Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO...That No One's Talking About
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6 ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO... ...That No One’s Talking About 6 Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO (That No One’s Talking About) WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION? Marketing automation is a software designed to help businesses know their customer, then personalize, contextualize, communicate and optimize their content for that customer. Marketing automation tools allow businesses to create an entire website or microsite specifically geared toward capturing leads, organizing their contact data, and then regularly nurturing them with personalized emails and dynamic landing pages that speak directly to each contact’s unique details. WHO USES MARKETING AUTOMATION? More and more businesses, whether they have 5 employees or 5,000, turn to marketing to marketing automation (MA) as a way to grow their businesses. It can help them organize their sales contacts, deliver targeted content and service to those contacts and measure the results - all from one simple user interface. In fact, the adoption rate for marketing automation has grown rapidly over the past couple years, with 2015 statistics showing 59% of B2B Fortune 500 companies, and 68% of top-performing small businesses use marketing automation. verticalmeasures.com 6 Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO (That No One’s Talking About) SEO potential. And that’s not what you want to SO, WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? hear when making a big investment into a new platform. Marketers, salespeople and SEOs love the optimization, relationship building and On the other hand, when you implement a ROI attribution that marketing automation marketing automation tool properly, there delivers. It can also pose inherent challenges to are lots of SEO benefits largely having to traditional website optimization in ways many do with the kind of unparalleled data that companies may not have considered - because marketing automation can provide, namely: frankly, no one’s talking about them… until now. real-dollar conversion attribution to keywords and referral sources, specific intelligence into visitor behavior and content engagement, and insight into link-building targets and channel Marketing automation performance. can pose inherent All those SEO rewards come after implementation, when marketing automation is already in play, but it’s during the pre-game challenges to strategy sessions that companies need to carefully consider their SEO initiatives and traditional optimization technical capabilities, in order to select and implement a marketing automation system that in ways companies may won’t create SEO blocks ahead. not have considered. HOW TO CHOOSE AN SEO- FRIENDLY MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM It would be virtually impossible to know IS MARKETING AUTOMATION precisely what all 2,000 marketing technology products do or do not offer and what website BAD FOR SEO? optimization challenges they might pose, so rather than a brand vs. brand showdown, While marketing automation platforms the goal of this guide is to provide you with often provide valuable built-in Search Engine general scenarios you might encounter while Optimization tools and deep-dive data about comparison shopping, and arm you with the web content it houses, the technical questions to ask, features to pursue, and implementation of the software suite itself can possible compromises that can be made. create some SEO setbacks. With improper setup or an insufficient set of features (or reasonable workarounds), a website built on a marketing automation platform may never achieve its full verticalmeasures.com 6 Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO (That No One’s Talking About) LESS CONTROL = SKEPTICAL • No server access SEOs • No root directory access Marketing automation systems feature content management (CMS) and sometimes customer relationship management (CRM) control • No SQL database access panels that allow you to build a website on your primary domain (www.example.com) or a microsite on a subdomain (subdomain. • Limited control of the HTML example.com.) Either way, you can easily build dynamic landing pages and lead capture <head> source code on the forms, then score and nurture leads, trigger series of emails, and access reports - all from landing pages one management platform. In order to use MA software and its nifty tools, your website or microsite generally has to reside on the MA Lack of server access and control could be a provider’s server, along with all the other users’ deal-breaker when deciding whether or not to websites. implement a marketing automation system. If you can’t access the server, you may not be able To brand your website as your own and mask to make server-level or source file adjustments the marketing automation behind it, you to improve your Page Speed or international setup a CNAME with your domain registrar, targeting. If you can’t access the root directory and point it to the IP address issued by the and edit the .htaccess file to create URL MA system. For the non-technical reader, this redirects, you could end up with duplicate is like registering a vanity license plate to a content. If you can’t access the database, you particular car’s Vehicle Identification Number. may not be able to migrate your customer and All the public sees is the branded domain or content data to a new host without starting subdomain, while the underlying IP address from scratch, which can setback your traffic and belongs to the marketing automation system. ranking. If you can’t fully edit the HTML <head> element, you may get unwanted landing pages Normally, this kind of set up makes technically- unintentionally indexed in the search engines. savvy SEOs nervous. Unlike hosting your website someplace where you have complete control and access to the server, marketing TAKING BACK CONTROL automation systems typically don’t allow users control of the shared server. That difference The good news, however, is that some results in the following challenges: marketing automation systems have built- in ways to solve most, if not all, the SEO implications that come with completely placing your site in the MA system’s hands. Look for these features built into the marketing platform’s control panel: verticalmeasures.comverticalmeasures.com 6 Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO (That No One’s Talking About) • Content Delivery Network (a common feature) to speedily deliver images and files • A 301 and 302 redirect mapping tool • An area that allows you to add/append HTML or Javascript to the <head> • Export tools that allow you to completely extract your content and customer data for Bounce Rate migration These items may not be included in the publicly-available list of your prospective marketing automation suite’s feature list, so be sure to ask the sales rep or implementation specialist if the items are available, and talk through their solutions or alternative workarounds. website To help you further understand what to ask for and why, here are six areas of SEO that could with ways to increase Page Speed via browser be helped or hurt by marketing automation, caching or minifying scripts. They also might depending on the platform’s solutions for not be sophisticated enough to support each. Also listed are questions you should the hreflang meta tag or special characters. ask the marketing automation salesperson or Knowing your business and its needs will help implementation expert about their existing and you in deciding what you can live with and planned solutions (and whether you do them without, but Page Speed is an important SEO yourself or their technical support does them): ranking factor and shouldn’t be completely overlooked. SIX SEO MUST-HAVES Questions to ask: 1. Page Speed • “Can we follow Google’s Page Speed Page Speed is a well-known ranking factor, recommendations to compress resources so the faster you can render your pages and with gzip or deflate, leverage browser deliver your content to the end user, the better. caching, eliminate render-blocking code Bounce rate or “pogo sticking” should decrease above the fold, and minify Javascript and and user engagement should increase, and CSS?” you could very likely see an improvement in rankings. Page Speed and international • “If not, what solutions do you offer that targeting, which you’ll discover below, can can help with Page Speed, beyond using a be a casualty of marketing automation, since Content Delivery Network?” some MA systems are not currently equipped verticalmeasures.com 6 Ways Marketing Automation Can Hurt SEO (That No One’s Talking About) 2. Content Delivery Network The beauty of a marketing automation system is that it generally utilizes the CDN for near- One of the ways to improve Page Speed is location content delivery as well as manages to use a Content Delivery Network, which is multi-language landing pages from within the frequently built into marketing automation control panel. Companies can clone landing suites. Websites use CDNs to host and pages in multiple languages and when possible, geographically distribute static assets like add the hreflang tag to the <head> section of images, videos, scripts and CSS files to serve the landing pages’ code to deliver a page of them up faster, from servers located closer content specifically geared toward the language to visitors positioned all across the globe. The of the visitor. CDN helps increase Page Speed, and using your marketing automation tool’s CDN is an easy win. However, you must make sure to associate Questions to ask: the vast majority of your website images with your subdomain or domain