Digital Marketing 101
Search Engine Optimization is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. Let’s discover how SEO plays a major part in Marketing.
Marketing involves showing up and promoting your product where your ideal customers can find you. And today, with over 66% of the world’s population on the internet, it would be counter-intuitive to ignore the internet in your marketing strategy.
Every day, over 4.5 billion people access the internet, representing more than half of the world’s population. This means you cannot go wrong if you implement a good online marketing strategy for your business.
Online marketing is the use of the internet to create awareness for your brand. Any effort you put into spreading the word about your brand on the internet falls under the umbrella of online marketing.
Why is Online Marketing Essential?
Your audience are already online: traditional marketing was previously the way to advertise to your prospects. However, times changed, interests diversified and today, the bulk of your customers spend a huge chunk of their time online than on any other media platform. The prospects are juicier because these people (your audience) are already looking for your products and services online.
Online marketing costs less: the elements of online marketing and advertising costs far less than expenses on traditional marketing. You only need to invest in website development, quality content and digital campaign analytics. These often cost way lesser than advertising on traditional platforms, and they are more effective.
Converts visitors to customers: with the right tactics, prospects can find you on the internet and after interacting with your brand online, make a purchase decision. Search engines such as Google and Bing, alongside social networks such as Instagram and Facebook can help direct visitors to your website or digital storefront. An effective SEO strategy will help you achieve this with little effort.
Aspects of Online Marketing
There are several aspects of online marketing. Notable among them are content marketing, social media marketing, Paid Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Content Marketing: this refers to the use of social media platforms to create awareness for your brand. The content generally includes resources such as blog posts, e-books, video and other formats with the purpose of providing value.
Social Media Marketing: this is the use of social media platforms to create awareness for your brand. Most social media users have a tendency to decide based on what they see on these platforms. Social media allows for real-time communication and an easy way to spread your message.
PPC: this refers to using paid advertisements on search engines and other platforms, to direct traffic to your website.
SEO: this refers to all the processes that go into making your website more visible on search engines. It involves using the right keywords and link structure. It is essential to the success of your marketing campaign.
Why is Search Engine Optimization central focus in Online Marketing?
Remember we told you that marketing involves showing up where your customers are? And that your audience are already looking for you? Well, SEO is what makes it possible for customers to find you when they need you on the internet.
The ultimate purpose of marketing is to ensure that your audience are aware of your brand and products. And that when they need to make a purchase decision, your product is at the top of their mind. SEO is then important because it ensures that you show up on a search engine result page (SERP), at the right place, and at the right time. It helps you get more traffic to your website, and allows you to convert visitors into customers.
How to Incorporate SEO in your Marketing
Google is the world’s largest search engine. If your website is not visible to Google, your SEO efforts may already be a waste.
Sitemap
The first thing you want to do to boost your SEO effort is to ensure Google and other search engines can see your website. This is achieved by submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console.
SEO Audit
Next is to perform an SEO audit, not only for your site, but also for your competitors, to get insight on the search volume of your industry.
Set up analytics account
An analytics account allows you to collect data, and visually represent the data, so, at a glance, you can find out what is relevant.
Perform keyword research
Keywords are words or phrases that users enter into search engines to find information. Identify keywords that match your target audience search intent. You should also note which words have the highest volume, and which words your competitors rank for.
Create and publish Search Enginge Optimization (SEO )content
SEO content means that your content is created with the intent to be found by users and search engine web crawlers.
Perform back-link analysis
the key to showing that your website is valuable is how much expertise, authority and trustworthiness your website has. Have an effective strategy for link building.
Perform Technical SEO
Asides creating SEO content, there are other things you need to do, to ensure your SEO efforts are on track. This involves taking the technical SEO expert as serious as possible.
How to Measure SEO Performance
The process of optimizing your search engine result performance can be daunting because there are tons of metrics that determine that you rank well. However, not all metrics are relevant to your business. It is important to know which you should focus on, to complement your marketing effort.
Organic Traffic
This refers to the number of visits you get when people check your web page after showing up on a search engine result page. An increase in traffic means your website has become more visible by search engines.
Keyword Ranking
for your website to show at the top of the first page on an SERP, you need to rank well for specific keywords in your industry. You will want to analyse the keyword gap, with five or more other competitors’ URLs. This shows the keywords for which you rank well, the ones you rank weakly on, and opportunities where your competitors can be outperformed.
Click-through Rate
This refers to the percentage of users who click on your website from a search engine result page. An increase in keyword ranking has a positive effect on CTR. You can also edit meta descriptions and titles to increase your CTR.
Bounce Rate
Refers to the percentage of users who click on your website but leave without taking any other action or interacting with your website. By keeping tabs on the bounce rate of your webpages, you can find out which pages perform well and which ones don’t. According to Google Analytics, an interaction occurs when a visitor clicks on more than one page on a website.
Back-links
The more back-links to your page, the greater the chances of that page appearing on the first rate. Analyzing your back-links helps you know if you are using the right strategy.
Page Speed
The amount of time it takes to load a page is the page speed. No brainers here, a good page speed would reduce bounce rate and improve your conversion.
It’s been said many times over, implementing an online marketing strategy is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time for the results to come in. but when they do, they are always an exponential leap in achieving your business goal. Tracking the results as they trickle in is how you know you are on top of your game, even in SEO.
Now that you understand a bit more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can read KwiqSolutions’s article on Web Design and User Experience to help you understand about the importance of your Web Design and User Experience.