Yesterday we touched on using traditional marketing tactical media to generate online buzz, and influence the search engine ranking results. Today I want to go a little further into how to weather the sometimes long ride while an SEO campaign generates results.
In this article you will read tactics we use to generate targeted traffic for our clients, you will also learn of ways to gain exposure for your web presence. Because of the nature of seo, we look for ways to value add the process and give our clients the greatest exposure to their market as possible.
One of the hardest jobs for the seo account manager is keeping a client happy while a campaign generates results. First let us look at some of the reasons it takes time for a campaign to lift your site in the SERP's.
Domain age is more or less the same as how long your business has been established for, XYZ company since 1980 will give a prospective customer a far more fuzzy feeling then we just opened our doors, come and spend your hard earned with us.
Of course as the business owner it can be hard to be patient while forking out money every month that is greeted with you are seeing results, look you have gone from page 57 to page 10 in the SERP. It is little comfort when in fact you feel and you are no better off yet.
Firstly education is needed to understand why it does take time to lift your much sort after keyword phrases. Secondly a plan is needed to help overcome the wait while it does happen and to feel some benefit in your monthly spend.
In a previous article we talk of the benefits of the long tail of search, again we are going to sing it's praises again. The long tail is basically search terms that are unique or equate to the less searched phrases. What is most interesting or important with the long tail is the conversion rate.
Lets look at two examples
Now the second term is a long tail phrase and highly targeted, and hence has a far higher rate of conversion.
Lets look at another example
Now it is also to be noted that on most sites it is the long tail that makes money and the primary phrases that generate traffic. So in essence we are better to have less traffic but targeted long tail phrases.
If we are searching for goods or services and we are ready to buy, we tend to get very specific about our search query. Part of this is buyer psychology, this is what I want, the other part is most searchers know if I do not get specific in my search, I am going to be presented with to many search results.
When we start a campaign for a client we concentrate our efforts on both sides of the fence, this generates our clients quicker results and in most cases they start to see increased sales in a shorter time period.
We can conclude that taking advantage of the long tail during the copy optimisation phase, and concentrating efforts to extend the amount of phrases we can rank for, will give good short term benefits. Furthermore we also know these same terms will rank far easier and for longer periods of time, than high competition primary keyword phrases.
Previously we have written about the benefits of your business having a blog, and yet again we are going to use this most useful resource to further help our marketing cause. First we have to decide if your blog is going to be part of your main site as this blog is to our domain, or it could be a completely separate entity. There are positives for both, a same site blog is generating continual content to your site, this the search engines love and will return faster to index your site than if it is a rarely changing site. We can easily build relevant long tail search phrases which again is benefiting our main goal of converting traffic to sales. We are building good internal linking which in turn helps all content on the site to be indexed and stay indexed. If content you are writing is viral in it's nature and is attracting links we are going to see our main site page rank lift over time and importantly internal pages will receive good page rank as well.
We have a soap box to shout out about our goods and services without affecting the sites look and feel, we have an area to showcase the companies talent, and what results employees have been attaining for clients. It allows news pertaining to your market or PR releases to be simply posted. We can showcase new products or services the business is offering, we can keep a flow of case studies of how you have solved clients problems and what the benefits were. Blogging for business can make you an authority in your market place, while building credibility and becoming a hub of material relating to your industry.
Encouraging feed back from your market place can see your blog a hive of activity from satisfied clients, and if you are unfortunate enough to receive a complaint, it allows immediate damage control to fix the situation. Nipping problems in the butt can also be seen as a caring company, one who is concerned if a customer feels wrong done by. With the world of business becoming more accountable a company that is seen to fix a mistake and return to the market how they fixed it, can do more good than the damage any complaint could of done.
If you are writing viral targeted content pertaining to your market, this content can be picked up by the greater blogging community, posted to the various social sharing utilities, and targeted traffic can flow in. It is about using all the resources the internet can offer to better expose your business, to the market place.
We have a business blogging service with many service options, from the maintaining and posting of content supplied by the company, to completely managed scenarios with content written by professional copy writers. Most businesses already have a host of material relevant to their market, it is not difficult to turn this into worthwhile articles for a business blog. Staff within your company can take it in turns writing one piece a week relevant to your market, and their skill set. With so many benefits blogging can give your business it seems almost wrong not to take advantage of this medium.
There are more ways to find targeted traffic than just Google, Yahoo and NineMSN, there are also good free and paid business directories and while I advise extreme caution with many paid directories you can easily dry run the value with a free listing first.
Here is a list of directories to have your site listed
This is just a taste of the free listing directories available but is a good start.
SEO can and does take time to breed good results but with maximising the potential from the long tail and and leverage added exposure from business directories we can offset the waiting period with untapped traffic sources.
Google local business centre, when you perform many searches you will of noticed the map that is displayed on the left hand side with a list of businesses, this is Google maps local business centre. Adding your business to this resource can be quote powerful as is always displayed on top of the organic results.
Submitting your content to Digg, although mainly a US resource it can still be valuable to submit your good viral content to digg, this can be a starting blog to people finding, sharing and linking to your content.
Another resource similar to digg is Propeller again a social sharing resource but please follow their guidelines for submitting content.
Yahoo answers for Australia can be another way to find targeted traffic, join and search for questions pertaining to your market, we have had and seen good results for a plethora of markets by taking advantage of this resource.
Social networking sites can be another great resource for sharing your content, Facebook for example has a simple button that can be added to your browser bar to share your content with your profile. With the surge of people using social networks and generation Y being a primary user furthermore using the resource for business purposes, social media just cannot be overlooked.
This article is just a taste of ways you can gain added exposure for your business and website, we use many of the resources and tactic we have mentioned here. If you are looking for a professional SEO company to leverage the greatest marketing medium available today, you simply must call We Seo, we understand the traditional and digital marketing space and keep up to date on the latest trends and resources. We are able to drive targeted traffic and unlock new markets for your company. Call today on 1300 78 50 60 or use our free consultation form and a account manager will return your call.