Results-Focused Online Marketing Strategies

Launching an SEO strategy is much like launching a new business. In order to succeed it’s important to research your competition and get a sense of where the best opportunities are.

The obvious first step is to search on all the most desirable terms you want to target through your SEO efforts. Have a look at the sites that come up high in the rankings:

• Do they have a lot of relevant content?
• Do they update their content (blogs, articles) on a regular basis?
• Do they have a high PageRank?
• Do they have a lot of relevant inbound links?
• Is their site structured and their content organized in a manner that is friendly to search?
  (note: we’ll discuss how to determine the above points in another post)

Once you’ve determined the answers to the above, you’ll be able to see trends and areas of opportunity. In most cases, you need to try to be “as good” in most of the areas noted and then excel at one or two areas in order to get decent rankings.

The exact areas you pick to excel at depends, of course, on where the best opportunities exist. For instance, if the sites you’re competing with have a lot of content but are poorly structured for SEO, put your biggest focus on structure (rather then trying to win on volume).

So, what to do when ALL areas are competitive? This is an interesting question that comes up regularly in industries like software and financial services. In these cases, the answer is to get more granular:

• Pick a limited number of search terms and focus on them one at a time. A LOT of strategic content around a single search term is going to yield exponentially better search results than a little bit of content on a lot of different topics. In this case, get some traction with your first chosen term(s) before moving on to focusing on the next ones. This strategy is particularly effective when executed through blogs and article archives (just make sure they are structured properly).
• Move to niche, local and/or “long-tail” terms. Typically, the more specific you can get, the less competition you’ll find. Also, focusing on a local or regional market (i.e. targeting searchers on “Seattle Web Design” rather then “Web Design”) will diminish your direct competition by a huge amount. “Long tail” is something you can build effectively over time as well - it refers to the large number of search terms that get fewer individual searches each, but cumulatively add up to a vast number of overall searches.

As I write this post I’m realizing that I could spend my entire morning and still not cover all the details I’d like to. With that scary thought in mind, I’m outta here!

Questions? Suggestions for a follow-up post? Just email me at robertecooper(at)gmail.com

Once upon a time, SEO was simple: put a lot of good, relevant content on your site and you’d be rewarded with qualified traffic.

Then, as seems to happen with all online mediums (email, blogging, forums), trickery and “secret tactics” became the way to climb the search engine rankings. The big problem with this is that instead of being rewarded for adding value to the Internet, many SEO practitioners were being rewarded for polluting the Internet with spam sites, ugly gateway pages, keyword spam, etc.

That was about the time I stopped actively participating in SEO. I’m a “content guy” at heart and believe the long term path to success is to add value to the medium you are working in. I had no interest in learning how to “beat the algorithms” and I put my energies elsewhere (community development, word of mouth, email newsletters).

Well, what’s old is new again and there’s a bit of a renaissance going on right now in SEO. The algorithms have caught up to the SEO spammers and successful SEO now boils down to exactly 3 things:

1. Lots of good content, regularly updated (a great reason to blog about your business).
2. Inbound links to your content from high quality sites (which happen when you write great articles or posts and actively promote them to other sites).
3. Proper site structure, tagging, and coding (another reason to hate Flash-based sites).

That’s it. Do a good job on those 3 things and your rise in the search engines is pretty much guaranteed.

Did I mention I’m back on the SEO bandwagon in a BIG way?

Business Blogging is red hot right now, and for good reason. A well thought-out corporate blog can do a lot for your company.

First off - lets clear up what business blogging is not.

Your business blog will not be a significant traffic driver. You may get some highly desirable traffic, but in setting your blog up for success, get rid of the thought that it will drive a lot of traffic. Ain’t gonna happen.

So, with that out of the way, what are the specific reasons why business blogging makes sense?

1. Credibility. This is one of the best platforms in the history of marketing to show your customers that you understand their needs and values. Forget about speaking to “everyone.” Your blog will establish credibility for you if you speak clearly and honestly to the groups that matter the most to you.
2. Connection. Chances are, if you’re a senior player in your organization, it’s rare that you get to speak face to face to actual customers. A blog and its commenting system allow you get opinions and engage your most vocal users on an intimate level.
3. SEO (think “long tail). A regularly updated blog covering topics that matter to your users is one of the most effective SEO strategies going. Just bear in mind that it will take time. It’s like going to the gym: the first couple months are no fun and you don’t see results. If you persist beyond that, you’ll reap the bounty of your hard work and it gets rewarding. Quit at that point and you’ll never benefit from your foundation of hard work.