Long gone are the days when websites were only used to post hours of operation and directions. Chances are you could be making one of the four worst mistakes businesses can make online. Today, your website is a 24/7 virtual assistant with an infinite amount of opportunities for attracting new customers or additional sales from existing customers. Are you dissatisfied with the amount of leads coming from your website? Instead of looking for them, you can get new people to find you, keep them coming back for more and eventually buying from you if you avoid the following:
Failing to Create and Share Relevant Content
According to research conducted by Fleishman-Hillard, 89% of consumers begin the buying process through search engines. Consumers go to search engines, type in relevant keywords, and the search engine renders all relevant websites in order on a search engine results page (SERP). The higher the business ranks on a SERP, the more traffic the website gets. According to the online ad network Chitka, the top listing in Google’s organic search results gets 33% of the traffic. Each subsequent position gets:
- 2nd Position gets 17.6% of traffic
- 3rd position gets 11.4% of traffic
- 4th position gets 8.1% of traffic
- As the positions decrease, the traffic continues to degrade.
While there are a couple different ways to the top of a SERP, the best way is to provide audiences with the information they are looking for through an intuitive content marketing campaign. Content marketing involves creating and sharing content in various forms to attract and keep clients. Because of its high level of effectiveness, content marketing has become one of the most effective branding strategies today.
Failure to Research Keywords
Even when businesses decide to use content marketing as one of its branding strategies, many miss the first and most important step, which is to conduct keyword research. As previously mentioned, keywords are the search terms customers and prospects enter into search engines to find the information they are looking for. Surprisingly, many businesses fail to conduct keyword research, which causes them to completely miss their target audience. This sonly applies if they have identified a target market in the first place.
Another huge keyword mistake is failing to incorporate a healthy mixture of long-tail keywords into the strategy. Long-tail keywords are the more specific, but less common keyword terms, which rank easier and generally focus on a niche. One of the greatest benefits to using long-tail keywords is they are strong buying indicators. A few examples of long-tail keywords used in a search criteria are:
- What’s the cheapest price for a camera?
- Where do I get the best deal on a car?
- What tires are the best tires to buy?
Failing to Keep It Fresh and Mix It Up
In a world dominated by the need to access information quickly, what Google Search says is law; and from the very beginning, Google has stated that “Content is King.” Since search engines and audiences love fresh content, it’s important to produce it on a regular basis. Fresh content appeals to the “freshness” factor engine crawlers desire and will result in higher search engine rankings. More importantly, people love reading new and relevant content. Simply put, “What’s good for the reader is good for Google.” While most people who understand this strategy prefer to go with writing creative and informative content to attract customers, there are many other types of content to consider, such as:
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Pictures
- White Papers
- eBooks
- Animated images (Latest Trend)
The goal is to monitor and discover what your audience responds best to and give them a healthy dose of it.
Failing to Include Upward Mobility
Mobile device sales and the use of these devices to access the web is continuing to increase at an astonishing rate. As a result, Google recently announced that it would start factoring in a website’s “mobile-friendliness” as a key ranking signal. If your branding strategies do not include a mobile-friendly website, you may be missing a staggering 60% of traffic to your site according to comScore.
In the end, the success of your business hinges on your ability to produce engaging, relevant, informative and keyword-rich content that is optimized for a variety of devices on a regular basis. The rewards for successfully executing a content marketing campaign are favorable to increasing search engine rankings, increased brand recognition, and establishing a high level of trust amongst your audience.
