What Is SEO Marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing is a branch of digital marketing that focuses on improving a site’s visibility in organic (unpaid) search results from traditional search engines like Google.
This improved visibility in search results can be in the form of:
- Higher rankings (listing positions) on search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Appearing in SERP features like AI Overviews, the local pack, and the People Also Ask (PAA) box
What Are the Benefits of SEO Marketing?
The benefits of SEO marketing include getting more direct and indirect traffic to your site, which can drive conversions.
Case in point:
Our marketing and SEO techniques help the Semrush blog get an estimated 200.4K monthly organic search visits from the U.S., according to Semrush’s Organic Research tool.
This traffic would have cost us around $1.1M per month if we had gotten it by paying for search ads instead.
Doing SEO for marketing purposes can also improve visibility among AI chatbot users. Because many of the techniques that improve SEO can also help you appear in AI chatbot responses to grow brand awareness.
And what could this increased brand awareness lead to?
More traffic. And conversions.
What Are the Main Types of SEO Marketing?
The main types of SEO marketing are:
- On-page SEO: Improvements made to the content itself, i.e., “on the page.” One example is creating content that incorporates relevant keywords.
- Off-page SEO: Techniques to improve search engine visibility that happen “off the page”—meaning not on your site. Getting backlinks (links from other sites to yours) is a common off-page SEO tactic.
- Technical SEO: Technical improvements to your site, especially those that help search engines access your content. Common techniques include submitting an XML sitemap and improving page speed.
- Local SEO: Practices that boost your visibility for local and location-based searches. One of the best ways to improve local SEO is to optimize your Google Business Profile.
How to Do SEO Marketing
Here’s how to do SEO marketing:
1. Do Keyword Research
Do keyword research to discover keywords (search queries) your audience uses so you can create content that addresses their needs.
First, use a tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find keyword ideas.
Here’s how:
Open the tool and type a broad initial keyword relevant to you (called a seed keyword). For example, if you run a recipe blog, a relevant seed keyword could be “recipe.”
Enter your domain and target country. Then click “Search.”
The tool will return keyword suggestions based on your initial keyword, plus metrics like:
- Intent: The purpose of the search (e.g., to learn about a topic or research a product before buying it). Knowing the searcher’s intent helps you create content relevant to it.
- Volume: The keyword’s average number of monthly searches over the last 12 months. A higher search volume suggests higher interest in the topic, which you may want to capitalize on. But other marketers may think the same way, leading to more competition for these keywords.
- Potential traffic: The tool’s estimate of the number of monthly visits you may get if you optimize quality content for that keyword. The higher the estimate, the better.
- Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %): The tool’s estimate of how easily you may rank in the top 10 results for that keyword, expressed as a percentage out of 100%. The lower the percentage, the better.
Use these metrics to shortlist keywords to create content for.
While creating your content, add a relevant keyword to the title tag, H1 heading, other headings (if applicable), meta description, and body (especially in the introduction). Doing this signals to search engines that your content is relevant to this keyword so they can better match your content to it.
During your research, you may discover keywords relevant to content you’ve already published. Consider updating this content to target those keywords.
2. Create Quality Content
Quality content containing reliable and helpful information that addresses your audience’s needs is likely to rank higher in search results and be cited by AI chatbots more frequently.
Google considers content helpful and reliable if it meets criteria like:
- Containing original reporting and analysis
- Adding value instead of simply replicating content from other sources
- Being written or reviewed by subject matter experts
- Having very few (if any) spelling and grammatical errors
Need an example of quality content? Check out Wirecutter’s sleep mask review.
The review impressed me because it:
- Shares Wirecutter’s testing methodology, including how it relied on multiple testers, researched more than 50 sleep masks, and tested 14 masks
- Provides details of how Wirecutter staff tested the masks, like taking them on multiple long-haul flights and wearing them daily
- Is regularly updated, as seen from wording like “One tester, who tried the Alaska Bear sleep mask in 2020 and again in 2024 …”
- Contains high-quality photos of testers wearing the masks rather than brand-supplied stock photos. This further demonstrates that Wirecutter staff tested the masks instead of relying on existing information.
And I’m not the only one who found the review useful. Others trust Wirecutter’s recommendations, too.
3. Get Backlinks
Get backlinks from authoritative sites, as search engines may view these links as endorsements that can lead to higher rankings.
You may also get more traffic if people browsing the other sites click the links that take them to your content.
To get backlinks, publish link bait—content that naturally attracts links for being especially useful or shareworthy. Types of link bait include research studies and valuable free tools.
Here’s one example:
Time and Date AS’s time zone converter, which makes checking time differences among different cities and countries simple:
This free converter has about 211K backlinks from roughly 6K sites to date, according to Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.
After creating your link bait, promote that content.
For instance, look up people who run sites in your industry, share your link bait with them, and ask them to link to it if their audience will find it useful.
Doing this helps you get backlinks more quickly than waiting for others to discover and link to your content on their own.
Need ideas for sites to reach out to?
Try Semrush’s Link Building Tool. It generates a list of prospects based on your country, target keywords, and competitors.
The Link Building Tool also provides an Authority Score (a metric that conveys a website’s overall SEO strength and quality) and rating for each prospect. The higher these metrics, the more valuable a backlink from that prospect may be.
Use these metrics to shortlist prospects to promote your link bait to.
4. Enhance Your Site’s Technical Infrastructure
Enhance your site’s technical infrastructure so search engines can discover and rank your content more easily, which can lead to higher SERP and AI chatbot visibility.
Simple but effective enhancements include:
- Submitting an XML sitemap to search engines: An XML sitemap is a list of the pages you want search engines to display on SERPs. Submitting a sitemap helps search engines find and process your pages more effectively.
- Improving page speed: Pages that load fast provide a better user experience. And search engines tend to rank them higher. Improve page speed by taking actions like reducing your images’ file sizes.
- Fixing broken links: A broken link leads to an error page and is often caused by deleting a page or changing a URL. Broken links can stop search engines from discovering your site’s content, so replace or remove them.
Use a tool like Semrush’s Site Audit to routinely scan your site for technical issues so you can fix them promptly.
Once you’ve run a crawl, the tool will display a report of your site’s issues, organized by severity.
You’ll see the number of pages affected by each issue, plus suggestions for addressing it.
Click any issue to view the corresponding list of affected pages. Then, apply fixes to these pages.
To catch issues that crop up in the future, schedule daily or weekly audits that get sent to your email address.
5. Optimize Your Google Business Profile (for Local Businesses)
Optimizing your Google Business Profile increases the chances of Google displaying your business more prominently to Search and Maps users within relevant geographical areas.
Steps to take include:
- Claiming your business’s Google Business Profile if it already exists. Or creating a new one if it doesn’t.
- Updating your Business Profile to display accurate information on your business. This includes its address, hours, and contact details.
- Getting more good Google reviews. Your Business Profile displays your Google reviews, and Google tends to give highly rated businesses more visibility.
- Reviewing your Business Profile regularly to ensure it’s up to date
6. Track Your Site’s Search Performance
Track your site’s search performance to measure the outcome of your efforts and refine your SEO digital marketing strategy for even better results.
Performance metrics to measure include:
- Traditional search engine visibility: Your pages’ prominence on SERPs, as evaluated by their organic rankings and appearance in SERP features. Instead of manually Googling keywords to check your visibility, use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to get search visibility metrics in one convenient report.
- Organic traffic: The number of searchers who clicked your pages’ organic search listings to visit them. Google Analytics 4 offers detailed organic traffic reports, which you can filter by geographical region, device type, and more.
- AI search visibility: How often AI chatbots mention and cite your brand in their responses. Tools that help measure AI search visibility include the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit.
- Branded searches: These searches include your brand’s name and can indicate the level of awareness of and interest in your brand. Branded search volume tends to improve as people discover you via traditional search engines and AI chatbots. Track branded search with Semrush’s Organic Research tool.
Let’s say you discover an increase in branded search traffic, which suggests more people are looking for information on your brand.
Identify the branded keywords driving more traffic. Then, take action to meet searchers’ needs. Like publishing information that answers their questions about your offerings.
Get Started with SEO Marketing
Get started with SEO marketing using the six steps above. And invest in the right tools to make your SEO and marketing efforts easier.
Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is a particularly good option because it lets you find dozens—if not hundreds—of keywords to use for creating and optimizing content.
Try the Keyword Magic Tool for free today.