2014 - The Year of Content Marketing
SEO is dead. The competition for keywords has grown incredibly fierce, and now more than ever business is becoming increasingly local.
Years ago keywords, meta tags, browser titles and H1 tags were the hottest thing for your website to climb the search engine ladder to the first page. The advent of social media changed the entire landscape for website ranking for the foreseeable future.
2014 will be the year of relevant content, one of the driving factors for bringing visitors to your site. This, blended with a carefully crafted social media presence with rich content, will drive your website back to the top of your favorite search engines first page.
For retailers this could be a sign of relief. The more chatter about their brand, the more positive reviews and people sharing their experiences across social media, the better. Retailers have it easy. B2C markets have always been relatively easy to market to, especially for the bare essential services that we all need; food, clothing, etc.
What about B2B marketing? Where will businesses who are trying to market to other businesses be left? This is one thing that some businesses that I’ve done websites for struggle with. How does a company that offers landscaping services to other businesses get the word out about their brand?
Traditional advertising and marketing are still key tools that businesses need to leverage in order to gather new leads and generate new business. They should also learn to use social media in a way that helps their customer base with simple ideas and solutions for everyday problems.
Take the landscaping company from the example above. In order to help generate new leads and drive traffic to their website, the company should continually blog on their website and link from social media accounts to their website. Additionally, ‘Free’ whitepapers help prove they are the expert on the topic.
A website is like a garden, and you have to care for it regularly with fresh content that keeps search engines coming back for more. By doing this, your reach to consumers will continue to climb. Consider creating a video and introduce your company and team to potential customers.