SEO Strategy Framework to Optimise Landing Pages

Whether you are building a new site from scratch or optimising your existing site or landing page to increase organic reach, there are a few fundamentals that can be explored to ensure the basics are in place. We spoke to Sam Dunning - Director and Co-Owner of Breaking B2B - and he was able to help us sketch out the fundamentals of a good SEO Strategy. Each of these fundamentals can be explored in greater depth, but there is a good framework to begin optimising your landing pages.

STEP 1 - NAIL DOWN THE KEYWORDS

The first job is to nail down the keywords that you actually want to get your website (or landing page) ranked organically on Google. You literally just want to think “What are the products and services we offer?” And if you’ve already got data from Google Ads or similar that will be really useful here so you know what’s working.

So, let’s say you - or your client - offers some kind of insurance product (or just swap out the word insurance for whatever it is you are offering), there are a few different search terms that jump out depending on where in the funnel you are targeting.

BOTTOM-OF-FUNNEL SEARCHES

• Best Life Insurance Provider
• Get Life Insurance Now
• Get A Life Insurance Quote

If people are typing this and searching this then and clicking through to your page then they are very likely to be ready to get a quote.

MIDDLE-OF-FUNNEL SEARCHES

• Compare X to Y
• Y and Z Comparison
• Compare Life Insurance

TOP-OF-FUNNEL SEARCHES

• Do I need Life Insurance?
• Why do I need life insurance?
• What to consider before getting life insurance How do I go about getting life insurance?

Be sure you have search terms and keywords that fit into each part of the funnel.

Tools that you can use to help you with this includes: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner. They will all give you data on how many hits each of these searches get per month, the search value, what your competitors are doing etc. Then you just have to assess the value each of these and put together a plan to begin testing.

STEP 2 - ON-SITE SEO AND OFF-SITE SEO

There are two main elements to SEO, everything on your website (On-Site SEO) and everything off your website (Off-Site SEO).

ON-SITE SEO

Look at your website from a technical perspective

Google recently rolled out an update called Core Web Vitals. Some elements of that include making sure your website load super fast (check Google Page Speed Insights if you don’t know this and it will tell you your page speed on mobile and desktop). If you get a score under 90 they will give you actionable tips to improve your load speed to be sure to take this to a developer. Ultimately you want your page load to be under one second.

You also want what is called a Mobile First design, as now typically over 60% of Google Searches are made from mobile.

Responsive design means your site will adapts it's design to suit different screen sizes, from mobile or tablet and desktop, but it doesn't mean there's a particular focus on ensuring the user experience is tailored fr these specific devices. Mobile First design is different as it first prioritizes mobile devices which is important where the numbers of mobile users are typically higher - such as B2C. So, if your site doesn’t work well on mobile your prospects will head to a competitor.

The technical framework for SEO also includes things like ensuring Meta Title and Meta Descriptions for each page are relevant to the search terms and keywords you decided upon in Step 1.

Look at the content

You don’t want to jam keywords into a home page as they may not be relevant, especially if we are looking at the Top of Funnel searches. Instead, build dedicated landing pages for each of these searches - such as What to consider before getting life insurance - as they can become useful resources and go on to organically rank highly at the top of the funnel.

QUICK TIP ON CONTENT: If you get common questions from your customers each week and every week, such as “What’s the best way to do X” or “What should I consider before doing X?” Etc, create content on separate pages around each of them

If you are unsure what these questions may be then be sure to ask your sales reps for the most commonly asked questions or objections.

OFF-SITE SEO

Once you’ve ticked all the boxes for on-site SEO, you can start cracking on with off-site SEO. This includes things like creating articles, press releases, informative blogs, infographics, and building backlinks.

On-site SEO will only get you so far, especially if you’re in a highly competitive or overly saturated market or industry. Creating content and backlinks, and distributing this, will help build up your website’s Domain Authority, send links back to your site, build up Link Juice in Google and ultimately help you rank even higher.

STEP 3 - MEASURE EVERYTHING.

Once all this is up and running you need to be able to measure it all. Ensure Google Analytics is set up on your website so you can see how you landing pages are doing, which search terms are performing well, which keywords are leading to sales etc.

Track all your traffic sources so you can attribute what has come in as Organic Traffic and what has come in as Paid, track all your conversion points, so at the end of the month you can understand everything you’ve done and what has worked and what can be improved.

This article was adapted from a Podcast called: A Deep Dive Into SEO. Check out the entire thing over on Apple, Spotify or Databowl’s YouTube Channel.