What traditional marketers are thinking these days might surprise many people. Growing influence of digital media has made them re-think Marketing.
Recently Saatchi & Saatchi CEO said traditional marketing is dying. Seth Godin, the Internet Marketing Pundit, highlighted the importance of Content Marketing; his words are: ‘content marketing is the only marketing left.’ Coca Cola has bridled the horse of content marketing as its prime strategy for the next decade.
These are no ordinary signs for the marketers languishing in past. Social and Digital media can no more be ignored if small, medium and large businesses are looking to grow their customers base and achieve higher levels of customer engagement.
Many people wonder what is online marketing and how can they find a way to steer their business through it. Terms such as social media, email marketing, pay-per-click, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), blogging and content marketing dominate in what is called the Digital Media Marketing. Although these are different techniques used in internet marketing, content is used in almost all of these.
In the digital world users’ appetite for content is ever growing. They hunt for images, videos, stories and written content to find answers to their problems or to simply entertain their souls.
Marketers who have mastered the art to provide interesting and informative content to the users rely moderately on Search Engines to bring roaming users to their web sites. The traffic that comes from major Search Engines (SEs) such as Google is not only consistent but also well targeted. It converts well and user engagement levels are also higher.
A search marketer shall understand the concept that how search engines want to show information to their users. A basic experiment of searching a few search terms or keywords, as these are called in SEO, would reveal that SEs show different types of results based on a keyword searched. These results generally include relevant web sites, videos, images, encyclopedia articles (mostly Wikipedia Resources), social media pages, dictionary references, blogs, presentations and user discussion sites such as Question/Answer web sites.
Most SEO gurus rely only on optimizing their own web pages in Search Engines. This is sometimes not only difficult but also time consuming. It also involves risk as in case the web site gets hacked or gets penalized by the SEs all the efforts put into SEO and content creation would doom.
Here are discussed 7 ways to market content for search domination. These tips work equally well for all search engines:
1. Put Content on Web Sites Wisely
Any digital marketing professional would not hesitate to repeat ‘content is the king’. It is extremely important that the content written for the main web site or landing page must be exceptional. It must provide value to the readers. It is sometimes hard to believe that good content ranks itself on the top of the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs).
2. Make Videos, Optimize them and Have them Placed High on SEs
Videos that go viral is a gem in web marketing. These videos get ranked higher in the videos sites as well as SERPs. If an advertiser has provided clear link in the video description videos can send traffic to that link/web page. Ranking video-based content on search engines is not that difficult. A good video that gets popular in social media becomes a strong candidate to rank on first page of Google based on many keywords.
3. Create Images and Infographics
Images also rank high in SEs. When various keywords and key phrases are searched mostly there are image based results shown at the very first page of the giant search engine Google. These images are taken from web sites and can be used as a content market tactic to dominate search placements.
4. Be Active in Social Media
Facebook pages of a brand, business or any other organization have great importance when it comes to grow a loyal fan base. These pages also have been found in SERPs for various keywords and phrases. Intelligent content publishers are using Facebook pages, twitter profiles and LinkedIn company pages as a content marketing tool. This strategy has a dual benefit; firstly it serves as a fruitful traffic source and secondly it provides a platform to interact with the customers.
5. Blog and Blog a Lot
A high potency feed on which search engines run is blogs. Today, in all the industries experts have the freedom to express their views and share their expertise. What else can be more useful than this to empower people. Gone are the days when mainstream newspapers and magazines were the sole authority in dispersing information. Today this power has been shifted to the individuals who blog and solve people’s problems. Search Marketing experts have not been able to conceal the effectiveness of blogging to optimize content for search engines. Blogging is inevitable in the current digital marketing scenario.
6. Presentations are the Way to go
Another interesting search engine result that often appears is the presentations. There are various web sites such as Slideshare which allow users to upload content-rich presentations which have a huge potential to mark a place in search engine top pages. Presentations can also serve as a traffic stream for a web site.
7. Participate in User Discussion Forums and Web Sites, Leverage their Content Marketing Potential
Search Engines work according to a scheme. Although it cannot be entirely known to any SEO expert but it can be safely assumed that certain patterns do emerge when it comes to the preferences of SEs in showing search results. One such pattern which is commonly observed is that the biggest player in the industry, Google, shows results from forums and Question and Answers web sites. These sites can be leveraged in a way that a content publisher can ethically participate in these web sites and solve users problems while staying away from spam tactics. Participating in forums and similar web sites is a great way to optimize content for the Search Engines.
When the above techniques are used in an organized way content gets re-purposed and also gets maximum search visibility. Traffic coming from various sources also optimize the health of a web site from an SEO perspective.
Aside from these seven ways can you do you have any additional tips or something?