Media Precision

With around 65,000 new websites launched every day, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is becoming more and more competitive. The need for businesses to have successful online marketing campaigns has increased beyond comprehension. Good marketing of your site could be a cost effective way of making your business successful, whilst a bad internet marketing strategy could see you waste a lot of money, and worse even go under.

This first installation of The Ten Steps of SEO looks at Initial Analysis. A lot of companies over look market analysis, and do so at their own peril. I always advise people to treat their online marketing campaign as they would any other marketing campaign. Analise the market before committing big budgets, and never, ever, go in blind.

Is there a market for your products/services?

As obvious as it may seem if there is not a market for your business then you stop right now. You will struggle to force a market. Ask yourself what your USP’s (Unique Selling Points) and if people are really going to buy from you. People buy for 2 reasons, they either need something or they want it. Do your customers NEED your product? If not is it going to be something they want?

What products & Services is your competition offering?

I don’t look too much into the competition at this stage, as this is something I look at a lot more in detail at a later stage. However have a quick look at who your competition is and what products they have to offer.

Who is your target Audience?

Identify as early as you can who your target audience is. Different target demographic will require different approaches, so think about who your site will be aimed at.

What is your route to market?

Now you know who your target audience is you must now decide what will be the best way to get your website in front of people. Social media is a great way of driving traffic to your site but the levels of success may vary depending on who your site is aimed at.

Put together a marketing strategy

Now you have gathered all of this information, put something down in writing. Put together a marketing strategy, it will help you keep focus of where you are going, and not to mention put you in a positive, proactive frame of mind.

To Summarise, make sure there is a market out there for you business. Look into who your site will be aimed and how you will target them. Put together a marketing strategy.

Finally, don’t be afraid to walk away. The whole purpose of this exercise is to clarify whether or not there is a market for your website, and whether it is worth you investing your time and money into SEO. If at any point you feel that there is not a market out there, this exercise has been a success.

Ten Steps of SEO is a series of articles written to give you an insight to the basics of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Many people seem to be under the impression that there is some secret formula to SEO. In reality this is not true. There is no hidden secret, there is no one process that that will get you to the top of the search engine results. Good results are achieved by gradually, over time, using ethical (white hat) methods, to grow your website organically. Follow these Ten Steps of SEO and you will be on the right track to improving your online visibility.

1. Initial Analysis – Online Marketing is just the same as any other marketing campaign. To be able to monitor the progress of your campaign you must first know where you are starting from. It is also a good idea to check that there is actually a market out there in the first place.
2. Keyword Research – This is one of the most important aspects of SEO. My advice would be to spend a long time on this. If you get this bit right the marketing of your site will be a whole lot easier in the long.
3. Competitor Analysis – Knowing what your competitors are up to is essential, it allows you to plan your strategy. Look who is linking in to your competitor’s site and put these sites on a list of possible link partners. By getting these companies to link back to your site, you eliminate advantages gained by your competitors with these links.
4. On-page Optimisation – You may have heard the cliche “Content is King”, well search engines love good quality unique content. Mix in well a written meta title & meta description and you are off to a good start for a well optimised page.
5. Search Engine & Directory Submission – This is an easy way to get lots of initial links back to your site. Register with the search engines and this will encourage them to visit your site and index all of your pages. Some directories have good PR (Page Ranking) which means you will be getting relevant link backs from respected sites.
6. Blogging/Content Updates – Adding good quality content to your site on a regular basis will encourage search engines to keep returning to your site. Visitors to your site will also show the same loyalty. If you release interesting content on a regular basis, people will start to look out for updates and re-visit your site. The easiest way to do this is to set up a blog or news section on your site.
7. Article Marketing – Article marketing is a very effective aspect of SEO. Submitting articles to article sites such as EzineArticles has 2 key benefits. Firstly it allows you to build links back to your website. Secondly, as the articles are free to republish, if your article gets used by anyone, they will need to include the original links from your article.
8. Strategic Link Building – Links are vital to increasing your search engine rankings. However it is not just a case of building as many links as possible. Avoid building links from sites that are not relevant for your niche as these will potentially do more damage than good.
9. Social Media – There are many forms of social media. I amsure you have all heard of sites like Myspace, Facebook, & more recently Twitter. Social Media is great for driving traffic to your site and getting your website in front of your target audience, at the same time as building back links we know to be vital to your search engine positioning.
10. Web Ranking & Link Reporting – Reporting on where you are ranking for keywords, and who is linking back to you will allow you to monitor your online campaign closely. You could also run these reports on your competitors to know how your online marketing campaign

We will go into more detail for each of these points in coming posts so, be sure to keep an eye out for updates. You can subscribe to updates via our RSS feed or alternatively subscribe via email and we will send updates direct to your inbox. And, if you don’t fancy doing this yourself, we are more than happy to step in and help.

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