Technological innovations are non-stop and the influence of the Internet is growing. Therefore, there are a lot of reasons why you should do digital marketing if you have a business.

In fact, data presented by Digital Strategy Consulting shows that 61% of professionals globally consider “growing SEO” as their top priority during the year 2018.

In case you’re new to SEO (search engine optimization), it’s one of the most popular and convenient digital marketing strategies used by businesses nowadays.

SEO is a method which involves optimizing your website for search engines, so you rank high on SERP (search engine page results). Why do you have to do this?

Naturally, Internet users would click on what’s first on the displayed results. Even I do this all the time, and it’s very rare for me to click on the second page. No wonder more and more businesses are focusing on their SEO.

You really have to keep up with your online competition. The Internet is now more powerful than ever, and it is still growing as a tool used to promote a business.

Where should you start?

The very first step to take is to build an organized and responsive website. This is considered as the centerpiece of your online presence.

You can drive visitors to visit your site through an effective digital marketing strategy. However, you can’t make them stay and further explore what you can offer with a sloppy and cluttered website.

Make sure that your website will give a great user experience that stirs the interest of visitors. Thereafter, you can fully introduce your services or products and how your visitors can benefit from them. Do you know what could come after? You could turn these visitors into potential customers and, eventually, generate sales.

After building an efficient website, it’s time to start creating a strong digital marketing strategy with the following elements:

• Campaign analytics: You have to measure your results to monitor the efficiency of your digital marketing strategy. You can pinpoint the weak points, then improve or replace it with a new campaign.
• High-quality content: To remain reputable in front of your audience, you have to create informative yet interesting content.
• Social media profiles: Create and optimize social media accounts to drive more website traffic.

You can use digital marketing to boost your earnings in many different ways, such as:

1. Create a blog

Content marketing has always been part of business both for traditional and digital marketing. You use it to let people know who you are, what your products and services are, and why they should use your business. It is primarily used as a tool for brand awareness and to build customer trust.

Moreover, digital content marketing has become more crucial today. Marketers and businesses are now looking into it closely and are working around it to appeal to online customers.

A content marketing statistic presented by the Content Marketing Institute for the year 2018 shows that 91% of the B2B marketing respondents use content marketing.

You can break down digital content marketing into different methods using different online channels:

• Blogging: This involves writing and publishing a 300- to 500-word relevant article on a regular basis. You can create a blog page on your website or use a content management system optimized for search engines.
• Social media posts: This requires shorter content compared to blogging. You need to create a catchy caption to catch your potential customers’ attention. You can also add appropriate graphics.
• Infographics: A text image type of post you can add to your social media marketing plan. Infographics are quite effective as well to appeal to online users.
• Email marketing: This method works by sending emails to potential customers to convert them into loyal customers.
• Video marketing: This involves creating relevant videos that are helpful to your target audience. These videos shouldn’t be too promotional, yet can still prompt viewers to visit your website and learn more about your offers and services.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

You already know what SEO is and how it works. To rank high on search engine results, you have to appeal first to the search engine host because they can recognize if your website is worthy of a high spot. You have to show them that your website deserves a high rank and the key toward this is to “optimize.”

How to optimize your website for search engines:

• Conduct a website assessment: Your website should have a fast loading speed, be optimized for different devices, and must include relevant keywords. You can use online tools to search for the top keywords used by your competitors. The keywords are identified based on how your customers would search for a business like yours.
• Track how your keywords are doing: Do an analysis, maybe after a week, to see how much the keywords are driving traffic to your website.
• Set SEO goals: After finally choosing the right keywords for your website, create your goals. You can change them from time to time. Let’s say, for example, you need to rank on the second page of search engine results after a month.
• Optimize for indexing: You have to create Sitemaps for search engines through XML and HTML versions of your website.
• Add and change keywords if needed: You have to do this if there are existing keywords that are not generating traffic at all.

3. Local SEO

Target your local customers and drive more traffic to your website.

On Google, you need to rank high or at least appear on the first page of SERP for organic SEO. You need to appear on the Google local 3-pack for effective local SEO.

The Google local pack will show the top 3 businesses in a particular area once a user searches for a local business.

Why should you optimize your website for local SEO?

A 2019 Google local search statistics presented by SEO Expert Bradley shows that 88% of consumers who did local searches on their mobile call or visit a business within a day.

Since it is evident that a lot of online users use their mobile devices to find a local business, this should give you more reason to optimize your website for mobile.

Digital marketing may require some time to produce evident ROI, yet it is convenient and cost-effective. Its general nature is to drive traffic first to your website and prompt visitors to take action that would lead them to use your business.

About the Author

I am Louise Savoie Digital Marketer at Proweaver, a web development company specializing in Custom Web Design which helps sole proprietors and small companies increase their sales and grow their business. I am responsible in Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing. You can find us on Twitter: @proweaver