SEO for leaders in 2022

You should work with search in general as a channel because search accounts for over 60% of traffic and 60% of sales => for those who succeed with the channel and otherwise have a normal marketing mix.

Marketing on Google is divided into two:

• Visibility you can pay for: Google Ads
• Visibility that is earned: SEO

The advantage of the latter is that you don't have to pay per click, so:

What mechanisms create success with SEO?

• Achieving visibility
• Identifying demand
• Assessing competition
• Understanding business opportunity

...must be the foundation for succeeding with SEO.

When SEO is explained, it is mostly with a focus on the technical factors. That you have keywords you want visibility on, that you produce content, that there are some who link to your website, and that there is a certain technical quality. These are of course important hygiene factors, but to have a real competitive advantage you need to have control over the aforementioned points and most importantly succeed with them.

This requires involvement from those working with SEO at a strategic level and an understanding from the leadership about how important it is to share this with the tactical level.

This is where the value is created, the executing level must have a good brief.

What changes have affected SEO?

In recent years, competition has increased significantly, despite the fact that demand has also grown a lot. If you manage to be a winner in SEO, it pays off much more now than just 2-3 years ago. If you have previously made a half-hearted effort and not succeeded, further half-hearted efforts are guaranteed to fail. But those who invest now have much more to gain from it.

Changes in the competitive landscape and the profit framework are linked to:

• More successful use of technology in marketing
• More digitally competent employees
• Massive increase in the use of search over the past 2 years
• No significant changes in Google that make it easier for mediocre performance with SEO.

Google is also increasing the amount of results that answer the search in the results list, so-called zero-click searches.

The image above shows an example of a search that is answered in the search result, a so-called zero-click search. This is a threat to website owners, because those who search do not visit the website to get answers to their questions.

I believe the increase in zero-click searches is largely due to imprecise and misunderstood communication from the website owner's/advertiser's side.

It has also become more difficult to engage in sales modeling due to the loss of third-party cookies, and it seems to be getting more difficult in the future.

Some strategic considerations with SEO

If you have little content, have low precision in content work

It is important to adapt the strategy to the size of your website. If you have little content (less than 100 pages), you should build more content based on what you think is good. If you have between 100 and 1000 pages, you should use web analytics to reinforce what has worked and conduct competitor analysis to see what your competitors have done. If you have more than 1000 pages on your website, you should engage an SEO expert to make the right moves.

Use the right tool depending on the diagnosis

It's not always necessary to have an SEO expert to succeed.

• Should you hire a copywriter to produce more content?
• If it's technical execution that's lacking, you might need to hire a developer or employ one?
  
  

3 tips at the end that the marketing department should look into:

• Focus on promoting subpages and not the homepage to get the effect of links.
• Technical checks should be done at least as often as you celebrate your wedding anniversary. Hint: Once a year if you want it to be pleasant, maybe more often if there's a lot going on.
• The quality of content success indicates whether it provides an SEO effect. Use the Content Hotness Barometer™ to get an indication of whether you will succeed before the content is launched.

Rocket 🚀-pitch

On November 18, I gave the lecture SEO for leaders in 2022. I have given this lecture before but refined it each time. In the article above, I summarize the most important points from the lecture.

You can watch the entire lecture here on LinkedIn, and I am happy to present it again - in a refined state - at your event or for your company.

Rocket is looking for clients who want to work strategically with and invest in SEO and digital marketing, so please contact me via email at magnus@rocket.no or by phone at +47 924 51 273 if you need assistance.

Rocket is a company within NOVA and consists solely of senior consultants, who assist Norwegian medium and large businesses with SEO, digital advertising, CRO, and web analytics - as well as recruiting marketing specialists.