The new year is sure to bring new challenges to companies looking to draw customers using digital or search engine marketing.
If the past few years are any indication, the only thing we can truly count on is that change is inevitable. However, that doesn't mean you should do nothing to either protect or ramp up your SEO efforts.
Most web companies are guilty of at least one of these three actions (or inactions) that are causing their number of site visitors to dwindle.
1. Not shifting as search factors change
With Google's almost daily updates, having your web content found easily by those surfing the Internet hinges on having an active digital strategy that is dynamic and adaptable to the ever-changing search landscape.
With Google getting more sophisticated in how it judges and measures your online exposure, it's vital that your strategy be upgraded to reflect these changes.
The past 12 months have brought many changes in how web sites are ranked by Google and other search engines as well as how their content is presented in search. If you're still doing things the way you did a few years ago, you're getting further behind your competition every day.
What can you do to keep up with these changes? We have several suggestions:
- Assume that every page on your site is the first one a potential customer sees. Does each and every page reflect your company's mission and image? Is every page search engine friendly? It's not enough to just optimise your home page. You don't know which page will lead a potential customer to your site
- Make sure that each page is optimised using terms that real people will type into the search box. Increasingly, those terms are more than one word and often are a complete question or statement
- Take an inventory of the pages on your web site. Do you have content that reflects all of the key words, phrases and/or questions a potential customer might use to find your product or services online?
- If you have pages on your site that aren't designed for customer use, do what's necessary to keep those pages from being crawled by the search engines. Those utilitarian and staff pages could be hampering your search performance
- Not all back links are desirable. Do you have links pointed to your site from questionable sites and companies? Do what you can to get rid of these "bad" links
2. Bad user experience
Google and other major search engines are placing heavy emphasis on the user experience. They seek to measure that experience through varied methods including how many times a page is liked, shared or commented on.
Because of this, it is important that your site is not only attracting qualified leads, but also providing useful information that is relevant, engaging and encourages sharing with friends.
If you think that social media isn’t right for you, think again. Sharing is a form of content promotion that encourages others to link, share and visit your website pages. This assists in brand awareness and helps get your site ranked well with search engines like Google.
By making your websites interesting and useful, you’re increasing the user's value, engagement and experience.
The theory of Conversion Optimisation involves helping website visitors easily find what they seek. Refining your website pages with pre-defined visitor’s goals in mind is key. While embracing change can be challenging, onsite enhancements are relatively easy to make and are a cost effective way of reducing your cost per website lead.
The days of the hard sell are over, at least in digital marketing. Today, Internet marketing is all about building trust and establishing a relationship that will eventually lead to sales revenue.
3. Set and forget mindset
Although keeping up with changes in the digital marketplace is important, making changes too quickly without a plan, strategy or backing reason can be just as bad (or worse) than not changing at all. Making extreme changes to your site can turn away loyal customers as well as send your pages plummeting in search engine results.
With that said, don’t be afraid of embracing change, refining your strategy and exploring new tools.
Testing will tell you relatively quickly which changes are achieving their goals. If required, you can test another idea without attempting a complete overhaul. You can take this method further by adopting an "always be testing and evolving" mindset.
Understand that your digital marketing strategy will never be perfect. However realising the speed of change that the Internet has brought to marketing and utilising that speed to your company's advantage, will be crucial to the success of your future marketing efforts.