SEO for CEOs: how to win the online marketing game
You want your website to get noticed. There are millions of businesses clamouring for the attention of customers so how do you stand out from the background noise?
Search results are one of the biggest drivers of web traffic.
When a buyer is looking for a product or service, they use Google to figure out where to spend their money. If your website is on the first page of Google results you’re much more likely to connect with new clients.
So how did the companies at the top of the Google search results accomplish their high rankings? The answer is SEO.
How SEO works.
SEO — Search Engine Optimisation — is the way top-ranking websites get their Google search dominance.
There’s a lot of misinformation around SEO. Over the years as the online culture evolved and Google refined the complex formulas they use to rank websites, SEO techniques that worked well in the past stopped being effective.
In the early days of web-based marketing, all you needed to do to get your site onto Google’s front page was splatter your website with words related to your product. This technique was known as “keyword stuffing”. If you were selling toasters online, you’d just use the word “toaster” a thousand times on your website, and the Google algorithms would list your company first for anyone searching “buy a toaster”.
This simplistic process led to all sorts of manipulation by canny web marketers, and Google realised they needed to come up with a more refined formula.
Google search results are now the product of a very sophisticated set of analytic formulas that measure websites’ traffic numbers, user ratings, reliability and authority.
Links from authoritative websites have emerged as the foremost driver of Google search result rankings. Google’s objective is to give its users results that have been recommended and vouched for by other trustworthy websites.
Marketing experts say that websites linked by high-authority domains like news media and industry journals are given preferential treatment by Google.
So, what does all that mean for you and your marketing strategy?
- Keywords are still useful, but they’re not enough to get you on Google’s front page.
- A high Google search ranking and traffic growth depend on being acknowledged by established, high authority websites.
That sounds daunting for many business people. How can you break into that elite club of respected high traffic sites?
The most effective strategy for escaping web obscurity and pushing your brand up the Google rankings is content marketing. There’s no secret trick to it. There’s no special gimmick. Content marketing works because it builds credibility, and that’s the winning element in the SEO battle.
Content marketing.
Google’s analysis algorithms are primarily interested in what trustworthy websites think of your brand.
The more links that point to your website from high authority, high traffic domains, the more attention you get from Google.
Getting links to your website can be accomplished in two main ways:
- paid advertising,
- content marketing.
Paid advertising will get your brand in front of people’s eyeballs, but it’s not permanent.
The huge advantage of content marketing is that it promotes permanent links to your website that will be recognised by Google and count toward your search ranking.
Content marketing is all about giving people useful and entertaining information that they will actually want to look at. Unlike advertising, it doesn’t intrude into their browsing experience; it enhances it. A few examples of good marketing content are:
- articles about current trends,
- interviews with industry leaders,
- how-to guides and educational material.
The most potent feature of content marketing is its potential to promote sharing and linking. To get noticed by high authority websites and get them to link to your content, you need to have material that will be interesting and useful to them and their audience. If you publish articles that people will want to read, you have the best chance of getting the attention of the sort of websites that can boost your SEO by linking to you.
Here’s a simple example of the way content marketing works:
- You publish an article on your company blog talking about a new product you’re launching and the way it will benefit its users.
- You send a press release to industry journals in your category, talking about the article and encouraging them to share it on their website.
- High traffic websites are always hungry for new content, so if you offer them free material, they will often use it.
- An industry journal posts an article sharing your news and linking to your blog.
In this example, you’ve made two wins:
- you get an immediate spike in traffic from the industry journal’s link;
- in the longer term, that link will also boost your ranking with Google.
Content marketing can influence your online stature in ways that conventional advertising can’t, like building your brand’s credibility and making you the centre of an online community. Data released by Demand Metric shows that content marketing generates more leads than advertising and it actually costs less.
Good content is an SEO investment.
When you’re looking at ways to spend your marketing budget better, it’s worth considering the different impacts of advertising and content marketing.
- An advertisement appears as a distraction to a web user, something they want to filter out. And even if your advertising gets clicks, as soon as you stop spending money, your ads disappear, and your traffic dries up.
- Content marketing gets the attention of your audience by offering them useful information. Not only will it be a magnet to attract users to your site, but it will also encourage other sites to share your message, thereby lifting your ranking in search results.
- Unlike ads, marketing content is an investment; you pay for it once, and it’s there forever, bringing traffic to your brand.
Content marketing works on three fronts, building the credibility of your business, cultivating links from high authority websites, and enhancing your website’s SEO.
If you’re aiming for that coveted spot on Google’s page 1, content-driven SEO is the strategy for success.
Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.
I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. The digital marketing work I’ve done for clients like MailGuard, Uncloak and Innis & Gunn has earned them international press coverage, enhanced their SEO and increased their web traffic.
Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.
You can read some of my recent articles, here: www.storymarshall.com
Connect with me on Telegram: @polydigm
Follow me on Twitter: @raw_safari
