The more effort put into optimizing a webpage for search engines, the more likely that webpage is to rank among the first page of search results for a particular set of search terms. For digital marketing companies, this is the end goal — a high-ranking, authoritative webpage that brings in traffic from all corners of the internet, whether consumers are searching from their homes in Utah or European coffee shops.
The world of SEO is constantly changing. For marketing companies, in Utah and elsewhere, this means that they need to be on top of every update that Google makes. When a small tweak is made in the way Google prioritizes, marketing agencies need to make big changes in the way they help their clients. For those investing in the content marketing world and those interested in how it works, here are three things that marketers should stop doing for search engine optimization.
SEO seems like a massive undertaking, since Google has piles of rules that seem to be another language to someone without a Masters in computer programming. But with a few tips you may be able to optimize your blog or website from your kitchen in your underwear while on vacation in Southern Utah or on the East Coast.
Keywords
With every article you write you want to use a series of words, or keywords, in every site in order to make sure that people searching for what you’re writing about can find you. Use words that best encapsulate your blog or website’s topic or theme. You only need two or three words at most for your topics. If you do cover more than one topic, have one or two keywords per topic. Make sure to stay consistent with every article, or your keywords will be just more words in your article and doesn’t help your SEO.
Consistency
If you want to keep your Utah website on top of the Google search engines, make sure you post to your site on a regular basis. A slow site will not get the optimization it needs to stay ahead of the game. Even a quick update on your blog or website can help your SEO, so keep up on that writing. Find a time when you can write and keep a list of stories you come up throughout the week. This way you’re never completely out of ideas when it’s time to buckle down and start typing.
Links
One thing Google’s algorithms look for are links to other sites. Whether those links are to sites away from your projects or to stuff you’ve already written about, links are important to having your writing recognized on the web. Make sure that the links are relevant to your article. Nothing is more annoying than trying to read about how to keep a kitten from a Utah animal shelter healthy and ending up linking to great places to buy cheese in the area.
One might think that SEO has been around since the inception of the Internet, but in reality, SEO has only existed since search engines and marketing came together to create their proverbial lovechild. Search engine optimization, or SEO, helps connect marketers with consumers who might be interested in their particular product.
Generally, SEO does this well: Google and Bing don’t typically point you toward a basketball website when you’re searching for cats up for adoption in Utah, for instance. This is where your SEO company comes in — an SEO company can help you optimize your SEO and get your company out on the market. But before we go into that, take a look at the evolution of SEO — understanding the history of SEO may help you better understand what SEO is, and what it can do.
Successful content isn’t just about having a high rank in a search engine. Successful content marketing keeps readers’ attention because it matters to them, because it has relevance to their lives. Businesses from Utah to the East Coast need to spend time researching and developing their content strategies.
Content marketing is a vital part of any successful business plan, and it would not be possible without a good content writing team. Your content writers are master wordsmiths, but even they need a little inspiration from time to time.
By giving your content writers a creative friendly environment, you ensure the happiness of your staff and the quality of the products. From Utah to Europe, inspiration can be found in numerous ways, one only needs to look. Allow your creative team to explore and innovate in a way that sparks creativity, your content marketing quality depends on it.
Advertising and marketing agencies are known for having a wide array of clients. They say it takes all kinds, and we prove that statement right. Sometimes our clients can be just plain weird, but hey, there’s a client for everybody. Our job as marketing agencies is to help our clients reach their clients. You might be interested to hear that there is one industry that comprises 86 percent of all the advertising dollars in the United States, and it is not the industry you might think.
In 2014, cancer centers in the United States spent $173 million on marketing and advertising. Research by Indiana University School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh shows that in the nine years between 2005 and 2014, advertising costs for U.S. cancer centers increased more than three times over.
The study was conducted to take a deeper look into how advertising created by marketing agencies affects how cancer patients select treatment centers. The Universities’ research shows that the cancer centers that spent the most on advertising focused large amounts of their budgets on national media sources.
National advertising allows treatment centers to attract patients outside of their typical regions. However, the Commission on Cancer does not accredit more than half of the cancer treatment centers with the highest advertising budgets in 2014. So, what can marketing agencies do on their part to serve their clients and help to ensure patients get the best treatment available?
First, marketing agencies should be selective with their clientele. Running a business with integrity means taking on clients you feel good representing. Even if you wouldn’t use the product or service yourself, would you feel good about recommending it to a friend or family member?
Second, do your best to represent the facts. Most advertising for cancer centers relies on emotion. Emotion is an essential part of advertising, but try your best to present an equal amount of factual information. In this way, your agency can do its part to help those in need and give your clients the best product that you can.
As one of the most popular, critically-acclaimed programs in the history of television, Mad Men hit the ground running for its premiere in July of 2007 and charmed millions of viewers until its last episode aired on May 17, 2015. A period drama series set on glamorous Madison Avenue in the 1960s, Mad Men focused on the owners and employees of an advertising agency who built the brands of many famous products we recognize today.
From the fashion to the character development, and the set design to the dialogue, cultural events, and drama, Mad Men inspired many a millennial to make their way into advertising and taught viewers how different components of marketing agencies work, and how they work effectively and ineffectively to gain and retain (or lose, if you’re Don!) clients.
The best website designs capture our attention by telling a story. It may sound strange, a website telling a story, but web design is an art form. Like any other art form, design can tell a story. You just have to look closely and interpret what you see. In the modern world, the internet is a vehicle to not only tell stories, but to use stories to get the most out of websites.
So how do you it? How do you make your website the next Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy or J.K. Rowling? Here are few different ways to help your website tell a story.
Snapchat is one of the most popular social media channels today, especially among younger markets. Some content marketing agencies in Utah think it may even overthrow Facebook’s long-held supremacy on the social world.
Well, this news may add support to those opinions: Snapchat just announced changes that will allow content marketers to use the social media platform in new and, frankly, kind of awesome ways.
Snapchat Memories
Snapchat Memories is the newest feature on a social media site known for the fact that it is always evolving. Snapchat is still discovering its identity in the social world. Memories is an evolution that seems small but could drastically change content marketing.
The Snapchat blog explained Memories as a way “to create new Stories from Snaps you’ve taken, or even combine different Stories into a longer narrative.” Why is it such a big deal? Snapchat’s notoriety came from being a service that operated in real-time. Users have to post content as it happens, with no way to create content and post it after the fact. Memories changes everything.
What Content Marketers Can Do
With Memories, a content marketing company in Utah could create pictures and other content and then publish that content at a later date. Without the pressure of real-time publication, the quality of produced content will most likely grow. Content can be created and edited outside of Snapchat and then uploaded. This same Utah agency could even stitch together Snapchat Stories made of content that was originally published on other platforms.
Essentially, Memories allows for greater content sharing between Snapchat and other platforms. The possibilities for marketers to use Snapchat more extensively and efficiently are endless, but every new movement has its challenges (like Taylor Swift’s transition to pop music…haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate…)
If marketers start publishing tons of high quality content while the average Snapchat user is publishing in real time, snaps could lose the feeling of authentic interaction that makes them an effective way to reach audiences in the first place. In the end, will Memories move content marketing for better or worse? Time, and snaps, will tell.
