Online Marketing Strategy

Online marketing has changed dramatically in the past few years. When Google released search their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates , many website owners were sent scrambling as they watched their site’s rank slip.

But not all online marketers found Google’s updates to be devastating. Those who built a strong foundation in solid, white hat online marketing practices weren’t affected like marketers who cut corners and tried to game the system. These sites found their rankings plummet, and deservedly so.

Unfortunately, there were also those website owners who were stuck in the middle. Companies and individuals without a dedicated marketing team to test and tweak their strategies also saw their rankings dive.  Most of the websites in this category were run by business owners focused on day to day operations. Marketing is only a small fraction of daily operations, which means they didn’t have the time to understand the practices and testing that goes into online marketing. Instead, these business owners picked up techniques here and there, but were often unaware of how and when to use different practices. If this sounds like you, this overview can help you understand basic online marketing practices and how to use them.

Understanding the Basics of Building an Online Marketing Strategy

Building a successful online marketing strategy is just like building anything – it starts with a solid foundation. That foundation comes from understanding three basics of online marketing:

    Search Engine Optimization
    Content Marketing
    Social Media Marketing

But knowing what each facet does for your website isn’t enough. As many people discovered after the recent Google updates, applying even well-established marketing techniques incorrectly way can hurt your ranking. To maximize their benefits, you also need to understand their shortcomings.

Search Engine Optimization

When people think of online marketing and the search engines, SEO is usually the first thing that comes to mind. SEO is used to create a site that the search engines will rank as one of the most relevant pages for a given term. The fact is, 95 percent of searchers click on a page that appears on the first page results for Google, Yahoo! or Bing. You can see that search rank is a big deal!

Building a solid SEO strategy consists primarily of selecting relevant keywords and providing valuable content related to those keywords. In the past, SEO was driven by factors like keyword placement, keywords density, and even how many times a keyword was used to link to that page.

But the search engines quickly discovered that keywords could be easily manipulated. A page that had nothing to do with a keyword could be ranked in top three, just by optimizing the page. Today, this means that sites who rely solely on keywords are often ignored by the search engines.

Instead, SEO should include:

    Relevant Keywords
    Valuable Content that is Shared
    A Website that Loads Quickly
    Both Images & Content
    Backlinks from Respected Websites

Content Marketing

Content marketing is not a new concept. In fact, John Deere started the trend in 1895 when they released The Furrow, an agricultural magazine. Other companies like Jell-O and Michelin followed suit with recipe books and automotive tips. Content marketing is important because it helps build your brand and inspire confidence in your company. In fact, six out of ten consumers say that after reading a custom publication, they feel better about the company.

Online content marketing has expanded the field to include blogs, training videos, podcasts, and even video games. But like every other online strategy, content marketing has its downsides. Low quality content is the most common mistake and can affect your rankings and damage your brand. For example, content riddled with grammar and spelling errors makes you look careless and unprofessional. Providing statements without verifying the facts can make you look foolish. Remember that the content you put on your site might be the first impression a prospective client gets of your company.

Another mistake many businesses make is to pull away from content marketing all together. This likely results from a trend against guest blogging prior to the recent Google updates. Aggressive marketers were creating guest blog posts, and then submit them to anyone who would publish them in return for a backlink to their site. These backlinks were thought to be the perfect marriage of content marketing and good SEO.

Google, however, thought differently. They saw poor quality content of no value used for nothing more than backlinks. So Google took action against these aggressive marketers, and online marketers became concerned. Many dropped guest blogging and content marketing entirely, worried that their ranks would fall.

But Google never said guest blogging would result in poor rankings. They said marketers should provide valuable content and host it on reputable sites. Which should have been the plan for most marketers to being with.

Social Media Marketing

For some, social media is nothing more than a way to stay in touch with old friends. But for businesses, social media is a way to tie SEO and content marketing together. Search engines take into consideration the number of shares a page receives when it ranks that particular piece of content.

Social media is also quickly becoming the primary way content is shared. Sites like Twitter, Google+, Stumble Upon, and Facebook all allow consumers to share valuable content with others in their network. Research shows people are more likely to trust content shared from people they know, so a share is akin to a 4 star rating!

A common mistake in social media marketing is thinking a large number of followers is all you need. In fact, many businesses have sprouted up offering to sell you 100 or 1000 ‘real’ friends or fans. Keep in mind that friends and fans are not enough – you need to build engagement. Friends that are purchased are often not your target demographic or are fake accounts. Neither will help you accomplish your goals.

In order to make the most of a social media marketing strategy, you need to interact with your fans and create a true community. Show that you are accessible by allowing people to ask questions, voice concerns, and even complain. Then address these issues in a professional manner. Provide them with content that interesting, not just promotional. Remember, social media is first of all social!

Conclusion

These three components are just the foundation of building a successful online marketing strategy. But without an understanding of how these three areas lay the groundwork for your overall strategy, you could find your efforts wasted. By building a solid online marketing foundation, you can begin to build a successful strategy that works for your business.

5 Free Tools For Content Writers

If you write for web marketing purposes, you need all the help you can get. It’s tough to stand out and get your message across. The good news is there are five great apps that will aid you from start to finish. With managing projects, campaigns and your contributing authors, there is a lot to handle. Of course, SEO is the driving force behind traffic on the web – we all want to rank higher in the search engines. Researching tools with quick reference to original sites and potential content adds to the value of the content. Presentations using media that capture attention quickly, draws people in while providing valuable information. A great call to action elicits conversions, requests for more information and/or subscribers to market to in the future. And you’ll want to finalize the content with grammar and plagiarism checks and improve the content as much as possible. But all of this can take significant time. We need shortcuts that will help us get it done more efficiently.

So, if you are a web content writer, these five apps will come in very handy:

1. DivvyHQ
All types of online writing require time management over each campaign, ad and article. DivvyHQ is a spreadsheet style Editorial Calendar to plan your content with deadlines. It has a sharing feature. There is a free version for the single user. There is an easy to use dashboard with a place for your ideas. The Master Calendar maintains all campaigns and tracks the types of content you are writing. It has searchable and customizable labeling for each type of content you publish. It features a multi client management capability tool. It also has an alert system based on the assigned work and deadlines, preventing overdue work.

2. Google Keyword Tool
Once you have the subject or idea to write about, perform a keyword search to determine exactly the type of words people use to search for that information. Google’s Keyword Tool is free, and the easiest to use. There is a list of stats for each keyword. Choose the keywords with 5,000 or more searches per month to ensure higher volume of traffic. This is part of the SEO development that is necessary to gain the most attention from readers.

3. Snagit
Snagit is the best tool for screen capturing websites. It allows you to create resources to go back and read later. These saved pages are available to insert into presentations as well, further adding interest to the content.

4. Sliderocket
Presentation is everything! A deck should inform the customer, engage them and potentially sell them on the information presented. Today an app like Sliderocket gives you the ability to show presentations right from your phone and on social networks. It works with GoogleDrive as well. Import existing presentations, check analytics and use team access to develop each slide. Learn how to create the most powerful, useful presentations with a call-to-action that gets results.

5. Grammarly
Grammar and plagiarism checks are a big part of content writing for the web. Grammarly automatically checks work, recommends corrections, utilizes synonyms to freshen the verbiage and checks for plagiarism. Any similarity to a website, will display the website for citation purposes or you can modify the sentence to make it unique. It is a powerful tool. With Grammarly, you can present the most professional web content every time. Execute each published article with this effective proofreading tool.

Beginners Guide To Link Building

You may be wondering what you can actually do to build Google safe links. Here are four tips:

1. Quality over Quantity Rules
   It is vital to keep in mind that it is more important to get a few links from high quality and relevant trusted sites than hundreds of links on low quality sites.
2. Focus on Creating Quality Content
   By focusing on creating unique and compelling content, others will want to link to your website naturally.
3. Concentrate of Relevancy
   Having a link on a website that has nothing to do with your business niche will not help your link building efforts. Concentrate on building relevant links on related websites.For example, if your business niche is social media and you write a guest blog article that is published on Social Media Examiner’s website, this one article with a link to your website will be more beneficial than 200 guest blog articles on 200 other unrelated and lesser known websites.
4. Incorporate Social Media
   In his interview with Matt Cutts, Eric Enge spoke of his vision of one great way to build links by building strong Twitter, Facebook, Google+ presences. Eric explains that by building strong, engaged followings and then creating great content, you can “push that out and then that audience will likely share it, and start doing other things that cause visibility and help it rank.”Matt Cutts’ response was, “Absolutely, I completely agree.”

In essence, earn incoming links. Think of links as votes. When someone reads your content and finds it of value, it is more likely that they will want to link to it. Link building is not an easy process, but the rewards, when done properly are golden.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Advanced Techniques

Introduction

Search engine optimization is ever changing and evolving, so it's important to keep up with optimization trends and techniques. In the previous articles in our SEO series we dealt with the basics of search engine optimization as well as some tips & tricks of the trade. In this article we will explore more advanced techniques and discover why they are important. Be warned though, this is the stuff that can get very time consuming and the results are likely to be less dramatic. However, the effort may bump your ranking just enough to move you off the second page to the always coveted top ten and first page.

Be Social

This may seem like a no-brainer but not everyone realizes the power of the social networking sites. If you want to drive traffic to your site then social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook are excellent places to go. Not only do you receive the benefit of "getting the word out" about topics on your website, you also get the immeasurable bonus of having more unique links to your website which we all know is a great boost to rank. Power to the people!

Mapping the way .. XML style

In our previous article on SEO we discussed briefly the importance of having a sitemap page to make it easier for search engines to crawl your website. Now we'll take it a step further by showing you how to generate an XML sitemap file.

XML sitemap files provide search engines a much greater insight into how your website is structured so that they can determine how to catalog your pages, how often to crawl them for updated content and how you prioritize your pages. If you have never seen or used an XML file don't be frightened, they really are not that complicated and you can create them in any simple text editor such as Notepad. The most important thing to remember is that every tag in and XML file must have an accompanying close tag. When creating your XML you first need to define the basic structure. That basic structure is really very simple:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
</urlset>

That's it. You are now ready to define your sitemap. Just remember to keep everything between the <URLSET> and </URLSET> tags. You will now need to include the following elements for each page that you want in your sitemap (they are both required):

1. <url> - This tag simply defines the start of a new URL definition. All of the specifics for the URL are inside the opening and closing <url> tag.
2. <loc> - This tag defines the location of the page. It must be a complete page path such as "http://www.MyDomain.com/index.html". Relative paths like "/index.html" may not be understood by search engines and therefore get skipped. The limit here is 2048 characters.

An example of a complete basic XML sitemap file would look something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
     <url>
        <loc>http://www.MyDomain.com/index.html</loc>
     </url>
     <url>
        <loc>http://www.MyDomain.com/aboutus.html</loc>
     </url>
  </urlset>

Pretty simple, right? Now for the more interesting options, and they are all optional:

1. <changefreq> - This one is short for "change frequency". It defines how often the content changes for the given page. The valid options for this tag are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and never. The definitions are pretty obvious with "always" meaning the content changes every time the page is loaded all the way down to "never" which means the page has been permanently archived. Understand that this tag defines a suggestion not a command on your part and search engines are in no way obligated to crawl your page according to what you define here. Also, be smart about what you choose. If you're thinking "always" or "hourly" will in some way improve your rank, it won't.
2. <lastmod> - This stands for "last modified". Using the date format YYYY-MM-DD you indicate the last time the page was updated. You can also tack the time onto the date if you like but it is not required.
3. <priority> - This is an interesting option. Here you can define the priority of your page in the overall grand scheme of your website. Search engines can then use this to determine which pages to crawl first when they return to your website. Valid values are 0.0 to 1.0 with 0.5 being the default. Of course, 1.0 is the highest priority and 0.0 is the lowest. Again, don't simply put 1.0 on every page thinking it will help your rankings, be logical.

An example of a fully defined XML sitemap file would look something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.MyDomain.com/index.html</loc>
      <lastmod>2009-08-25</lastmod>
      <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.MyDomain.com/privacypolicy.html</loc>
      <lastmod>2009-01-03</lastmod>
      <changefreq>yearly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.2</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

Once you have completed your XML sitemap file upload it to the root directory of your website and name it sitemap.xml. Search engines can now find and use your sitemap file. In many cases, such as with Google, you can also submit your XML file directly to the search engine and they will send a crawler out to your website shortly after your submission.

Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.
4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. (Yes, actual printed books!) See our What Is SEO page for a variety of articles, books and resources.
5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not.
6. Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page of results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.
7. Include a site map page. Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.
8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.
9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.
10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it’s Google’s AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or something else, this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget it’s worth the investment. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like the “Be patient” suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.
11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing. Related bonus tip: You can ignore the Keywords meta tag, as no major search engine today supports it.
12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don’t stuff each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.
13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it’s a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.
14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.
15. Build links intelligently. Begin with foundational links like trusted directories. (Yahoo and DMOZ are often cited as examples, but don’t waste time worrying about DMOZ submission. Submit it and forget it.) Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area — the Chamber of Commerce, local business directories, etc. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too. Create great content on a consistent basis and use social media to build awareness and links. (A blog is great for this; see below.)
16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don’t waste journalists’ time.
17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that’s not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.
18. Use social media marketing wisely. If your business has a visual element, join the appropriate communities on Flickr and post high-quality photos there. If you’re a service-oriented business, use Quora and/or Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry. Any business should also be looking to make use of Twitter and Facebook, as social information and signals from these are being used as part of search engine rankings for Google and Bing. With any social media site you use, the first rule is don’t spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.
19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.
20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you. Sign up for Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they’re aware of.
21. Diversify your traffic sources. Google may bring you 70% of your traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard? What if your Google visibility goes away tomorrow? Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do. In fact, many of the DOs on this list—creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local search, etc.—will help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.

Tips For Building A Strong Content Marketing Plan

Reaching consumers is tougher than ever with so many businesses clamoring for attention. Providing good, attention-grabbing content is the key to being heard over all the noise. But how does your business craft a consistent, effective content marketing strategy?
According to a pair of studies hosted by Marketing Profs and the Content Marketing Institute, nearly half of all B2B marketers have no content strategy. More than half of all B2C marketers lack a strategy for content marketing. This means businesses and marketers who take time to plan their content marketing for 2014 will have an advantage over their competition.
As you begin a new year with high hopes for your marketing efforts, here are a few tips you can follow to create a content marketing plan that will yield results.

Content Calendar

All a marketer needs to create a content calendar is a blank calendar. There are several tools you can use, which are mentioned below, but the biggest work in a content calendar is the pre-planning you’ll do prior to marking up your calendar.

First you’ll need to determine the dates of your major events in 2014. Is there a special luncheon or seasonal sale you’d like to promote? Note that, as well as any peak sales seasons you’ll want to take advantage of. You’ll likely want to promote each date more than once, so when you begin choosing dates on your calendar, you’ll be able to choose several posting dates leading up to each big day.

If you’d prefer a more comprehensive content calendar tool, here are a few worth noting.

• Kapost is among the most popular content calendar tools, allowing users to assign team TISI -1.49% members, who can check off items as they complete them. But with plans starting at $95 per month per user, Kapost may be a much more robust tool than many businesses need.
• WordPress’s Editorial Calendar Plugin is a great option for current users of WordPress as a content management system (CMS). Using the editorial calendar, WordPress users can get an overview of when each blog will post to allow them to identify any gaps or overlaps. While this tool is designed specifically for blog posts, it can provide a good jumping-off point as businesses begin to create a content calendar.
• Google GOOG -2.01% Docs provides a selection of editorial calendar templates that can be used and saved to a shared Google Drive. Once uploaded, the calendar can be shared and updated by all permitted team members.

Collaboration Tools

In addition to planning posts, any business that has multiple team members working on projects needs a collaboration tool. Files can be uploaded and shared, tasks can be marked as complete, and workers can communicate over an interface similar to the social media tools workers use every day.

Here are a couple of the most popular collaboration tools.

• Basecamp starts at $20 per month, but it comes with a 60-day free trial to allow businesses to see if it meets their specific needs. With Basecamp, each project gets its own page, where users can collaborate, upload files, check off items on a to-do list, and more.
• Team Gantt uses the Gantt chart style of planning often used by project managers. But this solution adds e-mail reminders, collaboration capabilities, and more.

Incorporate Other Media

Too often content strategies focus solely on written content, but today’s consumers respond to imagery as much, if not more than, text-based content. Infographics continued to grow in popularity in 2013 and will likely become even more popular in 2014. By adding posts to YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram to its plans, a business can grow its market even further in 2014.

Another way to engage visitors and attract attention is through short explainer videos. Powtoon provides a free creation tool, as well as advice on how to create your own animated videos. Even on paid animation sites, businesses can create an animated video themselves at a fraction of the price a production company would charge.

Infographics are another tool that initially had business owners perplexed. Luckily, numerous online tools have emerged to help businesses complete the task. Infogr.am and Visual.ly both let businesses create infographics themselves, incorporating both text and vivid images.

Measure Results

Analytics and tracking should be a part of any marketing campaign, with results regularly gathered and reported. This insight can help a business redirect its campaign when certain elements aren’t working, ensuring success and boosting ROI.

Social media analytics are a great way to get information on campaigns specific to various social media sites, but many businesses can’t. Google Analytics can help provide insight on consumers’ search habits, both on PCs and mobile devices. For social media campaigns, though, HootSuite puts a variety of analytics in one place, with reports customized to a business’s needs.

SEO, Social Media techniques

Online marketing has changed dramatically in the past few years. When Google released search their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates , many website owners were sent scrambling as they watched their site’s rank slip.

But not all online marketers found Google’s updates to be devastating. Those who built a strong foundation in solid, white hat online marketing practices weren’t affected like marketers who cut corners and tried to game the system. These sites found their rankings plummet, and deservedly so.

Unfortunately, there were also those website owners who were stuck in the middle. Companies and individuals without a dedicated marketing team to test and tweak their strategies also saw their rankings dive.  Most of the websites in this category were run by business owners focused on day to day operations. Marketing is only a small fraction of daily operations, which means they didn’t have the time to understand the practices and testing that goes into online marketing. Instead, these business owners picked up techniques here and there, but were often unaware of how and when to use different practices. If this sounds like you, this overview can help you understand basic online marketing practices and how to use them.

Understanding the Basics of Building an Online Marketing Strategy 

Building a successful online marketing strategy is just like building anything – it starts with a solid foundation. That foundation comes from understanding three basics of online marketing:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing

But knowing what each facet does for your website isn’t enough. As many people discovered after the recent Google updates, applying even well-established marketing techniques incorrectly way can hurt your ranking. To maximize their benefits, you also need to understand their shortcomings.

Search Engine Optimization

When people think of online marketing and the search engines, SEO is usually the first thing that comes to mind. SEO is used to create a site that the search engines will rank as one of the most relevant pages for a given term. The fact is, 95 percent of searchers click on a page that appears on the first page results for Google, Yahoo! or Bing. You can see that search rank is a big deal!

Building a solid SEO strategy consists primarily of selecting relevant keywords and providing valuable content related to those keywords. In the past, SEO was driven by factors like keyword placement, keywords density, and even how many times a keyword was used to link to that page.

But the search engines quickly discovered that keywords could be easily manipulated. A page that had nothing to do with a keyword could be ranked in top three, just by optimizing the page. Today, this means that sites who rely solely on keywords are often ignored by the search engines.

Instead, SEO should include:

• Relevant Keywords
• Valuable Content that is Shared
• A Website that Loads Quickly
• Both Images & Content
• Backlinks from Respected Websites

Content Marketing

Content marketing is not a new concept. In fact, John Deere started the trend in 1895 when they released The Furrow, an agricultural magazine. Other companies like Jell-O and Michelin followed suit with recipe books and automotive tips. Content marketing is important because it helps build your brand and inspire confidence in your company. In fact, six out of ten consumers say that after reading a custom publication, they feel better about the company.

Online content marketing has expanded the field to include blogs, training videos, podcasts, and even video games. But like every other online strategy, content marketing has its downsides. Low quality content is the most common mistake and can affect your rankings and damage your brand. For example, content riddled with grammar and spelling errors makes you look careless and unprofessional. Providing statements without verifying the facts can make you look foolish. Remember that the content you put on your site might be the first impression a prospective client gets of your company.

Another mistake many businesses make is to pull away from content marketing all together. This likely results from a trend against guest blogging prior to the recent Google updates. Aggressive marketers were creating guest blog posts, and then submit them to anyone who would publish them in return for a backlink to their site. These backlinks were thought to be the perfect marriage of content marketing and good SEO.

Google, however, thought differently. They saw poor quality content of no value used for nothing more than backlinks. So Google took action against these aggressive marketers, and online marketers became concerned. Many dropped guest blogging and content marketing entirely, worried that their ranks would fall.

But Google never said guest blogging would result in poor rankings. They said marketers should provide valuable content and host it on reputable sites. Which should have been the plan for most marketers to being with.

Social Media Marketing

For some, social media is nothing more than a way to stay in touch with old friends. But for businesses, social media is a way to tie SEO and content marketing together. Search engines take into consideration the number of shares a page receives when it ranks that particular piece of content.

Social media is also quickly becoming the primary way content is shared. Sites like Twitter, Google+, Stumble Upon, and Facebook all allow consumers to share valuable content with others in their network. Research shows people are more likely to trust content shared from people they know, so a share is akin to a 4 star rating!

A common mistake in social media marketing is thinking a large number of followers is all you need. In fact, many businesses have sprouted up offering to sell you 100 or 1000 ‘real’ friends or fans. Keep in mind that friends and fans are not enough – you need to build engagement. Friends that are purchased are often not your target demographic or are fake accounts. Neither will help you accomplish your goals.

In order to make the most of a social media marketing strategy, you need to interact with your fans and create a true community. Show that you are accessible by allowing people to ask questions, voice concerns, and even complain. Then address these issues in a professional manner. Provide them with content that interesting, not just promotional. Remember, social media is first of all social!

Conclusion

These three components are just the foundation of building a successful online marketing strategy. But without an understanding of how these three areas lay the groundwork for your overall strategy, you could find your efforts wasted. By building a solid online marketing foundation, you can begin to build a successful strategy that works for your business.