Since Google's Penguin update people have been worrying about building links and the process they use to build links themselves.
What is the Penguin update all about?
In short, its Google’s latest attack on webspam – that is, those websites Google considers are ‘cheating’ their way to high rankings. Whereas the previous main update – ‘Panda’ – focussed on web content related issues, ‘Penguin’ focuses on the other main ranking factor – your backlinks. So, link farms, comment spam, paid for links, excessive interlinking between related sites, ‘unnatural’ anchor text, facile blog and forum posts are all under the spotlight. Here’s a post for you which will help you with getting your link building right.
How to build links
Firstly, when building links beware it needs to be seen as a natural process and so don’t just think about search engine rankings but think about where you place links and how these places will benefit you're website.
Your current links
As with with anything else it is best to start this process by looking at what you already have and trying to improve this first. The best way to do this is to visit your Google Webmaster account.
When you are logged in click through your links one at a time and check whether the link is on a relevant website; it is in a relevant place on the website and that the link has relevant anchor text. It can be beneficial if the anchor text includes your keyphrase for that page but really it is important that the link isn't simply your domain name. If the link is just your domain name you should see what you can do to change it, this will normally mean emailing the developer of the website that you have a listing on.
Once you have done this you don't only have more of an idea of how many link you have to your website but you also have a starting point which will allow you to track your links in future. So this is where you make a note of how many links you have and download these links so that you have a copy.
Looking at your competitors
Now that your links have been spring cleaned the next obvious point is to look at your competitor links to see if you can get additional online presence through the same areas. There are a couple of tools that are good for this: The SEO Moz Open Site Explorer and Back Link Watch
When using these tools you need to know who your competitors are so you can search for their links. You should already have a handful of competitors that you know of and have used for your keyphrase analysis. You should also type your keyphrases into Google to see if you have other online competitors that you didn't know of.
Once you have a list of domains simply work through these one at a time to see where they have links and if you think that you would benefit from links in the same place. Here you should also see how you can add links to these websites: Whether this is filling in a submission form or contacting a website owner.
Checking a website before building a link
You may of heard the term nofollow. This is a tag that can be added to a link to tell a search engine not to pass any link equity from one website to another and it looks like this:
<a href="http://www.domainname.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text Here</a>
If you only want links that pass equity from their website to your website then you should check the code on their website to see if they include this code. Also if the link is included within JavaScript then normally this link will not pass equity to your website.
So you are looking for code like this:
<a href="http://www.domainname.com">Anchor Text Here</a>
However there might be other attributes included within this such as id, class etc...
(<a class="bright-red" href="http://www.domainname.com">Anchor Text Here</a>)
Obviously when you check for the type of link you will need to look at links that exist on the website already.
You should also have the Google Toolbar installed on your website. This tool among other features has the Google Page Rank feature which allow you to see if a page had a PageRank and information on when it was cached.
Nowadays the Page Rank is only a small factor when looking at the importance of a website. However you should ensure that you are building a link from a website that has been cached by Google. To do this click on the Page Rank button then click on: Google Text Cache. If this gives you a 404 error then do not build a link from this website. If it hasn't been cached it has either been banned by Google or Google doesn't know it exists so the link will not be useful anyway.
Different types of links
There are a lot of different types of websites out there that you can get links from. Here are some of them:
Directories
Searching for directories
There are 2 main types of directories: Specific directories and General directories.
Specific directories are those that are industry or business specific. For example there are lots of directories out there that target travel such as Travel Directory. It is important to get listings on these types of website not only for search engines but to place your website in more potential search areas on the web.
There are literally millions of general directories across the web. For example one great directory is the Open Directory Project (also known as DMOZ). It is also useful to be placed on this type of directory, again to increase your websites exposure.
As well as increasing your website exposure links from directories will improve you search engine rankings.
How to add your website to a directory
Here is a guide to show you how to Add your website to a directory
Paid directory listings
Although technically it is okay to pay for a directory listing as long as it isn't paying for a guaranteed place on the directory and is paying for admin costs we recommend not paying for directory listings unless they are with Yahoo or Yell.
Forums and Blogs
In the past these have been seen as good places for links. This can still be good but this should not be simply logging into a blog or forum and and sneaking in a link where you can. Apart from this being very unnatural, in time these links will normally be removed and classed as spam. Also on forums doing this is normally breaking the advertising rules that you signed up for.
However you can build links from blogs and forums overtime by becoming a guest blogger and overtime the webmaster may give you your own author page or something similar where you can add in a mention of your website.
Taking part in forums and blogs may also help with rankings in the future. Now that social media is becoming more important in search being a guest blogger for multiple websites and blogging on your own website will increase your website visibility online.
Finding directories, forums and blogs
As well as finding links through competitors, links can also be found in other ways. A very effective way is by searching for directories, blogs and forums. This can be done by typing your main phrase after a phrase such as blog, directory or forum.
Here is a website that does this for you, all you do is type in your main phrase then click on the different links – Solo SEO. We recommend not solely using Google for this because you can find other links through the other search engines.
Social Bookmarking
There are a lot of social bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and many more that people use more and more nowadays. These are fantastic websites for promoting blog posts but can also be used to promote your domain name as well. To do this you simply visit the website, register with them and start adding your social content. When you add a title for a link this will be the anchor text. Although some of these websites only offer nofollow or JavaScript links they are marketing tools within themselves and can add social equity to your website which as we mentioned earlier is becoming more important.
Articles
There are a lot of article and PR websites online that let you submit articles to them and some offer links back you your website. These links back you your website are normally because you include them within the article or in your personal information as the author of the article. Over the past few years these websites have started to remove most of the links within the article and added nofollow tags to the author informations. However again these can be useful to improve your online visibility and there are still a lot of websites out there that allow links to be included in the article, obviously if they are relevant.
Reciprocal links
Getting links from websites and people that you know is great for your website but you shouldn't just email every website that you find with a links page. This is something that should be done to improve a visitors experience.
So how can you exchange links without the old fashioned links/resources page? You should think about why a link from your website and a link from their website would benefit visitors then you should build this in. Here are a couple good examples:
Testimonials: Both having a small article explaining why you are happy working together;
Case Studies: Both explaining your business relationship: why it started; how it started, why you are both happy.
Summary
These are all good ways to manually increase your visibility online and most will also have the benefit of improving your search engines listings. However this need to be accompanied by exceptional content.
How Google Decide on Algorithm Changes
Google add 8 cameras and 16 microphones to a Google Algorithm Change meeting and broadcast this to the world. This video shows how every change even the smallest of changes get intense scrutiny by their search evaluation and ranking teams.
Google Improves it's Bad Ad Detection Process
Over the last few months there have been a few complaints about Google allowing malicious download ads and ads to websites containing scams and viruses. Although Google is always trying to detect and remove these ads they have improved their detection process considerably in March by:
- Allowing users to block counterfeit ads;
- Improving the automated systems that detect counterfeit ad to ban the advertiser and not just the ad;
- Google Staff will now actually view suspicious ads and decide whether to an them.
Six Fundamental SEO Tips
Google has released 6 SEO fundamental tips and here they are:
- Do something cool: This is a great way to stand out fro the competition;
- Include relevant words in your copy: Basically optimise your pages but don't keyword stuff, you can make sure your website is relevant for keywords without keyword stuffing;
- Be smart about your tags and site architecture: Our Free SEO lessons will show you how to align the title tag, meta keywords etc... on your website;
- Sign up for email forwarding in Google Webmaster Tools: SO you are the first to hear if Google sees anything wrong with your website;
- Attract Buzz: Write good interesting content that people will want to share and include social media buttons on your website to get natural links;
- Stay Fresh and Relevant: Keep content up to date and add new content whenever you can, however don't add content for the sake of it and keep the content relevant.
Google's Re-evaluation of Links Causes Problems
In February Google announced that it's changing the way it evaluates links. In particular they are switching off a method of link analysis that they have used for years. Now that this change and an update to Panda have been made we can see some websites de-indexed from Google.
In March it looks like blog networks have been hit by this change and Buildmyrank is actually shutting down.
Google has been cracking down on mass produced low quality content sites over the last year with Panda updates so the obvious next step was to move this into mass produced low quality links.
SEO is a self contained discipline which requires understanding of the way Google ranks sites. As many know its about understanding the way Google treats content and in bound links and a few other important factors.
Increasingly however SEO is becoming viewed as a component in a wider ‘inbound marketing’ context….
The diagram above implies a close overlapping between other important online marketing spheres – collectively the above are often considered the three main cornerstones of inbound marketing. They are all valid and useful in their own right but the combination of these areas and the interrelationship leads to a results which is substantially greater than the sum of the parts.
So lets examine this synergy and look at how we can optimise the relationship between them and see if we can improve our SEO as a by-product of other activities.
Content Marketing
In its simplest form this just means getting as much content out as a many different and relevant places on the web as possible – guides, whitepapers, ebooks, press and new releases, articles, blog posts, posts on related blogs, product reviews, directory listings forums – etc, there are many different types of content and lots of places on the web to direct them; for most small businesses it’s a question of resources to produce this content but it starts with a review (audit) of what electronic content gets produced already (quite often a lot more than you might think).
Additional content types can be identified as important and resources put in place for its production. Using outsourced third parties to produce this content is also an option.
(Incidentally we’ll be sending out a Create Great Content tutorial over the next couple of weeks so sign in to our Google Plus VIP circle if you want to get a copy automatically - Jan’s VIP Circle)
How does Content Marketing impact SEO?
In two ways:-
- In bound links are still one of the main – if not he main – factor in your Google rankings. Ensuring there are links back to the website from this content – and more importantly ensuring there are keyword rich ‘anchor text’ links back to relevant pages of your site is very important. It can be argued that this ‘content based’ approach to link building is more effective than other forms since it involves a range of different types of sites to get links from for a wide range of phrases so it’s more ‘natural’
- The other way of course is that just the sheer tasks of getting more content out on the web increases your visibility. Depending on what keyphrases people use in their search you may get content displaying in the Google hitlist from a variety of sources rather than just your web site – from article sites, Youtube if you distribute videos, , your LinkedIn profile and so on. Even from ‘directory’ sites like the one below if you have sent your content to them….
So, as a first step look at the content your organisation already produces and work out where to distribute it to on the web, who will do it and how often it gets done…..then you can build from there.
Social Media Marketing
Again, important in its own right for marketing. If you are not using any platform at the moment look at how your competitors are using social media as a starting point. If you are B2C Facebook may have strong relevance; if B2B the LinkedIn may be a good start. Of course there are others to consider like Twitter (see www.twellow.com the Twitter directory to see what others in your sector are doing) and YouTube which is now a major platform for business promotion
Incidentally we’ll be sending out a LinkedIn for Business tutorial over the next couple of weeks so sign in to our Google Plus VIP circle if you want to get a copy automatically (Jan’s VIP Circle)
How does Social Media Marketing impact SEO?
In four ways:-
- Directly in the search results – as above – quite often social media sites will show in search results as well as, or instead of, your website – depending on the keyphrase searched for…
- Link Building – Some Social Media sites will transfer ‘link juice’ to help your rankings. Its important to note not all will do this – particularly the major ones like Facebook for example. This is because they use the ‘no follow’ tag to tell the spiders not to crawl. You can check by viewing the ‘source code’ and searching for ‘no follow’. Many blogs and Social Bookmarking sites do count however (and bit.ly does although Twitter doesn’t!)
- Better ranking through social signals.Here’s a scenario….Lets say a new product from Dell gets announced and unfortunately there are problems with it with grievances and comments shared all over Twitter. Someone does a Google search for product reviews –what’s more important for Google to show in the results? – is it the product description on Dell’s website (which maybe weeks out of date depending on when the spider last visited ) or the bang up to date discussion on Twitter? Google of course wanting to show the most relevant and recent would not be happy showing just Dell website information.So this is a simple example of how social media activity should, and is, impacting search results. So Facebook Likes, Twitter retweets and many other signals are now used by Google to display the most important results and why we should encourage social media interaction with our brand.
- Integration of Social with searchThe example above shows how important it is for Google to access information on social media sites, and much of the information on a major social site – i.e. Facebook – is not available to Google which is probably one of the reasons Google has launched its own very important platform ‘Google Plus’.We've posted previous blogs about the importance of this and how to set up a good Google Plus Business Page yourselves. But the most significant thing is that we are already seeing strong integration of Google Plus activity within the search results. At the moment in the US you have the option of including G Plus results in the search results– soon it will be here and soon after it wont be optional – Google will intersperse G Plus content within the search results when it sees fit. The take away here is to set up a G Plus business page (like 100 million others already have), start using it to communicate with your audience and encourage people to Plus One (
) you.
So just to put things into perspective – SEO is still the jewel in the inbound marketing crown. There are 10.3 billion searches on Google every month from people looking for stuff; on Facebook, the largest social media platform by far, there are (only) 850 million people communicating (generally not looking for stuff). But – by participating intelligently with Content and Social Media Marketing activities as well as SEO, and because of the inextricable interrelatedness of all three we surely have a 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 5 situation. (or possible 7!)
Image Previews (Available in the UK and USA)
For quite a while now Google has offered Related Searches in search results which has been very useful. This is also a feature that has improved image searches and now Google has taken this a step further and will actually give samples of images for these related searches which is fantastic to help with finding exactly what you’re looking for or just have fun exploring.
For example if you search for London the related searches show as London Underground, London Eye, London Big Ben etc... Now you can hover over one of these results to show a small selection of associated images.
Related Maps (Available in the UK and USA)
Google now shows sitelinks for maps listings which is a great improvement. Again a great example of this is London. When you search for London. You will now see sitelinks under the map listings allowing you to view Hotels, Restaurants and tourist locations.
Health Results (Only available in the USA for now)
More and more people are searching for health information on Google and now Google has made a big change to improve the search results. Google's data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition.
So Google have now made this process easier by showing possible related health conditions for the for the symptoms that you have searched for. For example, if you search for abdominal pain on my right side, you’ll be able to quickly see some potentially related conditions and learn more about them by clicking on the links in the list.
These are search results and are not authored by doctors or other medical experts
As mentioned last month Google is now publishing search quality improvements each month. In January as well as the Search Plus Your World Google we have already discussed Google has made another interesting change.
As part of Google's commitment to provide the best search results they have released a new Page Layout Algorithm Improvement. This is an improvement that Google has made directly from complaints from searches.
Many searchers have complained that when they visit a website they have to scroll down you find the content that they are looking for; normally this involves scrolling past ads on the page. So Google has now made an algorithm change to help websites that have useful content above-the-fold to rank better than other websites where the content is below-the-fold.
Many websites that do not have ads above-the-fold but offer no or little content above-the-fold may get caught in the cross-fire. Although this sounds very worrying Google have stated that this algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.
Here are some other changes Google have published on the Google Insider Blog:
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Fresher results;
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Faster autocomplete;
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Autocomplete spelling corrections;
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Better spelling full-page replacement;
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Better spelling corrections for rare queries;
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Improve detection of recurrent event pages;
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High-quality sites algorithm improvements;
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Cross-language refinements;
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English on Google Saudi Arabia;
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Improved scrolling for Image Search;
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Improved image search quality;
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More relevant related searches;
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Blending of news results;
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Automatically disable Google Instant based on computer speed.
For more information on these updates visit the Google Insider Blog
Tools to link your SEO, Social Media and Your Website
Previously we have discussed the idea of improving our ‘Inbound Marketing‘ and have specifically outlined the need to have some sort of ‘Content Strategy‘ in place to underpin this.
We’ve also invited you to sign up to our ‘Google Plus VIP circle‘ so you will get free lessons on Social Media and SEO essentials.
Something else I’d like to introduce you to is a set of sofware tools to simplify the whole process of Inbound Marketing.
It provides an ‘All in One’ approach to online marketing ….
It makes easy the hitherto complex task of managing an array of online and social media marketing options.
Specifically it provides the following functions people have been telling us they need for ages…
- Very easy to produce new web pages for your site or change existing ones (remembering the imperative for new content for Google’s freshness update) through an extremely easy to use content management system.
-We can ‘blog’ using exactly the same CMS...
-The blog automatically populates other important social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Plus to increase your web visibility
-You are given guidelines as you add content on how to ‘SEO’ the new page to capture our important keyphrases to drive traffic and enquiries – plus many other SEO tools for keyword and link intelligence
-You can easily add ‘calls to action’ to new pages through inbuilt options for ‘call me back’ buttons and the like – to increase web enquiries
-You can use the social media platforms through this same interface and also monitor social media for mentions of yourselves or keywords relevant to you. So one interface into the social media world rather than lots of different interfaces.
-You can use a common analytics platform encompassing all places you are visible on the web – so you can see easily where your leads are coming from
- every web contact is recorded automatically and incorporated into a database you can use for on going emailing – and merged with your existing email marketing data
…and much more.
The software to do this is from Hubspot (the 2nd fastest growing software company in the World – invested in by Google and others)
Its quite easy to move to this platform from your current one – we have just done it for our own company.
If you would like more information, or a demo or free trial please get in touch as we have an agency agreement with them for the UK. Also much more information going on to the website soon about this and we really believe this will provide a significant competitive edge (for us and you!)
Is Google+ Important for your Business?
If you are interested in generating enquiries via online marketing the answer is yes, Google + is important to your business. Google + hasn't been around for long but already has over 90,000,000 users. Its doubled from 45,000,000 over the last 2 months and will continue to grow.
If in the past you haven't really seen how social networking websites can help your business then I understand why you might be sceptical about Google+. After all Google has tried social networking before with Google Buzz and Google Wave.
This Time It's Different
When searching for products and services on Google you have probably noticed that sometimes you will get personalised results (most of the time this is when you are logged in). We have seen this start a long time before Google+ and we will see this happen more and more in the future.
With the recent Google Algorithm update “Search Plus Your World” when someone is logged into Google+ they are getting personalised search results depending on their information together with the information of people in their Circles. We are also starting to see Google+ results appearing in search engine results when searchers are not logged into Google+.
With the knowledge that Google is making algorithm changes to support Google+ it is our opinion that you should have a Google+ account and a Google+ Page if you want to take advantage of the increasing integration we will see between search engine ranking results and G+.
Luckily we have something we prepared earlier to help you Create a Google+ Account. Also if you follow these instructions and create an account on Google then add Jan Klin to your Circles we will add you to our VIP Circle where we have just included tutorial that will show you how to effectively set up a Google+ Business Page.
Another Great Reason To Set Up a Google+ Page
At the moment you can search for a company on Google and find their Facebook page. Companies put a lot of effort into Facebook apart from just adding a page companies are constantly updating their status, engaging with Friends etc... But all of this extra involvement stays on Facebook. With Google+ this extra work that you put in will not only help you engage with people in your circles but will also appear in Google search results which is a great bonus.
This is just the start and Google+ already seems to be combining the best of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook into one platform.
We’re also looking forward to the PPC structure that Google are sure to add to Google+.
So Create a Google+ Account, add us to your Circles, create your business page and Google+ your world.
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Maximising Sales Through High Search Engine Visibility – Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Training 2012
Next course: 31st May 2012 – Radisson Blu Hotel Manchester Airport
Contact Jan Klin – 01928 788100 or email jan@janklin.com
Your investment: £295 per person plus Vat. Includes refreshments, lunch and electronic copy of all training materials
This course will provide you with all the tools, techniques and know how to get you to the top of search engines and deliver new business.
Importantly it will include the techniques we have developed over the past 10 years – techniques which work for our clients and provide the quickest way to get sucess
In over 35 years of business life I’ve attended many training courses, and your one day SEO training was one of the best. It went at a good pace, was full of really useful information and the USB stick you gave us is packed with help and assistance. I came out of it energised and ready to tackle SEO! Many thanks. Kathy Guest, Director, Marketing Results Ltd
Our Search Engine Optimisation training (SEO training) is now updated to include the new factors to consider for 2012 – including ‘Google Instant’ considerations, site speed, personalisation, real time search and integration with Social Media. In addition how best to take advantage of Google’s latest ‘Panda’ its ‘freshness’ update and Google + integration.
Who should attend?
Anyone involved in internet marketing wanting to get the very best results for their search engine marketing budget including sales and marketing managers, online marketers and consultants.
How will you benefit?
Apply the learning from this course and your website ranking and position will be boosted within the results pages of all the major UK and global search engines, maximising the marketing return on your website investment.
SEO Course Module 1: Introduction and finding keyphrases
- An outline of the ‘best practice’ structured process to optimisation
- How to find the most effective keyphrases to bring relevant visitors to your site
- Using the latest web tools to identify the best keyphrases
- Assessing the ‘relevance’, ‘popularity’ and ‘competition’ for your keyphrases
- Harnessing the ‘long tail’ for maximum sales and conversions
- Keyword strategies for ecommerce sites
- Techniques for assessing the competition and how long it will take to achieve good results
SEO Course Module 2: Auditing your existing site and SEO considerations for new sites
- The major factors which will provide good SEO ranking – both within your website and external factors
- How search engines work and which are important
- Using web based tools to assess your current position versus your online competition
- Building a new web site – the essential for SEO success. Choosing the right technology and CMS (content management system)
SEO Course Module 3: Optimising your web pages
- Explaining metadata and identifying the most important metadata in your site for top search engine performance
- Structuring your title, description, keyword and H1 tags for optimisation
- Explaining ‘keyword density’ and the importance of effective copy writing for high SEO rankings
- Using web based tools to analyse your existing copy and keyword density
- SEO copywriting techniques – how to panda to panda
- Implementing your optimisation – matching pages to phrases
SEO Course Module 4: Developing backlinks and using directories
- A structured approach to developing your linking strategy
- The importance of backlinks to your SEO rankings
- How to develop and assess links from the best sources
- Structuring your ‘anchor text’ for optimum search engine performance
- Analysing your links and your competitors links using web based tools
- 8 key target areas for your links – from directories to social media sites
SEO Course Module 5: Monitoring our performance and fine tuning
- Monitoring your rankings and click throughs – using web based tools to see keyphrases and search engine positions
- Telephone tracking – relating enquiries to keyphrases
- Analysing what’s working for you and how to improve
- Which phrases are working for you, which search engines and directories are delivering results
- Fine tuning your SEO to out compete your online competitors
- What to avoid to remain ‘search engine friendly’
SEO Course Module 6: Utilising Social Media and understanding the latest Google ranking factors
- Working with Blogs to improve SEO
- Working with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and Google+
- Google ‘universal search’ – including video, image and news SEO
- Local Search – make sure you are on the ‘Google Map’ for local searches
- ‘Digital Assetts Optimisation’ – including Video SEO (YouTube and others
- Real time search, personalisation and website speed issues
Please contact us now if you wish to benefit from this SEO training or find delivery locations near to you.
Your investment: £295 per person plus Vat. Includes refreshments, lunch and electronic copy of all training materials
Contact Jan Klin – 01928 788100 or email jan@janklin.com
Dear Jan,
I was on your excellent ‘Loughborough UNI Course’ and you blew my socks off! I was VERY impressed with your presentation and ‘Inside Track’ knowledge. ……Thank you for your effort to making it the best and most interesting business presentation I have seen in years!
Well done!
Yours sincerely,
Paul R Morton, Morton Connolly
MBA, MCIM, MA,DipCAM
Managing Director
Last time we discussed the idea of inbound marketing and identified an important feature of it – namely the idea of having different types of digital content for people at different stages of their buying cycle. Its accepting that nowadays the web and web content is the main port of call for most people – whether they are buying, researching or just looking for answers to questions , and we want to be in a position to be in the picture regardless of which stage they are at.
A Content Strategy
What underpins this then is some form of content strategy – this doesnt need to be as grand as it sounds – its just making sure, in a structured way, that…
- We have good content in different forms (or we have plan to produce some)
- We know which platforms the content will be distributed by (Facebook, Blog, website, RSS, email, press releases, etc, etc)
- We know who is responsible in the organisation for its production, distribution and how often they will produce/distribute it.
A spreadsheet is a good way of recording this information – with different columns for the items above and possibly additional area for notes.
Here’s a partial Content Plan spreadsheet one of our customer’s produced to give you an idea…
The important thing here is a documented plan shareable amongst all th individuals who have responsibility for getting the content produced and distributed.
A good starting point is to do some sort of Content Audit – that is looking at the current content types you routinely produce then deciding on which platforms to publish through. For example you may already produce press releases but dont maximise publishing opportunities. There are loads of online distribution services to get this content out through – PRWeb, PR World, Market Wire etc
This type of activity will lead to identification of gaps – for example, you may decide, as we do, that you will produce regular blog posts to your contacts and distribute via RSS, Facebook, Google Plus etc. You may not do it at the moment so need to decide who will do it, how often what about and so on.
Incidentally a by product of this activity is aiding your SEO through link building activity – so another way of looking at link building is to treat it as a component of your content distribution strategy.
Another aspect of this is you may decide you dont have resources to do all that you think is necessary – you may decide you cant post to Facebook twice a day of you cant produce articles and blogposts as frequently as you think its needed. This is where 3rd parties like ourselves can help supplement you activities and even manage the whole content disstribution strategy for you if you wish.
Again, its worth repeating your type of businesses will determine to what degree you do all this. If you run an ecommerce site maybe the important things are product updates through the web, product offers through Facebook and Twitter, Getting users to review you products/services – so generating useful ‘User generated Content. Maybe if you are on line travel agent your priorities are different – producing regular unbiased blogposts about the locations and resorts you service for example maybe the most important thing. So at least think about it and think about the ‘sales funnel’ we discussed last time at how best to engage with your audiences at different stages – rememebring that its much more effective that you have multiple contacts with your audience at different stages rather than just expecting them to find you at the point they wish to make a purchase
Most people in business are aware of how marketing has gone through a shift over the past few years. People refer to this as modern marketing, new marketing and quite often inbound marketing and many other variants. Whatever we call it the key thing is its moved from an aggressive form of invasive attention grabbing to more subtle forms. In this post and the next few a want to outline how you can go about doing it. I’ll discuss several customers of ours as exemplars and see if we can arrive at a best practice process of doing this. As part of this we’ll revisit SEO and look at various Social Media platforms in detail.
Inbound Marketing
The reason most outbound marketing activities fail to deliver the expected benefits is because most people are not interested in our messages and offers at the point we send them out. Thats why conventional marketing methods from telesales, email shots, cold calling, print advertsing and many others – are immensly wasteful and frustrating. Further we have increasingly sophisticated ways of filtering out unwanted marketing messages which means in general its difficult to get a return on outbound marketing initiatives.
The Case for Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing means we create an environment where people contact us at the point at which they are interested – by definition this contact will be much more likely to do business with us. As an example take search marketing – someone does a search for, say, ‘Japanese Knotweed eradication company’ and ends up on a web page that provides the service. That is someone has found you at the point at which they have an interest in buying – so much more of a qualified opportunity than us picking up the phone and calling around to see if anyone has a Japanese Knotweed problem. (Which is by all accounts very unpleasant.)
Of course they may not be interested in buying from us at the point of contact – they may be looking for further information, or looking for anwers to questions. So the trick is to be in a position to respond to people in an appropriate way depending on where they are in their sales cycle. This is where Social Media can play an important part.
Visualising the ‘sales funnel’ can be a good way of thinking about this…
Acknowledging that different information types and marketing techniques are relevant at different stages is important. It also means we need to be in a position to provide useful ‘value added’ information to build loyalty and credibility. We have to accept that ‘the more we give the more we get back’. The idea of giving away stuff (like we give away lessons for free and course materials) is not something every company is comfortable with – but it is a feature of Inbound Marketing.
Heres a list of the most important techniques and information and communication forms relevant to Inbound Marketing – not all these will be relevant to all companies (or indeed possible) but over the next few posts I want to try to go into these in some detail and also to give you some tools and processes for deciding which is the best approach for you. In short I want to help you put together an Inbound Marketing strategy…
Search Engine Optmisation (SEO)
Pay per Click Advertising
Link Building
Online PR
Online article and news distribution
Blogging
Facebook
Google Plus
Twitter
YouTube
Linkedin
ebooks
Email marketing (permission based)
whitepapers
RSS
….and of course a business focused, landing page and ‘call to action’ rich website.
So in future posts we’ll discuss….
Creating a content strategy -Good content underpins Inbound Marketing
Creating a work schedule – who is going to produce your content and which of the above will they use to deliver it
Which of the above items are important for us – prioritising the above
We’ll also look in detail at each item in the list above – where weve created a lesson in the past we’ll give you the link – we’ll also introduce some new lessons (Using Linkedin for business for example which we havent covered previously)
We’ll include examples of what some of our customers are doing
We’ll also detail some software tools to allow you to integrate all of this and manage all your web content and social media through a common interface -from content creation and distribution to prospect management and analytics.