How to Build an SEO Strategy that Fuels Your Entire Sales Funnel

CPG brands looking for sales acceleration in the new year know that a full-funnel approach to media strategy is a must.   And a smart media strategy begins with building strong SEO.  Bold SEO Strategist Jon Lightfoot explains why your brand should make SEO that powers your whole sales funnel - from awareness to purchase and beyond.

How SEO Supports Full Funnel Marketing

SEO guides brands through the marketing funnel, shaping customer journeys at every stage. In the awareness phase, it heralds your brand via search visibility and social media reach. In the consideration phase, SEO assists research and evaluation with valuable content, long-tail keywords, and user-generated content. Long-tail keywords are vital as customers refine their searches. SEO acts as a guiding hand, nurturing the path to conversion. In the final conversion stage, SEO optimizes landing pages, presenting compelling content, persuasive CTAs, and transparent pricing. It ensures these elements are easily discoverable, facilitating smooth navigation towards a "yes" from potential customers. These roles underscore the pivotal role of SEO in full-funnel marketing.  Let’s take a closer look at SEO through the entire marketing funnel.

Awareness Stage: In this stage, SEO powers the discovery of your brand and products via customer searches and social media engagement. For example, a well-executed SEO strategy for an organic skincare company (let’s call them PureBotanix) would ensure that when someone searches for "natural skincare products" or "organic skincare solutions" on Google, your website appears prominently in the search results. 

Let's say PureBotanix shares informative blog posts on their website about the benefits of organic skincare on your brand's social media pages. Effective SEO can help these posts reach a broader audience by optimizing social media content, using relevant hashtags, and encouraging social sharing. As a result, users interested in skincare topics come across your posts and associate your brand with their skincare concerns. 

This initial interaction plants the seed of awareness and triggers the first touchpoint in the customer's journey down the marketing funnel.

Consideration Stage: During this phase of the marketing funnel, shoppers research and evaluate their options before making a purchasing decision. They compare products, read reviews and recommendations, and narrow down to their top choices.

• Relevant, high-quality content that should address common questions and concerns.
• Longtail keyword strategy to harness specificity and make your brand and offerings more visible.
• Comprehensive user-generated content (UGC) on your site, including comments, images, videos, reviews, or other media, that is created and contributed by users or customers rather than by your brand.
• A website with excellent user experience (UX) that loads quickly and is mobile-friendly contributes to a positive user experience.

By providing valuable information, aiding in decision-making, and making the user experience seamless, SEO helps ensure that individuals in the consideration phase are well-informed and inclined to move down the funnel toward the conversion phase. This is where the strength of long-tail keywords becomes crucial as shoppers hone in on what they need and get more specific with their searches.  In the consideration phase, your site’s user-generated content, like images, videos, reviews, and testimonials, can help keep shoppers moving down the sales funnel.

Conversion Stage: It's time to get that sale, and SEO plays a pivotal role.  In this stage, SEO means creating a supportive ecosystem for shoppers on the verge of purchasing. To effectively drive that final "yes" from customers, a well-optimized conversion landing page should include several key elements:

• Compelling and relevant content that reaffirms the product's value addresses common objections and highlights its unique selling points.
• Persuasive and concise calls to action (CTAs) that guide users to make the purchase.
• Clear and transparent pricing information.

SEO ensures that these elements are not only present but are also well-structured and easily discoverable, making it easier for potential customers to navigate the conversion path and, ultimately, say "yes" to your offer.

Critical Efforts to Build a Full Funnel SEO Strategy

Each layer of an SEO strategy plays a vital role in securing your online presence and ensuring your brand's visibility to potential customers. When constructing your strategy, each step should focus on the phases of your customer's experience. Starting with meticulous keyword research that aligns with your customers' search intent to on-page optimization and seamless user experiences - all in service to the connection between your products and customers.

Keyword Research: A brand needs to conduct comprehensive keyword research to identify relevant keywords related to how shoppers discover and interact with your products.  Let’s use the organic skincare brand example again to illustrate:

Product description, specific benefits, ingredients

• Organic skincare products
• Natural skincare solutions
• Chemical-free skincare
• Eco-friendly skincare
• Cruelty-free skincare
• Hypoallergenic skincare
• Vegan skincare

Branded Keywords

• PureBotanix skincare
• PureBotanix organic skincare
• PureBotanix beauty products
• PureBotanix skincare collection
• PureBotanix botanical serums
• PureBotanix eco-friendly skincare
• PureBotanix natural moisturizers

Value Proposition Keywords

• Radiant skin
• Youthful complexion
• Hydrated and glowing
• Clear and blemish-free
• Soothes sensitive skin
• Evens skin tone
• Minimizes fine lines

Brands should also focus on long-tail keywords that align with user intent and your products.   This will tap into high search interest for your products.

On-Page Optimization:  Optimize the product and collection pages for all products.  Select a few of your products to further showcase to create a destination for your paid activity or organic search.  Well-optimized pages:

• Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your content, including the title, headings, body text, and meta titles, descriptions, and headings.
• Include high-quality, original, and valuable content that provides information or solves problems for your audience.
• Build internal linking between relevant pages on your website to keep users engaged and help search engines understand the structure of your site.
• Optimize images by compressing them for faster loading times and adding descriptive alt tags for accessibility and SEO.
• Create clean and descriptive URLs that reflect the content of the page. 

Content Ideation & Creation: Your brand needs a plan to create informative and engaging content around your product's benefits and related topics. 

This could include blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos. Promote the use of your products as a means for consumers to be their own heroes within this content.

Technical SEO: Be sure to conduct regular site audits to identify and fix technical SEO issues, such as page load speed, broken links, and crawlability. 

This will ensure continued proper use of those meta tags, headers, image alts, and schema markup you built.

Link Building/PR:  Build high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources in your category and complementary categories.

Partner with influencers, bloggers, and experts in and complementary to your category to create content and gain mentions.

These critical efforts will work synergistically with your paid efforts - enhancing each other’s effectiveness and driving better overall results!

KPIs to Monitor Success

Staying at the forefront of SEO success is a fundamental objective for CPG brands seeking to enhance their online visibility and reach a wider audience. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics that provide insights into the performance of your SEO strategies. This section will delve into the essential KPIs brands should employ to monitor their SEO success. 

Organic Sessions: Monitor the growth in organic sessions on your website and product pages. 

Keyword Rankings: Track the rankings of key target keywords related to brain health supplements, Neuriva's products, and semantic topic clusters, as well as GEO-based terms.

Conversion Rate: Measure the conversion rate for those who engage with your website and product pages, add items to their cart, or fully convert with product purchases.  

Backlink Quality: Monitor the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site, ensuring they come from reputable sources, contain strong domain authority, have low spam scores, and stem from aged, unique domains.

Timeline for Success

SEO results can vary based on several factors, including competition, website authority, and the quality of your SEO efforts.

High sales velocity CPG categories can be extremely crowded and competitive, so it may take several months to start seeing results. Here’s a general look at when you can expect progress:

Months 1-3: Keyword research, on-page optimization, and technical SEO improvements. Initial improvements in rankings may start to appear.  

Months 3-6: Content marketing efforts begin to gain traction. You may see more organic traffic and improved keyword rankings.

Months 6-12: Continued content creation, link building, and user experience enhancements. Conversion rates may start to improve.

Beyond 12 Months: Ongoing SEO efforts to maintain and improve rankings. 

Getting Started

Building a strong SEO foundation is crucial, and BOLD Strategies is here to help you achieve your sales goals in 2024. As a trusted partner with a proven track record, we specialize in guiding brands through the complexities of SEO. Our expertise can make a significant difference whether you're in the awareness, consideration, or conversion stage. 

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of your SEO strategy and power your entire sales funnel?  To start your journey to SEO success, request a free consultation and SEO analysis from BOLD’s SEO experts. Let's work together to drive your brand's online visibility, engage your target audience, and boost your sales.