Small businesses have many opportunities to increase online visibility and be found by their ideal customers if they just know where to focus. Since most of us have minimal resources to call upon, we need to be smart when selecting online marketing activities that deliver the best results for our efforts. Remember that marketing is an investment, not an expense, therefore invest wisely to achieve the greatest ROI.
In my last post on SEO best practices, we covered the SEO techniques that can increase visibility in the search engine results. Now we will take a look at SEO worst practices that must be avoided if you don’t want to end up in the Google penalty box.
A lot of great advice has been written about the new search engine optimization (SEO) rules due to the Panda and Penguin releases of Google’s algorithm. In many cases, what previously worked may no longer and some of the practices can damage the ranking of your website. If you are implementing an inbound marketing strategy, make sure you are familiar with the new, up-to-date SEO best practices and stay away from the older techniques, which will be coming in my next post, that could get your website penalized.
Implementing an inbound marketing plan can have a major effect on the growth of your small business but it can also be a drain on an already overwhelmed small business owner. By following these five steps and outsourcing where it makes sense, you can create an inbound marketing system that gains visibility and drives traffic to your website.
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy …” – The lyrics from George Gershwin’s Summertime remind us that we should kick back and take some time off, enjoy our family and friends, golf, go to the beach and basically just have fun. But should we take time off from continuing our inbound marketing efforts during these hot summer months?
Patience and consistency – virtues in many aspects of your life. These same qualities are important for marketing, and even more critical for your online efforts. Putting an inbound marketing plan in motion that attracts your ideal client is something that requires stamina and determination: Stamina to continue on course for the long term no matter who says you should change; Determination to make it work and see your business succeed.
Now that you have your inbound marketing plan and have established your WordPress website and social media outposts, it’s time to start generating and nurturing leads and turn these prospects into customers. But how do you incorporate inbound marketing into your daily schedule while still working in your business? Create an inbound marketing system that enables you to consistently execute your activities and see the results.
Lead nurturing is what it sounds like: continually providing support and nourishment to leads (in this case acquired through your inbound marketing efforts) by anticipating their needs and sending them new, fantastic content that is interesting, educational and relevant.
By now you are probably wondering “what’s in it for me” when it comes to inbound marketing. It seems like a lot of work and is there any benefit to my small business? The ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to generate leads. All of this work is futile if in the end you have not generated any interest in your products and services. But like everything in marketing, generating leads using inbound marketing is a process.
Social media has evolved into a key marketing channel for small businesses wanting to gain visibility, drive traffic to your website and generate new leads. The next step in your inbound marketing effort is to: Identify which social networking sites will work best for your business, and Create optimized social media outposts to ensure your brand can be found.
