An interview with our SEO expert: Joe Penrice

If you’re anything like us, at one point or another, you’ve tried DIY-ing it.

Whether that’s been cutting your own hair or attempting to file your own taxes, you’ve likely ended up calling a professional to sort out the mess…

Well, the same holds true for getting your website picked up by search engines.

When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), sometimes it’s best to leave it to experts.

To save you a headache, this month, we sat down with our SEO and Google Ads specialist to break down what SEO is and why investing in it can be one of the best marketing decisions you could make for your business.

Here’s what he had to say…

Q: Why do you believe SEO is crucial to include in digital marketing strategies?

Joe Penrice: I might be biased, but I think SEO is the most important area of a digital marketing strategy. All other channels in digital marketing, at some point, feed into your website as you want to drive enquiries. By including SEO as part of your digital marketing strategy, you essentially make sure your website is optimised to receive traffic from every channel.

Whether this is through the copy you have, the design of the website or the speed and loading time of a page, these are all factors considered in SEO which should be correct before you start to push other channels. SEO has no limits on the number of keywords you can target and how you can target them, meaning there’s always more work to do and more customers to find!

Q: How can investing in SEO contribute to long-term business growth compared to other marketing tactics?

Joe: Typically, marketing your business involves a lot of investment, whether this is on ad spend for channels such as Google Ads or Meta Ads or campaigns to grow the visibility of your business online across social, email etc. SEO is slightly different.

That’s not to say it’s a cheap and foolproof solution, but in the long term, it can offer a much better Return On Investment.

SEO will help your website rank organically for the most important keywords. Whilst there’s still a cost involved in getting this right, it means that in the long term, the investment doesn’t continually rise as it would with other areas of marketing.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that SEO can actually reduce your spend on other channels. Once we’ve got your website bringing in lots of organic traffic and enquiries, you may choose to allocate less of a budget to other marketing channels, for example.

It also works hand-in-hand with Google Ads. If for whatever reason you needed to decrease your paid advertising budget suddenly, you’re not going to see a drastic drop in website traffic – as the SEO has been quietly working in the background.

Q: How does SEO help improve brand visibility and credibility online?

Joe: SEO is a really good tool for improving brand visibility and credibility. People might often see social channels as the best way to promote your brand, but creating really informative content can help build a lot of trust and interest in your brand.

Not everything in SEO has to be sales-focused, so blog articles, PR pieces, and guides can be really helpful for customers. This not only helps them trust your brand and find your company useful but also puts you front of mind when they decide to pay for your products or services.

Q: How can SEO impact lead generation and customer acquisition?

Joe: Much like other channels, SEO is used to improve the traffic you drive to your website through organic search. Ultimately, it’s a tool to find what your customers are searching for, which then informs you of the changes you make to your website to target those search terms.

If you do this right, it will lead to more traffic for the keywords you want to get found for and that’s where SEO works hand in hand with the design and user experience of your website to ensure it’s an easy journey for customers to then make an enquiry.

So, if done effectively, it’s one of the cheapest solutions to get yourself in front of clients for your most important keywords.

Q: How can you utilise SEO to complement and enhance different marketing channels such as social media or content marketing?

Joe: SEO isn’t just about the keywords you use, so having well-designed landing pages and using your website to host guides and informative blog articles can give you a lot of content for your other channels.

Google Ads is a big one where you’d want to make sure landing pages are built with both organic and paid search in mind and again, providing a good user experience for the customer when they reach your website.

Likewise, social and email can benefit massively from SEO by using existing content you have across the website to push in their channels. It’s also important to look at how this works the other way around. Social media and email marketing, in particular, are fantastic ways to drive traffic towards a particular page on your website, which can benefit SEO and improve your visibility in search results.

Q: What are some common misconceptions about SEO?

Joe: I think people tend to view SEO as just sticking some keywords on a website. While this is a big part of it, many people, even within the marketing industry, don’t really understand what SEO is.

Keywords are important, but it’s also about looking at the layout of your copy, how your website is structured, how many backlinks your website has, and, really importantly, how the website is designed to improve speed and usability.

Google has over 200 ranking factors, so it’s not really a case of doing it yourself or being able to do it on your own.

Q: How do you measure the ROI from SEO initiatives, and what are the KPIs you would use to track success?

Joe: There’s no ad spend on organic search which is the beauty of using it to improve your website. When using a marketing agency or different SEO tools, this can give you a clearer idea of return on investment as to how much you’re investing and what you get back from it.

However, as said before, organic search is around much more than just driving enquiries, it’s about improving your brand visibility, building trust and also creating content and landing pages for your other channels.

Some of the best KPIs I like to use for tracking success are Clicks, Impressions, Click-Through Rate and Average Position. These can all be found in Google Search Console and basically give an overview of the number of keywords you are targeting and how well you perform for each. Bounce/engagement rate is another KPI as it essentially shows how relevant your landing page is to what customers are looking for.

Investing in SEO offers numerous long-term benefits that can significantly impact your business’s growth, visibility, and credibility. By understanding and implementing effective SEO strategies, you can ensure a higher return on investment and a more robust online presence.

At Root Fifty-Two, we offer SEO and digital marketing services dedicated to boosting your business’s online presence. If you’re ready to enhance your brand, we have the talent, expertise, and passion to make it happen.

Contact us at 01282 911910 or send us a message here.