It's 2013 already and it has come with a lot of competition, both in terms of advancement in technology and market growth. But, the question is, are you ready to take your business to the next level? Because, it’s not going to do that all on its own. Ending 2012, you should ask yourself a couple of questions: Did my business grow? Did I get a return on my investment of time and/or money? What was my profit/loss ratio? Am I satisfied with my marketing efforts, overall? If so, how can I improve? If not, again, how can I improve? What are the corporate real world SEO strategies for 2013? As business owners, often times we only keep our eyes on the return on investment. Whereas, what we should be doing is focusing on the right investment geared towards the core goals lead by expert digital marketing enthusiasts. Head-on focus on these will serve a great impact on the return on investment – which matters the most in the end. Wonder how? Let’s discuss in detail.
Effective Management
If you haven't any KPI’s, (Key performance Indicators) then you ought to set them now. Is your management team aware of performance based marketing? Some possible KPI’s:
Traffic:
- Search Traffic %
- Targeted Traffic %
- Global Traffic %
- Local Traffic %
- Social Traffic %
- Paid Traffic %
- Referral Campaign Traffic %
Leads:
- Signups
- Contact Forms
- Newsletter Subscriptions
Sales:
- Products
- Services
Ranks:
- Page Rank
- Authenticity
- Back Links
Secondly, divide your digital marketing team to focus on per page keyword targeting. Every person should have a clear understanding of their keywords, why they have selected those keywords, why they are targeting them, what competition is there for those keywords, why their sub-team is working on them, what is the difference between them and the other teams target area of work, what tasks have been assigned to them, what pages they are responsible for and what activities they will have to do in order to achieve the KPI’s. This way, every person in a team will work on a certain group of keywords which are to be targeted to specific pages of the website. This will yield highly beneficial results as the pages other than the home page will be completely independent, have strong on-page SEO backed up with the efforts of the specific marketing sub-team. This strategy is an overall better approach to SEO marketing, where teams are not marketing identical goals, instead focusing on promoting the business and each other through proper inter-communication and specific goals and responsibilities.
Web Evolution & Technology
SEO is not static, and certainly is not the set of repetitive tasks or more often labeled as 'donkey work.' SEO is technology-dependent. If there is an update in technology, search engine optimization is affected automatically. Some important questions arise: Is your business fully benefitting from Web 2.0? Is the website back-end technology up-to-date or outdated? Is your CMS (content management system) up-to-date with the latest standards? Are appropriate plug-ins installed in your CMS? Is your CMS generating parameters which are causing duplicate content? Is your online presence quality assured? Are there any search engine penalties on your website? All in all, you must have an understanding in the role of technology, and its impact on your online presence. SEO implementation is a crucial part of the corporate online marketing strategy. Businesses are resistant, and often hesitant, in adapting the changes to technology, and as a result, they lose out on any potential return on investment. So much has changed over the past year. For example, over 20 major search engine algorithm updates were released, which had a drastic impact on the ranking of websites. Those who were #1 got pushed way back or even out or rankings. Never miss out on any updates, practice safe search engine optimization. The details of these updates, and what’s and how’s are discussed in deep detail here. Bottom line: search engine updates can kick you where it hurts (i.e., your business), if you don't keep up to date. ! They can have a real negative impact on a business' return on investment due to lost rankings. So, watch out!
“You can never avoid people thinking that SEO is an effort to game the system or Google. Many tricks worked in the past, but as Google tries to continuously improve the quality of search results, many tricks do not work anymore. Being successful in SEO these days involves thinking along the lines of great customer service, offering great products and services, being a thought leader, and building brand advocacy online. Eventually this all helps out in building rankings as you gain more natural links that would not be affected by the Panda and Penguin updates.” – Benj Arriola,
Demographics & Research
So, technology is changing, but what else? Major changes include, but are not limited to:
- Online Social Life
- Consumer Buying Behavior
- Time Spent Online
- User Interaction
- Web 2.0
- Competition
You need to keep an eye on the above, especially if you are up-to-date on technology, and outdated on marketing personas and competitor tactics then it is still a lose-lose situation. Things you need to focus on are:
- Creating Marketing Personas
- Creating Marketing Profiles Per Team (Per Page/Section Targeting)
- Exploiting Social Media Marketing
- YouTube
- Google +
- Content Marketing
- User + Search Engine Friendly Content
- Content Distribution
- Link Bait Content
- Customer Support & Service
Always keep yourself updated with research; knowledge is power! Searches will certainly get traffic for enterprise environments, but the quantity and quality only depends on the organizational structure, effective management, technology and research. I hope this article helped. I would love to hear your comments below.
