Three Reasons Why SEO Doesn’t Work For MSPs

Many MSPs believe that, as long as they have some keywords, they have an SEO plan in place. Moreover, they feel that once they have an SEO plan in place, they are done and if they don’t rise in placement then SEO doesn’t work. The reality is SEO isn’t a strategy, it’s a tactic, and SEO requires the support of other tactics in order to be successful. Here are three reasons why SEO might not be working for your MSP.

1. You Didn’t Develop Your Local Brand

All search is local and Google treats search queries as if they end with “...near me”. This is why it is critical you develop your MSP’s local presence organically and with authenticity. Older SEO tactics consisted of merely adding your location to your titles or the more intensive black hat tactic of keyword spamming your city or town in every paragraph of your website. This was designed to catch Google’s attention via keyword quantity. Those practices have been abandoned in preference of keyword quality in the form of content.

As an MSP, localization for you requires your website reflects that you understand the needs of your local area businesses. This means going beyond just having your city in your title or jammed into your content. It requires that you actively engage your community by showing them that you are one of them and can solve their issues. The engagement can take the form of social media posts acknowledging local events, featuring case studies from local businesses on your website, and providing press releases to local media sources.

Modern SEO localization strategy utilizes a variety of online marketing tactics to promote your MSP services to your local customers as solutions to their IT problems.

Check out some ways to have your MSP turn up as a local search result.

2. Your Website Doesn’t Have Local Connections

Building engagement in a post-coronavirus business environment is certainly a challenge for many MSPs. However, you can still market during COVID-19. In fact, you must continue to market your services if you want to continue to generate leads.

Previously, SEO tactics were based solely on the “power” of the keywords you had on your site, which (of course) led to fraud and abuse and is why for the past two decades Google has changed how they value keywords. If this information is new to you, now is the time to rethink how you use keywords and focus on developing your website’s E-A-T potential.

What is E-A-T?

E-A-T is the acronym that explains Google’s ranking process and how they determine which websites to provide as a result of a search inquiry.

E (Expert), A (Authoritative), and T (Trustworthy) are the traits Google looks for when determining your MSP website’s value. Websites with high E-A-T ratios tend to have better search results. The best way to achieve this is to show yourself and/or your business as an expert in your industry. One method to increase your E-A-T is to build links and connections to the other businesses in your community or to use your website to provide visitors with solid and valuable information.

For more information about E-A-T, take a look at Google’s general guidelines.

Some basic steps you can take to develop local connections to your website include:

Chamber of Commerce:

Join your local Chamber of Commerce and have them place a link (otherwise known as a backlink) from their website to yours. Better yet, provide them content in the form of a guest blog post or even a video or webinar providing local businesses the opportunity to learn something of value.

Testimonials and reviews:

Gaining testimonials and reviews, also known as social proof, are considered very valuable when it comes to reinforcing your MSP’s local connections. Just as word-of-mouth recommendations are great for lead generation, so are online reviews, which communicate your business’ trustworthiness and authority.

In fact, word-of-mouth marketing is important even during social distancing.

Google My Business:

Google My Business has become one of the ubiquitous tasks a business does. However, there are a wealth of features it can provide your business, besides listing your address and time of operation.

Google My Business will allow you to create posts that can feature your blogs, or offer localized events or special offers. It is the place where reviews of your services will live. Finally, Google uses your provided information to determine whether or not to provide your MSP’s location as the result of a local search.

This is why it is critical that you claim and keep your Google My Business account up-to-date.

3. You Don’t Use SEO To Market Your MSP

SEO is a tactic of marketing, but not marketing itself. While on-page SEO, which includes website speed, metadata, and even website design are critical components, you need to focus on more than the ‘under the hood’ issues to benefit from your SEO.

Modern SEO strategy has grown beyond considering having the ‘right’ keyword as the driving force. In reality, effective SEO requires combining different sources of information to develop an effective marketing message, providing potential leads the information and confidence to contact your business.

For example, Google Analytics and Search Console can provide insight into how users interact with your website and what services they are interested in. If you work with an SEO professional, you should receive a monthly report which tells you the keywords, queries, pages, traffic that performed, and an explanation of what the data means, along with suggestions for improvement.

How To Use SEO To Market Your MSP

The most effective way for SEO marketing to benefit your lead generation is to use the information acquired from your SEO to glean the intent of your visitors and provide the information they are looking for. In fact, user intent is one of the main metrics Google uses when determining whether or not to show a page as a search result.

It benefits your ability to drive traffic to your site and convert leads if you better understand what your audience is looking for and ensure they can find it.

Basic Steps to Use SEO as a Marketing Tool

When you receive your SEO report, check which terms, pages, or impressions are generating the most traffic. This should be the basis of your digital marketing campaign. For example, if your data is showing “cloud migration” as highly searched-for them, then you should use your analytics to examine how your searchers are responding to your website. Are they clicking through to additional pages on your site or are they bouncing?

Giving you the ability to understand and respond to what the data shows you is what SEO is designed for. Once you have the information your SEO provides, it’s time to check if your website is able to respond to the intent of your visitor. In our example, you’d check to see if it provided relevant information about cloud migration.

Some steps to provide the information potential leads are interested in as indicated by your SEO report would be:

• Add a call to action about cloud migration to your homepage which not only informs but navigates to your cloud migration service page.
• Add a contact form to your cloud migration service page, so any interested party can contact you (don’t forget to offer a deliverable).
• Create custom content featuring cloud migration and share it
• Contact your local chamber or media source and provide them with a press release discussing cloud migration
• Be sure to discuss cloud migration on your social media platforms
• Email your lead list information about cloud migration to keep it top of mind

What these multiple steps are doing is reinforcing your marketing message by ‘touching’ your audience in a variety of methods using a well-established marketing technique known as the Rule of Seven.

SEO Does Work

SEO can work for your MSP, but only if you’re willing to invest the time and provide it with the resources to let it.

Truth is, as an MSP you’re busy trying to close deals and get projects completed and you may not have the time to give to your SEO. That’s understandable, and we’re here to help.

JoomConnect has a variety of services to help you make the most of your resources and help you get your message out. Our content marketing packages can help improve your MSP content and assist in delivering the high-quality content which drives traffic to your site, or update your older website with a modern, responsive MSP website designed for MSPs.

Supercharge your MSP marketing with one or more of our many other service offerings including Social Media as a Service, Brochure Kits, Animated Videos, and more, to really take your MSP marketing strategy to the next level. Call 888-546-4384 today to learn more!