SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND ONLINE MARKETING: WORKING TOGETHER
A successful online business will have a few things in common, but first, here are a couple of concepts you really need to be clear on.
- You can build the very best website on the planet, but unless people can find it, you won’t sell a thing.
- You can get hundreds, even thousands of visitors to your site every day, but unless you are offering what they are looking for, you won’t sell a thing.
Both of these concepts are what search engine optimization is all about. Getting found for exactly the phrase (or product/service) that your potential customer is looking for.
The marriage of search engine optimization and online marketing techniques is what this article hopes to clarify for you. You see, building an effective business utilizing online marketing techniques takes more than just coding web pages.
It takes a plan. It takes a deep understanding of who you are talking to and what language they use. It takes an automated sales funnel. It takes an automated follow up system. And it takes optimizing each page of your website for the keywords they are already using to find a solution their business pain.
Let’s break down the essential elements of a successful online business plan.
Defining Who You Want To Talk To
This step isn’t as simple as it sounds. The knee-jerk answer is “anyone who wants to learn Real Estate Investment Strategies” or “anyone who needs a blue widget”, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about who you are talking to.
It doesn’t tell you their current business or personal pain. It doesn’t tell you why they are online looking for a solution. It doesn’t explain what the solution for them would look like.
You need to spend a little time really getting specific here. You want to define your ideal audience. Your perfect prospect. Your target market.
You need to know exactly what they are looking for and why. You need to know what motivates them, what scares them, and what will inspire them.
Understanding Their Language
If your ideal audience is a real estate professional looking to increase their worth (or bottom line), then you will need to use their “language” in your sales copy, keywords and content. This will include professional terms unique to all real estate professionals (please note, I will be using Real Estate Investing as a sample throughout this document, just replace with whatever term makes sense for your business).
However, if your target market is someone who don’t know anything about real estate investing, but wants to get positioned to profit from an upturn in the housing market, then your “language” can NOT include terms only a broker would know.
This concept translates heavily into what keywords you target. If “John Q Public” with no real estate experience is your target audience, then you can’t optimize for keywords like “short sale buy strategies”, because John Q Public doesn’t know what that means.
He is more likely to be searching for terms like “buying and selling houses quickly” or “profit on flipping houses”. Remember, you are going to have to educate your clients. But first, they have to find you........ Read More