7 Tips for The New Year
We hope you are all having a great holiday season wherever you are. No doubt, Your digital marketing strategy for 2020 is already in good shape. To make sure it is as good as it can possibly be, here are the 7 best digital marketing tips from last year's rankingCoach Blog.
1# Punch Your Weight with Keywords
In Picking The Right Rival, we looked at the best strategies for finding keywords. Keeping an eye on the competition was a key part of this. Making sure you have all the best value keywords from your competitors covered in your SEO and content strategy is a key tactic for achieving success. In order to get this right, you need to pick the right competitors. If you are a small business, there is no point going for the keywords of a major established brand. Look for similar-sized competitors who rank highly for some of your target keywords.
Users of rankingCoach who are looking to improve their keyword performance in 2020, might want to switch in some new competitors every once in a while to spice things up
Best quote from the article:
"If a user has their mindset on a Big Mac then they probably won’t be interested in burgerCoach’s equivalent."
2# With BlackHat, Crime Does Not Pay
We explored the theme of Blackhat in-depth in two articles this year: In WhiteHat SEO vs BlackHat SEO we explained some of the most infamous BlackHat tactics such as
Keyword Stuffing & Smuggling, Scraping, and Cloaking. We did this to warn digital marketers against their use.
Best Quote from the article:
"In this new 'wild west' of Digital Marketing you really shouldn't fall in with the black hat wearing bad guys. These days, there are a fair few sheriffs in town; Google is certainly one that you don't want to get on the wrong side of."
To give our readers a better idea of the negative consequences of ignoring Google's rules In Big Mistakes in SEO and Digital Marketing we gave some real-life examples of big companies who got it wrong. Perhaps the most memorable was the car company BMW, who got in hot water with Google for Blackhat.
Best Quote from the article:
"These dubious tactics bagged (BMW) the top ranking for the sought-after term “used car” for a while. Until of course, Google discovered their trick and punished them accordingly with the zero rank ‘score of death"
3# Claim Your GMB Profile Before Someone Else Does
In Why Google My Business is Out Front the blog showed that the only way to make sure your business's details display correctly on Google My Business is to claim and manage a profile for your business. rankingCoach users can do this from the comfort of the platform's dashboard. Business owners who don't claim their GMB business could have incorrect information for their business entered by 'well-meaning' former visitors. It's even possible that someone could try to claim a business's profile before the site owner can get to it. So best to get there first!
Best Quote from the article:
"In many cases, this profile will be the first impression that customers get of a company, so it is really important that the information is correct and that it presents your company in the best possible light."
4# Don't Rush Your Content Posts
The final part of the 2019 series on content was all about the posting process.
The article: Meta Title, Meta Description and Media Content Tags For SEO gave some great tips for getting this right. This process is not just about having the right keyword tools. It's also about sticking to the character limits, thinking about how your content displays on search engines and taking your time!
Best quote from the article:
"If we want to do our website's content justice, We really need to pay careful attention to the meta title and meta description. If our listings are unappealing or nonsensical, users aren't going to click on the content."
5# Get Friends & Colleagues to Test Your Site
In Big Data and Small Data the blog explored the modern tendency to focus too much on Big Data at the cost of understanding the customer experience. To show what a difference this can make, we took the case of the Lego corporation, who turned their fortunes around by paying attention to the experiences of any 11-year-old boy.
It is vitally important for digital marketers to focus on the user experience. There is no point overhauling the content of a website to improve bounce rates, if the reason why users don't stay very long on a site, is because it doesn't display correctly on certain devices and browsers. Many issues like this can be discovered much earlier if a marketer takes a little time to get others to visit their website and provide feedback. Ideally with as many different browser and device combinations as possible.
Best Quote from the article:
"Talking to others about how they look up businesses like yours can provide a valuable fresh perspective. They can also provide good extra feedback on the appeal of your descriptions and meta tags."
6# Know When to SEO & When to SEM
Any business looking to do SEM should ideally already have a good SEO strategy set out. Any business with ambitions beyond the very short term must have a good SEO strategy. Paying attention to important ranking factors such as bounce rates and pagespeed will also improve a site's conversion rates. But in SEM Making the Most of A Craze we showed that in certain circumstances, such as when a website with a narrow reach is selling a variety of products with a short shelf life or period of appeal, using SEM to can be a great way of capitalizing on demand as quickly as possible. rankingCoach 360 users can launch an effective targeted Google Ads campaign in just a few minutes.
Best Quote from the article:
"What is required is a keyword-targeted paid ads campaign with budget controls, maximizing the likelihood of selling for each click and protecting the site owner from a high clickthrough and low purchase rate."
7# Send Emails to Get More Backlinks
One of this year's most popular articles looked at 4 strategies for finding the best backlinks. Many site owners find the process of getting backlinks to be one of the most daunting aspects of digital marketing. Instead of using shady backlink selling websites, which is blackhat, take a bit of time to find websites from industries linked to yours and send them an email. If you pick wisely, It shouldn't take too long for you to be pleasantly surprised by a response. Remember, when it comes to backlinks, most digital marketers are in the same boat!
Best Quote from the article:
"A cursory look around the internet for businesses operating in areas linked to your industry will uncover a wealth of opportunities for reciprocal link building and content sharing."
That was our top seven best tips from this year. We look forward to providing you with even more great digital marketing tips and tricks in 2020.
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