The traditional way of carrying out keyword research is reactive keyword research. It uses lagging (yet stable) data. Proactive keyword research, on the other hand, is anticipating the keywords people will be searching with in the near future and targeting them in order to acquire that forthcoming traffic. Let me explain.

You know, carrying out keyword research in the traditional way is great for content generation. However, keyword research doesn't have to be limited to the well known research tools. There is a lot of data to mine from a variety of departments within your business. This is especially true for the Sales department. Mining the data from your Sales department is an excellent way to generate content for acquisition purposes.

Every department that has a touchpoint with your website should work with SEO because this benefits the channel. This cross-functionality helps your business streamline the way it solves problems. Cross-functionality with SEO helps the SEO channel. It's also beneficial to the department working with SEO. Let me explain.

SEO is not as confusing as it needs to be. You see, whilst SEOs seek to make improvements, non-SEOs inadvertently worsen your site's visibility in the SERPs. The way to combat this is to stop making SEO less easy. The way to achieve this is to ensure you have an always-on awareness of SEO for non-SEOs. This will allow for improvements to be realised without constantly going backwards with your SEO.

You know, SEO is a great, powerful marketing channel. However, to win at SEO, it really needs to be treated as a product in itself. SEO needs to be treated as a product that's managed by SEOs. This is how recommendations get implemented, rather than consistently having push-backs from several departments, including leadership.

You know, organic traffic has to be earned. The level of traffic you receive can be seen as a reward for you consistently optimising your site - not for search engines, but for users. Without earning your organic traffic, you receive it via dumb luck. Dumb luck traffic receiving sites are subject to algorithm changes. In a world where sites earn the traffic they receive, they have to take responsibility for their marketing. Are you earning your organic traffic?

SEO can be so daunting that it immobilises you. It scares you from working the channel. It scares you from working with SEOs. However, the channel is really not as daunting as you may think. SEO is an open channel. All the unknowns about it can be learned, familiarised with and overcome. If you're scared of SEO, getting closer to it is the easiest way to become more familiar with it.

If you want to attain organic traffic, you have to have a budget for the organic channel. No one knows this more than SEOs. A campaign for the channel will require you to have a budget at hand. Wondering why you need to allocate a budget for SEO even though the channel is free? Let me share with you three reasons why you need a budget for your SEO marketing.

Have you ever wondered why SEOs are so negative? It's the way we're wired. We aim to think of solutions. But solutions to what? To problems, right? In order to arrive at a solution, we firstly have to identify the problem, or as we tend to put it, the issue. So, we're wired to think of issues. But do we have to be so negative? Let me share with you my take on this matter.