Digital marketing is an ever-changing landscape. Algorithms are constantly being updated and the AI that drives most of our searches are evolving rapidly. With so much competition and so many “SEO tricks and digital marketing hacks”, it is easy to get lost.
To make things more efficient and easier to implement, we have curated most of what’s available in the market and simplified them into a simple, easy to understand 10 point marketing guide. This will help you to focus your time and resources on getting the best out of your digital marketing campaigns and also make your life a lot easier in 2020 and beyond.
Whether you initiate any other digital activity or not these 10 things will be the bare minimum you would need to do to keep you afloat.
1. Annual SEO Audit
Do an SEO audit on your website once a year. SEO best practices are constantly changing due to the regular algorithm updates and changes. An SEO audit, at-least, once a year ensures you are top of these changes and don’t get stuck in the dark ages of SEO.
2. Create informational content
Customers can smell a sales copy miles away. Create content that is informational and useful for the target audience. This will also address those search queries that are information seeking.
3. Focus on query intent
By focusing on the intent you help build trust and reputation. A site that is trusted by Google tends to rank higher over a period of time. This also helps to connect with your audience much better before they click through to the site.
4. Use schema markup & rich snippet on your content
While there is no conclusive evidence on whether structured data boosts rankings (as of now), there are indications that search results with rich snippets will have a better click-through rate.
5. Local SEO
Google wants to show the most relevant results to users. That means shows results that are closer to them. By focusing on local SEO, you are not only going to be more relevant it will also help reduce the costs.
6. Create an internal linking strategy
Internal linking is most often an overlooked aspect of any digital marketing effort. Numerous studies have shown that a proper internal linking can improve your SEO efforts. By linking to other posts on your site, you can send your visitors to more of your well research content thus decreasing your bounce rate in the process.
A good internal linking strategy is not just linking to your important pages with the target keywords. It is also ensuring that the intent of the users are met and technically they are strong. This way it will look natural and aligned with your goals.
7. Track and improve your website performance
Creating a website is the easy part of things. Creating a website that loads fast, especially on mobile, is the toughest part of any website development project. Speed is everything these days.
Studies have shown that even a one second increase in load time can lead to an 11% decrease in page views, a 7% decrease in conversions and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
Use tools like GT Metrix, Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights to see how fast pages load on different devices.
8. Optimize for mobile
Mobile search has overtaken desktop as customers today spend more time exploring all types of content on mobile.
More than 50% of all website traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. About 3 in 5 consumers check their email on mobile. Nearly 80% of consumers uses a smartphone for regularly checking emails.
9. Optimize for conversion
Gone are the days when success of any SEO activity was measured by rankings of target keywords. Even if you rank in the first page for the target keywords, what really matters is what is on your website / landing page.
As you focus on building more traffic to your website, spend some time to optimize your content to focus on user intent so that you can convert those visitors into leads and customers. Analyze your user behaviour, look at your analytics and take the necessary steps to provide value to your visitors.
This way not only can you rank better, you will also be able increase your conversions.
10. Incorporate elements of authority & social proof
Experiments conducted in the 1970s and 80s showed that people will do almost anything if they were told by an authority figure. By displaying elements that shows authority & social proof you can appeal to natural human behaviors and emotions that will help you to boost conversions.
Things like recommendations, customer testimonials, celebrity / industry expert endorsements or getting featured on an authority publication are some of the many ways.
