Marketing in business has always been an area that witnessed high levels of creativity, and of course high levels of technology. From what started out as a few thought out TV commercials several years before, is now an ever-growing giant with a brain filled with out-of-the-box creativity, a mind that is willing to explore the depths of the field, and some of the latest technology on hand to help him in the process.
We have a million marketing tactics and technologies these days like SEO, online advertising, social media and the like that are being used by almost all business enterprises, depending on what works best for them.
A few of these, however, make it to almost every business marketing strategy.
Yes, you guessed it right! It is always a good informative website with some good quality content, pushed in the right directions through the right channels that often make a winning marketing strategy. Put together with the creation of some reliable and authoritative links, and then it becomes content marketing gold.
It is not a cakewalk, though; sticking to SEO specifications and building links, because as we all know, search engines are increasingly becoming smarter. There is a need to utilize these techniques while still being ethical and real, because you don’t want to be banned by search engines either. In other words, you need to adopt “white hat” techniques to stay in the game now, in terms of SEO and content marketing.
How can achieve that?
Here are some tips for you to follow as part of your local SEO marketing strategy in the upcoming year so that you can make the most of SEO without being unethical:
Include voice search
A lot of marketers often overlook this aspect of search engines these days thinking it’s not as important. But the fact is that almost 50 billion voice searches take place every month on personal assistants like Siri, Cortana and Google, which makes up about 10% of the global search volume.
Hence, try altering your SEO practices to suit the actual intention of voice searches. For starters, people often do a voice search on a local level, when they have a long query for the search engine, most likely in a more natural language. Try gauging such aspects of voice searches for a better ranking.
Make a thorough competitor research
As always, when it comes to business, knowledge about your competitors is very important. Research on two or three of your competitors and try running a backlink report. You have various tools online for this purpose like Majestic. Then you need to identify some of the top ranking websites for the keywords that you are a looking to build your ranking for.
That’s how you can find a potential linking partner. But merely identifying one is not enough. You need to reach out to them, ask for a link back and give them a good reason to do so. In such cases, even cold calling would work well or even work best sometimes.
Focus more on local link building
As mentioned before backlinks are the best way to build the reputation and ranking on a search engine. The more links you get, the more your search engine trusts your website for good and relevant content. Hence, you need to focus on building links on a local level, where you will be able to relate to your readers more. You don’t need to rely on big names for this purpose, though. You can achieve this simply by connecting with stores, sports clubs and such other non-competitive enterprises through sponsorships and promotional activities. It helps to build links too.
Go ahead and get published outside of your own site
This is again a matter of trust for the search engines. Try getting published on good quality third party websites for good quality content in your same industry. This could get them to link back to you if you fulfil either or both of two basic criteria:
- if you maintain consistency in terms of posting in your site and
- if you have been sustaining links for a considerable period of time
Have loads of content on your own site as well
Along with getting published on other websites, you need to keep publishing on your own site as well very often. Create high-quality content that adds value, is easily relatable with for your readers and helps them find solutions to problems. Use infographics and list-based articles for more shares. As discussed before, you need to give other websites a good reason to link back to you too.
Have contests and giveaways often
Contests are by far one of the most effective ways to earn link backs. You can have attractive prizes for people who share your content through various social media channels. You can also have multiple winners so that it gets you all the more shares and exposure.
Find and take advantage of technical errors on other websites
Yes, you read that right. As you read through different websites as part of your regular education process, you may stumble across sites that may have a broken link. If your website does have relevant content, similar to the broken link, then you can go up and inform the website managers about the broken link and offer to provide them your content as a substitute.
Make full use of User Generated Content (UGC)
This involves product reviews by users and customer testimonials on your web page. Such content provides a social validation for your website and increases trust among your readers.
Now you can also try and sell your products through your own content, but there is a difference. According to several studies, about 90% of consumers say that content does impact their purchase decisions, but almost 43% get turned off by a hard sell.
Those were some effective yet ethical SEO and link building tips that you can use locally. Be sure to keep them in find while formulating your next marketing strategy and you are sure to succeed.
Featured Image: Flickr
