When it comes to the internet and search engines, the number one issue emerging businesses have is discoverability. For customers to come to your website and purchase products from you, use your services, or even subscribe to your newsletter, they need to find you first.
There are three keys to discoverability, and while they can be simply defined, it takes some effort to actually make them work. But first thing first, we need to know what kind of web traffic that you want for your business website?
There are two different types of traffic that come to your website: direct traffic and organic traffic. Direct traffic comes from someone typing your website into a browser, and organic traffic comes when someone is searching for something or asking a question that your website has the answer for. New studies show that much more traffic is organic that many businesses thought: well over half. This is where these three components come in.
To earn organic traffic, you must be branded well, your site must have good SEO, and you need a content marketing strategy.
Branding
Branding is what defines who you are and what you do. For instance, if you are a real estate agency, your brand should convey some key facts:
- You sell homes
- You are licensed realtors
- You work with buyers to get the best deal
- You work with sellers to get their asking price
- You offer other services (like property management)
However, your brand is more than just about what you do. After all, there are hundreds of real estate agencies with thousands of agents. Your brand is also about who you are and why you do what you do.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Once you have determined who you are and what your brand is, you will have to determine what keywords you should be ranking for to reach your customers. Using the example in the previous section, a real estate agency would want to rank for the term “real estate agents” in their local area.
However, an agency would want to rank for more than just those keywords. First of all, there is probably a lot of competition for those keywords, since there are many real estate agents in any given area. Second, there are probably other things the agency does that they could rank for.
While some companies have their own in-house marketing departments that handle SEO, many also hire agencies who specialize in SEO to do this for them. There are even agencies that specialize in things like property management, home sales, and home buying SEO.
Whatever route a business takes to ensuring SEO is done correctly, it is a vital part of being discovered on the web.
Content Marketing
Once you have branded yourself and set up the SEO of your website, you need to create content that will draw users to your site. This can be done in a variety of ways, from blog content to videos, webinars, and podcasts.
Really, every part of your website that contains words is a part of your content marketing and should align with your overall marketing strategy. A part of understanding content marketing and how it works is to understand the marketing funnel.
To create the right content, you must use social listening and analytics to know what your customer likes, does not like, and where they spend their time. You can then utilize lifestyle content marketing, where you appeal to the way they live and solving their problems or meeting their needs, rather than trying to hard-sell them.
This is why businesses often specialize: real estate agents sell high-end homes in exclusive neighborhoods or work with commercial real estate. Car dealerships carry certain brands and models to appeal to the demographic in their area and beyond.
Your blog posts, web page content, and even landing pages should be directly related to this concept, and the lifestyle of the customers you have and those you want to attract.
Branding, SEO, and content marketing often seem like difficult and mystifying endeavors, but with the right strategy, they can set your business apart from your competition and make your business much more profitable.