SEO & It’s Role In Pull Marketing

In this article, I’ll provide a comprehensive introduction to SEO and explore its core elements, including OnPage, OffPage, and Technical SEO, along with strategies and tools to help businesses succeed in the digital marketplace.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improves a website’s visibility and ranking in search results, attracting potential customers through unpaid, organic traffic and is the process of optimizing a website to improve visibility in SERPs for relevant keywords and phrases.

SEO Components
Goal	Increase organic traffic
Strategy	Includes search engine algorithms, user behavior, and keyword research
Search Types	Image, video, and vertical search engines

Or as i define it as a SEO myself: ”The Art of Finding Needles in the Haystack”.

SEO has three main pillars:

Note: While Content Marketing is not officially part of these three pillars, it plays a critical role in maximizing SEO efforts and is considered to be one of the foundational disciplines in SEO. Studies show that without a strong content marketing strategy, SEO often fails to reach its full potential. Content provides the foundation for search engine optimization, helping engage users and enhance the relevance and authority of your site. In fact, research highlights that a well-executed content marketing strategy boosts SEO efficiency by improving engagement and enhancing brand trust​ ¹https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249457 ²https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/OIR-05-2022-0276/full/html

1. Rank Higher: Measure “Impressions” and “Position” of specific web pages and keywords (search queries) in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
2. Earn More Relevant Organic Traffic: Measure “Click-through Rate” (CTR) and compare it to the Search Engine Advertising (SEA) value of the article.

• Content Elements: Quality content with relevant information is fundamental. This involves thorough keyword research, naturally incorporating keywords within the content, and ensuring the content meets the user’s search intent, as well as adhering to basic SEO formatting guidelines.
• HTML Elements: This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headers (H1, H2, H3), and image alt-text. These elements help search engines understand your content and improve user engagement—they are often the first touchpoints a potential customer has with your business.
• Site Architecture Elements: Proper use of internal linking, SEO-friendly URLs, mobile responsiveness, and fast loading speeds are crucial. Implementing structured data markup can significantly enhance the visibility and CTR of your content in search results through rich snippets. ³https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33655/a-step-by-step-guide-to-flawless-on-page-seo-free-template.aspx

If your “storefront” is unattractive and cluttered with messages like “[SALE X%], [INSERT KEYWORD LIST], [BUY NOW PAY LATER]”, it’s unlikely to attract users looking for reputable online businesses. Unless you’re the only provider of a specific product in your area—which means success due to niche exclusivity rather than marketing genius—such an approach won’t be effective.

Similarly, your metadata should be inviting while providing customers with the exact information they’re seeking right in the SERPs. Think of it as the modern equivalent of the Yellow Pages (though, with advancements like AI as of 2024, even that analogy is becoming outdated). Those who adapted to how customers search for information thrived; those who didn’t either faded away or rely on an older demographic.

If quick turnaround times are a unique selling proposition (USP) that sets you apart and fulfills a client need, include them! Highlight USPs like fast delivery or flexible payment options if you can genuinely deliver on them. But avoid overselling or making unsubstantiated claims. For instance, if you want to say “Best in City X,” ensure you can back up that claim convincingly.

Metadata should generally be around 150 characters, so it’s important to be concise and mindful when creating it. However, don’t shy away from testing and refining your ideas. SEO is an iterative process that thrives on continuous improvement based on data and user feedback.

• Backlink Building: Acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites is one of the most critical elements of OffPage SEO. Techniques such as guest blogging, broken link building, and creating shareable content can significantly help in earning these backlinks. The more authoritative the linking site, the greater the potential boost to your website’s credibility and ranking.
• Social Media Engagement: Actively promoting your content on social media platforms can drive traffic to your site and increase its visibility. Social shares and engagement can indirectly influence your rankings by increasing exposure and attracting new users to your site, which in turn signals relevance and popularity to search engines.
• Brand Mentions: Increasing brand mentions across the web, even if they don’t always include direct backlinks, can enhance your website’s authority and relevance. A well-recognized brand with frequent mentions is often perceived as more credible by search engines, contributing to improved rankings.⁴https://backlinko.com/off-page-seo-guide

• Site Speed: Fast loading times are crucial for both user experience and search engine rankings. Pages that load slowly can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings, as search engines prioritize websites that offer a smooth, speedy experience.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring your site is fully responsive is essential. With mobile traffic continuing to rise, search engines reward sites that offer a seamless user experience across all devices, particularly mobile.
• XML Sitemaps and Robots.txt: Creating and maintaining an XML sitemap allows search engines to navigate your site more efficiently by providing a roadmap of your content. A well-configured robots.txt file helps direct search engines on which pages to crawl and which to ignore.
• Structured Data: Implementing structured data markup (schema) is a way to help search engines better understand the context of your content. This can enhance how your pages appear in search results by enabling rich snippets, providing more detailed and attractive information to users directly in the SERPs.
• Canonical URLs: Using canonical tags prevents duplicate content issues by indicating to search engines which version of a page is the preferred one. This ensures your site remains focused and that search engines do not index multiple versions of the same content, which can dilute your ranking potential. ⁵https://www.reliablesoft.net/technical-seo/

To effectively implement SEO strategies, several tools are essential for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing your website’s performance. The most commonly used tools include:

• Google Analytics and Google Search Console: These are indispensable for tracking and analyzing website performance. Google Analytics helps you understand your visitors’ behavior, while Google Search Console provides insights into how your site is performing in search results, allowing you to identify and fix any indexing or ranking issues.
• SEO Software Suites: Comprehensive tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz offer solutions for keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits. These platforms provide in-depth insights that help refine your SEO strategy, from identifying valuable keywords to tracking competitors and analyzing backlinks.
• Content Optimization Tools: Plugins like Yoast SEO (for WordPress) assist in optimizing your content for search engines. These tools guide you in managing key OnPage SEO elements like keyword usage, readability, meta descriptions, and internal linking, ensuring your content is both user- and search-engine-friendly.
• Technical SEO Tools: Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider help conduct technical audits by identifying issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and other structural problems. These tools will help you ensure your site’s backend is optimized for search engines.

SEO is a crucial component of a pull marketing strategy, which focuses on attracting customers by providing relevant and helpful content. Unlike push marketing, where messages are sent out to potential customers, pull marketing draws people in by meeting their needs and answering their queries.

• Increasing Organic Visibility: SEO helps your website appear higher in search engine results, making it more visible to potential customers who are actively searching for products, services, or information related to your business. This visibility is essential for attracting high-quality traffic. ⁶https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-seo/
• Attracting Targeted Traffic: By optimizing for specific, relevant keywords, SEO draws in users who are already interested in your offerings. This aligns with pull marketing’s goal of attracting customers naturally, based on their intent, rather than pushing unsolicited messages.
• Building Credibility and Trust: Websites that rank higher in search results are often perceived as more credible and authoritative. This trust can enhance your brand’s reputation and foster loyalty among potential customers, a critical element in long-term business success.
• Providing Valuable Content: A core principle of SEO is to create high-quality, relevant content that addresses user needs. By answering questions and solving problems through your content, you build a relationship with your audience, which is a cornerstone of pull marketing.
• Improving User Experience: SEO isn’t just about search engines—it’s also about the user experience. Optimizing your website’s structure, navigation, and content improves the overall experience for visitors, encouraging engagement. Techniques like digital PR, content marketing, and conversion rate optimization (CRO), often categorized under OffPage SEO, contribute to this by ensuring users find valuable content and clear calls to action.
• A Long-Term Strategy: Unlike paid advertising, which stops delivering results once the budget runs out, SEO offers sustainable, long-term benefits. Once optimized, your website can continue attracting new visitors over time without ongoing ad spend. SEO also allows businesses to reduce their reliance on paid advertising and instead invest in long-term brand growth. ⁷https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

SEO is often seen as a Pandora’s box, especially for small and upcoming brands. It offers affordable, scalable tools and frameworks that can help businesses position themselves in highly competitive markets. Compared to paid advertising, SEO is generally more cost-effective, making it an attractive option for companies looking to grow organically.

However, without a well-defined strategy and a solid foundation, SEO can quickly become overwhelming and drain your resources. The lack of a clear plan can cause frustration for your team, as efforts may not yield the desired results.

For instance, applying outdated techniques – especially from the pre-LLM (Large Language Model) era, such as methods from before the ChatGPT 3.5 release – can lead to wasted time and money. SEO requires continuous adaptation, and using obsolete tactics can prevent you from seeing real progress in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape.

Many businesses and agencies struggle with SEO because they fail to truly understand their target audience, both in terms of language and communication style. The problem often starts with investing resources into creating long, bloated content that lacks real value, coherence, or a clear goal. Often, there’s no actual SEO strategy behind it—just a vague list of keywords to target, which doesn’t address the audience’s specific needs or search behavior.

As a result, these efforts don’t align with what users (and search engines) are looking for. This approach, where SEO is treated as synonymous with basic content marketing, leads to content that doesn’t engage the intended audience. Worse, it can be seen as a cost-cutting measure rather than an investment in delivering genuine value.

Even if the content itself is well-researched and helpful, marketing efforts fail due to a lack of focus on critical aspects, such as:

• What is the target audience actually interested in?
• How are they searching for it?
• Why are they searching for it?
• What is their goal?
• What is the intent behind their search query?
• What are their expectations?
• How much do they already know, and what do they need to learn?

Failing to address these questions leads to SEO efforts that miss the mark, resulting in poor rankings and engagement, no matter how good the content is.

Before diving into your SEO strategy, it’s crucial to define your goals using structured methods. Clear goal-setting ensures that your efforts are aligned with measurable outcomes. Diverse methods like SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and the GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) provide frameworks to break down large objectives into manageable steps. These approaches help you track progress, stay focused, and adjust your strategy based on data. For a detailed look into these methods, explore my Goal Definition in Project Management article, which covers how to effectively apply these techniques.

If your sales funnel is ineffective or non-existent, no amount of SEO traffic will convert into meaningful results. Even if your site has high click-through rates (CTR), impressions, or rankings, these metrics are irrelevant if they don’t lead to actual conversions.

In particular:

• Marketing Strategists: If there’s a strategist involved, they act as the linchpin, aligning the SEO efforts with broader business goals. If not, results may suffer because individual decision-makers often focus only on their own areas without seeing the full picture.
• Agency and Client Collaboration: Both sides must work together. The agency provides expertise, but the client must be willing to invest in a validated marketing strategy. Don’t blame the SEO expert if you choose to outsource your strategy to tools like ChatGPT and skip essential planning. Equally, don’t blame the client if SEO services are oversold without fully addressing the work required to see it through.

SEO success requires a team effort. Each party involved should actively engage with the project—whether through pushing new ideas forward or pulling insights from data—to keep the strategy on track and the results sustainable. Without this cooperation, even the best SEO plan can fail to deliver the expected results.

Before diving into SEO, it’s essential to ensure that the basics of your business are in place. Start by solidifying your business identity, refining your product development and catalog (portfolio), and establishing a strong online presence.

Once these fundamentals are sorted, focus on selling to your customers. However, prioritize creating content that meets their specific needs rather than content you think they might simply enjoy. Avoid cluttering your strategy with “nice-to-haves”—stay laser-focused on what truly matters to your audience.

As you produce content and build your strategy, you’ll begin to gather valuable data. Use this information to validate and adjust your current SEO tactics, as well as future strategies, such as OffPage SEO. The insights you collect will not only refine your approach but will also provide direction for broader aspects of your business, like customer research and product development.

Remember, SEO works best when you have something real and valuable to offer. Content should only be a priority when you have something to sell—whether it’s a product, a service, or information that your audience genuinely needs.

SEO rewards those who understand how and why it works, but only when it’s applied with careful thought and insight.

P.S.: Be wary of snake oil. Not all SEO advice is created equal, and shortcuts often lead to disappointment. Stick to tried-and-tested strategies that align with your long-term goals.

Citations #

• 1
  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249457
• 2
  https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/OIR-05-2022-0276/full/html
• 3
  https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33655/a-step-by-step-guide-to-flawless-on-page-seo-free-template.aspx
• 4
  https://backlinko.com/off-page-seo-guide
• 5
  https://www.reliablesoft.net/technical-seo/
• 6
  https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-seo/
• 7
  https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo