It is not just Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), its Internet Marketing.
You need a holistic approach to how you do business on the net. Online marketing, offline marketing, social media marketing...
SearchMasters job of SEO is not just about getting websites higher on the search engines. Fundamentally its a marketing effort. The end result is that we need more people to your web site converting into sales and business leads... So what do we need to successfully market on the internet?
- A great underlying product or service
- Find out what people are looking for - search phrase selection
- Create content about those phrases
- A usable website - usability
- Great professional graphics
- Good website programming
- Get those pages ranked high on the search engines - links, links and more links. And time.
- Get ranked on Google Local - the maps that show on the normal Google search results
- Community interactivity with the site - social bookmarking, blog comments, rss
After all, the internet is about content. And once we get people to the page, they need to be satisfied in its quality and usability
- Create a brand/brand awareness, so you get word of mouth happening about your great content, and services. Not so easy to get brand awareness for generic domains.
- Find out where people are talking about your topic - forums, youtube, bebo, friendster, linkedin, ...
- Create videos about your products/services, and get those youtube and Google Video pages ranked within those websites, and the url ranked in the Google search results
- Find out the relevant industry directories - finda.co.nz, yellow.co.nz travel and accommodation directories...
- Newsletters and RSS feeds - push content to people
- Cost per click Search Engine advertising - Google adwords, MSN and Yahoo advertising
- Affiliate marketing
- Banner advertising - The Performance Network (First Rate)
- Press releases - for both online and offline publications
- Offline marketing - consider TV, magazine, newspaper, letterbox and PO Box drops, business cards, vehicle signage, road signage. Prominently display your website address on your offline advertising. Consider a special landing page for each medium so you can more easily track the traffic through that offline medium.
- Meetups - where are the people that are talking about your category of products?
- Conferences - attend as a speaker, attendee, sponsor etc.
- Local Chamber of Commerce and City Council local business growth initiatives
- BNI - Business Network International business networking
- Industry associations
- Be seen to be an expert across many different marketing platforms
- Tracking your achievements in each marketing effort and optimising your marketing spend based on results achieved in each area
Yes, there are so many different aspects to successful internet marketing. Its not just about Search Engine Marketing!
