Successful search and content marketing

Ensuring your products and services are seen by hundreds or even thousands of prospective buyers is challenge enough but today’s marketing environment does provide businesses with some incredible opportunities to do just that. What’s more you can save your business time and money in taking on some of the work yourselves, getting results faster and for less cost.

Here are just some of the ways in which you can be the master of your website’s destiny!

 

I’ve heard I should have a keyword rich domain name…

A few years ago, the CEO of Google stated that the company would try to stamp out keyword rich and relevant search terms within domain names. Evidence suggests they may have updated the algorithms to recognise this a little, but they certainly haven’t put a stop to it. Use any search term you like in an engine to see exactly what we mean. You will find domain names that match your search term in many cases but this does not give a definitive case for obtaining a keyword rich domain name as this is not the be all and end all of being ranked on page 1.

 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO has evolved dramatically over the past few years and far from having to employ specialist companies to perform link building and article submission to online directories anymore, SEO is now in the realm of content marketing, making it perfectly accessible to achieve good page rankings just by updating and keeping the content on your website fresh and relevant to your business.

In simple terms, the more relevant the content is on your website to the content posted elsewhere on the web for a particular search term, the higher the relevancy of your website against the search term itself and therefore the higher your page will rank in the search engines.

It is still true that to be truly optimised your website should be set up with all the appropriate terms in your title bars, meta descriptions, urls and content, but these technical aspects of search marketing are less important than in days gone by.

Top tip: Know the search terms that are relevant to your business, know how to update your website and add content to it and you are in control!

 

It’s all about content & being social

More and more, search engines look for relevant content on sites. Social media profiles and your blog can not only be seen as relevant content in their own right, but also provide a perfect resource to point to individual landing pages on your site. Together with optimising your social profiles in the right way, a continuous proactive strategy of this nature will continually help you to grow your search engine presence.

But it’s about more than just posting relevant content. After all, the content has to be seen to be shared. Content sharing builds brand awareness even if it doesn’t result in a direct sale.

Being social is about engagement, influence and leverage. In fact, your social pages are arguably the most important asset surrounding your businesses web presence. If people want to find out about your company, they go to your website. If they want to understand the true personality behind you and your business, they will visit your social pages. If you have highly visible social links on your website, check your analytics and find out how many people click on them.

 

Getting the right mix

The one big factor, illuminated on a daily basis is, yes we want to be promoting our business offering, but the amusing and engaging, relevant, but non promotional posts are the ones that gain the biggest reach and engagement; the ones that are shared, the ones that spread your brand further, faster.

Top tip: Utilising non-promotional content on social platforms can help you leverage that prospect to come and visit your website, they’ve seen your brand, they wonder what it is you do or you have that is of use to them. It’s now up to your site to keep them there, make sure that your content is engaging.

In addition to content sharing, social media for business is about providing great customer service, genuine engagement and leveraging fans and followers to come and view or find out more about YOU whether this is your reputation on LinkedIn or your business personality on Facebook/Twitter.

The right balance between promotional and leveraged content is up for debate and sometimes dependent on the business. The nature of some businesses allows them to sell without selling. If you are a venue or leisure attraction, you can be posting content about the funny or interesting event that happened last night. The fact it happened at your great venue helps you to continually leverage the reasons more should attend.

 

Every business is different!

The only way to decipher what works for your business is to test and evaluate continually to see what creates the best engagement across your website and social profiles. Content needs to be researched and managed properly. It needs insight as Facebook so aptly describes it. With insight you can start to create a content strategy that will not only raise your profile and help you to sell products and services, it will also have a direct impact on your website’s ranking.

Remember, be social and express your business personality, don’t continually sell, or your audience will switch off. The social media platforms have provided us with lots of advertising opportunities to sell now, and we should utilise these to our advantage.

Content marketing or relevant use of content is what makes the search engines tick nowadays and being engaging is what makes an audience tick, particularly on social platforms – so what if a more social attitude across all of your content is the right strategy for your business?

Test, test and test some more – you will be surprised by what you can achieve!