According to Gartner, 86% of high growth companies leveraged SEO as one of their marketing strategies. Deploying an SEO strategy, or not, was the biggest difference between the marketing strategies of high growth and nongrowth companies. (Channels, Content Types and CTAs That Tech CEOs of Growth Organizations Invest in for Lead Generation, 30 January 2023)
Image from Channels, Content Types and CTAs That Tech CEOs of Growth Organizations Invest in for Lead Generation, 30 January 2023
A major benefit to effective SEO for your Reprint campaign is that it requires less ongoing effort compared to other commonly utilized, proactive content marketing strategies like posting or advertising on social media, email marketing, and Sales Enablement activities.
Optimizing your Reprint landing page and blog posts for organic search can drive website traffic and qualified lead generation for no additional cost.
Why search has an advantage over other channels
Prospects who are actively searching for resources to educate themselves or help solve a problem are already in "information seeking" mode, compared to a LinkedIn post or email which might reach your audience when they are distracted or rushed, and not in the right mindset to read a detailed and informative analyst report.
If you optimize your copy to answer or address your audience's common questions or challenges, your content will reach them exactly when they need it.
Below are best practices for SEO that are especially applicable to Reprint-related marketing content, including your Reprints landing page.
Image from Gartner's Guide to Website Redesign: Plan, Deploy, Maintain and Optimize Your Digital Experience (Nicole Greene and Kassi Socha, December 2022)
Content MUST Be Customer Centric
To reach tech buyers actively trying to solve a problem, your content needs to make it clear the Reprint contains valuable information that will help your prospects.
Regardless of whether your organization is featured in the report, ensure your blogs and landing pages emphasize the value of the overall report for the tech buyer - make it clear what information the report contains and who/how it helps.
The more high-quality copy you put on the page that answers these questions, the more likely it is to match a user's search intent and appear as a top search result.
In addition to optimizing your Reprint landing page for SEO, creating report-related blogs will give your organization more opportunities to appear in the search results related to your potential buyers' problems.
A best practice for creating report-related blogs to aide your SEO strategy is to author blogs that focus on specific topics within the broader report, or emphasize related keywords to the focus of the main Reprinted report (cluster keyword strategy).
Include a call-to-action ("learn more" or "read more") that links back to your Reprint landing page within your blogs.
When creating blogs that promote or quote from the report, ensure your copy clearly conveys the answer to common questions or challenges your prospective buyers might be searching for. Learn more in our article Use Reprints to Enhance Your Content Creation.
Research the Top Questions, Problems, and Challenges Your Potential Audience Has
Successful Reprints clients have thoroughly researched the common questions their target audience has and the pressing business problems they're trying to solve. Your product team has also likely done research on these topics. Their findings can be utilized to inform your SEO strategy.
A better understanding of your potential customers' pain points will also ensure you select a report that will drive greater lead generation and/or brand awareness.
Your landing page, blogs, and other content should primarily focus on the most common questions and problems your target audience has in order to capture the largest possible audience. Once the most common topic is addressed, you can create additional blogs or content focused on secondary or less common use cases and problems to capture those audiences as well.
Emphasizing how your Reprint will provide them the answers they seek will increase the likelihood they will fill out a lead generation form in order to obtain the report.
Don't Overlook Technical SEO
The most common mistake that prevents organizations from capturing organic search traffic is that they inadvertently have their landing page set to NOT appear within Google search results. This is called a noindex tag. Ensure that when your landing page is created that it is discoverable by Google and other major search engines.
There are other elements of technical SEO that can maximize the traffic captured from organic search results - webpage settings and "backend" text fields that significantly factor into helping Google understand what information your landing page contains so that your page can be aligned to searches. These text fields are called metadata.
Make sure the copy in all of the following metadata fields is contains keywords aligned to the key questions and challenges of your target audience:
Most important Metadata Fields
Headings and sub headings
Page title
Image alt tags
Page URL
Hyperlinked text
Given the capabilities of modern search engines, everyday natural language will be sufficient to maximize your SEO traffic and help Google understand what information your landing page contains.
You may also want to work with someone on your web team to audit website elements such as:
Noindex tags (these tell search engines not to index your web page - only deploy if you want to hide pages from search)
Site and/or page load speed
SERP copy/text for your page
Website crawlability
If you wish to learn more, review Google's SEO Starter Guide.