Inbound Marketing For Australian SMBs

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.

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."

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.

 

Have you been following the Izzy Learns Inbound Marketing series? Izzy presents a business owner or marketer - someone just like you. Who is learning about Inbound Marketing and following the steps of an inbound marketing plan.

I sat in on a webinar recently by Hubspot, explaining keywords and how to use their keyword grader to determine the best keywords for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is now an important factor in SEO. Will it be more important than SEO, will Facebook take over Google as the king of searches? 

The most overlooked marketing tool that (almost) every business has is their website.  I continue to meet many business owners, especially in small business, who have a misunderstanding about the purpose of their website, and as a result aren't seeing the results they should and can get.

When I asked this at a recent business networking function no hands went up. 

Several years ago I identified the need to optimize our website with keywords so we could rank higher in the search engines.  Through my research in looking for the ‘best' search engine optimization company to employ, I quickly learnt that SEO wasn't something that you do once, it was ongoing and continually changing.  Not only that, the seo experts I was speaking with charged in excess of $1000 with no guarantee.  I decided it was going to be cheaper and better long term, for me to learn seo and make the changes myself.  So I spent a considerable about of time studying SEO until I knew what we needed to do with regards to optimizing the website, headings, page titles, meta descriptions and rewriting the website copy.  But the next challenge I ran into was updating our website.  Our web developer charged $100 p/hr to make the changes. This didn't provide me with the flexibility I needed to upload new content, test and measure results and change offers, calls to action. Also we needed to start a blog, but again the cost factor outweighed any financial benefit we could foresee.  It was frustrating and expensive, to say the least.