“I’m feeling lucky” was Google’s first Tweet. This binary coded message inaugurated a relationship that would boom into the encompassing symbiosis of social media and search engines. Shortly after Google moved its hard drives out of their Lego-made storage units Google was already making splashes. Once marketing professionals realized the potential of Google as a platform, everyone was feeling lucky.
Search engine optimization, which was born from realizing market trends and reactions to Google rankings, is now over eight times more effective at closing leads than traditional means of marketing.
Inbound leads, or leads that are created by potential customers coming to you rather than you going to them, have costs 61% lower than outbound leads. SEO, as an inbound lead based marketing strategy is already starting out with more results for your marketing dollar. Fifty eight percent of consumers begin their product search using online search engines. In fact 88% of internet users age 14 and up seek results from search engines. By using search engine keywords and rankings SEO is able to take advantage of inbound leads and position businesses exactly where consumers want to find them.
What is happening in the world of SEO marketing now?
The larry page namesake “PageRank” algorithm process was the first ranking system used by Google to sort through possible results and place them according to relevance. While it is not the only algorithm that Google has used, it is its most well known ranking system. Recently SEO has been effected by a much different ranking system. The latest SEO news to make quakes in the SEO terrain was the release of Google’s Penguin 2.1.
More than anything else, Penguin 2.1 through a wrench in SEO reporting tools, which are used to track a link’s progress up or down search engine results. As a result, for a brief time, SEO professionals were left to paw through an information blackout. On their hands and knees SEO companies learned to adapt. And this is not the first time, but it is relevant as SEO and online marketing look evermore to social media as a means of extending platforms.
What SEO pros found they always had.
Social media is an invaluable asset.
Social media has been around in one form or another even longer than Google. However, it is within recent years that this facet of media gained its crucial standing in how people get, and share, information. Now, of that 88% demographic who who use search engines, 40% of them will post their finds to social media networks. Social media has become one of the internet’s fastest means of communicating effectively to a large group of people. And it is exclusive. Not all content is being shared. Again, searchers are looking for quality answers. SEO marketing has taken a step back to evaluate those Penguin quakes in its marketing terrain, and now more SEO pros are focussing on delivering quality, re-postable answers as the most important of SEO.
Email newsletters still work.
The only thing people do more than get online and go to search engines is get online and check their emails. Email newsletters sent out to a network of recipients are still the best and most direct way of keeping consumers in the loop. The more answers you give, the more loyal those consumers will be.
Tending the flock never hurts.
Keeping active in the minds of internet users, through social media posts and email newsletters, can make all the difference in your business’s ability to hang on to its base of consumers while reaching out for more.