by: Osama A. Hussein
Last updated on 10 January 2021
DIGITAL MARKETING:
It should by now be obvious how public health hazards affect business forms. Many businesses have partially or totally gone online in response to the current pandemic. What about you? Are you an offline business addict who hates to conduct online business no matter what? Are you uncertain whether you would be able to overcome expected obstacles. Are you unaware of the Digital Marketing Techniques that work? If so, read on. While aviation may not get back to normal before 2022, flights to the online world are fairly easy to make. Those who made it use techniques such as Search Engine Optimization, Back Linking, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and List Building. You do not have to master all such techniques. No one does. As a stubborn survivor, Search Engine Optimization helps businesses survive. This is why it is given precedence in this blog.
DIGITAL MARKETING COTTAGE:
You might have been wondering if this virtual cottage can be of any help in your search for a hub that supports your business. You might have landed here by mere luck. It happens. One may be hanging around when he sees a place in the neighborhood that gets him captured by its modesty. It looks so different from other luxurious places that he promptly decides to give it a shot. Does modesty imply degraded value? Of course not. Is there a chance that you find what you have always been aspiring for? This you should find out in a minute or so. You may turn out to be lucky or it may prove otherwise. No regret. Life requires some decent experimentation so that clues end up indicative.
ENDING-UP HIGHLY NOTICED:
You may alternatively be a returning visitor who has landed here on purpose out of some previous experience. You are of course welcome. This blog was actually built to receive those who need to get noticed online but lack the relevant resources and knowledge. As is the case with any other type of business, web business cannot succeed on a fire and forget basis. It needs persistence, control and self guidance. It may also require a boost from some knowledgeable companion. In case you feel enough comfortable with your visit, stay tuned. This should help you get pretty noticed. To your surprise, you will not be too far from getting highly noticed. It would only require some more effort and a critical vision. The more you excel in this art, the better you can manage the web medium reactions to your online business increments. It is basically a mental game.
WHERE DOES YOUR BUSINESS DEVIL LIE?
Now back to business; real business. If you feel abandoned or unnoticed, review your business trip. The devil is known to lie in the details. But, he may well just opt for the big picture to ruin. There is no point in exerting extra efforts unless you trust your road map. Check your main business concepts. Carry out a top down analysis of your strategies. Get enlightened by available online business literature. If you are new to digital marketing, allow for some time to learn about the techniques disseminated throughout the present blog. New concepts will be carefully and delicately injected. Old ones get mature over time through due updates. You may also reach out and ask for advice. Every effort will be made to analyze your business trip, diagnose its inherent deficiencies and get your business on the right track.
MARKETING FOR LIFE:
It may be unusual to question the value of marketing. But to me it is rather historical. I recall when I attended a lecture on the subject delivered by an engineer who had switched to business administration. He started his lecture by asserting how much he had been hostile to marketing before he finally realized its value. I actually abode by the first standpoint of the lecturer. I deemed marketing as distraction from focus on work as key to excellence. Quality should speak for itself; I reckoned. After so many years, I now tend to assert the fellow was probably right. To survive, you may have to get your work blended with your potential. This would be your true image. Nothing else can be a better marketer. This I learned the hard way. I feel now proud I can make up for it by offering digital marketing services.
A NEW KNOWLEDGE BURDEN:
Then came the internet. Needless to explain its positive impact on human life. But its pluses came with new burdens. Let us just hint the marketing burden. Previously, humans had to market businesses to humans through conventional media. Such media have now been replaced by some sophisticated software called search engines. These turn trickier over time to allow for new concepts that can survive the competition. A digital marketer should help a business satisfy its target audience needs using available and ever-evolving search engine characteristics. Not all such characteristics are declared. This adds a new marketing knowledge burden. Marketers of similar businesses compete for a reasonable share of the same market against uncertainties. Different digital marketing techniques have been developed to resolve this issue. A wise digital marketer should be able to use the proper set of his choice. This requires an appreciation of all available digital marketing techniques.
DIGITAL MARKETING DEMYSTIFIED:
This is simply marketing web businesses over the web. It leans heavily on available web technology. Well-known digital marketing techniques include search engine optimization often referred to as SEO, advertising, content marketing, affiliate and e-mail marketing plus social media marketing. Search engine optimization is usually thought of as only boiling down to a process of keyword research. A broader perspective extends to inbound marketing that practically reduces to back-linking. It is worth noting that not every business uses all available digital marketing techniques. Picking a specific technique is a matter of belief and expertise. The underlying belief behind the present blog is that search engine optimization is a cornerstone not to overlook. It should be the first technique to use. It should also be revisited from time to time to assess and enhance whatever other techniques are in place.
A BUSINESS BLESSING OR CURSE?
A key concept that governs the internet is its reliance on search engines. They simply form its backbone as they make information available upon request. On top of search engines comes Google. Its advent has revolutionized and is still revolutionizing the rules of the game. Major and minor updates of search algorithms are being constantly developed, declared and put into effect to allow for better capture of information. Some features are made publicly available while many others are kept proprietary. It is almost impossible for web businesses to be aware of all publicly available Google algorithm features let alone the proprietary ones. But it is really worth exerting the effort. The more you grasp Google algorithms, the more you can generate traffic and avoid being penalized. As many other things you experience in life, a search engine can be your business blessing or curse.
BASIC INTERNET SEARCH MECHANISM:
How would any business find its way to its target audience on the web? Some minimum understanding of the basic internet search mechanism should help. Three parties share the fun. A web business offers its products and/or services for a potential target audience. On the other side, the audience seeks a potential business that satisfies its needs. Then comes the role of search engines to achieve the required matching. Being basically anonymous, the business and the audience must have some common language. It is a keyword/search term game. The search term is used by search engines to locate the businesses that utilize the same term as a keyword. Every search engine then responds to the search process by publishing the most relevant businesses in the Search Engine Results Pages(SERPs) as per its preferences. This highlights how smart a search term should be and how intricate keyword selection is.
HOW REPRESENTATIVE A KEYWORD IS:
Web businesses should use representative keywords so as to find the right audience. This is a two-step process. First, keywords should represent the web content. Second, content should express the target sales profile. No online entity can manage the second step as the sales profile is a business property. But both content and keywords are available online and are hence manageable. This allows search engines to set representation metrics. Best representation is difficult to define and SEO is used in a jungle of uncertainties. Actually, SEO on its own does not form any systematic, solid or unique technique. It rather forms an umbrella of constantly changing techniques the significance of which is questioned from time to time. Being indispensable to business success, it should be adopted as early as possible. This provides enough time for enhancements. Other digital marketing techniques may then follow.
CLOSING DEALS:
On the other side of business, someone might have supposedly entered his search term in his preferred search engine and got to the SERPs. Your business might have made it on the first or second page out of a unique vision and a perceived mission. Now comes the turn for the customer-to-be to opt to visit any of the businesses available including yours. It would be up to him to narrow the options available through direct negotiations before he gets totally committed. Moving down the sales funnel is a different story in which effective interaction has a prominent say. To get there, you have to get focused on getting noticed.
KEYWORDS:
Technically speaking, a keyword is simply a word or phrase that is supposed to represent some published web content. It can figuratively be regarded as an organic interface between some specific content and the web in the large. Search engines play an exclusive role of content dissemination through a rather sophisticated process. A factor to be taken care of by businesses is how representative of their published content keywords are.
PROPER CONTENT REPRESENTATION:
Content representation should be realized on different levels. On a frequency level, moderate usage turns the keyword candidate for proper representation. Both excessive and insufficient usages cause harm to the very representation concept. Excessive use is actually more harmful as it is seen as an illegal means to bombard the text with target keywords. This may amount to self spamming. On a different level, the content should flow naturally around the keyword. An expert author should keep keywords in the background of his mind rather than stick them on his forefront. No keyword enforcement should be observed by any human or software reader. It may be otherwise interpreted as artificial tweaking of content. A copy writer must avoid being artificial while minding the frequency of keyword usage. This is a minimum requirement for proper content representation.
KEYWORD SELECTION:
Keywords are used to help extract the target audience out of a niche market. Unless referred to through a link, web content can only be reached through keywords. Businesses are then compared and favored through their content. While the right keyword rightfully represents the content it is used in, this in turn should rightfully represent the business it stands for. To begin with, keyword selection may look easy. But it is actually rather sophisticated given the large amount and variety of data available on the web. This lays more burden on content managers. They would not be doing a good job if they just stack tons of content missing a critical vision. A good piece of content should be able to find its way in the crowd, surpass potential competitors, reach its destination and prove relevant and useful. Such content is best guided by effective keyword selection.
KEYWORDS AS COMMODITIES:
Think of a keyword as a commodity. Using a keyword in your web content is equivalent to offering it in a virtual keyword market. If you offer a commodity that has no demand, you will not find a buyer. So, check for the demand beforehand. You need some minimum amount of demand for a keyword to become marketable. There is no point in using a keyword that has never been demanded. This brings up a basic keyword dilemma. Upon demand increase, competitors realize the keyword value and hence offer it in their web content in hope of high return on investment. This turns the commodity more competitive. You may be then unable to withstand the competition. A wise compromise allows for keywords with demand level of affordable competition. It is up to each business to determine whether it can afford any perceived competition. Tricky but feasible.
NEED FOR TOOLS:
You certainly hope your business would be consistently able to show-up in relevant organic searches. To this end, you should be ready to revise your keywords periodically; a burden that may require outsourcing. Now, consider this example. Have you ever been to a car maintenance agency? You most probably have. Have you observed how simple it was for them to proceed swiftly in the repair process? Well, it should be their pertinent experience, the business network they keep and the tools they use. This is not any different from outsourcing your on-page SEO to a consultant. You should outsource to someone who is knowledgeable enough in digital marketing and who keeps a network that helps leverage his potential. But neither knowledge nor network would suffice to complete the job without adequate tools that help assess web response to proposed keywords. This is where the real work is done.
KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS:
Traffic generation is not magic. It is a legitimate output of the smart and hard work someone does to get noticed. Actually, you will never be able to penetrate the web without understanding its behavior. Well, not its global behavior but the one it exhibits in response to your conceived path. You simply intend to use keywords that already have history you know nothing about. Here comes the role of the Keyword Research Tools. They work as probes that expect the performance of a keyword based on its previous performance. The previous performance is estimated using publicly available data. you can accordingly assess your keyword potential. This type of business targets organic search; a synonym of unpaid search. Many online businesses take it as a main line of business. The present post paves the way toward a basic appreciation of the subject and provides an introductory SEO explanation.
NEITHER UNIQUE NOR DEFINITIVE:
It should by now be clear that the conclusions drawn from a keyword selection process are never unique. You may research the same keyword list and end-up with different conclusions. It is all in the approach not the list. The vision you adopt governs your choice. The degree to which you accept competition; to start with; is firmly related to the quality of content you think you can create. How fast you escalate competition is another factor. You may also select a keyword just to beat a competitor. Other factors may intervene. Consider chess as an example. Hundreds of books and online references explain its tactics. The information is there. But one single chess puzzle can be handled differently by different masters. So goes keyword selection. It is never unique. It is never definitive either. Keywords should be revised from time to time to adapt to inevitable web market changes.
A KEYWORD OVERVIEW TOOL:
The present blog introduces and sets an example in digital marketing. With this in mind, the present post uses the free Ubersuggest tool developed by Neil Patel to carry out basic SEO. Once a proposed keyword or domain name is entered, the tool overviews its web market and returns; among other data; data pertinent to organic search such as monthly search volume and SEO difficulty. It is advisable to use easy keywords in early posts. Those are keywords of low SEO difficulty. If you can afford to be competitive, introduce less marketable keywords. Learn about other tools as you proceed. If you keep practicing and testing, you may be able to make it in a decent period of time. Think of the day when you can comfortably post marketable content. This would be the day when you would have mastered digital marketing and your web business would flow at ease.
PINPOINT OR DIVERSIFY?
From disbelief in conventional marketing by non-marketers to offering diverse digital marketing advice, the author switched. This blog is meant to provide enough insight on how to help the unnoticed get noticed; pretty noticed. Care is taken to touch on that through diligent presentation of principles even if it comes at the expense of post length. Actually, any post enhancements may extend indefinitely if not wisely managed. So, cut it short once post length and quality turn sufficient to rock the web. Well, part of the web. An infinitesimal part. There is no point in pinpointing one single detail in your niche while neglecting or postponing others. Diversify and move on. Post at a frequency you can easily afford so as to preserve sustainability. Wait for the say of the web. It responds to listeners.
IS IT ANY RELEVANT TO YOUR NEEDS?
If you now end-up a bit enlightened, the information presented herein must be sort of relevant to your needs. Stay tuned for more posts covering SEO in particular and digital marketing in the large. Learn this art the easy way. Never underestimate the apparent role of marketing. This is how your target audience can become aware of your content and hence your business. In case you are in trouble, don’t hesitate to contact pretty noticed for general advice or a particular tweaking consultation.
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