Inbound Marketing For Australian SMBs

Are you struggling to write content to publish on your website? Or, do you know what information you need to publish but you're just not sure how to write it in a way that will make sense to your prospects?

Inbound Marketing is a methodology based on:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as been a major focus for marketers over recent years. Implementing the tactics to get on the front page of Google for keywords has been key. But with all the changes to Google’s algorithm, and the increase in social media –  how important is SEO for marketing success today?

Showing up in search results for your keywords is just as important today, as it always has been. What has changed is Google’s ability to reward valuable sites and penalize the sites using ‘black hat’ tactics trying to scam or pay their way to the top of searches, with schemes like “link farms”. Thankfully those days are over!

SEO today is about the user experience – your prospects, leads and customers. Here are a few simple tips to remember:

1.    Write content for your audience, not the search engines.
2.    Use keywords your audience uses.
3.    Publish content your audience will want to share.
4.    Publish content on your website regularly – weekly at a minimum.
5.    Make it easy for your audience to share content with their network.

Over the years Ive written several articles on SEO, the most recent covering the latest updates from Google. To make it easy for you Ive compiled a list of my top 5 articles - see list below.

Do you have any questions about SEO and how it can help your marketing? If so please use the comment section below.

What part does social media play in your marketing? Do you have a Facebook Business Page because everyone else does? Are you seeing results? Do you know how to determine whether social media is working or not?

The internet and social media have changed consumer behavior. The consumer is now able to do a lot more pre purchase research, which means they are better educated buyers. And consumers are connected to more people than ever before – making it easier to get reviews, recommendations and feedback.   Having a presence on social media is important for marketing, but to be successful at social media marketing its important to understand what role social media plays in the bigger picture, and how to best leverage it to achieve your end goal.

The internet and rapid growth of social media coupled with a tough economic climate have many business owners asking – Where are my customers? Their traditional marketing methods are not nearly as effective as they used to be, and they need sales, NOW!

In recent months Google has introduced changes to their algorithm to penalize sites trying to “trick” the search engines, and reward the sites who are focused on the customer experience and publish quality sites.

Ive published many blog articles on choosing keywords so I won’t go over that again, at the end of this article you’ll find links to those articles.  So lets assume you have your list of keywords, you even know where and how to use your keywords, but you’re struggling with the implementation. How do you make it happen?

The number one request I get as an inbound marketing consultant is to help companies rank higher in search results to drive more traffic to their site. So the question begs; “how do we do this the right way?” Thankfully Google is committed to returning search results that are highly relevant to searchers’ requests. They do this by updating their search algorithm, the way they rank web pages and return results to the searcher, to penalize sites that use tactics that cheat the system, known as ‘black hat’, ‘keyword stuffing’ and ‘webspam’. 
"The key takeaway is that Google is changing it’s algorithm to reward quality sites – so stay focused on publishing quality content."

While your end goal for might be sales, the secret to success for lead generation with social media is to know where it fits into the buy cycle for your business. My view is that it's at the beginning, and should be utilized to build reach, awareness, rapport, trust and authority. So here are my 8 social media tips for small business owners and marketers:

This article has been written for small business owners and marketers who want to understand enough about SEO to get results but not to qualify for a Masters in SEO. Use this article as your quick guide to finding the right keywords and knowing what to do with them.

 

How are you adjusting to the new Facebook Timeline? The more I learn about it the more I love it, especially for marketing.