The Power of Words and Online Marketing
It sounds obvious (the title I mean) but I’m daily reminded that many businesses and marketers don’t fully grasp how significant words are to online marketing. And, subsequently, how to utilize that knowledge to speak directly to their target audience.
For many people familiar with SEO/SEM and online marketing in general, what I’m talking about is old hat. But even so, I think it can’t hurt for us to be reminded just how nearly everything we do online — at this moment at least — comes down to words.
I’m a fan of link-building guru Eric Ward who calls his services both “content publicity” and “link building”, since 1994 no less. I agree 100%. By their very nature, search engines organize content by word searches so, naturally, the more there’s quality content that’s relative for a user, then the more likely that site is going to be picked up by a search engine. This content can be in the form of site pages, blog postings, feeds, you name it. The point is that it’s word focused and therefore gets indexed and found by users.
Over the next few days, I’m going to elaborate on the basic factors and steps to marketing a site via words, from choice of words to publishing to distribution.
This includes (1) content, (2) keywords, (3) publishing, (4) search data, and (5) tracking and measurement. So stay tuned.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has the primary goal of increasing traffic from search engines to a website.
SEO Overview
SEO done right not only drives more traffic to a site but also drives targeted, high-quality prospects and customers. For SEO to be effective as a targeted marketing channel, several areas must be integrated to create a cohesive implementation strategy. Following are what we call the ‘3-legged stool’ of SEO – all are essential for effective and profitable SEO:
1) Keyword Mapping – what a site’s target market (e.g., customers) searches for online
2) Content Optimization – the creation of quality content that is (i) valuable to users and (ii) utilizes the key search terms and phrases that a site’s customers are searching for
3) Linking Strategy – strategic utilization of inbound and internal links to drive targeted search traffic to a website
Thunder creates comprehensive SEO strategies that utilize all of the above so that a company can increase its market share via targeted search engine traffic.
What is tracking?
In short, without tracking, any promotion or marketing, especially SEO, is meaningless. With tracking, an online business has complete knowledge of exactly where its business comes from – be it Google organic listings, Yahoo organic listings, Google Adwords, affiliate partners, etc. – and can make highly strategic marketing decisions. Thunder shows clients how to track all click-through traffic as well as phone calls (which is paramount to a business that relies on phone calls for new clients).