How SEO Strategy Can Help MSPs Grow Their Business

One of the main goals for every MSP is to make getting new clients onboard as easy as possible. A major way to achieve this is to rank high on Google for the area your MSP operates.

Purple Cloud IT is an MSP that serves clients in the UK, but we’ve also helped many MSPs over the years with their SEO and Google ranking because we’ve found that we’re pretty good at SEO.

SEO Case Study for MSPs

Recently we’ve helped an N‑able customer called Managed IT Experts who are an MSP located in the Edinburgh area. In this blog, I want to outline the steps we took to help them with their SEO strategy so you can understand how you might be able to apply this to your own MSP business:

Fix website issues for better SEO performance

It’s essential to rectify website issues that can significantly impact SEO performance. Our audit of Managed IT Experts’ website revealed several areas for improvement. We rectified pages with duplicate title tags, mended broken links, updated pages lacking meta descriptions, and boosted the site’s loading speed among other enhancements. These corrections are vital for SEO as they improve the site’s usability and search engine indexing, which in turn, can lead to better search result placements. Regular website audits and timely issue resolution are key to maintaining and elevating your SEO rankings.

Rolling out a backlink strategy

To boost your Google rankings, a well-crafted backlink strategy is essential. For Managed IT Experts, we identified partners and suppliers in the tech sector to acquire authoritative backlinks from—Google values links from industry-relevant sites highly. We prioritized domains with high authority to enhance credibility and SEO impact. Additionally, we conducted a thorough review of the backlink profile to weed out any toxic links that could harm the ranking. This strategic approach not only strengthens your SEO but also aligns with Google’s emphasis on quality and relevance.

When seeking a backlink from a partner, suggest their marketing team write a case study on your company’s successful use of their products with clients. Some partners may feature a dedicated partners page where you can request inclusion. For optimal SEO impact, it’s preferable to have partners link to your specific target landing page rather than your homepage. This approach not only enhances your SEO but also strengthens your partnership through shared success stories.

Improve on page conversion

We also refined their landing page by targeting the keyword “IT Support Edinburgh.” Despite ranking for this keyword, the page faced conversion issues. We improved the “hero section” making it more prominent and appealing to the target audience, including the call to action which in this case is a “Free 30 minute consultation”.

Before:

After:

We also changed the wording to make it more localised for Edinburgh. For example, we specifically mentioned the fact that they are located in Young Street in Edinburgh, and included some other local information to help in this area. We also streamlined the text to avoid overwhelming visitors. The partners’ list was repositioned higher for increased authority, and the page’s overall design was modernized for a cleaner, more contemporary look.

The role of content in your on-going SEO strategy

Another area of SEO that we would like to highlight is the role content plays in your on-going SEO strategy. Creating good content, that speaks directly to the people you want to reach, is crucial to help MSPs connect more effectively with their target audience.

Base your content on keywords that business owners will use to search for your services, or to tap into trending issue/concerns like cybersecurity. However, keep in mind that your prospects are unlikely to use the same terminology as you. For example, they probably won’t use the term “MSP” or “managed services” as this is an industry term. So you’re better served using terms “Computer support for dentists” (or whatever your specialist vertical is) or “IT services and computer repair”.

You also need to ensure that the content you create is engaging and educational, as it can play a key role  in building the trust you need to help move visitors from prospects to customers. Creating this content can be a challenge, N‑able MarketBuilder is an excellent source of ready-to-use content that you can use for landing pages, blogs, and social posts to help make the whole content creation process that much easier and less time-consuming.

MarketBuilder is a resource that is included as part of your N‑able product subscription and contains content and campaigns that can help you attract new customers, and retain your existing ones. If you’re an N‑able customer, you can sign up for MarketBuilder now.

How SEO helped achieve growth

Through our dedicated SEO efforts, Managed IT Experts have ascended in Google’s rankings, attracting more visitors via targeted keywords, and experienced more prospects reaching out due to the optimized landing page. This strategic enhancement has not only improved their online visibility but also boosted their customer engagement.

Our work with Managed IT Experts clearly shows how SEO can significantly improve your MSP’s lead generation and sales pipeline. If you’re not focused on it already as part of your general MSP marketing plans you are certainly missing out. A good first step would be to read a comprehensive SEO guide for MSPs to get up to speed with all the adjustments you can make to enhance your web visibility.

Aaron Nihat is Director at PurpleCloud IT