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- In Out-Of-Box
The internet is a vast pool of knowledge, growing deeper every day. How will you make your business swim rather than sink? It’s not easy to navigate through the digital marketing world and a lot of big brands out there face challenging obstacles, especially when it comes to the constantly evolving, competitive arena of search engine optimization. Thankfully, there are ways to overcome these common obstacles and increase your organic visibility.
1. Targeting the Right Audience
Before you start any digital marketing efforts, be sure that you’re targeting he right crowd. Set up demographics in Google Analytics to see what age group is viewing your site the most, what gender they are, and what interests they have. This will help you efficiently target your audience without any wasted efforts.
Once you have this nailed down, build out buyer personas. Develop their budget, needs, and behaviors. You will now be able to segment your SEO content strategy and appeal to the audience that views your site the most.
Next, think about what motivates each of your audiences based on their personas. Let’s take a car dealership for example. If your viewers are browsing your pre-owned inventory and have a relatively low budget, get some content created around used cars under $15,000. If they’re a bit older and have a higher budget, focus on the newer models with more trim options. If they’re younger and maybe even a college grad, offer leasing options, as well as discounts and rebates. This will help bucket your customers and successfully lead them to find just what they’re looking for.
2. Generating Awareness and Exposure
Whether you’re brand new to the scene or you’ve been around for awhile, exposure is key. You could sell the best cat toys out there, but no cat will ever experience them if you’re not marketing to the public. Start with your website: optimize your metadata, check your alt tags, fix internal links, etc. Find opportunities to help you grow in the rankings and dive deep.
If your content is thin, you could be in danger of a Google penalty. Target keywords with high search volume and pair these keywords with relevant landing pages. Optimize the metadata on these pages and together, these efforts will help you rank in the search results.
3. Social Media Integration
Social media and SEO are best buds. They work best holding hands and their integration is key for successful exposure. There is a method to targeting, engaging, and promoting. From reputation management, to adding someone new to your circles, social media is a great way to get people aware and involved with your business.
For exmaple, if you are adding new content to your site about a 2015 Nissan Maxima, post that link to your Twitter with a note along the lines of “Want to be the first to test drive the 2015 Nissan Maxima? Visit us at 1234 Stream Drive today!” Feel free to offer your customers something as an incentive, especially if you’re introducing yourself to the social media world.
If you’re engaging, whether it’s via a mention on Twitter or a Facebook comment, be personable and always offer a solution to a problem. If you’re engaging just to comment, be sure to personalize and show that you really paid attention to whatever was offered in the post.
4. Remain Relevant to your Customers
So you’ve done everything you can. Now, let’s focus on your website. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Can you easily maneuver through your navigation? If you wanted to schedule a test drive, could you find in the form without getting aggravated? Just because you optimized all your meta data and tweeted 25 times a day doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear. If your website isn’t user friendly, then neither is your business.
Take a walk through your website and check for slow load times, problem pages, eyesores, and anything that you would think may make a customer reconsider buying from you. These issues will most likely be an easy fix and will make all the difference in the long run, even if they seem miniscule right now.
Just because you’re a big brand doesn’t mean you have to spend all day and night finding new and innovative ways to outsmart your competitors. Cover your bases and be diligent with the basics. Stay active on social media and be up to date with your SEO efforts and in no time, you’ll have overcome your challenges.
By: Danielle Bartholomew