SEO for IT

IT-companies belong to the B2B – “business to business. This means that the approach to SEO promotion will be different from the common practice. Semantics will have to be thoroughly worked out, attention will have to be paid to optimization of content and website functionality, expert copywriting will have to be ordered, tools and technologies will have to be selected to increase ranking in niche requests, and trust in a web resource will have to be increased for search engines.

SEO issues are relevant to optimizers, owners of IT companies and promotion departments, i.e. those to whom it is important to make a company (product, service) get noticed in the oversaturated, highly competitive market.

A promotion contract should formalize the communication between customers and SEOs. This minimizes the risk of errors. Any uncoordinated change on the part of SEO, for example, to update the design of the site, can nullify efforts to promote, as a result of which the web page will sag in traffic and positions within search engines.

In favor of the choice of search engine promotion are two factors:

• The number of search engine queries is constantly increasing as users use search engines to solve their problems and get any information.
• SERPs by output take into account the usefulness of the information for the visitor, placing it in a way that answers the question as relevantly as possible.

This means that SEO takes into account the user’s interests and their choice of the most useful and informative page. Search engine algorithms only adjust to this decision.

For IT companies, the value of SEO is priceless. All competitors have a strong presence on the Internet, using the same techniques and promotion tools. Customers in the niche are technically educated and have high requirements for content. The channel allows you to generate maximum leads for IT-themed companies, but if the site disappoints users, the leads will come to naught.

The task of SEO is to meet the requirements of search engines, to make them your partners, not to fight them. Invested in search engine optimization finances delayed start working for the company, bringing profits only after 6-12 months from the start. This is a long-term investment in development.

Peculiarities of SEO-promotion for IT

• The need to stabilize the flow of organic traffic.. Semantics will need to be worked out, expert articles created, site functionality optimized, tools used to accurately hit industry queries, increase user loyalty to the product (service) offered and search engine trust in the site.

• Competence. The quality of solution of problems of search engine promotion for IT services depends on the experience and qualification of SEO specialists, as well as on the reliability of partners. The site should necessarily have certificates, lists of clients and partners, realized stories. They confirm the professionalism of the company engaged in search engine optimization.
• Quality of content. The trick to SEO promotion for IT companies is specificity: it is necessary to demonstrate mastery of the topic, clearly describe the details and subtleties of the product or service being sold. Quality content allows to increase the link mass, showing expertise not only on the site and blog, but also on third-party sites.
• Keys. Selecting keywords for SEO promotion in IT SaaS services means a deep dive into the subject. Each stage of search engine optimization requires different queries – from high-frequency (“cloud providers of Russia”) to specific ones (“cloud VK”).

SEO promotion for IT outsourcing or promotion in IT SaaS technologies differ slightly, being aimed at increasing targeted applications, increasing relevant traffic and ROI of marketers.

SEO algorithm for IT

• Defining goals, how to achieve them, and KPIs. The top place in search results does not always bring traffic and increase sales. That is why it is better to assign the goals of promotion to the growth of organic traffic, lead generation, sales conversion, brand awareness, creating a positive reputation in the online space, attracting key clients, building continuous communication with clients, etc. The goal should be clear, achievable and measurable. Only after that can you develop a strategy to achieve it.

• An important step in search engine promotion is the collection of semantics. It is necessary to do market research to determine the portrait and intent of the ideal customer. This knowledge is tied to the goals of SEO. Depending on them, emphasis is placed on selecting informational queries, shifting the focus to transactional or commercial search intent of the user.

It is important to identify keywords that are relevant to the audience, relevant to the business, and are not by their frequency ruinous to the company. The more tools you use to collect SEO, the better. In this case you should not blindly trust the artificial intelligence, human experience and intuition have not been canceled.

All target keywords are distributed by SEO-promotion goals, user queries and priorities.

• Once you have a semantic core, you can create a content plan. To “make friends” with search engine algorithms, you have to use only useful and unique content of the highest level. Knowing search queries makes it easier to answer the question of “what users want.

At this stage it is necessary to find out who is involved in content development, to create topics of articles according to their intension and priority of key words, to outline possible channels and frequency of publications.

It is necessary to control the efficiency of content marketing. Any correction of the strategy is necessarily based on the evaluation of key SEO indicators.

• Link Profile. For the search engine the quality of links, the authority of the donor site is more important than the number of incoming links. Since not every IT-resource can build up a link mass from good donors, you should focus on improving the quality of your own content.

The better, more informative and useful the content is, the more likely it is to be referenced. For this to happen faster, each article posted on your own web resource should contain information that allows you to link to it. Adding references raises the importance of the article, because the indication of the original source means the reliability of the information.

Including numbers, practical advice, facts, data sets in the texts are all opportunities to acquire inbound links.

For backlinks, you need to promote content. When it gets noticed, the site will get more organic traffic. Backlinks improve rankings and form an ecosystem for traffic generation.

• Internal optimization of a web page has two purposes – to ensure indexing and to generate user interest in the site. The longer the user stays on the web resource, the more favorable the ranking.

When optimizing a site design is adapted to different mobile devices, downloading speed increases, structured data is introduced, the interface is improved, and the quality of content display of all kinds is increased. Testing of the site is performed on different types of devices.

Technical optimization should be performed regularly, without stopping there.

• A site audit to evaluate the effectiveness of SEO. Search engine promotion strategy is designed for the long term. It takes at least six months to reach the top, more often – a year. To audit a number of performance indicators. On the technical side must comply with the correct indexation, download speed of 3 seconds or less, optimized for mobile devices, the presence of meta tags and alt tags for illustrations.

In text optimization the emphasis is placed on relevance, uniqueness, internal linking, compliance with user intent, literate texts.

Performance indicators are organic and referral traffic, ranking changes, improvement of the link profile, content demonstrating the extremes of behavioral factors, conversion.

The cost of search engine optimization

The price of SEO-promotion for IT cannot be fixed. It depends on:

• The goals set (100 or 1000 visitors to the site daily);
• The level of competition in the niche of promotion (the presence of major players pulls traffic, increasing the budget for optimization);
• the type of site (online store, commercial or informational page).

The main costs come from:

• Content (texts, illustrations, videos). It must be ordered from professionals and experts. Bad content can “kill” even the most promising idea.
• SEO specialists. The work of agency employees (SEO, analysts, marketers) is more expensive than the services of a freelancer, but the conversion from the site as a result is higher.
• Developers. The more changes, older design – the higher the budget for additional work.
• Guest posting. The budget depends on the amount of content posted on third-party sites.
• Generation pages. Necessary for online stores.

Saving on SEO is impossible. Competent SEO emphasizes uniqueness against competitors and raises to the top of search results. There are no secret techniques: only the quality of content, the natural growth of the link profile and the constant work to improve the site.