Factors for SEO marketing success

Surprises occur in the small to midsize business (SMB) arena, especially when it comes to sales and search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing. More than a decade ago, banner ads were effective at pulling in a lion's share of online traffic. Fast forward several years and keywords later, pay-per-click advertising were the rave.

2014 is ushering in more change, major search engines influencing some of the change. Namely, Google is placing more emphasis on content quality. Gone are the days when simply having lots of inbound links and content online was enough. SEO content has to be tailored to the very people that a business serves.

For example, a small to midsize horse training company, could be better served by developing SMB SEO marketing content that educates local horse riders on how to mount and ride a horse, care for a horse and prepare a horse to trot and run in cold weather. As the horse training company continues adding this type of tailored SEO marketing content to its website, particularly to its blog, search engines will start to identify the company as a horse training business.

Local residents who are passionate about horses may also start to see the company as an industry leader. Clearly, SEO takes a multi-pronged approach. As Search Engine Land says, "Search engine optimization — SEO — may seem like alchemy to the uninitiated. But there is a science to it. Search engines reward pages with the right combination of ranking factors, or “signals.” SEO is about ensuring your content generates the right type of signals."

Factors that influence SMB SEO marketing success include building quality inbound links to a business' website, the numbers of times SEO marketing content like videos, images and blog posts are shared, including social media shares and the country and region of a country a business is located in. Although some search engines are placing more weight on the overall subject and quality of content than they once placed on keywords, it's not time to toss keywords out.

When using keywords while implementing SMB SEO marketing strategies, it's important to research keywords. Also, ensure that keywords and phrases used in the content are the keywords and phrases that local consumers would use to search for and find the products or services a company develops and sells. Website HTML tags, including title and description tags, the ease at which local consumers can navigate a business website and the speed at which small and midsize company websites load are other factors that determine how successful SEO marketing strategies will be.

As tempting as it might be, it's best to show search engines the same business website pages that local visitors see when they click onto the website. It also helps to build a business website that is mobile device friendly. There are so many factors that contribute to a business' SEO marketing success that some business leaders are encouraging their marketing staff to complete Google, Hub Spot and other respected SEO certifications. Other business leaders are partnering with SEO marketing agencies in effort to increase their online visibility as quickly as possible.

 
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