In business, these are words you never want to hear, because they may well translate as you have lost out on an opportunity to sell to someone new.
Step forward digital marketing
Did you know that 93% of online activity starts with a search. People are looking for information and wanting to buy stuff, including everything that you sell. How do you make sure they find you and not your competitor?
Well, unless you are a household name, say British Airways, Mercedes or Tesco, you need to be discovered. You need search engines like Google to find you first and display a link to your website at the top of their search results page.
There are two basic ways to ensure a high search profile; paid advertising, or search engine optimisation (SEO). Let’s just focus on SEO for now.
What is SEO?
SEO is a series of techniques that digital marketing experts have developed and can tailor for your business. The result will be a website that attracts the type and volume of visitors you are looking for to drive profitability.
Leading digital marketing agency, revvd, has identified four key areas and can work alongside you to make all this happen.
1. Keyword research & content strategy
2. Create content that customers and search engines love
3. Promoting content (link building)
4. Monitor results and keep improving
The skills and experience required to do all of these things well is hugely unlikely to exist within most businesses, so working with a credible partner is the obvious route to follow. Yes, it will require some prudent investment, just like any sales strategy. The big plus it that these returns are measurable, objective and can be extremely rewarding.
So, why do most companies ignore SEO?
Time after time I meet with business owners who have invested a considerable sum of money in a new website, but it is very unlikely to obtain free search traffic. Reasons can include a lack of expertise from their website developers, or possibly the original budget neglected SEO in favour of a design led approach.
Isn’t how Google works hard to understand?
It can be. The search algorithm deployed by our friends at Google is constantly being improved. For instance, in 2018, Google reported 3,234 updates!
So, understanding how Google do their thing and how this keeps evolving is far from straightforward. Working alongside a digital marketing partner like revvd becomes super important.
Their experience and testing regime helps to decide what works, and equally, what not to do. Yes, this can be complex but that can be an advantage, because lots of your competitors will choose to neglect SEO, deploy it badly, or use paid search advertising instead, leaving the field clear for you to dominate.