The business world is moving fast, and with advances in technology occurring as quickly as they are, action needs to be taken to ensure that your business isn’t left behind. While increasing your visibility online is the key to success it is worth reminding yourself that visibility is only effective if the right people see you and are encouraged to read, buy or use what you have on offer.
Your digital marketing agency is responsible for ensuring that your website is fully optimised and is being seen and used by the right people. In order to do this they need to employ a three-pronged approach.
1. Research Keywords Effectively
In order for your website or blog to be properly ranked in the search engine and be found by potential customers, it is essential that the keywords that are being used are relevant and have a likelihood of success. The obvious toy shop keywords ‘toys’, ‘gifts’ and ‘children’s toys’ are probably being used by ten thousand toy shops.
Using your imagination when searching for keywords will push your website higher in the rankings and into the line of sight of searchers. Be inventive with your keywords and always consider current search trends when putting these keywords into play.
Utilising free SEO keyword checkers such as Google Adwords or Wordstream (limited free searches yet still a great tool) with help you assess the viability of a keyword.
2. Use Backlinks Wisely
Backlinks are an extremely important part of optimising your website and ensuring it ranks well. It is however wise to remember that quality over quantity is the mantra that should be followed. Linking to higher ranking sites that are relevant to your sector or products that are not in direct competition is great. Poor quality links and content which is stuffed with backlinks is as bad for the business as stuffing copy with keywords is. Either way you will be penalised by Google, so get the balance right.
3. Social Media Marketing
Your digital marketing agency will be very keen on increasing your social media presence and they are right in that this is a valuable tool. Social media is vast and there are so many ways that it may be used, often for free, to increase brand awareness and feed into SEO efforts.
As with keyword stuffing and resorting to poor backlinks, jumping around a social media platform like an over-excited puppy will do more harm than good. On Facebook for instance, businesses that post too often will look like spam and pages which don’t interact will be hit by the EdgeRank algorithm which will assume that your page is simply not of interest and therefore should not feature regularly in people’s timelines.
Adopting a persona across your social media platforms, updating often enough to pique interest and encourage engagement alongside using social media advertisements and similar tools carefully will build brand loyalty, increase visibility and produce more sales.
Your marketing team should already understand this. However, for a campaign to be as successful as it can be, business owners and digital marketing specialists need to work together and be on the same page. A united front against poor optimisation choices will win the battle for visibility and increase profits and growth.
Social media is now central to good SEO. Find out how to use social media to your business advantage now.
