. As its name suggests, it provides clarity and visibility into your SEO efforts through AI-powered insights.
It does the following:
Crawl data
Deliver ranking and search demand insights
Provide content optimization recommendations
Perform technical SEO analysis
One-click automated SEO execution
Create and send automated reporting
Features
Get the following features and capabilities when you subscribe to seoClarity:
Daily rankings – Manage site performance on organic search by knowing where your site ranks for its target keywords. You can also find insights on securing the Google featured snippet to position your website on top of SERPs.
Technical and on-page optimization – Crawl pages to identify and remedy site errors. Analyze log files to get the bigger SEO picture about performance, rankings, and search bots. From here, you can optimize your web pages to improve their crawlability and indexability.
Insights from real-time analysis – Leverage advanced AI analysis to help you provide actionable items. You can also compare your sites with competitors based on SEO metrics to benchmark their performances. Finally, determine if you have a healthy link profile through constant link analysis and monitoring.
Content ideas and gaps – Identify content gaps and opportunities using People Also Ask datasets. From here, you can write compelling, authoritative content to answer their questions using seoClarity’s AI writer.
Pricing
seoClarity offers multiple subscription options:
Essentials – Price starts at $750/month. Essentials provide daily rank tracking, live chat, and email support.
Core – Price starts at $3,000/month. Core offers daily and weekly rank tracking, a dedicated success manager, and an SEO advisor.
Professional – Price starts at $4,500/month. It gives you everything Core provides, advanced technical SEO tools and the highest level of support.
Agency: This subscription tier includes all the elements of Core plus an unlimited number of users. Get a custom quote by contacting the seoClarity sales team.
How to Choose an Enterprise SEO Tool from the List Above
There’s a lot of feature overlap among the SEO enterprise software above. This makes choosing the right one for your corporation much more difficult.
But to help with the selection process, below are the things you must do:
Determine Your Needs
Start by looking at what you expect from an enterprise SEO platform based on the needs of the business. Create a list of all the features you want, the must-haves and nice-to-haves.
Any vendor that doesn’t offer the features your SEO and digital marketing strategies can’t live without is not a good fit.
Schedule Demos with Applicable Vendors
Once you’re ready with a shortlist of vendors, it’s time to schedule demos. When on the demo call, ask questions if something isn’t clear. And be sure to watch out for the following:
Presence of critical features.
The vendor’s understanding of your marketing and business needs.
Ease of use.
The type of after-sales support you’ll be getting.
Negotiate Contract
Enterprise SEO software providers generally don’t advertise that they’re amenable to negotiating contracts.
Not only can you get the best pricing and discounts for multi-year contracts. But you can also negotiate the support facilities available, warranties, backups and recovery plans, service level agreements (SLA), etc.
Which Among the Enterprise SEO Tools do I Recommend?
So there you have it—our list of some of the best enterprise SEO platforms on the market today.
And since we know you’re expecting us to suggest a tool or two, here are our top picks:
Semrush: It’s an all-in-one solution and, therefore, ideal for large SEO and content teams. Plus, it’s a household name in the SEO industry—meaning it’s reliable.
Conductor: Want high-performing content? Take Conductor with you. Most tools on this list help drive content that converts, but Conductor’s ability to integrate with various business tools makes it stand out.
As mentioned above, however, the needs of your business come first. Determine your must-haves and choosing the best fit should be smooth sailing.
Christopher Jan Benitez is a professional freelance writer who provides small businesses and startups with content that aims to grow their engagement and conversion with their audience. To learn more about Christopher, you can follow him on Twitter.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) often has a reputation for being a cheap marketing strategy, but high-value work can require substantial investment. Dave Colgate of agency Vertical Leap looks at how to invest properly.
Unsure how much you need to spend on search engine optimization (SEO)? Let’s look at how to set the right budget, considering how much other companies are spending; the factors you need to budget for; and the minimum recommended spend for small businesses just starting out with SEO.
How much do companies spend on SEO?
Marketing budgets suffered from Covid-19, but industry reports show companies are on their way to returning to pre-pandemic levels. According to Oracle’s top marketing trends report, 64% of companies planned to increase their budgets in 2022.
The same study shows companies are spending 8.5% of their marketing budgets on SEO, topping the list of “unpaid channels”.
Gartner’s insights are largely backed up by The Marketing Budgets Report 2022 from StrategiQ, which finds companies spending 10% of total revenue on marketing in 2022. It also finds companies are spending 10.5% of their marketing budgets on SEO, up from Gartner’s 8.5%.
StrategiQ’s report found that small companies dedicate a greater percentage of revenue to marketing.
StrategiciQ includes fewer channels in its report than Gartner. This is an important point because the fewer channels you spread your marketing across, the greater percentage you’ll spend on SEO. So, if you’re not spending any marketing budget on live events, digital audio advertising, or other channels, you could spend far more than 10.5% of your marketing spend on SEO.
What does your SEO budget get spent on?
When you’re setting an SEO budget, it’s important to understand how your spend will be spread across key activities:
Analytics: The insights that inform every part of your SEO strategy and reveal your biggest opportunities.
Content production: Every piece of content you create and optimize to rank in search engines.
On-page SEO: Optimizing your web pages and content to maximize search visibility.
Off-page SEO: Optimizing off-page signals with link building, content placements (eg: guest blogging), reviews and other factors outside of your website.
Technical SEO: Optimizing and maintaining the technical performance of your website (loading times, link profiles, URLs, etc).
SEO tech stack: The tools you use at every stage of your SEO strategy: analytics, competitive research, content planning, content production, etc.
Agency/consultancy fees: SEO services you require from agencies or consultants.
Outsourcing: Tasks you outsource to freelancers or external talent, such as content creation, copywriting, web design, etc.
That Oracle report found something else: 82% of companies were planning to change their marketing tech stack in 2022.
In today’s data-driven marketing environment, this is one of the most important aspects of your SEO budget. With the right tech stack, you can drastically increase the ROI of your SEO spend by improving the quality of insights, automating tasks and seizing opportunities before your competitors.
If you don’t have the budget or resources to build a competitive SEO tech stack, it’s worth looking at agencies that have already developed their own. By partnering with the right agency, you can tap into class-leading SEO technology at a fraction of the price.
As a rule, we advise smaller companies that it’s difficult to gain meaningful SEO traction for anything less than £800/month (about $1000). This doesn’t stretch too far when you consider all of the expenses we looked at in the previous section (analytics, content production, SEO tools, etc.).
Obviously, larger companies should expect to spend significantly more but it’s not simply a question of spending more for better results.
Spending wisely is just as important as setting the right budget. Every business can maximize ROI with a high-impact SEO strategy using data science to identify and prioritize opportunities.
If you want to increase your visibility online, we can run a free analysis of your current SEO status and provide a quote. Click here for more information.
Take these steps to break free from the SEO-chase game
When it comes to understanding the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to a business the pendulum swings from “ignore it completely” to “understand and chase every Google update”.
The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly a website that is structurally flawed, slow to load and fails to display properly on mobile devices is losing an important chunk of online business. Similarly, a website that is search engine optimized to the gills but then fails to understand what those who find it actually want to do once they are there, is winning only one half of the online marketing game.
How to reconcile these two approaches requires a nuanced understanding of what SEO does and what a business exists for. Stripped of all its esoteric mumbo-jumbo SEO is there to help a business find its audience at the moment that audience is actively looking for it. A business, in turn, exists to solve a problem.
From this perspective search itself, for all its many iterations through Google updates over the years, has always been focused on delivering the best relevant results in response to a searcher query. Search becomes the bridging point between a business and its audience. This, logically, means that search is marketing. But that’s not all it is.
Human Behaviour Determines Search Use
The biggest threat to your business losing that bridging connection between itself and its audience lies in factors that are far outside the remit of search itself and, by association, any SEO activity you may engage in. Following the 2018 EU $5 billion antitrust enforcement against Android, Google is now making the placement of default search engine choices on its mobile devices free to competitors.
The majority of mobile device owners are not search experts. They don’t truly understand how search engines work which means qualified choices are based on purely subjective criteria. On that basis even at a conservative estimate, Google mobile search will experience a reduction in usage. The warning bells rang as far back as 2015 when it was flagged just how few mobile devices actually use Google search.
Back then Google search was dominant on mobile devices as it was the default setting that few mobile device owners bothered to change. In the years since Google has had to change that policy and the impact of that has not yet become obvious. In addition, mobile device owners use apps and social media accounts in lieu of a search engine to find what they need. Social media accounts connect them with friends and enable them to ask for recommendations while specific apps make it easier for them to engage in search behaviour.
How To “Search Proof” Your Business
The reason we are even talking about search engine optimization (SEO) right now is because, initially, as the web grew finding anything at all in it required the help of a search engine whose crawlers had indexed websites and organized the information they contained.
The web however, no matter how global in size, always has the most direct impact at a local level. The personal devices we use are geolocated and, increasingly, so are our laptops. This makes searching for something location-determined. The recommendations of friends and the ability of apps to know where we are at and use that knowledge to provide useful information make search the means through which we find solutions to problems we experience locally.
Google rose to prominence because of the quality of its results. Search results that are delivered within the tight boundaries of a location always have the potential to be higher in quality because the two bugbears of search: disambiguation and veracity can be resolved that much faster when the information from which a pool of answers, to a search query, is drawn, is limited by nature.
The limitation imposed by geographic boundaries reduces the level of ambiguity that is created by massive amounts of information that is similar in nature but does not amount to the same thing. It also makes it easier to filter what is real from what is fake. The context of local search then makes it easy to come up with a formula that helps “search proof” your business.
Whatever happens to search next, whatever fresh updates occur in Google’s algorithm or whatever app, recommendation engine or even human-word-of-mouth channel is used they all require the same two key ingredients to work:
Experience – A taste of what your business does, how it does it and why it does it.
Confidence – A sense that your business is capable of totally solving the problem the searcher is facing, easily, quickly and at level that is good value-for-money.
Find ways to make this come through the content you create. Truly connect with those who come to you to find the solution they need to the problem they experience and you will find that fretting over SEO will be a thing of the past for you.
Augmented reality (AR) is already making waves online. From Rihanna’s sparkly diamond headpiece to Kylie Jenner’s bold lipstick shades, AR filters are all over Instagram. That’s indicative of the trend that AR is gaining popularity.
In fact, a study estimates that there will be approximately 1.7 billion mobile AR users worldwide by 2024. That’s huge, right? With more internet users embracing AR, you can expect users to change the way they browse the internet.
There are big changes coming in the next few years, all of which are likely to impact search engine optimization (SEO). In this post, let’s look at some of the ways the evolving AR landscape is likely to change search engine optimization.
1. Local SEO will become more important.
Local SEO is already a focus area for anyone who wants to get ranked on Google. With AR, you can scan a code via a mobile device and get all the information you need about a business. You can check reviews and ratings and get images.
With apps like Wikitude or Yelp, you can give out location-specific AR experiences. For instance, you can give a special offer to someone who is close to your business’s location.
As a business owner, you’ll have to ensure that all of your business information is updated in local listings to make the most out of the popularity of AR.
2. Immersive digital experiences will become more mainstream.
AR will change the way you design your website. It opens up the possibility of giving users a truly immersive and engaging experience. Such experiences could have a mix of physical as well as virtual elements, and they have varied applications.
IKEA is one of the big brands that has already jumped on the bandwagon. They let customers preview their furniture items within their homes or any other living space. Through their special app, IKEA Place, users can check 3-D renderings of more than 2,000 IKEA products from different angles.
If you are buying a new sofa for your living room but aren’t sure whether it will fit in a corner, you can place it on the app and check. Similarly, fashion brands can offer virtual dressing rooms where customers can try out different outfits. Real estate companies can offer virtual tours for properties they want to sell.
This example is for an app, but there is a chance of such experiences being replicated on websites in the future. With a better user and immersive experience, you can expect to have a positive impact on your SEO. That’s because such elements can increase the overall time spent on a website and reduce the bounce rate.
3. Visual search and interactive content will become widely used.
In their quest to provide a better user experience, Google has included image and voice search features. To further elevate the experience, they are also investing in AR projects like Tango and virtual reality (VR) projects like Daydream. Overall, its vision is to maintain its lead as the most widely used search engine worldwide.
As AR-based content becomes more popular, you can expect it to gain more space in the search engine results pages (SERPs). For forward-thinking businesses, AR should become a part of the overall content marketing strategy.
With multimedia elements like 3-D objects and videos added as a part of the mix, you can expect visual searches to become more mainstream. Eventually, interactive content is also likely to become an integral part of the virtual world. As a content marketer or an entrepreneur, you’ll have to make sure you deliver such immersive experiences and match up to the changing search trends.
4. Social media will impact SEO more.
Everyone already knows that your social media presence has an impact on your SEO. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that AR will likely increase this effect. That’s because AR allows social media companies to provide engaging and immersive experiences that can boost engagement and conversion rates.
For instance, Facebook’s 360-degree videos allowed users to fully immerse themselves in whatever they were watching on their screen. Because of this, you could take a tour of the Louvre in Paris while sitting in your bedroom.
When it comes to AR, this is just the beginning. If you’ve used Snapchat or Instagram, you know how popular their 3-D effects are. You can see social media users get creative and experiment with them to create unique Stories.
Brands have already been using them to market their products and increase their brand awareness. With the increasing popularity of AR, you can expect more social media channels to come up with AR-centric features. That means the impact of AR on your SEO strategy is likely to increase. In a nutshell, AR should be a part of your social media strategy to make sure your SEO strategy works well.
For inspiration, consider the creative AR social media campaign created by Browns Fashion. The luxury retail brand came out with a sparkling AR filter to boost brand awareness. It gained more than 2 million try-ons. Even celebrities like Vanessa Hudgens and Heidi Klum used it on their Instagram profiles.
Augmented reality has the potential to change the way people interact with products and make purchase decisions. It is a technology that can also enable businesses to better understand their audiences and provide better user experiences. If you are looking to level up your SEO strategy, think AR. It’s still a new and fairly unexplored territory, so you can get the early mover advantage, too!
As an SEO expert, your job will include optimizing websites to attract quality traffic through organic searches. Many companies and online business owners are constantly looking for professionals with SEO skills and SEO experience to help them monetize their web content, generate good leads, build brand awareness, and optimize user experience.
If you’re interested in building a successful career in the industry, this article can help you learn how to get a job in SEO and discover what’s attainable on the job market. We will outline educational programs and SEO skills you need to secure the highest-paying SEO jobs in the industry.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique used to maximize the searchability of content on a webpage to increase its visibility and position in search engine rankings. SEO Knowledge makes it possible to generate organic links for your client’s website. It is used in online marketing to incite and increase interaction with prospective customers.
SEO makes it easy to measure the success of marketing campaigns and efforts, as well as substantially draw actionable insights from these SEO campaigns. Before you start earning your dream pay in this exciting profession, you need to understand the technicalities of this field, how it relates to the online business world and how it can be integrated.
SEO Job Outlook
SEO is a budding field, and as such, the demand for SEO professionals is growing consistently. According to the Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers grouping by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, advertising, promotions, and marketing managers, which includes SEO experts, have a positive job outlook, 10 percent higher than in the average career. Between 2020 to 2030, there will be an employment growth of 31,800 new entrants.
What Education Do I Need to Become an SEO Expert?
To become an SEO expert, you need to learn the applicable skills and then devise workable SEO strategies that will impress your clients. Most positions in SEO require bachelor’s degrees in marketing, business management, and information technology. Alternatively, you can secure an SEO position with certifications. You can get these through coding bootcamps or online courses.
Can I Get an SEO Job Without a Degree or Certificate?
Yes, you can. You don’t necessarily need a certificate or a college degree for a job in SEO. While some potential hiring managers prefer to hire college graduates, you’ll definitely find many who place more emphasis on your hands-on experience and technical skills. In most cases, having a well-tailored portfolio will make you stand out as a potential employee.
Can a Coding Bootcamp Help Me Get a Job in SEO?
Yes, a coding bootcamp can help you get a job in SEO. Enrolling in a digital marketing bootcamp, business bootcamp, or information technology bootcamp can provide you with the SEO skills you need to succeed in this field. Coding bootcamps are specialized in preparing students for lucrative career roles in the tech industry.
These programs offer interested students well-structured immersive curricula spread out over a few months. If you enrol in any of the bootcamps listed, you’ll be taught by industry experts and career advisors. These instructors will provide you with mentorship in building your portfolio and social media profile. You’ll also have access to job placement services.
How Long Does It Take to Get a Job in SEO?
It could take you anywhere between one month and four years to get a job in search engine optimization. This mostly depends on the education path you choose, your learning speed and the platform you choose to conduct your job search. If you learn through online courses, it could take you anywhere from a few hours to six months.
Coding bootcamps offer an intensive curriculum and excellent student services, usually requiring about four months to complete. Typically, earning a degree takes longer. Associate degrees take up to two years, while bachelor’s degrees take three to four years. You should also consider the time it takes to build a portfolio of projects and a strong resume.
Common SEO Education Paths
Several educational platforms can help you gain the SEO training you need to apply for job openings in this field. We’ve outlined the most popular training platforms, along with their mode of operation, so you can choose the best fit.
SEO Bootcamps
SEO bootcamps are a popular education pathway for people looking to get started in this field. With this training, you’ll learn more than just the SEO basics. You’ll build your soft skills, technical knowledge, social profiles, and portfolio. You’ll learn about key SEO tools and how to scrape websites for data. You’ll also learn how to devise useful marketing strategies.
Community College
Community colleges offer both certificates and associate degrees to college students looking to get started in SEO. Certification training in either social media marketing or digital marketing from community college can provide sufficient education for a career in SEO. You’ll study topics such as content marketing, key SEO tools, link-building strategies, and click advertising.
SEO Degrees
You can gain search optimization knowledge and professional SEO marketing skills by attending a University or a four-year college. A college degree offers a strong knowledge base and a wide range of career options. Most SEO firms prioritize students with broad degrees in a related field.
You can learn how to efficiently measure SEO efforts, build search engines, and use advanced SEO factors through a bachelor’s degree program in digital marketing or information management.
Key SEO Skills to List on Your Resume
To impress prospective hiring managers, you have to structure your resume in a way that efficiently highlights your core skills. Your resume should list your transferable skills, as well as your technical skills. Below are some of the key SEO skills your resume should highlight.
Front End and Backend Programming
SEO specialists and managers need skills in programming. Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is essential for making websites easier to find on the web. A front end developer utilizes programming languages, web design skills, and keyword research when optimizing a website to meet SEO standards.
On the other hand, an SEO expert with backend development skills will ensure the website URLs are properly canonicalized to facilitate organic searches.
Data Analytics
Every SEO expert should understand and be able to implement SEO analytics. SEO analytics is the process of gathering and organizing datasets from websites into useful patterns to evaluate the organic performance of a website based on specific indicators. The information extracted from the analysis is used to make predictions and improve future results.
The types of analysis you can conduct on your website include on-page SEO, off-page SEO, content audit, site audit, local SEO, backlink analysis, and technical SEO.
Copywriting and Marketing
Copywriting and marketing in the digital world involve applied SEO. Your job may require you to create engaging and directional sales copies or marketing campaigns using search engine optimization. In cases like this, you need to know how to utilize specific keywords and links organically to ensure your content promotes authority, actionability, and brand awareness.
Professional content marketers and copywriters know how to identify the components of Google Analytics or Bing ranking algorithms to create compelling sales or ad copies.
Where to Find SEO Jobs
You can monetize your communication and analytical skills by becoming an SEO expert.
Now that we’ve covered the essential skills particular to SEO experts, it’s time to identify the best platforms for SEO job search. If you’re ready to start applying to reputable firms under contracts or freelance work, below are some of the best platforms to use.
Upwork
Upwork is one of the leading players in the gig economy. This freelance platform provides opportunities for SEO professionals to advertise their expertise through service offerings to potential clients. You’ll find different types of real-time SEO jobs on this platform, including on-page SEO, off-page SEO, SEO keyword research, and SEO audit jobs.
Search Engine Journal
Founded in 2003, Search Engine Journal was developed to enable SEO professionals to find lucrative remote and onsite jobs in different parts of the United States. If you’re interested in careers in content marketing, social media marketing, software development, web development, copywriting, data entry, and customer support, this platform may be for you.
MarketingHire
MarketingHire is a freelance job website for marketers in various niches, including SEO. It provides job placement services for interested marketers. All you have to do is apply as a job-seeking marketing professional and you’ll be matched with prospective employers in less than a week. This platform supports full-time, part-time, and hourly pricing.
» MORE:How to Land a Job at Intel
How to Prepare for Your SEO Interview
Your SEO interview will require you to display your impressive knowledge of SEO as a discipline and field. You may be asked technical and non-technical questions to determine whether you’re the best fit for the position. Here are some common questions you may encounter.
SEO Interview Questions
What are the most important Google ranking factors?
What is a canonical error?
How do you integrate SEO into content video marketing?
How do you measure SEO performance, using Google analytics?
*The job outlook for SEO digital marketers has been sourced from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics under advertising, promotions, and marketing managers.
Search Engineer
Salary: $117,423
A search engineer is a professional who builds search engines for Internet users and programs them to optimize website content, using keywords for search ranking purposes.
SEO Director
Salary: $112,857
An SEO director leads and coordinates an SEO team. This professional develops and approves SEO strategies that are adopted by the company. They determine how the company utilizes these strategies in generating organic traffic and brand awareness.
SEO Technical Specialist
Salary: $84,063
An SEO technical specialist is an IT specialist that coordinates the backend technical operations of a website. Their job is to improve search optimization and increase a website’s visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.
SEO Digital Marketer
Salary: $69,301
An SEO digital marketer is a marketing professional who utilizes the practices of SEO in devising and implementing useful online marketing schemes. This includes improving access to products or services using different ecommerce platforms.
SEO Engineer
Salary: $65,289
An SEO engineer is a web engineer that focuses on building websites in such a way that they are optimized for search engines. This professional uses knowledge of front end and backend development in devising responsive websites and web pages.
SEO Career Path
SEO can be implemented in different tech careers. Below are some of the possible SEO career pathways.
Entry-Level SEO Jobs
Search Engine Marketer – Search engine marketing is an entry-level role that involves promoting products and services on search results or search engines through paid ads.
SEOTechnical Specialist – An SEO technical specialist works on the backend of a website, ensuring web pages load faster by optimizing server response time. They also create sitemaps and indexes.
SEO Copywriter – An SEO copywriter creates sales copies using keywords that target a specific group of users to stimulate immediate purchase or engagement.
Mid-Level SEO Jobs
SEO Analyst – An SEO analyst evaluates web pages and websites to identify areas that need improvements. This analysis can be done on the client’s website or their competitor’s website.
SEO Manager – An SEO manager helps an SEO team implement marketing campaigns and keeps the team updated on the latest SEO trends.
SEO Developer – An SEO developer builds and designs websites and web pages to optimize SEO, increasing your search engine ranking potential.
Senior-Level SEO Jobs
SEO Director – SEO directing is a senior-level duty in the SEO hierarchy. Professionals in this role utilize their leadership and communication skills in coordinating the SEO efforts of marketing teams.
SEO Marketing Manager – An SEO marketing manager coordinates and evaluates the marketing efforts of a company.
SEO Engineer – The SEO engineer defines the technical website needs, devises a workable plan and collaborates with the development team to build an SEO-optimized website.
SEO Certifications
If you’re looking for the best SEO certifications to accelerate your career, below are some of the best ones you should consider earning.
SM Certified SEO Professional
This certificate is awarded to professionals who display relevant expertise in performing on-page and off-page SEO which enables a website or web page to rank high for certain keywords. For this certification, you must follow a study guide and take an examination.
ClickMinded SEO Specialist
ClickMinded offers students a professional certificate at the end of its training course. This certificate is issued after the student has successfully completed a prerequisite final exam. The certificate can be uploaded on LinkedIn and other social platforms to display competence to future employers or clients.
Moz SEO Essentials
Moz is one of the most popular SEO platforms in the world. It specializes in building SEO tools and techniques that other clients integrate into their marketing strategies. Its training academy offers a series of six-part courses and examinations to help students build a comprehensive knowledge of SEO. At the end of each exam, candidates receive completion certificates.
Tips on How to Get a Job in SEO
Below are the best tips for securing a job in SEO.
Build knowledge through SEO courses
Before you apply to any SEO jobs, you should have at least gone through basic SEO training. You shouldn’t expect to learn all the concepts of SEO on the job. Employers typically go for competent professionals who are trained and can deliver on set goals. There are several SEO courses online to get you up to speed.
Familiarize Yourself with SEO Tools and Techniques
Make sure to familiarize yourself with SEO tools that professionals use to gather actionable insights from data analysis. These tools help to determine the visibility and performance of websites on search engines. There are SEO tools for different purposes, such as checking page ranking, page speed, gathering keywords, scraping websites and generating blog posts topics.
Create a Professional Profile
Once you’ve learned the techniques of SEO and how to use the various tools in gathering useful information from websites or webpages, you need to build your professional profile. You can use personal websites and social platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook to promote your availability and services. Your profile should draw attention to your portfolio.
Create an Impressive Resume
To apply for desired jobs in this field, you need a professional resume. Your resume is the document that informs the hiring manager of your compatibility with the job role. Your resume should create a good first impression and highlight your relevant education and work experience. You can use platforms, like Indeed, that offer resume services.
Prepare for Possible Interviews
An impressive resume gets you to the interview stage, not necessarily the job. Your interview preparation helps you secure the job. Before going into an interview, review your knowledge of the techniques of the discipline, the company’s history and vision, the latest industry trends, and general employment information.
Should You Get a Job in SEO in 2022?
Yes, you should. SEO is a relatively new field that has been recently experiencing high demand because of its practicality in increasing the revenue and customer relations of a company.
According to Research and Markets’ Agencies SEO Services Global Market Report in 2021, the SEO services market will grow at a CAGR of 19.6 percent between 2021 and 2025. Professionals in this field will enjoy higher median salaries, career growth, and opportunities.
SEO Expert FAQ
Can you become an SEO expert without a degree?
Yes, you can. You don’t need a university or college degree to secure a job in this field. There are other alternatives for people interested in breaking into this field. A coding bootcamp is an excellent choice for those who need in-depth theoretical and practical training.
Is it hard to get into SEO expert?
No, it’s not. It’s very easy to break into the SEO field. There is a wide range of career options to choose from and several affordable professional training courses to get you started. This article contains some of the best training resources available.
Is SEO a good career?
Yes, it is. SEO is an engaging and lucrative career. Professionals who choose this career path are likely to experience high job satisfaction as a result of the flexibility and autonomy offered by the profession. As an SEO expert, you can choose to work remotely and on your desired schedule. You also get to decide your rate and pick your clients.
Do SEO jobs pay well?
Yes, most SEO jobs pay well. As an entry-level SEO specialist, you could earn an annual salary as high as $75,500, according to the salary review from ZipRecruiter.
The world of search engine optimization is changing all the time. Here are the latest SEO trends to be aware of.
When it comes to online marketing, there are a variety of different tools that businesses can take advantage of. Pay-per-click, social media, review websites such as Yelp, and search engines are just some of the online ways that consumers come across websites of all sorts.
Search engines are one of the best ways to get clients of all types. Hair and makeup product customers, storage facility customers, personal injury clients, and so many other consumers can be found through businesses utilizing these search engines properly.
With such a promising market future, it’s no wonder that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is utilized by an abundance of different businesses. This system creates great results, is cost-effective, and can easily be implemented and maintained. Unfortunately, many website owners aren’t as familiar with the industry of SEO.
The Search Engine Optimization Market
SEO is a growing industry thanks to its proven success and usage. Businesses all over the country and world are participating in this market, contributing to its high potential in the future. Understanding how this industry is stable and growing is important for businesses looking into utilizing SEO.
It is estimated that businesses are spending more than $80 billion on SEO services just this year. This is much higher than in 2018 when the estimated business spending for SEO was around $72 billion. Within just three years, the Search Engine Optimization market has grown substantially, and we can expect more of this in the future.
68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, representing a large portion of online traffic. In fact, 92.96% of all global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. With such high usage and acknowledgment, it’s no surprise that most businesses take advantage of this tool.
Why SEO is Important for Business
Such a large market means ample opportunities for businesses. Businesses who utilize SEO can sometimes expect 1000%+ more traffic than they would from organic social media. Of this traffic, SEO leads can have a 14.6% close rate.
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective forms of online marketing. It has great success rates and doesn’t cost an abundance of money to use. Even businesses with small marketing budgets can use SEO to their advantage.
Since search engines are so commonly used, SEO best practices are essential for businesses when it comes to making these engines work in their favor. Without SEO usage, websites are highly unlikely to get search engine exposure. 90.63% of websites get no organic search traffic on google, meaning their traffic relies almost entirely on SEO.
Find an SEO Agency Specializing in Your Niche
Effective SEO services such as the legal SEO agency Rankings, help websites ensure they are one of the first results within a search engine. This high ranking is the key to getting the most traffic that you can through search engines. Studies have shown that 0.78% of online users click on Google results that are on the second page. It’s advised you find an agency that specializes in your specific niche as they will be the experts in understanding your competitive landscape and how to implement an advantageous strategy for your business.
Businesses that successfully implement this type of marketing can reap the benefits this approach provides. SEO is one of the most effective ways to reach high-quality leads online and convert them into customers in the future.
Learning how to implement SEO on your own or having a professional assist you are two easy ways to make search engines work to your advantage.
Keeping up with SEO is highly recommended for businesses. Whether you are looking to maintain or increase your current customer volume, SEO is one of the best ways to do so.
For many businesses, marketing can feel like a black box that maybe doesn’t always get the return you expect. For example, would you rather spend $500 on search engine optimization, paid advertising, or just burn up the money instead. According to the US Small Business Administration, a company that makes less than 5,000,000 a year should allocate between 7% and 8% of its revenue to marketing.
This budget should be split between brand development costs and the costs of promoting your business. But how do you make sure that the money is well spent?
If you are spending money on marketing, have a marketing plan, and are getting customers, but not making any money, then you probably need to take a look at your customer acquisition costs or CAC.
What is CAC, how do you calculate it and what steps can you take to improve it? By the end of this post, you will know the how what, and when to start tracking CAC to improve your marketing spend, and it will become a long-term piece of your business plan.
CAC Meaning
CAC stands for customer acquisition cost. It describes how much a company needs to spend to gain a new customer. CAC marketing is now used by many companies that use web analytics or intelligence to make data-driven decisions.
CAC helps companies figure out if they’re getting their money’s worth on investments for growing their clientele. This can be from paying to have potential customers, clicking on banners or investing in articles or graphic content. Today, internet marketing methods can now target specific groups of customers. Before, companies had to cast a wide net with advertising.
They had to aim their marketing content at a broad segment of potential customers with the hope that it would bring in some new customers. However, this approach lacks specificity and many companies saw undersized returns on their marketing investments. Modern, targeted campaigns when combined with CAC, hones in on specific groups of people.
It can also tell you how much you’re spending to bring a new prospect onboard and convert them into a paying customer.
What goes into calculating CAC?
There are a few things that need to be considered when calculating the cost of customer acquisition.
These include:
Advertising costs
Marketing team costs
Sales team costs
Creative costs
Technical costs
Publishing costs
Production costs
Inventory upkeep costs
How to calculate CAC?
CAC is calculated by dividing the costs spent on acquiring customers by the number of customers acquired during the time the money was spent.
For example, a company that spends $1,000 on marketing in a year and gained 100 customers in that same year, their CAC comes out to $1.
The customer acquisition cost formula is $1000 ÷ 1000 customers = $1 per customer.
If the company only gained 500 customers, then the CAC will be $2.
The formula to calculate the CAC is pretty simple.
However, adding up total expenditures takes a lot of factors into consideration including the cost of multiple marketing strategies and staff salaries.
Some companies may even make investments like marketing in a new region or early stage SEO and do not expect to see results from these until a later date.
This creates some issues when calculating the CAC.
It is therefore recommended that you perform multiple variations to account for these situations.
Example of CAC
Let’s take a fictitious home services company that provides HVAC and plumbing services.
The company marketing efforts include:
Paid sales and marketing staff
Social media campaigns
Pay-per-click campaign
Magazine ads
The company decides to track how much it costs to acquire new customers for one year from January 1st to December 31st. They will consider what they spent throughout the year and how many customers they have by the end of the year.
Here’s a breakdown of their customer acquisition cost formula.
Paid sales and marketing staff – $150,000 total spent
Social media campaigns – $12,000 total spent
Pay-per-click campaign – $10,000 total spent
Magazine ads – $8,400 total spent
Total Marketing Expenses: $180,400
New Customer Acquired: 2,512
CAC $180,400 ÷ 2,512 = $71.82
The calculations show that the company spent on average $71.82 for each new customer they acquired in that year. This CAC is pretty high for a home services company and should definitely be evaluated. You will want your CAC to be lower than the average sales price of your product or service to make sure you are actually making money on your efforts.
However, this is just the start of the CAC story. The company also has to consider how much each customer spends which can be calculated using customer lifetime value (CLV).
Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer lifetime value (CLV) or Lifetime Value(LTV) is an estimate of the amount of money a company may generate from a customer throughout the customer’s “lifetime” as their customer. It can take into account reasons why customers stay around beyond just your product as well. CLV is determined by adding up the revenue earned from a customer (annual revenue multiplied by the average customer lifespan) minus the initial cost of acquiring them.
You can also search for a CLV calculator using your favorite search engine. The CLV gives you a better understanding of what the customer acquisition cost means to your company. However, the amount of time a person remains a customer and how much they spend will vary from company to company. This means that you will have to consider other factors that can impact your company specifically.
Here are some of the most important elements of CLV for most organizations.
Average customer lifespan – how long the individual remains a customer.
Rate of customer retention – the percentage of customers who buy again.
Profit margin per customer – takes into account CAC and other expenditures. These can include the overall cost of goods sold (production and marketing costs) as well as how much it costs to run the company.
The profit margin per customer is calculated by taking your net income per customer(minus the CAC) and dividing that number by your revenue from the customer over their lifespan as your customer. Next, multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.
The average amount an individual spends over their lifetime as a customer – Add what each customer spends over their lifetime and divide it by the number of customers.
Average gross margin per customer – This can be calculated for a certain period. For example, a year or according to the life span of a customer.
If you’re doing a life span calculation, take the profit margin per customer over their lifetime and divide it by 100. Then multiply that by how much they spend during their lifetime.
Example of CLV
Let’s look at a fake company that provides marketing services for small businesses
Here is a look at this company’s numbers:
CAC – $180 per customer.
The average customer stays for 10 years.
Their profit margin per customer is 19%.
The average amount spent by each customer over their lifetime with the company – $57,052.
The average gross margin per customer over their lifetime with the company – Calculated by 0.19 x $57,052 = $10,840.
How to Improve CAC
There are several methods you can use to improve your customer acquisition costs, these include:
Know CAC per Marketing Channel
Most marketers want to know the CAC for each of their marketing channels. If you know which channel has the lowest CAC then you know where you can spend more on marketing. The more you put in your marketing budget in the lower CAC channels, the more customers you can get for a fixed budget amount. The best approach you can take is to use your spreadsheet and gather all your marketing receipts for the year and add up those amounts by channel.
Improve on-site conversion metrics
Set up a goal on Google Analytics and perform A/B split testing with new checkout systems. Do this to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate, improve your landing page, speed of your site, mobile optimization and other factors that can enhance your overall site performance.
Add value to your offering
The value users perceive from your product and services is subjective. That is why you may not have the desired effect if you’ve implemented features similar to what other companies use. Take a different approach and try to interact with customers using surveys and emails that can help you figure out what best fits their needs. You can also study statistics like your customer retention rate and subjective feedback from any review you get.
Use a CRM system
A CRM system helps you keep track of new customers, their movements through your sales funnel, how much they buy, loyalty programs and more. It can also be used to manage email lists and campaigns such as promotions, seasonal email advertising and drip campaigns.
What CAC can do for you
Measuring and tracking CAC is important for your company. Companies can use CAC to allocate resources and funds and strategize their marketing campaigns. It can also help to guide them in their hiring and salary process. CAC and CLV combine to make a powerful tool that can help you assess your marketing return on investment (ROI).
Joe Martin is currently the VP of marketing at Scorpion, a leading provider of technology and marketing to help small businesses grow. Formerly he was CloudApp’s GM and CMO and a Head of Marketing at Adobe. With over 15 years of experience in the industry and tech that makes it run, he provides strategic guidance on how to build and use the right stack and marketing for businesses to grow. Joe believes marketers need smart training and leadership to scale company growth. Connect with Joe on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @joeDmarti.
