Content becomes the link connecting businesses to customers. Storytelling sets the tone for their engagement. Blogs, social networks and video-sharing sites inform, entertain and empower your best prospects and clients. – Trond Lyngbø

Content Marketing can address every stage of the sale funnel.

Well planned Content Strategies should have a piece of content for everyone at every stage of the sales cycle. This includes everyone from the general public all the way to yesterdays customers.

First, by creating easily shareable content for the general public or even people just beyond the upper limits of your sales funnel, you can actually help your entire site gain domain authority by attracting more monthly visits, acquiring more backlinks, and increasing activity on social media channels.

Secondly, by raising awareness, answering questions, and addressing concerns Content Marketing can aid prospects through each and every phase of the sales cycle.

Lastly, just because a person has already purchased your product or service doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be addressed in your marketing plans. Content can be produced to keep people coming back again and again. Pieces centered around continuing education, product updates, or even company updates, can help ensure customers will recommend your business to their friends and family.

Content Marketing not only informs people, it can convert prospects.

In reference to my previous point, Content Marketing can help prospects build so much trust and confidence in your business’ product or service, they will be ready to purchase by the time they call in or visit a location.

The idea behind this concept is that your high quality content will qualify a prospect by clearly explaining every reason someone should buy your product or service. The content you’ve produced will in turn, nurture the prospect by addressing all of their concerns and answering their questions. Lastly, prospects will be ready to purchase because they will be well informed, know what they want, know why they want it, and now trust your brand.

Content Marketing helps you find out what is important to your market.

I know it’s a passive approach, but it still has value. Pieces of content can be used to gauge market interest. The more activity an article generates – the more your audience is concerned with that topic.

Be sure to remember, content can always be repurposed. Meaning, if you write an article that sparks a large amount of activity, host a webinar on that topic, create an infographic, or create a video blog. The main goal is to keep the ball rolling, generate even more exposure, and dig deeper into the market.

Content Marketing lets you tell your story.

This is something that Joe Corporate needs to understand. The internet has made finding and sharing sensitive information with the world incredibly easy. Using Content Marketing to inform people about your business, its morals, its agendas, and even its hiring practices can help everyone – including the general public – build trust, create understanding, and develop confidence in your company.

The post Why You Should Be Using Content Marketing appeared first on Clix.

After a while, it becomes more like educated guessing ( My Product/Service + This Strategy ≈ C ).

Then, it evolves into a reliable way to forecast sales ( My Product/Service + This Strategy = C ).

This evolution in expectation is realistic. It acknowledges the fact that there is no sure bet when it comes to having people accept your product or service. From the most fundamental standpoint, marketing is establishing your target market and the media they use, then presenting your product or service and its benefits to your market in a digestible manner.

The typical types of media used for marketing are:

Although this is not a comprehensive list of media, it gives the impression that there are a lot of choices out there when it comes to marketing your product or service. However, the nice thing is that marketing can integrate with one another.

Take for instance the Nike commercial below. This commercial is available for viewing on YouTube – an example of television integrating with online marketing.

Another example is when a radio station streams their shows online. Rather than just leave their listeners to the car radio or boombox (seriously, who carries those anymore?), radio stations can stream their shows online and retain a higher percentage of their listeners throughout the day. Print media post their stories online and integrate reader feedback with Facebook, Twitter, Google + and more.

It’s common practice to integrate marketing strategies with one another to form strategic marketing plans. Today, it is important to reach your market online due to the medium’s versatility. It integrates easily with almost all other forms of marketing, and your website is open 24/7, offering a place to go for those seeking to research your products or services. Today, the answer doesn’t get more easy. Online marketing requires strategy and research, but it is a valuable resource for any business looking to gain exposure, build brand awareness and potentially increase sales.

Out of the gate, online marketing doesn’t provide an exact answer to the equation, Your Product/Service + This Strategy = C, but it adds a variable to the structure (we’ll call it “OM”). When OM is added to the equation, Your Product/Service + (OM + Print Media) + (OM + Television) + (OM + Radio) = C, it supplements other strategies and fortifies them. This creates a stronger, more organized marketing plan that addresses both your online and offline needs.

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I filtered our most important updates into two categories: Local & Quality.

Local

• Name: LTS. [project “Other Ranking Components”] Google improved their web ranking to determine what pages are relevant for queries containing locations.

Our Take: If you search for a keyword containing a locale such as st louis, what can you expect to get back from Google? Your results should take into consideration the entire metropolitan area, right? It’s a subjective concept, but what if you were to search Google using a keyword that contains ballwin or even manchester ave.? Then, the search itself becomes more objective – more exact. Proximity is a tough concept to take into consideration because it all comes down to preference. How far are you willing to drive? How much are you willing to pay for shipping? Do you really want to do business with someone 30 miles away? Or, 300 miles away? This update objectively takes into consideration your location and hopes to provide you with better results.

• Name: nearby (August). [project “User Context”] Google improved the precision and coverage of their system to help you find more relevant local web results. Now Google is better at identifying web results that are local to the user, and rank them appropriately.

Our Take: This local update is one of many. The focus of this one is to provide users with a more relevant local search experience. Google bases its local search on IP addresses, keyword terms and manual location targeting (i.e., when one manually changes their location). At one time, Google may have missed relevant content, but this update aims to change that.

• Name: #83377 (August). [project “User Context”] Google made improvements to show more relevant local results.

Our Take: Not much information is provided here, but this update is relative to improving the quality of local search results by showing relevant listings.

• Name: #83406 (September). [project “Query Understanding”] Google improved their ability to show relevant Universal Search results by better understanding when a search has strong image intent, local intent, video intent, etc.

Our Take: Understanding intent is an extremely important component of search. This update aims directly to improve Google’s capacity to identify intent and provide results that are relevant answers.

• Name: #81360 (September). [project “Translation and Internationalization”] With this launch, Google began showing local URLs to users instead of general homepages where applicable (e.g. blogspot.ch instead of blogspot.com for users in Switzerland). That’s relevant, for example, for global companies where the product pages are the same, but the links for finding the nearest store are country-dependent.

Our Take: Ok, so this one is more interesting than applicable. It’s a nice example of how Google is segmenting local and catering search to locales, regions and countries.

Quality

• Name: #82862 (August). [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

Our Take: If anything, this update reminds us that low-quality sites are on their way out the door.

• Name: #83442 (August). [project “Snippets”] This change improved a signal Google uses to determine how relevant a possible result title actually is for the page.

Our Take: Hopefully this spells the end for sites that use title tags blatantly misrepresenting their content.

• Name: #82279 (August). [project “Other Ranking Components”] Google changed to fewer results for some queries to show the most relevant results as quickly as possible.

Our Take: This update is not far-reaching. However, we like how it’s focused and cuts out the fat.

• Name: #83709 (August). [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change was a minor bug fix related to the way links are used in ranking.

Our Take: What does Google consider to be minor? Ah, yes, who knows. But, this is a little reminder that a poor backlink profile is going to kick your online campaign in the rear end sooner rather than later.

• Name: #84010 (August). [project “Page Quality”] Google refreshed data for the “Panda” high-quality sites algorithm.

Our Take: Yes, the panda has been updated for its 20th time. This begs the question, when is Zebra coming out?

• Name: #83689 (August). [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

Our Take: This update is similar to #82862.

• Name: #84394 (September). [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

Our Take: This update is similar to #82862.

• Name: #83901. [project “Synonyms”] This change improved the use of synonyms for search terms to more often return results that are relevant to the user’s intention.

Our Take: Searching is not a matter of exact match. This is evident if you have a background in PPC. Google takes into account synonyms to match what you “meant” (or, to at least try…).

If you would like to see the full list of updates, please click the link at the top of the page.

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]]> https://clix.co/august-september-search-changes/feed/ 0 https://clix.co/how-to-find-a-st-louis-seo-company/ https://clix.co/how-to-find-a-st-louis-seo-company/#respond Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:19:54 +0000 https://clix.co/?p=275 When it comes to entrepreneurship, SEO or pretty much anything in life,...

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]]> When it comes to entrepreneurship, SEO or pretty much anything in life, you are forced to face off against a wide variety of “situations”. Unfortunately, we remember negative situations in greater detail over positive situations in large part to discomfort. It is embedded in our DNA to dislike being turned down, embarrassed or downright punished for our actions, especially when we don’t know what we’re doing is wrong – because we learn and someone or something got the “best” of us.

However, what if you could avoid negative situations in your life and business by simply preparing and envisioning where you will be and what you will be doing?

Businesses are microcosms of life and within these defined microcosms must be visions. Why? The answer is simple. Life and business are two in the same. We work in order to live a life that is satisfying.

Furthermore, we live to work, to have a purpose that wakes us up every morning to compete and win against other bakeries, consultants, search engine optimists; the list can go on and on… In order to achieve this success, you need to visualize where you will be in 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months and so on… You wouldn’t walk down the steps into your basement without flipping the light switch, would you?

A vision is the light in the basement you flip on so that you don’t trip and fall down those  pesky basement steps – keeping you from experiencing a negative situation! Luckily, it doesn’t take mathematical genius or analysis to create a vision. It takes an understanding of your business and what you do well. And, it takes enthusiasm. You need to enjoy and be poised by what you do so much that you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep it going.

SEO can be a large part of your business’ vision. If your business is seasonal, SEO can help prepare you for that most profitable time of the year. If you’re business is dependent upon supply and demand, SEO can prepare you by keeping you ranked on the internet’s top search engines through thick and thin. SEO is an all-important factor of your business that can easily be taken care of so that you don’t have to worry about anything else besides serving your customers, selling your products or assisting your clients.

So, next time you think about where your business is headed, make sure you are prepared for whatever life may throw your way.

A list of steps for drafting your vision (courtesy of an article in Inc. by Ari Weinzweig):

1) Pick your topic (Envisioning specific parts of your business’ future or your business as a whole)

2) Pick you time frame (5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months…)

3) Put together a list of “prouds” (What does you business do so well that it separates you from your competitors)

4) Write a first draft (Brainstorm and get your ideas out there on paper and remember to write “Draft” on the first page – don’t be afraid to think big!)

5) Review and redraft (Reread your first draft entirely then edit it, but make sure you always keep an original copy of the first draft for comparison’s sake)

6) Redraft some more!

7) Solicit input (what do other’s think)

8) Share your vision!

The Clix Group is a St Louis SEO Company, and one of the best in town.

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