As I have stated before, content is key in your online marketing campaigns. Social Marketing is a way that search engines are able to build trust in you and your product and that they are able to assume you are actively speaking with relevant customers in your area.
SearchEngineland has a great column here written by Trond LyngbøThe peppered moth (Biston betularia), once white with black spots, faced a strange challenge in London during the Industrial Revolution. Buildings and trees, stained with soot, turned black. The light colored moths could no longer hide against this backdrop, and were eaten up by birds.Click here to read more
But some peppered moths survived – by turning black themselves!
To survive, you must adapt and change with your environment. Otherwise, you’re dead. That’s the powerful lesson business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from a humble moth.
The Times, They Are A-Changin’
A major shift has taken place that alters the way you’re doing business online — and offline. It has to do with social media, SEO and public relations (PR). Ignoring their impact on your marketing is suicidal. Weaving them into your strategy can be transformational.
Let’s talk about why you mustn’t merely include social media, SEO and PR in your existing business and marketing, but intelligently integrate them in a manner that lets you dominate your niche. With the right approach, you can create and reap synergies that will deliver long-lasting effects at a high ROI.
The Shift In Emphasis Toward Trust
Tactical SEO games are about to end. Google will no longer ignore manipulative SEO tricks based on fake check-ins and false reviews. Tactics like that could destroy trust in Local Search, and Google doesn’t want that to happen. Thus, there’s a concerted effort on Google’s part to determine identity and assign trustworthiness based on it.
Then we have Google+. Did you believe it’s just another social network for folks to meet, greet, and share information? No, it’s much more — it’s a far-reaching effort to establish user trust levels.
Trust has become Google’s financial lifeline. With the majority of the search giant’s $50.2 billion revenue in 2012 coming from ads, Google wants people to keep coming back. And they are coming back — because they trust Google’s search results. Once they stop finding relevant and reliable answers, they’ll abandon the big G.
To prevent this, Google must:
This means SEO suddenly has grown very complex. Isolated on-page and off-page SEO tactics are no longer enough. SEO is now true marketing. It’s also about social media and PR.
- Correctly uncover searcher intent and understand their problems, mining data from the knowledge graph.
- Provide local ads and search results relevant to people, wherever they happen to be at the moment.
- Identify real people and assign them a trust score, using signals that are tough to game or cheat.
Where Are You Investing Your Marketing Budget?
Blindly throwing cash at outdated techniques is a road to slow, sure death. To succeed today, your approach must change. You must evolve to survive.
According to Google, 97% of customers search for local businesses and offers online. If they can’t find you, they’ll go to your competition. Optimizing for local and mobile search is therefore critical.
Google CEO, Larry Page, has said that the knowledge graph is only 1% of where they want it to be. They want to know more about their users, and this includes you. They seek to judge whether or not your content, your website, your offer — your business — are worth sharing in their search results.
It’s a long journey, and there won’t be any quick fixes. There are 3 key factors at play in this dynamic marketplace:
Google needs to keep pace with all of them. If you’re worried about how challenging this all seems for your business, just think about how much harder it must be for Google!
- Technological advancements
- Human behavioral and attitudinal changes
- The digital ecosystem
Google Knows Where Your Customers Are
The search giant recently launched a knowledge graph carousel for local search, which means that local search results are now displayed higher on the SERPs. The carousel is populated dynamically based on the searcher’s location, so the geographic location of a business or outlet will impact which search results users will see first.
Social signals and PR also play a greater role. People come ahead of links.
Until now, the focus on links was like the proverbial Achilles heel. Google relied primarily upon links, which were easy to manipulate. Google has to find a way around this — not to replace the value of links, but to gain a greater perspective by considering them in context.
While SEO in general is still the same, local SEO is influenced by 2 unique factors:
Guess which carries the highest weighting? That’s right — the one associated with social signals. In other words, positive reviews. Convincing your satisfied customers to post stellar reviews of your business can have a dramatic impact on your local search rankings.
- The citations your business has received
- The number and tone of reviews from local customers (tone being positive, negative or neutral)
Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.
