SEO - it's only the beginning

source:http://thefreeseoguide.com/

Working in SEO day in day out, can you can be forgiven for sometimes thinking that good rankings can solve every business problems. The issues start when business owner themselves start thinking the same way and have unrealistic expectations of what search marketing can do for them.
In any business strategy, seo should just be one element of a very wide environment including other marketing channels, data analysis, customer management, acquisition and retention strategies.

Business objectives
At the end of the day, the ultimate objective for any commercial business is to generate revenue. So when working on your seo (either in-house or via an agency), always keep in mind what your core business is, as without sales and revenue, there is no business. Of course good rankings are great, but if they don't convert searchers into traffic and customers, then they're financially worth nothing. So always try and integrate seo within your overall business plan so that you can set realistic objectives and measurement methods for this channel.

SEO strategy
Once you've set your SEO objectives, look at your keywords, your rankings, the impact on your traffic and how you can optimise your website based on searchers behaviour. Of course ideally you'd want high rankings, but some of your competitors may generate more revenue than you with lower rankings thanks to a better optimised site. You need to find the right balance for your website, and if your landing pages are well optimised, then the rankings won't matter as much.

The big picture
In today's online world, seo is obviously one of the key elements of any online marketing strategy and it needs to be planned and implemented very carefully, but it is not the be all and end all solution for your business. If you run a company, you need to always keep the big picture in mind. SEO is a tool that can bring great rewards if done correctly, but remember that good rankings won't always bring traffic and conversions, so don't be fooled by agencies promising you high rankings and top positions in search engine results pages.

Search marketing needs to be used in conjunction with a full range of marketing tools like paid search, website/conversion rate optimisation, web analytics and so on to bring the best results for your business and ultimately revenue.

How does SEO work for your business? do you have good rankings and limited revenue? feel free to share your views and get in touch if you'd like to know how to develop a marketing strategy that works for your business

Social Media Optimisation- what to include in your strategy

As mentioned in the past few weeks, I've recently been working on a social media strategy and I'd like to share what I think are some essential elements to include for any business wanting to enter this vastly complex and ever changing area of online marketing. I don't intend this to be a definitive list, the be all end all of social media, but I think it represents a good mix of activities:

1 - Push strategy:

• Publish articles / content syndication: distribute your keyword rich content as widely as possible across the web through online article submission websites such as amazines, e-articles....
• Social bookmarking: encourage people to bookmark your content in websites such as digg, reddit, delicious, twitter....you can achieve this by publishing link worthy content on your site and add social bookmark buttons (explanations here)
  Create your own social bookmark accounts and tag your own articles to increase distribution
• RSS feeds: Create an RSS feed for your site and update it as regularly as possible. Distribute your feed and encourage signups with buttons on site.
  It is also advisable to link your feed to social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
• Content distribution automation: try and automate as much of the processes as possible by developing website apps that will automatically sync your website with your social media tools (rss, twitter, social bookmakrs, blogs...)
• Social networking: it seems obvious, but you need to create individual accounts on each of the social media main sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace) The sites you regsiter on will depend on your tagret audience and its demographics
• Microblogging: Tweet as often as possible!
• Blogs: Build relationships with influential bloggers in your industry and try and publish your content on the blogs whenever possible as this will giv eyou some authority in the market
  
• Rich media: Use rich media such as videos to widen your appeal and distribute video content such as tutorials, guides on sites such as youtube

2 - Pull strategy:

• Link baiting: create link worthy contenton your site to attract visitors and increase your link popularity and make it as easy to syndicate as possible (buttons, feed...)
• Widgets: If you have the budget, create a downloadable widget for your site but be creative!
• Blogs: a blog is the perfect way to demonstrate what you do in a less formal environment that a corporate website. It can also become the hub of all your social media activities (and also help you search engine rankings)
• Forums: Engage and respond on a regular basis. If people talk about you in a forum ,whether it is negative or positive, make sure that you're there to respond.
  Use the forums to advise people and don't be too pushy, remember that customers like to talk, so listen!
• Viral campaigns / buzz marketing: viral marketing is a very tricky art to master, but if you get it right it could be worthwhile.

As you can see there are a lot of things to take into account when doing SMO (and I'm sure i've missed some too) but one thing to remember is that a good social media strategy will only work as a aprt of an overall integrated online marketing strategy. And as usual, tracking and reporting is key as you need to put your resources towards the most effective channel, so measure, measure and measure results to make sure you do the right thing.