The importance of SEO marketing—which expands website exposure and maximizes customer traffic through non-advertising methods—is growing day by day. If you attended the 'SEO Introductory' seminar hosted by Elifunt earlier this year, I believe you gained some valuable insights! Since many people have found the provided lecture materials very useful, a 'SEO Marketing Introductory Guidebook'for your continued support. 🙂
What is SEO marketing, and why should you do it?
SEO marketing refers to a series of processes designed to help our target customers, who have searched for specific keywords, find us easily. During the seminar, Yeji introduced SEO marketing as "a journey of cultivating the path to welcome customers." As such, "SEO marketing" the effort to clear obstacles and erect signposts in the vast ocean of search engines, making our company's websitemore visible and easier to find marketingreceiving so much attention now? There are three main reasons for this.
1) Due to third-party restrictions, a first-party acquisition strategy is important.
In the past, it was possible to actively run advertisements and reach customers by utilizing third-party cookie data provided by services like Meta or Google, but the market landscape has changed. As big tech companies, including Google and Apple, have strengthened their privacy policies, it has become difficult to collect customer information easily, leading to a decline in the efficiency of performance marketing. In this situation, SEO marketing has gained attention as a first-party acquisition strategy capable of directly driving customers to our website.
2) For consumers who no longer watch advertisements, a strategy to 'build trust' between companies and customers is needed.
Consumers are also changing. Many consumers, particularly the digital native generation, are installing ad-blockers to avoid unnecessary advertisements. In this context, SEO marketing has emerged as an important strategy for building trust by naturally providing the information consumers need.
3) SEO marketing that answers customer questions maximizes performance through compound interest.
As seen in 1) and 2), the efficiency of performance advertising has declined due to changes in the marketing landscape, leading to a resurgence in interest in content marketing. SEO marketing, which allows for a steady influx of customers without incurring costs, is even more effective from a content marketing perspective. While the process of building relationships on search results screens by producing content that answers customer search questions is resource-intensive in the beginning, it will yield significant results over time, much like compound interest.
The 3 Basic Elements of SEO Marketing and Checklist
So, what are the essential elements you must address to successfully execute SEO marketing? I will explain the core elements of SEO and the things you must keep in mind when setting up each element.
1) On-Site SEO
It refers to overhauling the technical aspects of a website so that search engines can easily crawl it. While keywords often come to mind when thinking of SEO marketing, the fundamental step is to first check the basic operational status of the site, such as ensuring loading speeds are sufficiently fast, images display correctly, and there are no errors. After all, even if you create great content, it becomes meaningless if no one can access the site!
There is a checklist to help search engines technically understand our website. I have included the checklist below, so please check to see if your website is well-prepared!
✍ [Elifunt] View Full On-site SEO Checklist
2) Keyword Funnel Strategy
Keyword strategy is the core of SEO marketing. You must select appropriate keywords and naturally incorporate them into your content. Since keywords play a crucial role in search engines understanding webpage content and providing relevant results to users, keyword research and analysis are essential for SEO marketing.
If you have started content marketing, you must view the customer's search situation as a question and build a relationship on the search results screen by actively producing content that answers these questions. Therefore, rather than simply selecting a single search keyword, it from the customer's perspective which keywords they are searching for at each stage of the funnel—such as exploration, awareness, consideration, and purchase—anddefine keywords tailored to each funnel.
If you have identified the keywords frequently searched by customers who often visit your company, you should not simply repeat them; instead, you must read the underlying customer intent to secure the truly important keywords. Select keywords by organizing the relationship between your company and the customer at each stage of the funnel, so that customers will seek you out when they feel a need
3) On-page SEO
When doing SEO marketing, you must satisfy two types of readers. One is the readers we commonly recognize (customers), and the other is the search engine. It is very important to structure the webpage so that search engines can accurately understand what our content is about and who it will be helpful to.
core keywords titles, meta descriptions, and within the content, many are unfamiliar with the H tag structure. Therefore, the webinar focused primarily on explaining this aspect. Structuring subheadings and subheadings using H tags, as well as placing core keywords inside them, are crucial parts of page structuring, so please make sure to set them up.
Practical! A 5-Step Guide for Immediate Use in SEO Marketing Practice
Elifunt's events and seminars are always held to assist with practical content marketing. This time as well, we provided tool recommendations along with a guide that can be applied immediately in the field. I will introduce a four-step SEO marketing guide that even non-marketers can use to get started.
1) Select a search engine
The first step is to choose a search engine that suits us. The channels we commonly use are Naver and Google. As a portal, Naver is a channel widely used with the purpose of keeping users engaged to utilize Naver's secondary services.
To this end, it is understood that utilizing various advertising products, including search ads, is advantageous for exposure. On the other hand, Google is a search engine that curates useful content and links to relevant pages, and its market share is increasing in Korea as well. Accordingly, Elifunt views the Google search engine as an essential long-term channel for corporate content marketing.
It is very important to select a primary search engine based on your company's operational situation. However, given that Google's market share is growing rapidly in Korea, I recommend designing your site to meet Google's standards and adapting it for Naver Blog to operate the two channels separately.
2) Selecting Keywords
Once you have selected a search engine, the next step is to choose 'keywords,' the flower of SEO marketing. Recently, tools have emerged that allow you to examine keyword volume, search trends, and more. The free tools available for keyword analysis are listed below.
| Service Name | Google Keyword Planner | Black kiwi | Listening Mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| price | free | 5 Free Naver Keyword Analysiss (Google Keyword Analysis 27,000 KRW~/month) | Intent Finder, Pathfinder 7-day free trial (Intent Finder 720,000 KRW/month) |
If the number of keywords or search volume related to your brand is too low, I recommend reviewing other topics associated with those keywords as well. Additionally, examining which keywords customers searched before and after the relevant one will be even more helpful in identifying the keywords for each customer funnel mentioned earlier!
| Service Name | Ahrefs | SEMrush |
|---|---|---|
| price | Site Explorer Lite $99/month | 7-day free trial of all plans when registering a payment card (Pro starts at $129/month) |
In addition, by utilizing the tools mentioned above, you can examine organic traffic keywords from other sites similar to ours. Please identify keywords suitable for our customers from various angles.
✍ Curious about what to consider when researching SEO keywords?
Essential elements of content SEO, finding keywords See more
3) Create an SEO Marketing Calendar
Once you have derived keywords for each stage of the funnel, execution is No matter how thoroughly you plan your SEO content, you cannot succeed without execution. Therefore, rather than focusing on designing keywords more intricately, it is more important to gain the experience of defining one keyword for each stage of the journey, extracting content from it, and completing the entire process. Once you have organized your keyword funnel, create a calendar to complete one or two pieces of content per week, and consistently produce content according to that schedule.
✍ Curious about how to strategically place derived keywords in your content?
5 content creation tips to drive organic traffic See more
4) Check content
It is recommended to check if SEO is properly reflected in your content immediately after creation and before uploading. The tools below provide a score indicating the degree of SEO reflection in your content. The downside is that these tools are all designed for English-speaking audiences, making them unsuitable for us, as our content is primarily in Korean.
| Service Name | yoast | surfer | Rank.math |
|---|---|---|---|
| price | Free version available (Premium version $89/person) | Essential $119/month | 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee if Not Satisfied (Pro from $5.75/month) |
Therefore, Elifuntis currently developing a program specialized for Korean content. Since it is being developed based on Notion Workspace, anyone will be able to use it easily. If you are interested, please pre-register below, and we will guide you on how to use it as soon as preparations are complete.
✍ Curious about the tool the Elifunt Team uses to review content?
the SEO Scoring Beta Version Apply for
5) Manage performance indicators periodically
They say there is no such thing as a perfect score in SEO marketing. Even if I achieve a perfect score, if there is a place scoring 120 tomorrow, we need continuous refinement and monitoring to achieve a higher score. Please do not forget to set KPIs tailored to your company and monitor them periodically.
✍ Curious about content growth methods to build inbound leads?
B2B content marketing strategies See more
In today's blog post, I summarized and shared the key points from the introductory SEO marketing seminar. Success in SEO marketing should be approached from a long-term perspective rather than focusing on short-term results. Although significant resources are invested initially, I believe that as time passes, the effects accumulate, leading to sustainable growth.
