by USR
Digital marketing is a helpful strategy to disperse your brand name widely across a variety of channels, such as search engines, social media, mobile and web apps, influencer marketing, emails, etc.
And it does not stop here yet it still has to offer a lot more!
While you deploy digital marketing strategies, this will render your business with a unique digital marketing ecosystem that will do wonders in stepping up the odds of your content becoming the first choice of users.
In this blog, we will discuss the strategies that brands need to create a relevant digital marketing environment for their websites.
It typifies the art of ranking higher in Search Engine Results Pages (i.e., unpaid). Within SEO, there are three key sectors.
Let us take a look at each one:
On-Page SEO
Every year, Google makes changes to its algorithms thousands of times. As per the data recorded in 2018 alone, Google made over 3,000 updates (i.e., nine per day).
It is impossible to stay abreast of these recurrent changes, in conjunction with changes in user behavior.
However, one thing that will help you make the most of your advantage is on-page SEO, which optimizes your web pages to ensure better ranking and more target traffic.
A typical practice of on-page SEO is to optimize meta titles and meta descriptions. In conjunction with a description that reiterates the same keywords, turns up on the first page of results on Google.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO corrects the database of your website. It is part of on-page SEO and it includes 404 errors, page speed, duplicate content, etc.
Page speed: As per several pieces of research, users take no time to leave sites that consume three or lesser seconds to load. Current Google guidelines bestow a privilege on websites that take three seconds or lesser seconds to load content. With that said, faster = better for both users and search engines.
Duplicate or missing content: Duplicate content refers to the same content that is available on over one URL. Search engines cannot resolve which URL to exhibit and the problem worsens when users start to link to a variety of URLs with similar content. Consequently, this mightily affects your site’s ranking, which leads to less traffic.
404 errors or broken links: Another way to lose rankings and massive traffic is to have broken links on your website. Even while multiple sources may already be linking to your website, yet if a link is out of order, you will lose traffic without knowing it.
In brief, the nitty-gritty of technical SEO is to keep the site up to date and free of duplicate content and broken links.
Off-Page SEO
While on-page SEO is about “frontal” operations, off-page SEO is like working behind the scenes, but with observable results.
Off-page SEO includes link building, social networks, guest blogging, creation of promotional content for publication on other websites, etc.
Local SEO
Optimizes your business to grip the attention of local audiences.
The “best things around me” trend is accelerating. Users are becoming used to asking Google to find the best services available nearby.
According to HubSpot, more than 45% of searches made on Google are local. And Google is at the leading edge of offering the most favorable options, along with reviews, locations and suggestions in its featured snippets (synopsis of a question asked on Google, selected as the best answer for the survey).
Users even need not click on the website link because they acquire inclusive information available on the results page. If you want to convince users without requiring a click, local SEO should be a part of your integral marketing strategy.
Keyword search
Keyword research resides in the hub of the digital marketing ecosystem. The keywords are what you search for on search engines (for example, asking Google how to do this or that; searching for new events, etc.). Everything you type on Google is keywords.
Brands need to evaluate the keywords and the purpose behind them to figure out exactly what users are searching for. With this in mind, they must create their content.
For example, if I search for “how to be a storyteller”, my intent and purport behind the keywords is that I wish to become a storyteller.
I am a person who deals in creating stories for people, or maybe I want to brush up my social skills to impress other people. This elicits the answer to who your audience is.
Therefore, a guide that will educate me on how to create stories without consuming a lot of time will be my primary choice on search engines.
A first-class SEO strategy is to use a combination of keywords that fit well with the user’s query and intention.
Link building
In a ‘question and answer’ session with Google, Andrey Lipattsev, senior search quality strategist, gave away the three salient ranking factors:
· Links
· Content
· Rankbrain (search engine algorithm dependent on machine learning helps Google process search results and elicits the most pertinent answers to users).
Links are one of the key ranking factors. The more backlinks a website has from varied sources, the better it will be ranked. However, not just any backlink. This means that sites with first-rate links, varied sources and valuable content win the top rankings.
Content Preference
Highly valuable content, as always, is at the hub of digital marketing.
Google bestows awards on those who create content that responds to user questions or delivers them solutions to their problems.
To create value-added content, you must have the knowledge of what your user wants and what the most preferable form of content is. That is why it is good to ensure whether text, images, videos or audio will be the ticket?For example, a person searching for recipes would have a special affinity for YouTube videos than in an article delineating the nitty-gritty of the ingredients. Use a keyword ‘recipe’ for searching, YouTube videos will turn up first on Google.
Marketing beyond Google
As per the Jumpshot report, Amazon outdid Google in terms of products’ searches. Now, Google no longer remains the only option for users.
They jump to Amazon to search for products and switch to iTunes or Spotify to listen to the most up-to-date podcasts.
Then there is YouTube for those planning to learn something new without having to be concerned about typing a few words into a search engine.
In 2020, depending on the preferences of the user’s content, the preference of search engines will also vary.
If you are more interested in selling products, you would want to opt for the Amazon store. Alternatively, if you are a marketing agency, it is good to produce videos while mentioning your tips.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is another website where you can spend most of your time – although it is not a place where they do research; they don’t mind browsing Facebook or Instagram all day and reading stories shared by others.
So, why not add your stories to these settings?
As a result of the broad social media presence, you are not forcing users to read your content. Quite the reverse, it is more like inviting them. The decision is at their discretion.
Depending on the interest of your website users, they will like your content, share it with others and even comment on it. Getting engagement of target audience on social media is validation for search engines, as it evinces that it is worth ranking your content with enhanced ranking.
You can mingle free and paid social media marketing strategies. Regular Instagram users typically find video ads that appear engaging and do not appear like ads. Apparently, they are local to the channel, appealing enough to lead users to conversion.
Search engine marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or marketing of search engines refers to the purchase of ads from search engines to attract traffic to a website. One of the best examples of SEM is promotional ads that you see before the organic results.
SEO keeps you waiting months for results, while paid ads help you get at the top of search engines. Since it is the first thing users see when they look for something, brands receive a lot of hits at once.
However, this does not infer that you should discard all other methods and pay attention to paid ads only. Studies give you an idea that they receive exclusively 3.4% clicks, compared to 38.5% clicks from organic results – which, as usual, are the winners.
Paid ads are only one way to get a fast hike in traffic, while organic marketing takes time to do its magic.
Influencer Marketing
With the advancement of social media, the trend of influencers becomes so. These social media guys are like celebrities to their followers. No matter whether your target users read your content or not, they will truly give an ear to an influencer who markets your products.
Take a look at these statistics to become familiar with the effects of influencer marketing:
- Four out of 10 millennial followers (born in the early 1980s through 2003) believe that their favorite influencers understand them better than their friends;
- 53% of women made purchases inspired by influencers’ posts on social media;
- 49% of consumers trust the recommendation of influencers to make purchases.
If influencer marketing is not already listed in your agenda, you are missing a very available opportunity to reach your target users speedily.
E-mail marketing
After seeking permission from customers to get access to their emails, email marketing has earned the standing of one of the most effective marketing channels. Taking 4,400% ROI (Return on Investment) into account, the strategy can triumph over all other trends and fashions.
Email marketing is an open door for consumers. Your content reaches them directly and acts as an invitation to use your products and services.
Featured snippets
Virtually all answers come into view in featured snippets. Therefore, users experience a petty need to click on site links – let alone read the content.
34.4% of desktop results are never clicked. On mobile, results without a click arrive at 62.5%.
Now, the fight is not about getting clicks; as an alternative, it is about winning customers with zero clicks.The highlighted excerpts are the way to do this. They create valuable content that responds to users’ common queries. Google searches for the best Internet content and offers him a place in the featured snippets as a reward.
Optimization for different devices
The cell phone has already outdone computer searches. State-of-the-art devices, for example, Smartwatches and smart TVs have become a cardinal part of the daily lives of users. Make sure that you make your website compatible with multiple devices. Otherwise, you will end up losing your target potential customers who use devices rather than desktops.
Voice search
In this day and age, voice search is getting increasingly popular day by day. This means that users will start interacting with Google in a conversational tone (i.e. long-tail keywords). You should optimize all of your content with long, everyday keywords to answer users’ voice search questions.
Conclusion
Time and money are essential to creating an integral digital ecosystem that serves all traffic from a variety of channels and devices. However, if you follow a smart approach, you can survive.
For example, American entrepreneur Gary Vee creates 64 pieces of content in a single day. It divides long-format content into a variety of formats, for example, audio, video, images, etc.
This is not hard work, but smart work.
As a final piece of advice, follow the trends. Knowing what the next step will be and changing user behavior is the key to the success of the brand.
