White Hat SEO Techniques for Your Business
When most people think of search engine optimization (SEO), the things that come to mind are keywords, rankings, and scary Google algorithm updates. While yes, these are parts of an SEO program (though algorithm updates should not be the boogeyman they are made out to be), it’s important to remember that an effective SEO strategy is capable of attracting potential customers throughout the sales funnel. A nuanced and holistic SEO strategy can drive performance for any site. Given Red Door’s experience in the telecom space, we’ll explore how this type of SEO program applies to that industry, but these principles can easily be repurposed and applied to your business and its vertical.
Appealing to the Upper Funnel – Build Awareness
Many businesses shy away from targeting users higher in the sales funnel with their SEO program because it can be hard to quantify without a robust attribution model. This is a missed opportunity to build your brand’s awareness and authority on a subject while building out content that can be used to build up your backlink profile.
For a telecom business, creating informational help content is the perfect way to build your expertise and authority within the market. Many people are asking questions about their services such as “why is my internet slow?”, “how can I improve my internet speeds?”, and “what internet speed do I need for gaming?” Becoming part of these organic results opens two opportunities.
The first opportunity is helping your customers with their service issues. Talking with your support team about the most common questions they are asked and then creating content around those questions is a great way to not only improve organic performance but also reduce the number of phone calls directed to your call centers, thereby reducing costs for your business.
The second opportunity is around searchers who are not current customers and are having trouble with their ISP. These searchers are likely frustrated and may already be thinking “is there a better provider?” Providing a helpful resource for these potential customers will add you to their consideration set as they look for ways to improve their internet service. A content gap analysis can be a great way to identify areas of opportunity where your competitors are ranking but your site is lagging.
Mid to Low Funnel Users – Building Local Visibility
In Google’s never-ending quest to serve the most relevant results, local SEO has become increasingly important for service providers. This means it is imperative to have a local aspect to your SEO strategy that ensures Google knows where you offer service.
Local landing page development along with Google My Business listings are a cornerstone of any local SEO strategy - and for telecom, this is no exception. Local landing pages can attract consumers in the middle of the sales funnel (think searchers who are planning to move and are doing research on what their new ISP options will be) and consumers lower in the sales funnel who are actively on the hunt for service in their area. These landing pages will rank for queries like “internet service in Denver,” “San Diego internet service providers,” and “high-speed internet near me.” Not sure where to start? Look at areas where you service many households but do not maintain a large organic search presence.
When building local landing pages, it is always best to avoid templatized content. Google rewards robust, unique content. Simply replacing city and state names in a templatized fashion is not likely to set you up for success. A successful strategy requires manual work and copywriting, but the results will be worth the extra effort.
Finally, do not forget about local link building! Reach out to local government websites to ask for a backlink and look through unlinked mention reports to identify sites that are discussing your services without linking back to you. Again, this is an initiative that requires some legwork, but building a localized backlink profile to your landing pages will pay huge dividends in the long run.
Low Funnel Users – High Search Volume, High Intent
This is where optimizations to your primary service pages come into play. You will be optimizing for highly searched terms such as “high-speed internet,” “home phone provider,” and “internet service providers” to maximize organic visibility over many searches. While it may seem counterintuitive that highly searched terms would be used to target lower-funnel consumers, it makes sense for telecom. These are people who know they need internet (or telephone, or television) service and are looking to sign up as soon as possible. They may be comparing prices or speeds between providers, but once they have compared these items, they are ready to sign up.
To rank for such highly searched, competitive terms, following SEO best practices is essential. Keep an eye on site speed and technical optimizations to ensure Googlebot can effectively crawl your pages, and make sure your pages are full of robust, informational, keyword-rich content. Proper metadata updates and heading tag implementation are also essential. Once you have the basics covered, start to work through internal and external linking strategies to drive incremental ranking gains and push your site to the top of Page 1.
SEO Techniques for Any Business
While these recommendations are centered around the telecom industry, this type of holistic SEO strategy can be repurposed and applied to nearly any industry. A well-developed SEO strategy can target searchers throughout the sales funnel from initial research and education to conversion. Keep search intent in mind when choosing keyword targets and leverage your knowledge of your consumer to create SEO-minded content that appeals to them and their needs.
Looking for help building your organic search strategy? We’d love to hear from you. Visit our SEO Services page for a full list of SEO services we provide, or contact us today!