What is SEO?

A topic that is fascinating and more than slightly mysterious, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can best be defined as a series of actions performed to ensure that your website lands close to the top of the search results when a user performs a search within a search engine.

Sounds simple enough right? Well, it is and it isn't.

There are two main areas that need to be considered in SEO: On-page optimization and Off-page optimization.

On-page Optimization:

Many people think of SEO solely as keyword usage. Google uses complicated algorithms that are constantly changing to provide users the best search experience. For instance, there really isn't such thing as a "Keyword" that will increase your search rankings; the internet is just way too massive for such a thing to exist. Rather, there are "Keyword Phrases." For example, you do not seek out a place to eat by typing "food" into a browser; instead, you might type in something like "best restaurants in Mytown", "Family dining that stays open late in Anywhere", or something along these lines. The search engine takes these phrases and returns the best matches for you. When optimizing a website, keyword research is a combination of intuition and investigation. While keyword usage is an important component, there are many other on-page factors that should be considered. Other on-page optimization techniques include keyword density, website design, and image use. While many web designers take these factors into account when they are designing a site, some do not.

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Off-page Optimization:

Off-page optimization is the process of improving your rankings through actions that happen outside of your site. Primarily, this is done through back links, which occur when other sites link back to yours. The reason this works, is that each link into your site is like a vote for your site. In essence, they are vouching for you as a credible resource. Some simple ways to build back links to your site are through a social media site page or a blog. On the flip side, a site manager wants to seek valuable back links from credible sites with good ranking; otherwise they can do more harm than good.

  

I'll talk more about SEO in upcoming posts as it's an important topic in digital marketing. Often times it falls into the hands of the website owner, marketing director, social media manager, or another employee, to conduct the SEO for a company. Some may choose to do the SEO themselves and some choose to hire another company to do it for them. Search Engine Optimization has become such a technically specific endeavor that now there are a multitude of companies that sell their services to businesses to help them to increase their searchability. We can learn from all of this that Search Engine Optimization is an art. It takes a certain amount of finessing between the right combination of keywords and the proper amount of internet savvy to ensure one's foothold among the many competing online for a spot nearer to the top. 

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing consists of any marketing techniques that bring customers to your site, service or product. To understand inbound marketing well, it helps to look at its counterpart: outbound marketing. An activity that a brand pays for in order to find an audience can be considered outbound marketing. For instance: paid advertisements, purchased email lists, infomercials, commercials and trade-shows are all examples of outbound marketing. Inbound marketing on the other hand, is where the customers find a brand, whether through a deliberate search, internet “chatter”, or simply stumbling across while in search of something else. To successfully market a brand, an appropriate mix of both inbound and outbound marketing should be used.

Inbound marketing draws people toward a product or service through engaging and quality content. This can be done through Search Engine Optimization, Blogging, Social Media Sites, Online forums, White papers, and Videos; basically any form of online communication that captivates an audience and turns them into customers. Rather than focus on just one of these mediums, a brand should immerse itself in all of them, offering free content in every area, which will increase exposure, attract links, and thereby increase rankings in Google. That said, the content delivered has to be good; it must engage the viewer and make them want more.

Img via Flickr.com courtesy of Gavin Llewellyn

One interesting area to look at in inbound marketing campaigns is email. Through email, there is an opportunity to engage with the customer and create a personal connection that is unique from other means of marketing online. Data is showing that email is an increasingly popular method of communication and that people are relying not only on their personal email addresses through services like Gmail and Hotmail, but also Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin email services. Furthermore, the increasing use of smartphones and tablet computers is allowing more constant access to email than ever before. This creates a fabulous opportunity to reach out to customers and draw them to your site or service. A marketer must create emails that captivate the receiver so that they are not instantly deleted, marked as spam, or unsubscribed from.

As stated earlier, finding a good mix of both outbound and inbound marketing techniques can drive business. Compelling inbound marketing techniques can serve to promote and bring in more and more customers in creative and unique ways that are not achievable through traditional outbound marketing techniques. 

Coding

Writing code is something that every internet user who desires to promote their brand online should know on at least a very basic level.  Understanding what goes into the development and design of a site or an online application will give a better understanding and sense of control when it comes to changes that need to be made in order to accommodate new technologies, preferences, and fads. Whether you hire a professional or choose to build your own site, knowing code can be greatly beneficial. Programs that facilitate website design such as Adobe Dreamweaver can enable one to build a website, but learning the code itself allows for more control over the end product. Additionally, hiring a professional web designer can be extremely pricey. It’s good to know what you are actually paying for.

Writing code is one of those mysterious things that is really not so complicated once one begins to understand it. There are a multitude of free resources where someone can learn how to design a webpage using HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, in addition to some of the lesser known programming languages. Code Academy and W3Schools are excellent resources for learning, and YouTube contains thousands of tutorials in practically every form of code as well.

Anyone who is a skeptic in the idea of self-taught web design need only to look at some of the top designers in the country to realize many of them started at extremely young ages and learned pretty much everything on their own. Here is a link from Creativebloq.com to an article listing of some of the top web designers, all under 25!

Data Mining

Data mining is the process of analyzing large amounts of collected data in order to summarize it into useful information. This is achieved by determining correlation and patterns in the data, which helps us to gain a better understanding of how it can be used to improve performance or outcomes. Data mining is used in a number of capacities, and it can be especially useful for companies that have a strong customer focus. Large retail chains, grocery stores, banks, and credit card companies, all use data mining to better understand their customers and tailor their offerings to suit them based on information obtained.  What information might we glean from analyzing data collected from customers and how is it collected? Information can be collected at any interaction between the customer and a business, for instance, Point-of-sale, customer surveys, customer loyalty programs, coupon usage, website usage, etc. Additionally, data can also be purchased by a company. We are able to discover an abundance of information about a consumer through these resources, for instance, where they live, their ethnicity, purchasing habits, family situation, estimated income, product preferences and so on.

In a fascinating article written for The New York Times, by Charles Duhigg entitled “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”, we are given some inside knowledge about how Target has used data collected about customers to develop a system for determining whether or not a woman is expecting a baby. This information is greatly useful for Target because, as the article explains, humans are creatures of habit who tend to follow routines in their purchasing behavior. Opportunities to gain new customers arise when these customers are going through life changes, such as pregnancy or marriage. This occurs because during these transitions customers are likely to begin new patterns of purchasing, and by being able to predict these life changes early, a company like Target is able to focus specific advertising efforts at these consumers and thereby retain them in the long run.

Various types of data mining exist; a common one in business, one that companies like Target employ frequently, is known as Market Basket Analysis. Basically, it is the awareness that when a consumer purchases one item, he or she is more likely to purchase another related or complementary item. In the case of Target and their ability to predict pregnancies; they were able to infer that if a woman began to purchase items such as vitamins and unscented lotions, there was a higher likelihood that she was pregnant. They were then able to direct coupons and advertisements for baby related merchandise at these expectant mothers. This allowed them to capture a new group of shoppers during a transitional period in their lives and then retain them as future customers as they developed new shopping habits based around their changing needs.

There are other types of data mining that can be useful in business as well, for instance regression analysis is used to identify how changes in one variable will affect another variable. In the case of marketing this can be a highly useful tool, as a business can use simple regression analysis to analyze factors such as how sales have been affected by a certain promotion or product. The reason businesses find data mining so useful, is that it can identify trends in data that could be otherwise overlooked and subsequently help the business use this knowledge to increase sales. Oracle is well known software for data collection; however, several tools also exist for smaller businesses to take advantage of this tool.

For more reading on this topic, I have attached a link to an article here from Entrepreneur.com showing several ways a smaller company can take advantage of sites like Facebook and Google Analytics to perform their own data analysis.

Product Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing

How many times have you said, or heard someone say, “If I owned that business I would _______”. Customers have opinions and complaints about how a product could be improved, and product co-creation and crowdsourcing do just that by allowing consumers to interact with a business and share their ideas. This is an amazing concept, because not only does it allow a business an opportunity to get direct feedback as to how they might be able to improve their product (something that can be very tricky to track by other methods), it also builds value in the brand by creating customer loyalty. “Customer loyalty is a fragile concept in a world where customers are only a mouse click away from a better deal”, according to an article entitled “Co-creation: A new source of value” on Kambil.com. Customer loyalty is extremely valuable and hard to gain and retain in the world of the internet. Personalized experiences produced through co-creation influence the user by giving them an emotional connection to the brand. Linux is an excellent example of product co-creation as thousands of programmers worldwide have contributed code to enhance the system.

Crowdsourcing is the concept that a business outsources some job or activity to an unknown group of users. Crowdsourcing can be a fun way for consumers to interact with a brand, for instance, LEGO developed the Digital Designer where a user can create and their own LEGO designs. On the other hand, crowdsourcing can be an exciting way for ideas to spread and innovative creations to come to fruition. According to Mashable.com, “Crowdsourcing is distributed problem solving. By distributing tasks to a large group of people, you are able to mine collective intelligence, assess quality and process work in parallel.”

Img via Flickr.com

The two concepts, Product Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing, are so closely related that it is hard to differentiate them sometimes. Essentially, co-creation can be thought of as collaborative new product development, whereas crowdsourcing can be thought of as encompassing that idea, but also it is a broader idea in that the “crowd” could be contributing in various other ways. For instance, they could be helping promote the business by creating their own fun commercials or helping to build audience and brand loyalty through story sharing. To sum it up, both crowdsourcing and co-creation are complementary and similar ideas that can help a brand to grow and thrive in exciting ways that were not as easily achievable before the digital age.

Mobile Marketing with Applications

There are a few ways apps can be used when marketing a business. The first way is to simply purchase advertising that will be displayed on apps. The second can be to develop an application that complements your existing business or website; think of the apps created by Facebook, Twitter, Skype, or any similar app that has come into existence in order to allow users access from their handheld devices. Applications can be a great way to further promote a business providing there is value in it in that it supports and promotes the existing business and does not take away from profits. Developing an app for your business is something that you would need to hire a programmer for, and from a small business perspective, not likely a resourceful way to direct funds and energy.

Another way apps can be useful to people involved in the digital marketing world can be to create a program designed specifically to be an app. I am referring now to the multitude of programs we see that have been developed solely for handheld devices. According to Moz, “there are currently 750,000 apps in the App Store alone, with over 40 billion downloads. And “one billion smartphones existing in the world, and that number is growing.” With numbers like these, it’s a challenging market in which to be discovered.

For an app developer who wants to be discovered, there are a number of factors that should be employed. Key words, the name of the app, and the graphics of the app, are what give users searching the app libraries their first impression, and so it’s imperative that a developer do extensive research to determine what features are likely to generate the most interest. Next, to promote an app you must create a PR campaign, using press releases, social media sites, blogs, and other online forums in order to generate buzz and drive consumers to your app.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; effective promotion of an app extends far beyond these strategies, however it’s a start. In my explorations about mobile app creation and marketing, I discovered this wonderfully thorough strategy guide from Apptamin that gives an abundance of information about how to effectively promote oneself in app marketing.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile devices are rapidly becoming one of the more popular ways for users to access to the internet. Just a few short years ago we were bound by desktop computers, bulky laptops and limited wireless internet access, which meant that most browsing was done from select locations. These days, a savvy consumer can access the internet from almost anywhere. Smart Phones, tablet computers and other handheld devices are increasingly becoming the preferred method for many internet users. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, mobile marketing is expected to contribute $400 Billion to the U.S. Economy by the year 2015.

For small businesses, this can be advantageous or disastrous, depending on how they react and adapt to changes in consumer behavior. So how does a company participate in this shift to mobile? On a most basic level, any business with a website should ensure that the site operates functionally on any platform. Services exist that will convert a website very easily to one that is mobile friendly.

I have attached a graphic here to demonstrate the differences one would typically see between a traditional website and a mobile friendly one. A basic mobile friendly site should allow the user to quickly access information they may be searching for while on their mobile device, for instance, the business location, phone number, sales, or menu. Another way to connect directly with consumers is through a Mobile App (which I will cover in a later blog post), however, mobile friendly websites tend to be less expensive to create and are therefore a logical choice for a small business on a budget.

In addition to having a mobile friendly website, or developing an app if you choose to go that direction, you also want to look to engage customers and bring them to your website and social media sites in ways that incorporate mobile devices. Simple elements such as QR codes that allow a smart phone user to scan and instantly access your site, video, coupon, or any other link you choose to incorporate can be easily created on a multitude of free sites (Watch for a later post on the proper ways to use a QR code). Another way is to start a text campaign or ask customers to send in photos (many of which tend to get taken by phone these days).

The most important thing to be aware of in the shift to mobile by consumers is that it is here to stay and growing rapidly. Being ahead of the game, or at least part of the game, is imperative for any business that wants to have an online presence.