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Marketing moved into the digital age quite some time ago, and with any transformation it has come with its fair share of growing pains. Online marketing has become an industry of its own, comprised of Pay Per Click, blogging, and SEO, etc. There’s not a day a user can log online without being hit with some form of online marketing. So, how can you ensure you are following best practices?
The importance of Search Engine Optimization
Google's core algorithms and its layers of obscurity come as nothing new to anyone who has worked in online marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) offers up the proverbial key to near-limitless amounts of traffic on the web. The more your company understands SEO, the more likely you'll be able to appear organically in search results.
SEO feeds on content (text, images, videos etc) found on your website. Be sure to include relevant keywords and meta tags throughout your website. As you create content, you’ll want to make sure each page is optimized for:
- Page speed
- Bot crawling
- Responsive friendliness
- Overall findability
Gaining Google's Trust
It’s not a secret that link building is an integral part of helping you get to the top of Google’s search pages. Just like Content Marketing, link building is a long-term process that requires strategy, consistency and commitment. Gaining links in this age is no longer as simple as asking someone to link back to your site, commenting on blog posts, or submitting your URL to dozens web directories. Links these days have to be earned by offering something valuable that is worth linking to.
Organic link building is done by creating "anchor content" on your website, then linking that content to a trustworthy source that also provides popular reliable content. What is anchor content you ask? Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. SEO best practices dictate that anchor text be relevant to the page you're linking to, rather than generic text. The keywords in anchor text are one of the many signals search engines use to determine the topic of a web page.
Indexed Age
Think of the indexed age as how long you’ve known someone and what has happened over the course of that relationship. Your Indexed age is dependent on the date Google originally found website and has happened over time since that initial encounter. Think of it as a log of your website’s behavior with Google. If your website is efficient and continuously evergreen the better reputation you will have in Google’s eyes.
Content That Matters
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “content is king,” in the world of online marketers it is certainly not an exaggeration. Creating insightful, engaging and unique content should be at the heart of any online marketing strategy. Good blogs should be centered around one of the three following criteria:
- Actionable = Physical (It’s practical. There are steps they can take)
- Proven = Cognitive (If you want to teach something, you need supporting evidence.)
- Strong Opinion = Emotional (You felt something while writing it, it’s your opinion.)
Your reader should always feel as if they are taking away something that is either useful or thought provoking. Quality content is more likely to get shared. By staying away from creating "thin" content and focusing more on content that cites sources, is timely and relevant, you'll be able to gain Google's trust over time.
Today, with nearly every business completely dependent on the Internet, the ever-increasing connectivity has created global shifts in strategic thinking and positioning, disrupting industry after industry, sector after sector. With each passing day new technological advancement seems to be revolutionizing a new industry–marketing is no different.
Interested in learning more about how to fully optimize your website for better search results? Thinkdm2 is a New Jersey digital marketing agency that can help your company get a jump start its search engine optimization efforts.
