The Interrelation Between SEO Practices and Content MarketingInitiatives

The high regard for quality content has been proved many times over. This year too has been no different, with the 2012 Marketing Sherpa Search Engine Marketing Report concluding that content creation is still the best among the SEO tactics out there. However, it is also the one that is most resource intensive. An effective SEO marketing strategy can only be powered by freshly developed content. The content development should ensure that it focuses attention upon the right keywords that can then lead to link acquisitions and should be social network friendly. It incorporates a vision that has both, long term as well as short term objectives in its cross-hairs and pays attention to every minute detail.

Given that most managers are truly hard-pressed for time, it is not uncommon for the focus to waver. But no matter, how rushed one may be, some key elements must be incorporated at all times into any effort. Failure to do this is not only doing the content developer a grave injustice, it is also likely to undermine efforts in the chase for SEO glory and success! These elements include SEO basics such as optimizing the titles and meta-tag descriptions more search engine friendly to the interlinking of related pieces of content and seamless integration of social sharing tools that encourage and facilitate its spread.

Given that each finger on the hand is sized differently, so are the SEO Marketing strategies of firms. Most firms aim to put their best foot forward but success doesn’t favor them all. Those that reap rich rewards from their SEO Marketing efforts tend to do things differently and it is often their practices that are the deciding factor between them and the competition.

For a better understanding on the SEO Marketing practices of successful firms, we are going to examine closely the best practices of a few people out there that seem to be doing things right:

Infographic have well and truly taken the digital world by storm. They are great at rapid, at-a-glance visual representations of information, data or knowledge in an easy to understand, graphical medium. A few weeks ago, Neolane, the digital marketing software experts took an infographic (http://blog.neolane.com/socialmedia/spam-true-infographic/) take on the classic conundrum that examines the impact of the ever-increasing onslaught of spam, piggybacking on quite a few online marketing initiatives. Some of the key aspects of this laudable effort were the hyper-attention paid to certain SEO elements. Like the optimization of titles, meta-tag descriptions and the main copy itself. Another thing that they were spot-on about was in positioning all the social sharing buttons prominently at both, the beginning as well as the bottom of the post. The entire page too was given the social-friendly treatment. It incorporated some of the newer and buzz-creating platforms like Pinterest & Stumble Upon. Such a move, instantly amplified the chances of visitors being drawn into the infographic, thereby adding on to its popularity. The infographic also contains search optimized links that take readers to the home page and the other properties of Neolane. This is a brilliant move, as it completes the circle of inter-connectivity, wherein a user is encouraged to explore further.

Active interaction and transmission on social-rich media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. seems to be working for Christian Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri (www.christianhospital.org). Events, workshops, special interest initiatives, Christian Hospital spreads the word on them all. They have even begun to harness the power of the social platforms to establish a dialogue over care concerns by patients. The key factor behind the social push is the sharing quotient of the information and its relevance to its audience. Their efforts seem to be paying off, with public acknowledgements emerging, thanking them for their quality information sharing.

Video Bloggers and Enterprise Experts, Wikibon are no strangers to top-drawer tech events. Producers of live coverage and telecasts of premier events such as EMCWorld, Strata Conference, Hadoop, etc, they have a highly interactive team of contributors sharing videos, blog posts and other research assets. Some of the key characteristics of their content marketing strategy include the incorporation of cross-links to the various audio-visual media in each of their blog posts. Embedding and sharing functionality is baked into each of the videos being shared. Besides this, all their diverse postings are aggregated on a single page to promote blogging outreach and sharing improvements.

It is hoped that the above examples help forge a better understanding on the interrelation between Search Engine Optimization practices and the Content Marketing initiatives of businesses. They are more to serve as guidelines rather than as the complete truth. The fact of the matter remains that the proof of the pudding is in eating it. This is why the best way to do so would be by seeking ways that help achieve those organization specific goals.

In the end, Nothing speaks better than the Results themselves!

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Social Media Optimization – A Boon or a Curse?

 

Social Media has existed over the years but people have barely noticed their existence as a way to promote brands or businesses. Old school techniques usually involved blogs and forums (yes they do exist today). Individuals or businesses; both local or corporate would find a way to communicate with their fans, customers, communities or groups and keep them updated about events, meet-ups or happenings.

All of this changed when social media websites began to pop-up and were gladly accepted by the online community as a way to communicate with friends and family. Companies moved on to Facebook, Twitter etc. to connect to their customers and more importantly to get feedback related to their services. What makes social media so important today is that they allow businesses to find out statistics about their customer base and also learn about how they can improve and work on their services.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is here to stay and has helped thousands of businesses worldwide, get closer to their customers with the help of tools that have been developed by social media websites. Such tools allow businesses to set up a page of their own with a real person who handles the company’s image and handles queries from customers/users online. What this does is that it connects and gains a bigger customer-base and builds brand awareness on a personal level among customers who would recommend a page or product to their friends or family.

Yes! It is a boon, simply because companies know what is happening to their brands/products once they reach a consumer and brand-loyal consumers can easily be in-the-know about the latest updates via their social media pages. Moreover, companies can even promote an existing brand or product via their websites which works like an add-on bringing in web-traffic from the social arena online. SMO coupled with Search Engine Optimization work well together to bring-in traffic with help of the right keywords, website optimization and more importantly, the right and relevant content.

 SMO management is a service, which allows companies/businesses to hand over the job of maintaining, updating and bringing in more consumers to their websites to the digital and online media firms. Utilizing blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter, businesses can increase their popularity at start-up with a complete campaign or simply promote an existing product.

Businesses around the world today have launched campaigns with the help of SMO management techniques making the launch and product penetration grand and worthwhile.

 

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Media Buying & Planning: An Interactive Business Advertisement Strategy

Media buying and planning is one of the most important facets for a business today when it comes to promoting itself or a brand under them. Simply put down, it consists of the following 5 steps which will help one lay down a firm business advertisement strategy and successfully promote a brand or a product within a specified budget.

1. Finding the right market to target: Knowing who your target audience is of vital importance. Just blindly creating a media strategy will make no sense unless you know who you want to target.


2. Market Research: This research one can do with research and statistics that are currently available or one can take the trouble and do their own which is often more beneficial for them and well as for the project at hand. Here is where one needs to figure out the various routes that one chooses with the budget in mind and iron out all the problems before dishing out a plan to work with.


3. Set your goals: Now that the brainstorming is over; it is time to set your goals and contact buyers and sellers, confronting them on whether if chosen – how, when and why will their outlet work – whilst keeping in mind your target or objective.


4. Laying down the plan: This is the culmination of all the previous tasks and every step here should be taken with care although everything has already been set in place. Here is also where you check as to what benefits one can get through a particular outlet apart from the objectives set in the beginning.


5. Execution of the plan: Contacting media outlets and pushing forward the plan ‘for real’ in an organized manner as jotted down earlier. Every item on the list needs to be checked twice because once executed there is no turning back.

Media buying and media planning sounds complicated and chaotic; if well planned and more importantly well executed by experienced professionals they – can reach and exceed targeted objectives – helping businesses save up and utilize their resources in the right manner. Online media buying and planning is all about buying and selling of digital media – online. This is done by researching and then contacting which ad spaces are the best for the project at hand and then setting the campaign live on websites while trafficking the number of Impressions and calculating the CTR of the same. The objectives for both offline and online advertisement strategies are often the same but with different elements at the far end.

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Search Engine Optimization - A necessity for any Website

Today, almost every business out there has a website or wants to own one. This is simply because people have begun to trust the internet more than word-of-mouth. Moreover, a business can get better exposure online than to simply advertise in the newspaper which is more of a local form of advertising.

Having a website for your business is good; but again, the internet is full of them. Your competitor probably got one up before you. Yes! An online presence is important; something which gives your website and brand a social profile along with the brand awareness it needs. Today, creating an online presence is something which every brand needs and strives to achieve. One of the ways to do that is for your website to show up in search engine results. Almost every user out there begins searching for a product or a brand online, by typing in a related query and if your website has been scanned through and analyzed by search engine crawlers, only then will it show up in their search result listings.

This is where SEO or search engine optimization hops in. Search engine optimization (SEO) is skill and a technique. It helps search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and many more to list your website on their search results. The better the search engine optimization done for your website, the better will it rank and every website out there wants to be number one. Simply put, SEO gives your website a profile, telling the web ‘what you do’ and putting you in a category for the world to find.

Search engine optimization is not one single technique; it is the culmination of using the right content (words) on your website. Yes! If you do not know this yet, every website out there is scanned through by search engine crawlers. Crawlers are small programs that have only one task and mission which is to find, segregate and categorize websites on the internet. They do a great job considering the entire World Wide Web consists of over 20 billion pages. As complex as the task sounds, crawlers only take a look at the text matter on every page, which is why it is necessary that your website contains the right text and content.

Website optimization is a tiring task that consists of finding the right keywords and placing them in the right spots on your webpage so that crawlers find them and categorize your website in the vastness of the internet. The problem here is most people do not realize that the content they have on their website may not be relevant to the product that they are selling. For e.g. an online trading website may go on about tips and tricks of trading online, without even mentioning the most important word that users are searching with such as ‘Forex’.

Search engine optimization helps businesses with finding the right words that promote their business and compare those with what the world is typing in to search for them. The best keywords are chosen and are imprinted on the website in various places which include the content, meta-tags, page titles, headings, including back-link buttons and titles for images. Basically, everything that is text must contain the right keywords in the right quantity. Quantity is all about balance here as search engines would simply consider too many keywords in one place as an advertisement and simply skip your page.

Getting the right balance of relevant keywords and more importantly meaningful content is the only way a business or individual website can be recognized and pushed up the online search listings. Which is why it necessary that one gets them right when a website is created and avoid any unnecessary loss of rankings; after all the trouble has been taken to invest in one.

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Does your brand have a website or a web presence?

Almost every business today needs to be online. Forget businesses, even the common man needs an online presence these days, in an age where the internet influences every facet of our social and professional lives.

Even the common man gets an online presence almost involuntarily. This unknowingly happens if an individual has an online profile with aid from a social media website or even as a member of an organization or association that has a member directory listing online.

Yes, being online is very important; both for upcoming as well as existing brands. Which brings us to an important question; “does your brand have a website or an online presence?”

A website is the face of a company or a brand on the World Wide Web. Times have changed and simply having a great product will not do. Since 80 percent of consumers will check out a website after looking at a commercial, a website for a brand is vital. A website is a space to display the product features or the services that go with it a brand/product; basically a product display but one that is ‘online’ for the world to see.

But a website can only do that much by itself; meaning, it cannot sell a product if the masses do not know about it. This is where an online presence comes in handy. An online presence will give your website (brand) a social profile, giving it reach and recognition online. But an online presence does a lot more and requires continued attention.

People often confuse a website with web presence; they are two completely different things as mentioned above. A web/online presence can be acquired without the help of a website (with social media, blogs etc.) but a website will be hard to find or rather be left out in the vastness of the internet and can remain dormant without most people (or even nobody) even knowing about it.

With the right expertise, persevering attention and online presence management, one can develop a healthy and lasting, online presence which translates into brand awareness. One would simply need to cover all of the following factors in order to create a great online presence.




Utilizing the right keywords:

The ‘almighty’ keyword is an excellent tool if used correctly, to drive web traffic to one’s website. Keywords are critical; which means choosing the wrong ones would simply result in a low impact and shabby results. Keywords form the foundation when it comes to building an online presence which is why it is necessary that the most effective (but unique) ones are selected so as to drive and divert traffic over and over again.




Web Design:

Fact or not, great web design is hard to find online, but with increasing competition between brands, companies are trying to take every website to the next level. This they do, by delivering an experience, rather than simply relaying information to a potential user. The idea here is to convert that user into leads – that will come back – bringing more users in bargain for information or an experience. An intuitive and clear cut system of delivering content quickly is a must because nobody wants to visit a crowded and scruffy website.

 

Website Content and Social Media integration:

The content of the website must be delivered in a way that it provides good and interesting discussions while answering all the queries of the visitor. The right content for a webpage coupled with effective keywords is vital, as that is what will grab attention along with the aforementioned user experience. Social Media along with blogs have changed the way in which a company can achieve a better online presence.

They help build your brand; giving it better reach in a less technical but more direct and social channels. Social Media with its widespread roots can make for a quick, in-depth and responsive feedback system for a new brand or even an existing one.

 

The bottom line however lies in the right, balanced implementation of the above factors for the proper delivery of healthy brand awareness via a well-oiled online presence.

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Welcome To Our Space On The Blogosphere

 

Hello and welcome to our space on the blogosphere were we will keep you updated about all the happenings here at Cosmos Star Consultants. With this blog, we wish to share our extensive knowledge, which we've gained as a company over the years - one that works, understands and delivers nothing but the best to their clients.

We have always been known as a company that delivers consistent results through continued communication and interaction with our clients which helps them gain more from us while we are able to learn more from them. What makes Cosmos Star Consultants unique is our simplified approach towards the needs of each client which we as group of professionals are able to satiate so thoroughly.

There is always something new that shows up on web in terms of web technologies - newer, smarter and more efficient ways of building a brand and promoting it. We being a web-development and provider of online media services have a lot to share and just want to tell the world how easy and simplified the World Wide Web really are.

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