Search engine optimisation (SEO) is crucial to any marketing strategy if you want to increase discoverability and traffic to your website. However, our ‘Practice what you Preach’ agency marketing benchmark report has highlighted the challenges faced by agencies in matching their areas of expertise with the search topics they target.
When scoring over 100 agencies across the UK, we also ran their homepage URL through a piece of profile software to understand what search engines believe the websites to be about, based on their domain authority scores and Topical Trust Flow. Our report found that no agencies had two closely matching topics to their agency specialism or industry niche. Only 8% of agencies had one closely matching topic and 34% had only one somewhat matching topic. This suggests agencies need to be more aware of how their content affects their search engine rankings.
One of the main reasons for this mismatch is that agencies often create content that answers questions related to their clients' customer’s needs rather than their own. This content may be informative and valuable to clients, but it can also misidentify the agency in the eyes of search engine robots and text crawlers. These crawlers are designed to identify keywords and phrases that match a website's content, so if an agency's website has more content related to their clients than themselves, it can negatively impact their search engine rankings.
To combat this issue, agencies can take steps to ensure their their content aligns with their areas of expertise so their website is categorised correctly:
Identify keywords: Agencies should identify the keywords and phrases that their target audience is searching for, and ensure that these are incorporated into their website's content. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public or Ubersuggest to find out what these keywords might be.
Develop content strategies: Agencies should develop content strategies that focus on their areas of expertise and industry niche. We discovered 46% of agencies lacked a coherent content strategy within our recent research. This content should be informative, engaging, and provide value to their target audience but should be balanced to ensure that it also explores the value that the agency can bring, using the identified keywords.
Create landing pages: Agencies can create landing pages that focus on specific areas of their expertise, services, products or industry niches. These landing pages should be optimised for specific keywords and phrases, and should provide detailed information on the agency's capabilities, pull in case studies and drive deeper into your site. If you have a particular sector that you want to work with, hosting content tailored specifically for them on a separate page to your site may be beneficial. Optimise these landing pages for conversion and promote it across social media.
Optimise website structure: Agencies should ensure their website's structure is optimised for search engine crawlers. This includes using appropriate meta tags, page titles, and descriptions, as well as optimising URLs and internal links.
Monitor and adjust: Agencies must regularly monitor their website's performance and adjust their SEO strategies as needed. This includes monitoring keyword rankings, analysing website traffic, and making changes to content and website structure as necessary.
Chime Agency partners with some brilliant SEO agencies and experts. If you’re looking for help with SEO specifically or your content and marketing plans more broadly, why not organise a virtual coffee and a chat to see how we can assist you.
Download our Practice What You Preach report
Agency marketing is hard. Our research with over 100 UK agencies proves it. Download the report to learn how to become your own best case study.
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