Sales drive a business; without sales, the business fails. It’s that simple. In today’s ever-advancing and sophisticated technologies, your sales will be dormant without a robust digital presence that includes SEO.

Don’t let that happen.

So, if you want to increase sales— your market share—it’s essential to have a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

We all know the internet is cutthroat. Thus, learning and implementing cutting-edge SEO techniques can give you an advantage in getting noticed online—converting more prospects into loyal customers, and ultimately boosting sales. 

So how does a business accomplish this? Glad you asked.

Given that SEO is constantly evolving and best practices change over time, it is often difficult to know if you’re doing everything to increase sales with SEO.

If this has you feeling overwhelmed, don’t agonize over it. You can implement plenty of time-honored techniques and learn some excellent tips and best practices to leverage SEO to increase sales.

Construction Tech Firms

It is critical to get your website in shape and leverage SEO and Digital Marketing in the Construction Technology business, as noted in the below article. 

The good news is that construction startups have accelerated in the past year despite the many serious challenges businesses faced during the pandemic.

New construction tech startups secured more than $1.3 billion in funding in 2020 alone, and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies are expected to boost industry profits over the next few years.

SEO provides small construction companies and unknown construction tech startups an opportunity to out-perform many large companies in the B2B marketing race. A small construction enterprise must produce quality content intended for potential B2B customers to stay in the race. They must ensure their content provides absolute value to users. They also need to optimize it to attract more queries on the web. 

For instance, ventures searching for “cheap flooring in [given area]” should find your floor construction company in above-the-fold entries on the first page of the search result. 

Above-the-fold visibility in searches will dramatically increase your business. Therefore, pay attention to keywords in your content.

Keywords should be part of your content marketing strategy because those are the terms and phrases YOUR buyers are using to serf the internet.

1. The Importance of Keywords

Keywords in SEO have changed over the years, but they’re still a crucial part of the equation. Without keywords, prospects might never find you; keywords are the cornerstone of your SEO strategies.

For example, if your business sells mechanical construction services, an obvious keyword phrase you should rank is HVAC or Fabrication services. However, your keyword strategy should be broad and specifically matched, so you account for higher and lower volume searches. And so, you need to discern what they are and implement them (On-Page SEO) in your:

• Content
• Web pages
• URLs
• Headings
• Image descriptions
• Metadata
• Page titles
• Emails

Google AdWords is an exceptional place to start with keyword research, but there are plenty of other keyword planning tools you can use. Don’t forget about longtail keywords because half of all search queries are four-plus words in length. As a result, there’s typically less competition for these search phrases, leading to higher conversion rates. Determine what these keyword phrases are, build content on your website, and they’ll help connect you with prospects looking to buy what you are selling. Remember, sometimes buyers are researching industry topics (e.g., Mechanical Contracting, Mechanical Best Practices), so you need to create content to build awareness and brand and a very specific known-quantity or buying action (e.g., affordable HVAC replacement). 

2. Strong Content Opens Doors

Keywords, however, are nothing without great content. Strong content is a tool to design along the buyer journey (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision) to convert prospects—something valuable you can offer customers as a trusted, reliable resource that extends to other audiences.  

Here’s how content works to increase sales: when prospects search the internet for information about a service or product to what you offer, they’ll come across blogs, web pages, social media posts, blogs designed to provide information, answer their questions, and facilitate a purchasing decision. 

So when you have authoritative and engaging content (start using video) relevant to the industry and your brand on the internet, prospects will find your brand before all others. In addition, this content and position of your business build relationships along the funnel (Awareness, Consideration, Decision phases) and convert leads into customers.

It’s not rocket science; it’s just good marketing.

Exemplary content is designed in many formats, and your goal ought to be cultivating and creating content in all the formats, including but not limited to:

• Blog Articles and Resource Articles (create a resource center) 
• Short-form and Long-form Video (boosts organic search results by 50-times more than text-based content)
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Animations
• User-generated content (from a community) 
• Guest articles 
• White papers and Ebooks (gate these for form fills) 
• How-to guides
• Listicles (Top 5 Reasons to purchase your solution) 
• Customer Testimonials, Quotes, and Product Reviews 

At the center of inbound marketing is your “CONTENT.” A robust inbound strategy includes great content fueling search results and engaged prospects visiting your website. CONTENT also supports an Outbound marketing strategy in many respects – sales enablement tools, email marketing to help call campaigns, etc.  

However, it’s important to remember to create keyword-driven content with goals (awareness – drive organic traffic, consideration – convert leads, decision – close deals) and make sure these are the keywords embedded in content design. Even landing pages should be designed with a focus on specific keywords.  

3. Social Media Will Grow Your Audience and Your Reach

Social media is one of the fastest-growing comprehensive and modern SEO strategy elements. Many consumers are turning to these platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to reach larger audiences, engage prospects, and develop long-term relationships with existing customers. First, however, make sure you research the right platforms for reaching your target audience. For example, Facebook might not be the right platform if you sell business software.  

Beyond expanding your reach, social media is also a great way to show a more human side of your organization. Thanks to resources like Facebook Ads, social media can be used as a direct marketing tool. You can also upload your prospect list to target prospects and support your email marketing programs. One last point is to commit to social media because it takes time, money, and resource to create the content and posts regularly to build a following and make the platform pay for itself. 

4. Go Mobile and Local 

If you sell within a local geography, SEO best practices emphasize optimizing your website for mobile (this is a must for any business) and local content. The two go hand in hand. Local SEO is becoming vital as more consumers use mobile devices to search for companies. Thirty percent of all mobile searches performed today have local intent. Moreover, more than 70% will visit a nearby company after conducting a local search. Driving business to a physical or E-commerce store, the content focus must be localalized (keywords + landing pages) and your digital footprint is entirely mobile-friendly.

5. On-Page SEO Is Critical 

On-page SEO is crucial to your success and where the rubber meets the road. If you want to boost sales create a new revenue stream for your website, you must optimize the pages on your website. On-page SEO makes your website user-friendly. It makes it easier for search engines to index your pages, increases your search ranking, and helps you focus on essential elements like visuals that keep the traffic engaged and convert. Below are the most critical steps involved in On-Page SEO:

• Integrate your website with an SEO Grader such as Yoast. This tool gives you specific instructions on which pages need to be optimized. 
• Create descriptive and unique title tags
• Increase your web page load speed and watch bounce-rate
• Writing keyword-optimized and descriptive and alt text for imagery used (each page) 
• Optimize headings (H1, H2) with relevant descriptions and keywords
• Cross-linking pages within the website to enhance navigation, indexing, and User Experience (reducing friction at getting the content they want) 
• Using easy-to-read and sensible URLs 
• A must! Writing exciting and relevant meta descriptions to increase search engine visibility on search results.

6. Carefully Manage Your Reputation!

Reputation management isn’t always top of mind when discussing SEO, but it’s an essential component. Reputation management controls what and when people see when researching your business online. For example, a contractor who receives several bad Yelp reviews in a row gets into an immature Facebook spat with a customer. Beware: any potential customer who uses the internet to decide where to purchase will encounter bad reviews and social media and go with a competitor. That ill reputation will stick online like mud.  

Reputation management is all about making sure you put your best business foot forward online when customers go looking for you. Here are some tips for improving your online reputation:

• Mandate customer support acts professional and empathetic when engaging customers online.
• Audit/Monitor review websites 
• Take immediate action on negative reviews professionally and calmly and try to make them actionable – attempt to solve the issue, and maybe that customer will take down the negative review. 
• Actively (programmatically) engage satisfied customers to post positive testimonials and reviews. This is key!

7. Developing an Integrated Strategy to Keep on Track

For SEO to work for you, it cannot be a program conducted with minimal effort or part-time. To increase sales leveraging SEO, you have to be street smart and dedicated to your efforts. That means employing a solid strategy that integrates all components. 

To accomplish this, you’ll need a dedicated team that understands SEO best practices with the ability to integrate content marketing into your company goals as part of a long-term strategy. 

SEO Key Takeaways 

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial success strategy for business because it increases your online reach and visibility to help boost sales by driving more traffic from multiple channels to your website. In addition, it will provide you with more opportunities to convert leads into customers and give you the tools to increase conversion rates. But SEO is multifaceted. For your success in boosting sales, focus on the fundamentals below:  

• Researching, selecting, and implementing relevant keywords
• Develop and use your keywords strategically 
• Create exciting and engaging content that informs and delights audiences
• Leveraging social media to grow your audience and develop relationships through consistent engagement 
• Focus on local SEO – If local is where you sell
• Make sure your digital strategy is mobile-optimized
• Working hard at on-page SEO will make sure you have a site that will attract and retain prospects
• Keeping your online reputation squeaky clean

Finally, remember that creating content and maintaining a comprehensive sales strategy that prioritizes these components is as important as the components themselves. That’s the best way to ensure that you will build a well-oiled SEO machine that will help you boost sales.

Remember: sales drive a business; without sales, the business fails. It’s that simple…

Article Written by: Conor O’Brien