There are four key areas of online marketing that will promote your identity to either bring more traffic, get you more sales, or a combination of the two:
- Search Engine Optimization: showing up in the organic search engine results
- Search Advertising: appearing in the ads above and beside organic search engine results
- Content Marketing: creating great content, such as blogging, podcasting, and video marketing
- Social Media: having and using a Facebook page, Twitter account, Google+ page, Pinterest, and more
We find it a bit easier to follow when we work backwords, so let's start with the Sale. In order to get a sale you first need to 'convert' the visitor into a customer or subscriber with either a macro-conversion like getting them to buy a product, or a micro-conversion like getting them to sign up for a mailing list.
Building or altering your website so that it converts the most amount of visitors is called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). In its simplest form, conversion optimization makes it easier for website visitors to take specific actions that you've defined, like purchase your products or contact you.
Since this guide is focused on increasing traffic, CRO isn't included within, but you can still read all about CRO here.
The next two sections are for Organic Search Results and Search Advertising Results which are the Web Marketing world's way of categorizing the page you see when you search for something on Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Finally there's the more indirect methods of driving traffic to your website such as social media and content marketing. Both of those also have ties to your organic rankings as well.
Massive media organizations charge well over $10k per month to manage all of this for you. We're not adding zeroes here; to get all of this done for you, it could cost more than ten thousand dollars every month. Why take that hit to your bottom line when you can do much of this yourself? And we'll guide you through it: simply read on!
Why do we think it's best for you to learn how to do this yourself? Have you ever seen anyone get more excited than you about your business? We doubt it! After all, who knows your products and services better than you? You can spend less money and waste less time by doing as much of your web marketing as you wish, simply by following our guides.
If you'd prefer to tackle some of it, but save some of your time and pay for the rest, get in touch and we'll let you know how we can best help you do that.
Below you'll find a brief overview of each marketing method listed above. If any one of them is one you'd like to proceed with, you can click through to get more info on how to accomplish it.
SEO: Linking and Structure
There's a lot of confusion and uncertainty surrounding the search engine optimization world. Most people believe that Search Engine Optimization is all about adding keywords to your website's tags, which is only true to a minimal extent. There's a delicate balance of precise character lengths, too many or too little keywords, and using just the right phrases in page titles. If the balance isn't found, then your search rankings might suffer.
Yet, despite all this, it only makes up a small portion of your site's ability to rank well on search engines. The larger part of your sites rankability comes from its online 'presence' in terms of how many websites of great quality link to yours.
With our guidance, you can learn more about how to best optimize your website. Just click below to get started!
Search Advertising: How not to waste your money
When you search for your company or its products on Google, did you ever notice the tiny word "Ad" written beside the first few results? These are the "pay per click (PPC)" ads for your keywords and you will be missing out on potential business if you don't take them seriously.
To get your website showing as one of those ads, you'll need to create a Google AdWords account and bid a certain amount per click. That amount is the dollar value per click that you have committed to spending on the keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Essentially, you pay Google every time someone searching those terms clicks through to your website.
Content Marketing Strategy
From written to audio to video marketing, you need to provide value to your website visitors while making it easy for them to share your content with others.
Here's the problem: there are countless methods and tactics to choose from and choosing the best for your business is not always easy.
Ask us about the best content marketing options for your business. We'll advise you on how to create a plan to make the best possible use of each content type that will work for your business. Even better, we can help you integrate all of this content directly into your website.
Social Strategy: How not to waste your time
How many times have you opened Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and spent hours scanning the news feed to see if maybe anything important or relevant has been posted. Many people, especially solo-preneurs are guilty of doing just that.
The first most important part of Social Media Marketing is about getting ahead of those 'user' tendencies and transforming them into 'business owner' tendencies. That's where your strategy starts.
Having a strategy for social media ensures that the time you do spend on social media channels communicating with your audience is done with a purpose and an end goal and fits with the overall goals of your business.
Want us to tell you what's next?
Get your website assessed today! We'll analyze everything from your on-site tag structure and content to your backlink portfolio and provide you with a report that tells you exactly what you need to be doing to get more traffic to your website.