Optimise your website and content to rank prominently in organic search results, capturing traffic without ongoing advertising spend.
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Search-engine optimisation SEO for short is the discipline of making your content the best answer to a user’s question and helping the search engine recognise that fact. In practice this means choosing the right topics (keywords), structuring pages so a crawler can understand them, earning signals of trust (backlinks, engagement) and removing technical friction (page speed, mobile layout, indexability). When all four elements align, your article, video or product shows up ahead of competitors in the results and collects free, compounding traffic.
Although most of us shorthand SEO to “ranking on Google”, the concept applies to every platform with a search box and an algorithm: Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Amazon, the LinkedIn feed, the App Store and rapidly AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Gemini that cite web sources. Wherever potential buyers type, talk or tap a query, optimisation matters.
I started tweaking meta titles in 2010, months before launching my first paid-search campaigns. Fifteen years and hundreds of audits later, I still rely on the tandem: paid search for instant data and leads, organic search for compounding trust and lower long-term acquisition cost. In fact, this entire Solid Growth wiki is itself a growth hack an SEO backbone designed to rank for B2B terms my future clients Google every day and you are reading the results of that strategy in action. So it's working :)
SEO matters because it captures high-intent traffic people actively searching for solutions without ongoing advertising costs, creating compounding returns as your content library grows. One well-optimised article ranking for valuable keywords can generate hundreds of qualified visitors monthly for years with zero marginal cost, dramatically reducing blended customer acquisition costs over time. For B2B companies especially, SEO enables you to intercept prospects during early research phases, establishing thought leadership and earning consideration before they've even assembled their shortlist. The channel also produces higher-quality leads than interruption-based advertising: organic visitors actively chose your content because it appeared relevant to their query, arriving more informed and engaged than cold prospects. SEO's compounding nature makes it especially valuable for startups and scale-ups with limited budgets whilst paid channels require constant spending, SEO investments accumulate, with each new piece of content adding to your asset base. The authority SEO builds also has spillover effects: high rankings signal market leadership to prospects, and the backlinks and brand mentions you earn through content improve overall brand recognition. However, SEO requires patience and sustained commitment: meaningful organic traffic typically emerges 6-12 months after consistent effort, making it unsuitable for businesses needing immediate results. The channel also faces increasing competition as content marketing has become table stakes, requiring genuinely excellent content rather than keyword-stuffed mediocrity to rank. Algorithm updates can also disrupt rankings overnight, though sites with genuinely helpful content typically recover quickly. Organisations succeeding with SEO treat it as a long-term compound growth strategy rather than quick wins, committing to consistent content production, technical excellence, and earning authoritative backlinks through quality rather than shortcuts.
Create content that exactly satisfies the intent. A purchase-ready keyword wants pricing, demo videos and case studies, not a 3,000-word history essay.
Structure the HTML so search engines parse it quickly:
Make the site easy to access and fast to load:
Earn trust by collecting signals from the wider web:
Google’s Page Experience signals reward pages that render quickly and elegantly on mobile. Compress images, defer non-critical scripts, adopt lazy-loading and test in real devices. A one-second improvement can raise conversion rate by five per cent or more SEO impact aside.
Launch a Google Ads campaign on your target keywords. Highest-CTR ad text often becomes the organic meta description. Conversion data reveals which problems resonate; feed those into deeper organic guides. When organic pages reach page one, reduce the overlapping PPC budget and redeploy spend to new terms.
Backlinks are hyperlinks from one domain to another. Search algorithms treat them as votes of confidence: if reputable sites cite your guide on “B2B onboarding email templates,” they imply it is worthy of attention, lifting your authority score.
Newly registered domains in competitive B2B niches often need four to six months to see significant organic traffic. Established domains adding siloed content may see ranking movement in weeks. Speed depends on content quality, technical health, competition and backlink velocity.
Think in topics clusters of related queries so one pillar page answers multiple intent variations and sub-articles dive deeper. Google’s semantic understanding groups synonyms; topic authority outlasts single-keyword chasing.
Google says it uses no single “domain authority” score, but independent tools approximate it by backlink quantity and quality. Treat DA/DR as relative signals in competitive analysis, not an absolute KPI.
SEO is the long-game partner to the instant traffic of paid search. It demands an empathy for the searcher’s job-to-be-done, disciplined on-site structure, bulletproof technical foundations, and a proactive approach to off-site trust-building. Apply those four layers across Google and secondary engines YouTube, Amazon, emerging AI search and your content becomes an evergreen growth asset. For the complementary quick wins of bidding on those same keywords, see the paid-search primer at [/what-is/paid-search].
Build your channel strategy and optimise each channel, so you grow traffic strategically without burning budget.
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Most teams waste ad spend testing randomly. A structured approach to creative testing compounds your learnings so every campaign performs better than the last.
Gabriel Weinberg
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A method to discover your best channel. Prioritise, test and focus resources where traction is most likely.
Russel Brunson
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A broad look at audience building. Useful ideas for content, partnerships and email that compound over time.
Set a traffic goal, group keywords by intent, and build a strategic content pillar map that scales with clear launch plans ready to execute.
Turn your organic-growth strategy into a production system. Track ideas, score by impact, move through workflow, and publish on time consistently.
Earn links from other websites to your content to signal authority to search engines and improve rankings for target keywords over time.
Evaluate email content and sending practices to identify elements that trigger spam filters before sending campaigns that might damage deliverability.
Master the economics of customer acquisition by tracking what you pay for each meaningful action across channels.
Build cumulative site-wide ranking power through quality backlinks and strong content so new pages rank faster than competitors starting from scratch.
The percentage of visitors who meaningfully engage with your landing page instead of bouncing.
Ensure emails reach inboxes rather than spam folders by maintaining sender reputation, authenticating properly, and following anti-spam best practices consistently.
Target prospects based on demographic, firmographic, and behavioural data, interrupting their social feeds with relevant offers and content.
Maintain a positive sending history to ensure emails reach inboxes rather than spam folders by following best practices and monitoring feedback signals.
Build relationships and demonstrate expertise on social platforms to generate inbound interest rather than interrupting buyers with cold outreach.
Calculate what you pay each time someone clicks your ad to evaluate channel efficiency and determine if paid traffic costs justify the leads generated.
Process email to empty daily by deciding whether to act, defer, delegate, or delete each message rather than leaving unread items as false to-do lists.
Reach prospects who don't know you by sending personalised outreach that offers value and starts conversations rather than pitching products immediately.
Identify search terms your customers use to create content that ranks organically and bid on paid terms that drive qualified traffic at profitable costs.
Fix site infrastructure issues that prevent search engines from crawling and indexing pages properly to ensure content can rank regardless of quality.
Protect long uninterrupted blocks for deep work that requires concentration by clustering meetings and separating them from creative and analytical time.
Measure likes, comments, and shares to evaluate content resonance and algorithmic distribution on social platforms that reward interactions with reach.
The percentage of impressions that result in a click to your website or landing page.
Measure what percentage of cold emails get responses to evaluate message quality and list targeting rather than sending more emails to poor prospects.
Track emails that fail delivery to maintain sender reputation and avoid being marked as spam by continuing to email invalid addresses that hurt deliverability.
Optimise your website and content to rank prominently in organic search results, capturing traffic without ongoing advertising spend.