What does your online strategy look like? Are you marketing without a plan, or do you have a sound website marketing plan in place?
Today, we decided to dive deeper into 2 essential strategies of a powerful internet marketing plan: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing.
1. SEO Strategy
SEO is a long-term process that needs to be applied on a consistent basis. It’s more to it than simply writing a blog or posting a video. If you want to make SEO work in your favor you’ll need to get into the details and understand how algorithms work.
Why is this important?
SEO is an ever-changing and evolving process. This again implies constant learning and staying up to date with the newest algorithm changes and best practices.
2. Content Marketing
If you want to increase brand awareness and boost your Google presence than you need to have a sound content marketing strategy in place. Besides branding, content is essential for driving traffic to your website and building quality backlinks.
What do you need to do in order to create a compelling content marketing strategy and lift your overall website marketing plan to the next level?
Here’s a short 1:44 minutes video with several B2B leaders highlighting the critical aspects of an effective content marketing strategy…
What are the elements of an effective content marketing plan?
Here’s what Small Business Trends recently had to say about this topic…
Blogging
Setting up and maintaining a blog is a must if you’re striving for an excellent content marketing plan. It is important to keep these pointers in mind:
- Create a reliable and informative blog that’s fun to read, even if you’re just blogging about products and services.
- Aim for about 5 blog posts a week, but don’t force the content. Quality over quantity is crucial in blogging. If content is forced, it will lose its quality. So do the best you can to post five times, but scale back if the content isn’t there.
- Have a motive behind your blog posts. Do your research and work to develop high-ranking SEO keywords and key phrases to use within each post to give your blog posts the intended purpose of creating traffic and disseminating information.
Guest Posting
Guest post on other sites to make your content available to a wider audience. Doing this helps you connect with other people in your industry. Guest post with an aim to provide valuable content and a following for your site rather than for link building.
Press Releases
Press releases are a great venue for creating quality online content and developing links and avenues of sharing information. The frequency of the press releases you send out or post depends on your budget and the products and services you offer. However, try for at least one press release a month, minimum.
Press releases not only give you quality content for Google to pick up on, they give you back links and the chance to fit in keywords related to your business venture within the text of the press release.
Infographics
The use of infographics on your site or blog is attractive because users prefer to see a concept rather than read a bunch of text about it. Also, Infographics have the potential to go viral, and they are great tools for social sharing over Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Audience Engagement
Engaging your audience is one of the most important steps in your content marketing plan, but it often occurs after you have all the other elements of your content marketing plan in line. Make sure to follow these guidelines to effectively engage your online audience:
- Provide social sharing icons any chance you get.
- Include access to your mailing list wherever and whenever possible.
- Always establish a call to action when content marketing.
- Blog posts should also push users to take action. Include links to your site or product pages so they can follow through with the action you’re suggesting.
A sound online marketing strategy should be based on several pillars: SEO, Article Marketing, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing, PPC Campaigns, Forum Marketing, Podcasting etc.
Leaving SEO and content marketing out of the equation is like driving a car on two wheels. If you want to experience the full potential of your car, and get from point A to point B faster and smoother than ever before you’ll need to focus on your SEO and content marketing strategy.
Don’t waste your precious time and money on figuring out how to beat the competition by applying certain shortcuts. Do the job; create compelling content and put your energy into understanding your target audience.
What other aspects would you consider when designing your content marketing strategy? What else is needed for a successful website marketing plan?
