Category: Marketing Automation

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At many companies, it can feel as if there are 100 miles between sales and marketing. In a recent LinkedIn survey, 60% of global respondents believed that misalignment between sales and marketing could damage financial performance, yet there are a number of disconnects between the teams from strategy to process.
One of the most critical steps for aligning your sales and marketing efforts is creating a service level agreement (SLA). Traditionally, an SLA serves to define exactly what a customer will receive from a service provider. But SLAs serve internal operations as well, and sales and marketing agreements are among the most crucial.
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Ultimately, a service level agreement is designed to create alignment between two parties by setting clear expectations and mitigating any issues before they happen. With that in mind, there are multiple types of SLA depending on your use case.

1. Customer Service Level Agreement
A customer SLA is just what it sounds like: an agreement by a vendor to deliver a certain level of service to a particular customer. Here’s a fun example:
In the TV show The Office, the company, Dunder Mifflin, supplies paper to various organizations. They might have a customer SLA stipulating that Dunder Mifflin will supply [Company X] with 50 reams of paper per month, shipped every Monday to [Address 1] and [Address 2] by Darryl Philbin — with a confirmation of delivery sent to Jim Halpert. (Sorry, we had a little too much fun with the references in that one.)
2. Internal Service Level Agreement
An internal SLA only concerns parties from within the company. While a business might have an SLA open with each of its clients, it can also have a separate SLA between its sales and marketing departments.
Let’s say Company X’s sales department has to close $5,000 worth of sales per month in total, and each sale is worth $100. If the sales team’s average win rate for the leads they engage with is 50%, Company X’s marketing director, Amir, can work with the sales team on an SLA, stipulating that Marketing will deliver 100 qualified leads to sales director, Kendra, by a certain date every month. This might include four weekly status reports per month, sent back to Amir by Kendra, to ensure the leads Kendra’s team is receiving are helping them keep pace with their monthly sales goal.
3. Multilevel Service Level Agreement
Multilevel SLAs can support a business’s customers or the business’s various internal departments. The point of this type of SLA is to outline what is expected of each party if there’s more than just one service provider and one end user. Here’s an example of a multi-level SLA in an internal situation:
Company X’s sales and marketing teams partner up on an internal SLA that delivers leads from Marketing to Sales every month. But what if they wanted to incorporate a customer retention strategy into this contract, making it an SLA between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service?
After sales closes 50 new deals for the month, it’s Customer Service’s job to keep these customers happy and successful while using the product. In a multi level SLA, Company X can have sales director, Kendra, send monthly “customer friction” reports to Joan, the VP of service, based on dialogue the sales team has regularly with its clients. This helps the customer service team build a knowledge base that better prepares them for the pain points customers call them about.
You can learn more about customer service’s increasing role to business growth in the HubSpot Academy.

What does an SLA include?
The details of an SLA will differ among internal and external agreements. Nonetheless, there are common building blocks that each SLA should include, whether the recipient of the service is your customer or your sales team.
Featured Resource: Free Marketing & Sales SLA Template
Download this Template
HubSpot’s Sales & Marketing SLA Template is the ideal resource for outlining your company’s goals and reaching an agreement between these two crucial teams. Download it now for free.
1. A Summary of the Agreement
The first item on your SLA should be an overview of the agreement. What service have you agreed to deliver to the other party? Summarize the service, to whom it’s being delivered, and how the success of that service will be measured.
2. The Goals of Both Parties
In external SLAs — those between a business and its customers — the goals stated in the agreement are primarily those of the customer. If this is your intention, work with your client to marry their needs with the abilities of your product, and come up with a measurable goal that your company can feasibly meet for the client on a regular basis.
Is this an internal SLA between your sales and marketing departments? Both teams should have their goals outlined in this section of the contract, while making sure that when Marketing hits its goal, Sales can reach its own goal as a result.
3. The Requirements of Both Parties
SLAs should include what each party needs in order to reach their goals. In agreements that serve a customer, keep in mind their needs might go beyond simply “the product.” They might need more than that to reach their goals — such as weekly consulting, reporting, and technical maintenance from you.
SLAs between sales and marketing teams should describe what they might need from the opposite department in order to help them hit their targets. Marketing, for example, might need weekly status reports on Sales’ pipeline so the marketers can adjust their lead-generating campaigns accordingly.
4. The Points of Contact
Who’s in charge of making sure each party’s goals are met? Sort out which team does what, and who talks to whom, in this section of your SLA. Is there a separate employee using the services, in relation to the employee who reports on performance every week? Make it clear who’s involved in the SLA, and how.
5. A Plan if Goals Aren’t Met
You might not want to think about it, but there should be formal consequences when a goal isn’t met as part of an SLA. Don’t freak out, though — these consequences aren’t always business-ending situations. Include a form of compensation to the service’s end user for when the service doesn’t meet their agreed-upon goals. In external SLAs, according to PandaDoc, this compensation can come in the form of “service credits.” Grab PandaDoc’s free SLA template here to find out more.
For Sales and Marketing SLAs, work with your sales team to establish a plan for how any lost revenue is to be made up as a result of an unreached sales quota. You might settle on a strike system that holds certain employees — in both Sales and Marketing — accountable for diagnosing and resolving issues of low performance.
6. The Conditions of Cancellation
Under what circumstances will your SLA be terminated? Whether your contract serves a customer or two internal departments, you’ll typically find yourself putting the SLA on the chopping block when it’s just not working. Maybe your goals have gone unmet for the last three months, or the current agreement simply doesn’t have buy-in from everyone involved.
Come up with formal conditions under which you’d cancel the current SLA in pursuit of, hopefully, a better SLA.
Examples of SLAs
While an SLA will be unique to your needs, here are some examples and templates that can give you an idea of what an SLA may look like.
1. HubSpot’s Marketing & Sales SLA Template

As previously mentioned, HubSpot has a template for marketing and sales service level agreements. Instead of being overly complicated, the template provides straightforward, no-nonsense sections so that any party can skim at a glance.
What we like best: It’s laid out in a two-column style to easily denote which team is responsible for which activities and metrics. Having them side-by-side like this further underscores the goals of partnership and alignment.
How to Implement This in Your SLA
Simplicity is the key to recreating this SLA template. Whether you use HubSpot’s offering or create your own, effectively implementing this type of SLA means resisting the temptation to list out every possible outcome and instead focus on the big picture of goals, initiatives, and accountability.
2. Hivehouse Digital’s Marketing & Sales SLA Template

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This sales and marketing SLA template focuses heavily on metrics, making it a great choice for high-performance teams. The design relies on tables for easy information input and even comes with prompts/examples to help you define the agreement.
What we like best: The document is organized step-by-step, making it a great choice for teams without a formalized SLA process (yet).
How to Implement This in Your SLA
Implementing the Hivehouse model for your SLA means leaning into its step-by-step strengths. By breaking down SLAs into smaller and more manageable steps, there’s less chance of you and your team getting overwhelmed.
3. Lucidchart’s Marketing and Sales SLA Template With Examples

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Instead of going through the process of creating an SLA, this template organizes sections by the marketing and sales process itself, from goals to lead qualification, handoff, and nurturing.
What we like best: The template takes a visual approach with columns for marketing, sales, and shared goals. This makes ownership of deliverables crystal clear throughout the process.
How to Implement This in Your SLA
Seeing is believing in this type of SLA template. While the nitty-gritty details are there, this approach uses color and shape to highlight important categories and actions. If you’re planning to take this approach to your SLA, use color psychology and graphic design principles to create a visually appealing SLA.
4. AT&T’s Small Business Service Agreement Example
Here’s a real-world example in the wild. Not all SLAs are between marketing and sales teams or even other internal departments. Here’s an SLA that lays out a service agreement between AT&T and its customers, setting expectations for the engagement. They make this SLA publicly accessible for all their users.
What we like best: The agreement is plain and simple, leveraging bullet points to make each detail clear and understandable.
How to Implement This in Your SLA
AT&T’s real-world example highlights the importance of calling out what matters — in this case, by using bullet points. Applying the same approach to your SLA means distilling larger and more complicated outcomes into easily-understood snippets that don’t leave room for confusion.

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5. Microsoft Azure SLA Example for Cloud Services
As a service provider, Microsoft Azure also makes its SLA for customers public. The SLA uses bullet points to clearly identify its offerings and customer promises, which are unique depending on the plan and services rendered.
What we like best: The SLA is organized with headings for quick navigation to the offerings that are most pertinent, and information is kept concise with an optional “View full details” link.
How to Implement This in Your SLA
In-depth SLAs are naturally complicated, making it easy to get bogged down in the details despite best efforts to keep things simple. Microsoft’s example offers a streamlined approach to implementation: Call out the key details and then provide links to the full SLA text.

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6. PandaDoc’s Multi-Page SLA Template
PandaDoc provides another option for provider/client agreements and is a great choice for more formal arrangements.
What we like best: This template makes for a clear and concise SLA with times, dates, and solid expectations.
How to Implement This in Your SLA
While this type of SLA leans more toward legalese with language like “whereas” and “therefore”, it has the advantage of a solid narrative structure to describe expectations. If you’re planning to implement something similar, consider using a template to speed up the process rather than starting from scratch.

How to Make an SLA for Marketing and Sales Alignment
While SLAs are common between businesses and new customers, they can also improve internal alignment. When one exists between sales and marketing departments in particular, this agreement details marketing goals (like number of leads or revenue pipeline) and the sales activities that’ll follow and support them (like engaging leads that were qualified by the marketing team).
Both the sales and marketing departments use this document as a commitment to support each other based on concrete, numerical goals. And guess what? 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between sales and marketing enables critical business growth.
Now, if you don’t have a Sales and Marketing SLA in place, fear not: We’ve outlined how to create one below so that you can easily start aligning your sales and marketing teams.
To draft your SLA, you first need to align your Sales and Marketing teams around a shared set of goals — or, as we put it before, the harmonious “Smarketing.” This alignment can then dictate the creation of a written SLA that reflects these goals. Here’s how to create an SLA with “Smarketing” in mind:
1. Calculate a numerical marketing goal based on the sales team’s quotas.
As a marketing department, not only should you have a concrete goal for each campaign you run, but you also should have a high-level numerical goal that aligns with the sales team’s operations. At the end of the day, that’ll mean qualified leads and actual sales from those leads.
Salespeople are driven almost entirely by their sales quotas — the numerical goals that correlate with their compensation and job security. If Marketing commits to a similar, related numerical goal, it shows that the team is being held accountable in a manner similar to Sales. The trick, however, is to make sure your numerical goal can effectively power the sales team’s numerical goal.
In order to calculate the marketing side of your SLA, you’ll need the following four metrics:

Total sales goal (in terms of revenue quota)
% revenue that comes from marketing-generated leads (as opposed to sales-generated ones)
Average sales deal size
Average lead-to-customer close %

Then, it’s time to do some calculations:

Sales quota x % revenue from marketing-generated leads = Marketing-sourced revenue goal
Marketing-sourced revenue goal ÷ Average sales deal size = # of customers needed
Customers ÷ Average lead-to-customer close % = # of leads needed

2. Segment your goals by specific intervals during the year.
It might also be a good idea to reevaluate the marketing side of the SLA each month, as a variety of factors can change the numbers used in your calculations over time. To do so, create a document that tracks your SLA calculations by month, which should include the following metrics:

# of marketing-generated leads
# of those leads that became customers
Revenue from those closed customers
Total revenue closed that month from marketing-generated leads only
Total revenue closed that month

You will also need:

The average sales cycle length

With the figures above, you can re-calculate the metrics you started with on a monthly basis, or at whichever interval suits your business — quarter, year, etc. Just make sure the same measure of time is used for both Sales and Marketing to maintain alignment. Have a look:

# marketing-generated leads that became customers ÷ # marketing-generated leads = lead-to-customer close %
Revenue from closed customers ÷ # of marketing-generated leads that became customers = sales deal size
Total revenue closed from marketing-generated leads / total revenue closed = % revenue from marketing-generated leads

You could also take it one step further, and incorporate quantity and quality into these metrics. The above calculations provide you with a quantitative volume goal of marketing-generated leads. However, we know that not all leads are created equal, and as a result, some may be considered higher- or lower-quality than others.
For example, a decision-making executive might be a more valuable contact than an intern. If that’s the case, you can do the above analysis for each subset of leads, and set up separate goals for each type/quality level.
Want to take it even further? Measure in terms of value, instead of volume. For example, a CEO may be worth $100, for instance, while a director is $50, a manager is $40, and so on.
3. Calculate sales’ figures and their goals.
The sales side of the SLA should detail the speed and depth to which a salesperson should follow up with marketing-generated leads. When establishing this end of the SLA, consider these two sales statistics:

Salespeople who follow up with leads within an hour are nearly seven times more likely to have meaningful conversations with a decision maker on the other end.
However, only 7% of leads respond to a follow-up contact within five minutes after filling out a form.

Bottom line? Not all leads may be fit to send to sales immediately. They often need to meet some minimum level of quality, like reaching a certain activity level, which can only take place after being nurtured by Marketing.
Nonetheless, engaging a lead the short time after he/she converts is critical to maintaining a relationship with them — the question you have to answer is what that engagement should look like. Either sales or marketing should take action to start building that relationship, make nurturing easier, and set up the sales rep for success when she eventually does reach out.
Keep in mind this advice is futile if you don’t consider the bandwidth of your sales reps. Sure, in a perfect world, they’d make six follow-up attempts for each lead — in reality, though, they may simply not have enough hours in the day to do that. For that reason, you’ll also need to factor in the number of leads each rep is getting (based on the marketing SLA), how much time they spend on marketing-generated leads versus sales-generated leads, and how much time they have to spend on each one. If you’re looking to conserve time, some of the follow-up — email, in particular — could be automated, so look into options there.
4. Set up marketing SLA reporting.
Now that you have your SLA goals, it’s time to track your progress against that goal — daily.
To start, graph the goal line using this formula:
(1÷n x g)
Where n is the number of days in the month and g is your monthly goal.
That should determine what portion of your monthly goal you need to achieve each day. You’ll want to graph that cumulatively throughout the month and mark your cumulative actual results on the same chart. We call that a waterfall graph, and it looks something like this:

5. Set up sales SLA reporting.
For the sales SLA reporting, you’ll have two graphs — one monitoring the speed of follow-up, and the other monitoring the depth of follow-up.
To graph the speed of follow up, you’ll need the date/time the lead was presented to sales, and the date/time the lead received her first follow-up. The difference between those two times equals the time it took for sales to follow up with that particular lead.
Take the averages of lengths of time it took for sales to follow up with all leads within a particular timeframe — day, week, month — and chart it against the SLA goal.

To graph the depth of follow-up — e.g., the number of attempts — look specifically at leads that have not been connected with, since the goal of the follow-up is to get a connection. For leads over a certain timeframe that have not received outreach, look at the average number of follow-up attempts made, and graph that against the SLA goal.

6. Communicate, celebrate, and address the achievement (or lack thereof).
Maintaining strong communication regarding how each team is performing on goals boosts transparency. If either team isn’t reaching their goals, addressing that confirms their importance, while celebrating hitting those goals can aid motivation.
If you’re not sure where to begin when it comes to setting these goals, check out our free Marketing & Sales Lead Goal Calculator, designed to help you determine and track the goals that will eventually become part of your SLA.

To ensure you’re getting the most from SLA creation, implementation and management, it’s worth aligning your efforts with industry best practices. Some of the most common include:
Define Realistic Goals
While promising the moon might seem like a good idea, things can quickly go off track when SLA outcomes aren’t met. As a result, it’s worth starting SLA creation with a brainstorming session that includes relevant stakeholders. Here, the goal is to define what you want to do, what you can do, and what you can reasonably offer.
Ensure Everyone is On Board
Next, make sure all relevant parties feel like their needs are being met with your draft SLA. Better to find out up-front that there are potential problems — and make proactive changes — than face pressure to scrap in-place service level agreements and start over.
Get Specific
Specificity is what makes SLAs work. For example, if you’re an IT service company drafting an SLA about uptime, the number of “nines” — 99.999 percent, 99.9999 percent, etc. — defines exactly how much uptime you’re agreeing to provide. Using specific terminology reduces the risk of conflict around SLA expectations by removing ambiguity.
Pinpoint Key Metrics
While specific SLAs are a solid starting point, you also need ways to effectively measure the success of your agreement. In the uptime example above, minutes of downtime per year are often used to determine if goals are being met. When it comes to marketing or sales, meanwhile, metrics could include leads generated, deals closed, or any other measurement that makes sense under your SLA structure.
Account for the Unexpected
Unexpected events — such as severe weather, staffing challenges, or sudden IT failures — can make SLA goals challenging to reach. As a result, it’s worth creating clauses that account for unexpected events. While there’s no way to predict exactly what will happen, and obligations remain to meet at least minimum standards, building in some breathing room for the unexpected is well worth the effort.
Double-Check the Details
Even small details matter. Consider the example above: While 99.999 percent uptime works out to just over 5 minutes of downtime per year, 99.9999 percent is 31 seconds. Here, a misplaced 9 could put your company on the hook for providing service levels that are almost impossible to reach. As a result, it’s worth getting your SLA double-checked by a fresh pair of eyes before moving forward.
Review and Revise as Needed
Service level agreements aren’t static documents. While they cover a set period and describe a specific set of actions, both provider and partner needs can change during that time. As a result, it’s worth building in the option for review part way through the SLA agreement period and conducting a full review when the contract is up to determine if changes are required.
One Last Step When It Comes to SLAs
When it comes to what should be in your service level agreement, there’s one final piece: Review these metrics on a regular basis to monitor your progress, and make sure both Sales and Marketing have access to the reports for both sides of the SLA.
This step helps to maintain accountability and transparency and allows for both teams to address issues — or congratulate each other on productive results.
Editor’s Note: The post was originally published in January 2019, but was updated in December 2019 for comprehensiveness.

What is the first thing you do when you need new marketing ideas? What about when you decide it’s time to find a new accounting software? Or even when you notice a flat tire in the car?
My guess is you turn to Google.
Impact Plus reported that 61% of marketers named SEO as a top marketing priority in 2021. And so, it’s a cold, harsh truth that without at least some presence on Google, your business faces a digital uphill battle. In this guide, you’ll discover a strategy to build your online presence — Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll learn what SEO is, how it works, and what you must do to position your site in search engine results.

But before we begin, I want to reassure you of something.
So many resources make SEO complex. They scare readers with technical jargon, advanced elements, and rarely explain anything beyond theory.
I promise you, this guide isn’t like that.
I’m going to break SEO into its most basic parts and show you how to use all its elements to construct a successful SEO strategy. (And to stay up-to-date on SEO strategy and trends, check out HubSpot’s Skill Up podcast.)
Keep on reading to understand SEO, or jump ahead to the section that interests you most.

When asked to explain what SEO is, I often choose to call it a strategy to ensure that when someone Googles your product or service category, they find your website.
But this simplifies the discipline a bit.
There are a ton of ways to improve the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs.
With all of these factors taken into account, SEO primarily drives two things — rankings and visibility.

Rankings
This is what search engines use to determine where to place a particular web page in the SERP. Rankings start at position number zero through the final number of search engine results for the query, and a web page can rank for one position at a time. As time passes, a web page’s ranking might change due to age, competition in the SERP, or algorithm changes by the search engine itself.
Visibility
This term describes how prominent a particular domain is in the search engine results. Lower search visibility occurs when a domain isn’t visible for many relevant search queries whereas with higher search visibility, the opposite is true.
Both are responsible for delivering the main SEO objectives – traffic and domain authority.
What’s the importance of SEO?

There is one more important reason why you should be using SEO: The strategy virtually helps you position your brand throughout the entire buying journey.
In turn, SEO can ensure that your marketing strategies match the new buying behavior.
Because, as Google admitted, customer behavior has changed for good.
As of June 2021, 92% of internet searches happen on a Google property.
What’s more, they prefer going through the majority of the buying process on their own.
For example, Ststista found that 60% of people research a brand online before making a purchase. What’s more, this process has never been more complicated.
Finally, DemandGen’s 2022 B2B Buyer’s Survey found that 67% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search.
But how do they use search engines during the process?
Early in the process, they use Google to find information about their problem. Some also inquire about potential solutions.
Then, they evaluate available alternatives based on reviews or social media hype before inquiring with a company. But this happens after they’ve exhausted all information sources.
And so, the only chance for customers to notice and consider you is by showing up in their search results.
Featured Resource

22 SEO Myths to Leave Behind This Year

How does Google know how to rank a page?
Search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information.
Every time you use them, their algorithms choose pages that are the most relevant to your query. And then, rank them, displaying the most authoritative or popular ones first.
To deliver the right information to users, search engines analyze two factors:

Relevancy between the search query and the content on a page. Search engines assess it by various factors like topic or keywords.
Authority, which is measured by a website’s popularity on the Internet. Google assumes that the more popular a page or resource is, the more valuable its content is to readers.

And to analyze all this information they use complex equations called search algorithms.
Search engines keep their algorithms secret. But over time, SEOs have identified some of the factors they consider when ranking a page. We refer to them as ranking factors, and they are the focus of an SEO strategy.
When determining relevance and authority, following the E-A-T framework can help tremendously. E-A-T in SEO stands for “expertise”, authoritativeness”, and “trustworthiness”. And although these are not direct ranking factors, they can improve your SEO content which can impact direct ranking factors.
As you’ll shortly see, adding more content, optimizing image filenames, or improving internal links can affect your rankings and search visibility. And that’s because each of those actions improves a ranking factor.

What is SEO strategy?
An SEO marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan to get more visitors to your website through search engines. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based keywords; and off-page strategies, which earn inbound links from other websites.

 
Three Core Components of a Strong SEO Strategy
To optimize a site, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — technical website setup, content, and links. So, let’s go through them in turn.
1. Technical Setup
For your website to rank, three things must happen:
First, a search engine needs to find your pages on the web.
Then, it must scan them to understand their topics and identify their keywords.
And finally, it needs to add them to its index — a database of all the content it has found on the web. This way, its algorithm can consider displaying your website for relevant queries.
Seems simple, doesn’t it? Certainly, nothing to worry about. After all, since you can visit your site without any problem, so should Google, right?
Unfortunately, there is a catch. A web page looks different for you and the search engine. You see it as a collection of graphics, colors, text with its formatting, and links.
To a search engine, it’s nothing but text.
As a result, any elements it cannot render this way remain invisible to the search engine. And so, in spite of your website looking fine to you, Google might find its content inaccessible.
Let me show you an example. Here’s how a typical search engine sees one of our articles. It’s this one, by the way, if you want to compare it with the original.

Notice some things about it:

The page is just text. Although we carefully designed it, the only elements a search engine sees are text and links.
As a result, it cannot see an image on the page (note the element marked with an arrow.) It only recognizes its name. If that image contained an important keyword we’d want the page to rank for, it would be invisible to the search engine.

That’s where technical setup, also called on-site optimization, comes in. It ensures that your website and pages allow Google to scan and index them without any problems. The most important factors affecting it include:
Website navigation and links
Search engines crawl sites just like you would. They follow links. Search engine crawlers land on a page and use links to find other content to analyze. But as you’ve seen above, they cannot see images. So, set the navigation and links as text-only.
Simple URL structure
Search engines don’t like reading lengthy strings of words with complex structure. So, if possible, keep your URLs short. Set them up to include as little beyond the main keyword for which you want to optimize the page, as possible.
Page speed
Search engines use the load time — the time it takes for a user to be able to read the page — as an indicator of quality. Many website elements can affect it. Image size, for example. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool for suggestions on how to improve your pages.

 
Dead links or broken redirects
A dead link sends a visitor to a nonexistent page. A broken redirect points to a resource that might no longer be there. Both provide poor user experience but also, prevent search engines from indexing your content.
Sitemap and Robots.txt files
A sitemap is a simple file that lists all URLs on your site. Search engines use it to identify what pages to crawl and index. A robots.txt file, on the other hand, tells search engines what content not to index (for example, specific policy pages you don’t want to appear in search.) Create both to speed up crawling and indexing of your content.
Duplicate content
Pages containing identical or quite similar content confuse search engines. They often find it to be nearly impossible to display any of those pages at all. If search engines do find them, your website can be penalized. For that reason, search engines consider duplicate content as a negative factor.
Featured Resource

How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit

2. Content
Every time you use a search engine, you’re looking for content — information on a particular issue or problem, for example.
True, this content might come in different formats. It could be text, like a blog post or a web page. But it could also be a video, product recommendation, and even a business listing.
It’s all content.
And for SEO, it’s what helps gain greater search visibility.
Here are two reasons why:

First, content is what customers want when searching. Regardless of what they’re looking for, it’s content that provides it. And the more of it you publish, the higher your chance for greater search visibility.
Also, search engines use content to determine how to rank a page. It’s the idea of relevance between a page and a person’s search query that we talked about earlier.

While crawling a page, they determine its topic. Analyzing elements like page length or its structure helps them assess its quality. Based on this information, search algorithms can match a person’s query with pages they consider the most relevant to it.
The process of optimizing content begins with keyword research.
Keyword Research
SEO is not about getting any visitors to the site. You want to attract people who need what you sell and can become leads, and later, customers.
However, that’s possible only if it ranks for the keywords those people would use when searching. Otherwise, there’s no chance they’d ever find you. And that’s even if your website appeared at the top of the search results.
That’s why SEO work starts with discovering what phrases potential buyers enter into search engines.
The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then, converting them into initial keywords. And finally, conducting extensive research to uncover related terms your audience would use.
We’ve published a thorough guide to keyword research for beginners. It lays out the keyword research process in detail. Use it to identify search terms you should be targeting.
With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. SEOs refer to this process as on-page optimization.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization, also called on-page SEO, ensures that search engines a.) understand a page’s topic and keywords, and b.) can match it to relevant searches.
Note, I said “page” not content. That’s because, although the bulk of on-page SEO work focuses on the words you use, it extends to optimizing some elements in the code.
You may have heard about some of them — meta-tags like title or description are two most popular ones. But there are more. So, here’s a list of the most crucial on-page optimization actions to take.
Note: Since blog content prevails on most websites, when speaking of those factors, I’ll focus on blog SEO — optimizing blog posts for relevant keywords. However, all this advice is equally valid for other page types too.
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Guide to On-Page SEO Strategy

a) Keyword Optimization
First, ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:

Post’s title: Ideally, place it as close to the start of the title. Google is known to put more value on words at the start of the headline.
URL: Your page’s web address should also include the keyword. Ideally, including nothing else. Also, remove any stop word.
H1 Tag: In most content management systems, this tag displays the title of the page by default. However, make sure that your platform doesn’t use a different setting
The first 100 words (or the first paragraph) of content: Finding the keyword at the start of your blog post will reassure Google that this is, in fact, the page’s topic.
Meta-title and meta-description tags: Search engines use these two code elements to display their listings. They display the meta-title as the search listing’s title while the meta-description provides content for the little blurb below it. But above that, they use both to understand the page’s topic further.
Image file names and ALT tags: Remember how search engines see graphics on a page? They can only see their file names. So, make sure that at least one of the images contains the keyword in the file name.

The alt tag, on the other hand, is text browsers display instead of an image (for visually impaired visitors.) However, since ALT tag resides in the image code, search engines use it as a relevancy signal as well.
Also, add semantic keywords — variations or synonyms of your keyword. Google and other search engines use them to determine a page’s relevancy better.
Let me illustrate this with a quick example. Let’s pretend that your main keyword is “Apple.” But do you mean the fruit or the tech giant behind the iPhone?
Now, imagine what happens when Google finds terms like sugar, orchard, or cider in the copy? The choice of what queries to rank it for would immediately become obvious, right?
That’s what semantic keywords do. Add them to ensure that your page doesn’t start showing up for irrelevant searches.
b) Non-Keyword-Related On-Page Optimization Factors
On-page SEO is not just about sprinkling keywords across the page. The factors below help confirm a page’s credibility and authority too:

External links: Linking out to other, relevant pages on the topic helps Google determine its topic further. Plus, it provides a good user experience. How? By positioning your content as a valuable resource.
Internal links: Those links help you boost rankings in two ways. One, they allow search engines to find and crawl other pages on the site. And two, they show semantic relations between various pages, helping to determine its relevance to the search query better. As a rule, you should include at least 2-4 internal links per blog post
Content’s length: Long content typically ranks better. That’s because, if done well, a longer blog post will always contain more exhaustive information on the topic, thus keeping a reader on your site longer. That’s called dwell time, and it’s an important ranking factor for the search engines
Multimedia: Although not a requirement, multimedia elements like videos, diagrams, audio players can signal a page’s quality. It keeps readers on a page for longer just like longer content does. And in turn, it signals that they find the content valuable and worth pursuing.

3. Links
From what you’ve read in this guide so far, you know that no page will rank without two factors — relevance and authority.
In their quest to provide users with the most accurate answers, Google and other search engines prioritize pages they consider the most relevant to their queries but also, popular.
The first two areas — technical setup and content — focused on increasing relevance (though I admit, some of their elements can also help highlight the authority.)
Links, however, are responsible for popularity.
But before we talk more about how they work, here’s what SEOs mean when talking about links.
What is a backlink?
Links, also called backlinks, are references to your content on other websites. Every time another website mentions and points their readers to your content, you gain a backlink to your site.
For example, this article in Entrepreneur.co mentions our Not Another State of Marketing Report page. It also links to it allowing their readers to see other stats than the one quoted.

Google uses the quantity and quality of links like this as a signal of a website’s authority. Its logic behind it is that webmasters would reference a popular and high-quality website more often than a mediocre one.
But note that I mentioned link quality as well. That’s because not all links are the same. Some — low-quality ones — can impact your rankings negatively.
Links Quality Factors
Low quality or suspicious links — for example, ones that Google would consider as built deliberately to make it consider a site as more authoritative — might reduce your rankings.
That’s why, when building links, SEOs focus not on building any links. They aim to generate the highest quality references possible.
Naturally, just like with the search algorithm, we don’t know what factors determine a link’s quality, specifically. However, over time, SEOs discovered some of them:

The popularity of a linking site: Any link from a domain that search engines consider an authority will naturally have high quality. In other words, links from websites that have good quality links pointing to them will yield better results.
Topic relevance: Links from domains on a topic similar to yours will carry more authority than those from random websites.
Trust in a domain: Just like with popularity, search engines also assess a website’s trust. Links from more trustworthy sites will always impact rankings better.

Link Building
In SEO, we refer to the process of acquiring new backlinks as link building. And as many practitioners admit, it can be a challenging activity.
Link building, if you want to do it well, requires creativity, strategic thinking, and patience. To generate quality links, you need to come up with a link building strategy. And that’s no small feat.
Remember, your links must pass various quality criteria. Plus, it can’t be obvious to search engines that you’ve built them deliberately.
Here are some strategies to do it:

Editorial, organic links: These backlinks come from websites that reference your content on their own.
Outreach: In this strategy, you contact other websites for links. This can happen in many ways. You could create an amazing piece of content, and email them to tell them about it. In turn, if they find it valuable, they’ll reference it. You can also suggest where they could link to it.
Guest posting: Guest posts are blog articles that you publish on third-party websites. In turn, those companies often allow including one or two links to your site in the content and author bio.
Profile links: Finally, many websites offer an opportunity to create a link. Online profiles are a good example. Often, when setting up such a profile, you can also list your website there as well. Not all such links carry strong authority, but some might. And given the ease of creating them, they’re worth pursuing.
Competitive analysis: Finally, many SEOs regularly analyze their competitors’ backlinks to identify those they could recreate for their sites too.

Now, if you’re still here with me, then you’ve just discovered what’s responsible for your site’s success in search.
The next step, then, is figuring out whether your efforts are working.

How to Monitor & Track SEO Results
Technical setup, content, and links are critical to getting a website into the search results. Monitoring your efforts helps improve your strategy further.
Measuring SEO success means tracking data about traffic, engagement, and links. And though, most companies develop their own sets of SEO KPIs (key performance indicators), here are the most common ones:

Organic traffic growth
Keyword rankings (split into branded and non-branded terms)
Conversions from organic traffic
Average time on page and the bounce rate
Top landing pages attracting organic traffic
Number of indexed pages
Links growth (including new and lost links)

Local SEO
Up until now, we focused on getting a site rank in search results in general. If you run a local business, however, Google also lets you position it in front of potential customers in your area, specifically. But for that, you use local SEO.
And it’s well worth it.
46% of Google searches are for local businesses. They look for vendor suggestions, and even specific business addresses.
What’s more, they act on this information: 72% of searchers visit a local store or company’s premises within 24 hours of the search.
But hold on, is local SEO different from what we’ve been talking about all along?
Yes and no.
Search engines follow similar principles for both local and global rankings. But given that they position a site for specific, location-based results, they need to analyze some other ranking factors too.
Even local search results look different:

They appear only for searches with a local intent (for example, “restaurant near me” or when a person clearly defined the location.)
They contain results specific to a relevant location.
They concentrate on delivering specific information to users that they don’t need to go anywhere else to find.
They target smartphone users primarily as local searches occur more often on mobile devices.

For example, a localpack, the most prominent element of local results, includes almost all information a person would need to choose a business. Here are local results Google displays for the phrase “best restaurant in Boston.”

Note that these results contain no links to any content. Instead, they include a list of restaurants in the area, a map to show their locations, and additional information about each:

Business name
Description
Image
Opening hours
Star Reviews
Address

Often, they also include a company’s phone number or website address.
All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage. But it also allows Google to determine how to rank it.
Local Search Ranking Factors
When analyzing local websites, Google looks at the proximity to a searcher’s location. With the rise of local searches containing the phrase, “near me,” it’s only fair that Google will try to present the closest businesses first.
Keywords are essential for local SEO too. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is the presence of a company’s name, address, and phone number of a page. In local SEO, we refer to it as the NAP.
Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location.
Google assesses authority in local search not just by links. Reviews and citations (references of a business’s address or a phone number online) highlight its authority too.
Finally, the information a business includes in Google My Business — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — plays a huge part in its rankings.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg. But they are the ones to get right first if you want your business to rank well in local search.
What is black hat SEO?
The final aspect of SEO I want to highlight to you is something I also hope you’ll never get tempted to use. I mean it.
Because, although it might have its lure, using black hat SEO typically ends in a penalty from search listings.
Black hat practices aim at manipulating search engine algorithms using strategies against search engine guidelines. The most common black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking (hiding keywords in code so that users don’t see them, but search engines do), and buying links.
So, why would someone use black hat SEO? For one, because, often, ranking a site following Google’s guidelines takes time. Long time, in fact.
Black hat strategies let you cut down the complexity of link building, for example. Keyword stuffing helps users to rank one page for many keywords, without having to create more content.
But as said, getting caught often results in a site being completely wiped out from search listings.
And the reason I mention it here is that I want you to realize that there are no shortcuts in SEO. And be aware of anyone suggesting strategies that might seem too good to be true.

Doing SEO Yourself
Be honest with yourself — are you interested in learning SEO? Do you have time to learn the basics? Do you have the resources to bring in help if you redesign your website and accidentally deindex several pages? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you might not want to take on the responsibility of SEO yourself. SEO is a long term play, and just like a muscle, you have to work at it consistently to see results. That can take a substantial amount of commitment. If you have any doubts, try the next best thing — delegating the work.
Delegate SEO to a Team Member
If you’re not quite sure about taking on SEO yourself, consider delegating the work to a team member. If you have a person who’s interested in growth marketing, development, or even web design, this would be a valuable skill to help grow their career. You could also hire a full-time search engine optimization specialist if you have the budget.
The person in this role can report to the marketing team, development team, or even design team. Because SEO touches nearly every function of a business while maintaining a unique set of skill requirements, this position won’t be subject to frequent changes if departments need to be restructured later on. The person you delegate to this job will contribute cross functionally more often than not, so you’ll have some liberty with managing them.
Outsource SEO to an Agency
You don’t have the interest in SEO, your team’s at full capacity, and you can’t spare the budget to fill a full time SEO role. Now what? The best bang for your buck is to outsource SEO to a reputable consultant. Why? First, a well-respected SEO consultant is highly skilled in bringing organic traffic, leads, and conversions to businesses. They do this day in and day out, so they won’t need the ramp up time that you or a member of your team would need in order to learn the basics.
Second, a consultant can be less expensive than hiring someone full-time for the role because they don’t require insurance benefits, payroll taxes, etc. But how much exactly would you be looking at for outsourcing your SEO?
SEO can cost between $100 and $500 per month if you do it yourself with a keyword research tool. It can cost between $75 and $150 per hour for a consultant, and up to $10,000 per month if you hire a full-service marketing agency. Small businesses generally spend less on SEO than big brands, so be sure to take that into account.
Incurring SEO costs can mean one of two things: the investment in your organic search strategy, or how much you pay for paid search engine marketing (SEM) services like Google Ads. If you’re paying for a tool, consultant, or marketing agency to help you optimize your web content, your bill can vary wildly with the depth of the services you’re receiving.

SEO Resources & Training
This guide is just a starting point for discovering SEO. But there’s much more to learn.
Here are online training resources to try next if your or someone on your team wants to take on this skill:

The HubSpot SEO Academy
Google Analytics Course
SEO That Works course

You can also pick SEO knowledge from industry experts and their blogs. Here are some worth reading:

SEMrush
MOZ
Yoast
BrightLocal (local SEO advice)
Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Land
Bruce Clay Inc.

Over To You
Without actively positioning its content in search results, no business can survive long.
By increasing your search visibility, you can bring more visitors, and in turn, conversions and sales. And that’s well worth the time spent becoming an expert in SEO.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When you think of online advertising, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Google? Facebook? YouTube?

If you limit yourself to those digital media giants, you could be missing out on a more targeted market that is reaching 300 million users every month.
What Is Quora? And Who Uses It?
Quora is a social question-and-answer website, founded in 2009. Over the years, Quora has earned a reputation for crowd-sourcing the best responses to questions based on a Q&A engine of curious and highly engaged users.
In June 2017, Quora launched its advertising services, and businesses are seeing significant ROI from advertising on Quora. Why? Quora users are 20% more likely to have authorized a business purchase. They’re 65% more likely to report a college degree. They’re also 37% more likely to be a manager. And they’re 54% more likely to report an annual household income of more than $100K.
Even more interesting? 63% of Quora users conduct research before major online purchases. In the United States, Quora users are highly educated and primarily live in West and East Coast metropolitan areas.* With demographics like that, Quora Ads might be the perfect way to connect with your target market.
Let’s dig deeper into why Quora makes sense for advertising, explore what advertising options are available, and delve into best practices for running ads on Quora.
Quora Ads
When you’re ready to launch your first Quora Ad campaign, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, which makes it an ideal platform for beginners. You only need two lines of text and a landing page to get started.
While it’s quick and simple to launch your ads on Quora, don’t underestimate the platform’s power. Being able to pinpoint users who are interested in specific topics and/or questions means that Quora Ads provide a level of niche targeting that most other ad platforms can’t deliver.
There are several objectives to choose from, including conversions, traffic, awareness, app installs, and lead generation. And you can target your ads based on users’ interests, behavior, location, what they’re reading, and more.
If, for some reason, you get stuck as you set up your first Quora advertising campaign, you can always get help by clicking the ‘Talk to an Expert’ button at the bottom of the Quora for Business page.
How much does it cost to advertise on Quora?
You can start advertising on Quora’s self-serve platform for just $5 a day, which makes it almost risk-free to experiment and discover what advertising tactics work best for your organization.
Quora Ads uses a live auction system. In the way auctions commonly work, buyers — in this case, advertisers — offer a bid for the items being auctioned (i.e., ad placements). Final costs vary depending on the competitive landscape and your targeting selections.
Major debit and credit cards are accepted, and you’re only charged when your spend meets specific billing thresholds. The first threshold is $25 USD, and the threshold rises with each successful charge to $50, $250, $500, and $750. You are charged either when you hit your current billing threshold, or on the first week of the month, whichever comes first.
Types of Quora Ads and Where They Appear
Choose from text ads, image ads, or promoted answers to launch your campaign. Quora ads can appear on a user’s personal feed, topic feeds, and question pages. You can also opt-in for placements in the Quora Digest e-newsletter. (To subscribe to the Digest, go to ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Email and Notifications’. There, adjust your ‘Digest’ settings to your preferences.)
There are 10 targeting types available on Quora Ads, giving you several options to match your targeting to your advertising goals. Businesses are encouraged to utilize two or more targeting methods for a balance of contextual, behavioral, and audience targeting.
The Quora Pixel is required if you intend to run Conversion campaigns, or if you want to attribute conversions to specific campaigns, ad sets, or ads. Quora’s pixel not only allows you to track multiple conversion events, but also allows you to utilize Website Traffic Targeting, Lookalike Audience Targeting, and Conversion Optimized bidding. To install the pixel, visit the “Pixel & Events” tab in your Ads Manager and click “Setup Pixel.” A prompt with instructions will appear. You have the option of installing the pixel directly to your website, or through Google Tag Manager.
Quora Ads Best Practices
The key to success in advertising on Quora is to focus on answering questions, rather than being overly salesy. People come to the site to get their questions answered. Giving them what they want is the best way to showcase how your business is a good fit for them. This also makes Quora an ideal place to establish brand leadership.
As with any advertising option, there’s no “one size fits all” strategy when using Quora Ads. What works for one business, may not work for yours. The best practice is to test each targeting type or retest them with different groups of topics, interests, or keywords.
Not sure where to start? See what other businesses have done by studying Quora’s Success Stories.
And be sure to review Quora’s Ads Success Checklist before going live with your first campaign. To facilitate your onboarding, they’ve compiled a checklist of key steps to guide your campaigns. While completing each step doesn’t necessarily equate to success on Quora Ads, checking off each action item will help ensure your campaigns are optimized for scalability, measurement, and long-term success.
Is Quora advertising worth it?
While the answer to that question will vary depending on your organization’s priorities, Quora’s team has found key differentiators between successful and unsuccessful ad campaigns. Those differentiators can be found on Quora’s blog.
Speaking with one of Quora’s Ad Experts is another great way to determine if advertising on Quora is right for you. Their experts work on understanding your brand’s funnel, potential limitations, and even your team’s structure.
Advertising on Quora offers both advantages and disadvantages.
First, Quora features a high-quality audience. Unlike other online environments, Quora’s user base is overwhelmingly positive and informative. An internal team of moderators, along with the Quora community, ensure there’s very little negativity or name-calling. Answers are generally well crafted and carefully thought out. That means your ads are getting in front of a high-quality audience there to solve problems, not make them.
Second, the community on Quora is generally safe and constructive. The Quora community is positive by design. A team of human moderators oversees content, and posts must be attributed to verified real names. Advertiser controls are robust with exclusion capabilities. Only high-quality pages are eligible to run ads.
Finally, Quora’s Advertising dashboard is similar to Facebook’s and Google Ads’, making it very familiar. If you’ve used either of those platforms, you won’t be starting from scratch when creating and analyzing your campaigns.
No platform is perfect, and there are a few disadvantages to advertising on Quora.
First, Quora does not offer video ads. Video content, as opposed to text-based or image-based content, tends to draw in more viewers, but it’s not an option with Quora Ads.
Second, Quora metrics and customization are not as dynamic as those you may be used to with Facebook or Google.
Facebook Ads and Google Ads are currently the two largest digital advertising platforms in terms of ad spend, and they’re likely to remain so for a long time to come. So, it makes sense to continue to use them as the foundation of your online advertising strategy. But supplementing with Quora Ads might be the perfect way to boost your sales and brand authority.

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eCommerce is an essential part of the market for many retailers today, with ready customers but cutthroat competition. While 58.4% of internet users shop for something online every week, there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of online stores selling what you sell. You’ve got to be on top of your game to lure shoppers away…
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Last Updated on April 13, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How do you automatically create a record using Salesforce Flow? Objectives: After reading this blog, you’ll be able to:  Understand the basic components of Salesforce Flow Learn how to auto-create a record using Salesforce Flow Business Use
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Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you standardize the opportunity name to follow business defined naming convention?  Objectives: After reading this blog, you’ll be able to:  Understand when to use before-save flow Use the formula to concatenate fields in the flow Use assignment element to update the records  and
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