Most businesses are looking to not only grow, but also wish to improve their profitability, and with that in mind, a lot turn to the web, as they feel it is the most cost effective way of marketing their business to the masses.
We would agree, but would also add that with digital marketing you can track everything you do. In other words, if you create a campaign and share that content on Social Media, you can see at a glance which Social media platform turned into the most website visitors, and which generated the most leads.
If you go a step further and integrate into your CRM system, you can also then determine which lead turned into a paying client, and therefore which marketing worked best for your business.
Analysing website visitor data
One of the key things to implement before you do any online marketing is Google Analytics. Creating KPIs and Metrics is key in any marketing plan, and implementing a strong Google Analytics measurement system is vital in measuring some of those metrics. Of course, the first step would be to create a marketing plan that sets out your goals, timeline, areas of the business you want to grow, what marketing you are going to use, how you are going to measure what you have done etc.
Additionally, you can import all the data you need for reports for different people in different departments through tools such as Google Data Studio and Cyfe. This would enable you to give your stakeholders the information they need, but it also enables you to determine what is working, what is not and therefore eliminate waste from your online marketing.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Most companies will work towards being found organically on Google, Bing etc. This means they can focus their paid marketing budget on the things they want to drive additional visitors for, and leave the SEO for the long term general site visitors.
But even with SEO, you can be more granular.
Imagine this scenario: You are looking for a new Television for your lounge. You know you want a larger screen but not sure what other features would be useful for you. So your first search would be “large screen tv” or “large screen television”.
To be found on search for these key phrases, a website would need to have content that relates to this. It would need to be generalised but giving information to guide and help the visitor to taking the next steps in their decision process.
Remember that at this stage, you are researching, not buying, so the type of content a website provides is not sales lead, but helpful and informative.
Also remember that the website visitors may now be added to an audience segment on Google Analytics (if this is set up), in readiness for paid remarketing (more on this later).
Now you know a little more about the TV you are looking for. You may know the screen size and also the brand you prefer, based on your research. Your search changes to “75” Samsung HDR TV”
The websites you find will have details of the different types of Samsung 75″ HDR TVs, and you will now be looking at the exact one you want, based on reviews perhaps.
As you can see, this is a very different kind of content that you are researching, and so the website must offer a few options along with some credibility on those products – assured, real reviews is always good to see.
Now you have made up your mind, you are searching for the best value on the exact product you want. You may search “75” QN700A Neo QLED 8K HDR Smart TV” and you are looking for price, delivery time and delivery charges, company reviews (can they be trusted) and online security too. You are looking for the best value for you.
At this point, you should be taken to a product specific page where there are no distractions, and nothing to take you away from the product itself. This will lead you down the pathway of buying.
As you can see, organic is all about the content, and content planning is key to the success of any business online strategy. But what else is in the Google Algorithm that will help you get found further up the search engine results pages (SERPs)?
The Google Algorithm
This mysterious beast changes on a daily basis, and we have to understand why to help us achieve the very best results for SEO.
When M3SM delivered a course at Google, with Google in attendance, the Google Adwords team had no idea what the Google organic algorithm team were working on, and our explanation to them made perfect sense. This is what we said:
Google is looking at retaining the greatest number of visitors to its search engine, which means there is more opportunity for its paid Ads clients. So, to retain the greatest number of visitors it is important to deliver the very best and most accurate results for every term that is searched.
Tracy Spence – M3SM
For SEO that means a website owner must deliver accurate, informative and helpful content for all aspects if their business. They need to keep this content fresh and up to date. Writing for your prospects and clients/customers is better than writing for the search engines. It is more relevant, and also therefore more likely to convert into a buying client/customer.
The Google Algorithm is made up of so many different elements, but one of the things that business owners hear about is backlinks.
Backlinks and why they matter
Backlinks are essentially a vote from another website back to yours. Google (at the time of writing) does not distinguish the context of those links, so if someone is pointing out your site as being a company who is great to deal with, or a company who is not so great to deal with, Google will not care, they just see it as a vote, and therefore thats a good thing. We say currently, at the time of writing, because we know they understand context in other things, so this has to come.
Of course, if the person voting has no credibility, this could be damaging. so that vote must come from trusted, popular sources.
Having a less than discerning website say that your site is great wont work – it is all about the company you keep. And, you only keep company that is relevant too, so that vote (backlink) needs to relate to your content on the page it is linking to (note, we said page – not site).
Also, paying for votes (backlinks) will not work, because we have to state if this was a paid for link when we link to another website, and these ones do not count.
How to get a backlink
So you need to look for backlinking opportunities from reputable, relevant sites who are willing to vote for your website totally free and with no caveats.
As you can imagine, this is a hard and thankless task, but you can start with your associations, asking them to help. The next step is to look for where people have already mentioned you, and ask them to link back. After that, it is all about content and sharing. If you create amazing and useful content, then hopefully someone will be happy to share or cite that content – that is the very best kind of backlink you can get. An honest vote for what you wrote. Social Media sharing counts as an earned backlink and if you are very lucky, and that content is shared extensively, this will boost the ranking of that piece of content on the search engines.
We hope you have benefitted from the content in this article, and if you like it, don’t forget to share it (we like votes / backlinks too!). And of course, feel free to contact us to ask any questions.
