SEO, or search engine optimization, is a form of marketing through which a company’s website, or piece of content on a website, reaches a higher ranking on search engines to maximize visibility to consumers thereby creating a higher probability of traffic, which can later translate to sales and/or interaction depending on your business goals.
This is accomplished through creation of do follow links within a number of different arenas. While there’s more to making a web-based company successful than just good SEO, it is a very important part of getting clicks and page views.
For any entrepreneur, especially those just getting their businesses going, good SEO is crucial.
SEO is the best way to obtain online traffic for your business: when done properly, it’s one of the most cost-effective and powerful methods of establishing a broad client base.
Why SEO?
Search engine optimization is designed to establish your site in the top 10, but preferably the top 5, of any search engine, although Google is by far the most respected. This is done through a series of steps that require an ability to network, analysis of keyword research, and writing ability or at least a great writer on staff, among other things.
SEO requires creativity. It is an upbeat strategy that requires not only an ability to think out of the box, but for you to stay in touch with what topics are trending anywhere from where your business is based to all over the world. This marketing strategy is comprehensive and will ultimately connect your site to every concept available on the web from blogs, to forums, to business listings, to social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram.
Search engine optimization is best looked at as a perfect web, where even if you are unable to see where each strand goes at first sight, you know that there exists an intricate interconnectedness that leads to the ultimate success of the structure.
How to Employ SEO
This is not a simple step by step sort of method. It will take time as well as trial and error. One of the best tools in your box is the concept of guest posting. It is impossible to say just how many blogs are on the internet. It is possible to know however, how many visits a blog gets, how long visitors stay perusing the different pages, and how the blog ranks.
This is where the networking comes in. Establishing relationships with bloggers is crucial to SEO because it allows you to place links in places where they will be seen.
The main goal of marketing is exposure, which ultimately attracts clients. Take for example a television wall mount. How would a company that sells this one product distinguish themselves from every other company that sells a similar product? What would make a customer want to buy a particular wall mount over another?
Providing an article for an established blog that fits within the niche the blog caters to is going to provide exposure for your company as well as build a sense of trust between your brand and the reader. The articles and the link you want to place should always be relevant to each other so as to establish the most organic feel as well as credibility. In the case of the television wall mount, an ideal niche would be Mom blogs, sites runs by devoted mothers all over the world looking for new and innovative ways to best care for their families. T.V. Safety and Your Child is just one example of how to write an article for a site, that is relevant not just to what or whom you’re trying to promote, but to the host site as well.
The Importance of Social Media
The days of the Avon lady calling at the door are over, and the face of business sales has changed completely.
No matter what type of product you’re selling, you need to be able to keep up with the times if you want to actually sell your product or service.
Setting up a fan page and building followers on sites like Facebook and Twitter is something every single business owner should do. There is absolutely no excuse for not do so.
After all, these social media sites are free, and they can help you find new customers and connect with existing customers in an immediate way that was never possible before. Most business owners are still figuring out how to best utilize social media sites like Pinterest and Google+, they’re definitely a valuable tool. Once you figure out how to use them to promote your business, they very well may become more valuable and relevant than more established social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media platform in the world. That statistic alone is reason enough to join and start marketing your business on Pinterest. Pinterest is particularly valuable for companies looking to advertise to women. That’s because more than half of Pinterest users are women, and many of them are mothers.
The Huffington Post published a great article on statistics of social media sites for last year.
Just a few about Pinterest:
80% of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children.
64% American users of Pinterest spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site.
65% Pinterest referrals spend 70 percent more money than visitors referred from non-social channels.?
With statistics like this and more, there is absolutely no reason you should not be taking advantage of the free marketing Pinterest offers.
The key is to know what to pin because the highest incidence of pin are actually repins. Creating specific niche driven pinboards is the best way to go, and remember quality over quantity.
Google+
Google+ is a relatively unpopular social media platform, but its potential when it comes to reaching new customers is astronomical. That’s because Google designed Google+ so that it would dominate search results. That means that you need to be on Google+ to reach your customers. If Google+ related results come up in the top five search results a considerable amount of time and your business isn’t there, you’ll be missing out on page views and potential customers.
Aside from that, Google + has great tools that will help you run your business. Hangouts is actually a cost effective way of having meetings. A group of people can a join a hangout at one time. Creating circles allows you to group together clients, employees, and customers, thereby allowing you to send out mass messages to each group or individuals within them.
How to Get the Results You Want
SEO and use of social media are essential to success. On their own, they’re only a piece of the puzzle, and only doing one may not produce the results you want.
Making the effort to do SEO on your own is going to take work, a lot of it. Your best option is to put together a team of people each with a specialization.
Does Social Media Expert sound odd to you? Get used to it, because with the economy on the rise, SEO is one industry that is going to grow by leaps and bounds with more and more corporations realizing its worth and having the budget to do something about it.
Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer in Los Angeles and CEO and Founder of Gryffin media. Specializing in SEO her articles and work at Gryffin have catapulted her clients into the top 5 of their keyword Google searches.