Thomas StocksIn the first few months of the year, there is a whole host of SEO strategy blogs, insights and predictions, and like the title suggests, this is another one.
Although, before you decide to click away, this one will look at why you should get out of old habits and start looking at things will a fresh perspective.
The time of easy success online is a thing of the past unfortunately, which means your strategy might need some drastic changes. A decade ago, or maybe even less than that, it was easy to put a website up, with minimal marketing or spend on it and returns were huge, but as competition grows, algorithms change and usability becomes increasingly important, making money online gets harder and harder.
The World Wide Web is now a crowded high street, which means your marketing strategy needs to be smarter, more targeted and in-line with the search engine’s expectations.
Stand out from the competition
Focus on Hard Earned Links, Not Buying Them
Google has said for some time that people should not be buying links, which means earning them is a much more legitimate way of increasing your websites backlink profile. Whether this includes links within the media, or just people linking to your useful, engaging content, you need to make it your mission to make your backlink profile look relevant and ‘natural’.
The ‘Hard Sell’ is Old News
Over promotional jargon used to work, but nowadays it’s more about storytelling. By creating a story, your audience or customer base can relate to your business on a human level with something they can relate to a previous experience or empathise with. Storytelling is something that is new, but it is something people trust. If your story is good enough, people will share it.
Invest in Success
A lot of companies will spend some of their marketing budget and see some good results but after a certain time they will cut this budget without some real consideration. Your business success could be squandered if you decide to cut this too short, so it is worth thinking about. There are easy ways to track success of campaigns with the help of AdWords and Google Analytics, and some social tools too, so use the data you collect, and use it again. Data is really important, especially in 2015 and should be used to fund your success.
What About Your Competition
If you have an offline shop, your competitors could be completely different to your competitors online, so it is worth becoming knowledgeable about all of the companies or websites you think are ahead of the curve. A lot of what you do online is influenced by what your competition are doing, especially because you need to know what you require to be on their level or above them. There are some useful tools to see what activity your competitors are doing, like SEMrush.
Conclusion
A lot of what is said here is common sense, and fairly straight forward, but sometimes businesses get lured into old habits and continue to drive customers away instead of introducing new business. It is worth taking a break from what you know to think about the things you don’t and invest your time in data because data talks!
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