What is Discoverability?
Discoverability is the ability of your brand or website to become found on the internet. Traditionally, when you think about being “discoverable” or “findable”, you think about our traditional marketing channels: organic via SEO, paid advertising, and PR.
Over the past 3 to 5 years, the search marketing landscape has drastically changed and the importance of being discoverability has become more and more important. Directive has taken a deeper look into user behavior and the customer journey, and the traditional marketing channels do not necessarily seem to be the best way to generate qualified leads or revenue.
In fact, the more traditional lead generation channels can be the least effective. Paid search can generate unqualified leads, while LinkedIn can generate the best leads (and vice versa). SEO can cast too wide of a net, while strategic link placement can be the best channel for revenue generation.
For those keywords that do generate high volumes of leads and revenue, you must double down and be discoverable on every aspect of that SERP – which introduces us to a concept that dominates the search marketing space: Share of SERP.
What is Share of SERP?
Share of SERP is the practice of dominating a search engine results page in Google by taking all of the most valuable queries – we call this gaining “share of SERP”.
The point of gaining share of SERP is to maximizing the number of places in the SERP that a single user is capable of interacting with your brand. You take a larger market share of clicks with the more number of valuable positions you own.
For example, when you google “Top Log Management Software”, you find 4 ad spots, followed by 10 organic results, 3 more ads, and two related search sections that contain searches around “log analysis tool” and “infrastructure monitoring tools”.
Of these 10 organic results, all 10 are third-party review websites, so if you are a log management software company, it is nearly impossible for your website to rank for this keyword without writing a review blog. With this, you have two options:
- Do nothing, or (the better option)…
- Get your website featured in as many of these pages (as well as results on page 2 and 3) as you can
Even further, you can run ads to ensure that when users search this keyword, your brand shows up as a top 4 result above the fold.
By being featured in all of the third-party review pages and being featured as a top ad, you are gaining share of SERP for the keyword “top log management software”, maximizing your ability to become discoverable by your target audience.
How Can I Improve My Brand’s Discoverability?
Discoverability is about being found in the right place and in front of the right audience. Ensuring that you target the correct audience, you must continuously test different placements with various different keywords. Here are 4 tactics to strategically improve your brand’s discoverability:
1. Targeted Organic and Paid Placements
When you take a look at various paid and organic lists in the SERP, there are many options for you to showcase your brand or products. The cost of the ad placement at the top of the SERP versus the cost of being featured in the organic articles should influence your decision of where to allocate your budget.
If we take a look at the previous example about “top log management software”, you may not have the opportunity to rank organically for the keyword, but you do have the opportunity to pay for one of seven ad placements.
Even further, you have the opportunity to be featured in as many as 10 organic results. Depending on the intent of the search query, this could maximize your ability to gain discoverability to your target audience.
2. Guest Posting
Guest posting has been known to be a valuable link building tool because of its ability to gain backlinks with keyword-targeted anchor text. However, it can also be very valuable in creating a high volume of brand awareness to your targeted audience.
For example, if you are a log management company looking to increase your brand awareness to enterprise businesses in the tech space, a backlink from Tech Crunch is valuable, but the exposure to enterprise tech holds even greater value.
Partnering with the right websites with help create a continuous flow of links coming and exposure to your target audience.
3. Content. Content. Content… (but with a caveat)
As we have been told time and time again, content is king. But this is only true with a few caveats:
- Create high-quality content
- Create content that targets your audience
- Create content that engages your target audience
Every marketer has been trapped into seeing keywords with a large monthly search volume; however, empty traffic to your website does not necessarily equal potential traffic. You must be able to create good content that connects with the intent of the user.
For example, if you are targeting enterprise businesses that are looking for digital marketing services, writing a blog that is targeting the keyword “What is Digital Marketing?” most likely is not going to reach them.
The intent of the SERP is educational and the awareness level of the user is very low. A better option would be “digital marketing services”, where the intent is at the services and solution level, and the awareness is high.
Why Should I Care About Discoverability?
The best way to champion your website and brand online is through becoming discoverable by as many people as possible. Although the eventual end goal is to generate revenue, there is value in strategic brand placement.
When you think about traditional media advertisements, large companies pay sometimes more than $5 million for a 30-second advertisement just because of the number of eyes that are viewing and engaging with their brand.
When you think about search marketing, you have to approach your strategy the same way. It is less about how many pieces of content you can pump out for the sake of writing content, and more about the ability for your brand to become discoverable by your target audience at the right stage in the buyer’s cycle.
Not only does Directive makes your brand discoverable, it makes it nearly impossible to miss. Our goal is to make sure that you are discoverable at every step of the funnel, and more visible compared to your competitors.
Looking to make your business discoverable? Get a free custom proposal today.
