A few years ago it was relatively easy to dictate a search result because dominating rankings was based on building anchor text links and basic optimisation to your site sufficed. SEO has moved on from yester year’s tactics, and spy glassing into the future will continue to change greatly. If you place some long-term strategies into your plan, you will more likely dominate search engines for longer and create a firm hold in your business for the future.
There are many options to creating a successful SEO campaign. Take advantage of a few marketing tool suggestions for good, relatively quick results that are fairly easy to access:
Google Adwords is a very useful Internet marketing tool and is great for any online activity because it gives you an idea of what specific phrases you may wish to target, for your site to be found by people searching for your product or service.
You can do an Adwords campaign by yourself, but the downside being it can become very expensive if not monitored properly. It is easy to blow your budget quickly with few results because of lack of knowledge and experience. It would probably be advisable to find a local SEO company that can help you manage your PPC campaign – they have the expertise and experience in setting up, running and testing a campaign on your behalf. More on how to run a successful Google Adwords campaign can be found here.
Once your Adwords campaign is live, it can deliver instant visits to your website which means you are driving a new source of traffic to your site - really important for a new websites and a sound traffic source for older and more established sites.
If you are like most businesses you rely on long relationships with your customers and return business too. Social Media is a great way to build and maintain relevant relationships with your customers and keep them coming back with repeat business for many years. And because using social media is interactive from your and your customer’s side, you have the opportunity to listen to them – find out what are they saying or thinking about your products and that of your competitors – a useful and valuable tool in your ongoing market research and strategy.
The biggest cost in your Social Media campaign is time, but if your social strategy is returning the investment for you then it is time worth spent. However, if you are stuck with finding time, then contact a local SEO company that can help, advise or do your social campaign for you. More information on Social Media marketing can be found here.
A press release is another marketing tool you can use to get your brand, product or service known about and talked about within media circles. Most articles you read, or see, come from some form of media release. As a business owner, part of your marketing strategy is to inform as many people about your business, its products and or services as possible. Creating and submitting good quality press releases is a quick, cheap and credible option to exposing your business online.
According to findings in a survey conducted by Adobe and Econsultancy, the top priority for marketers in is content. And, 52% of marketers say the ability to target and personalise content is fundamental to their online strategy. However, only 18% say they have the marketing technology to succeed.
We are living in an information age, and because we can access information so quickly and easily, we use platforms like search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) to find solutions and answers to our problems and questions, making it a very big reason why you should be marketing online. If your business solves a problem then it is likely your products are being sought after and searched for. Making sure you have quality informative content on your website gives you an edge over your competitors, and anyone looking for your product or service will find you more easily.
Tweaking your website pages can be done relatively easily and does not mean having to amend your whole website. As simple as this may sound, it is important to give careful thought behind each change you make, ensuring there is a sensible reason for amending the element. Changing a few things on your pages is simple - add a strong call to action, or change your current one, add some content, or change an image.
Test the pages you change to see what attracts more actions and conversions and keep a record of the results. Continue tweaking and comparing to the best version of that page but allow enough time for some feedback to your testing – a couple of weeks at least. In its simplest form, optimising your page for conversion should include a strong call to action on every page on your site, encouraging site visitors to take some form of action whether it is to contact your or make a purchase. For more information on optimising for conversion have a read of this article.
While online marketing is ever changing and evolving we should never lose sight of our consideration for our clients and customers’ needs as they are the basis of our efforts to which we reap rewards and results.
photo credit: Paloma Gómez via photopin cc