Marketing is an old practice. Marketing can be thought of as the methods used to get the word out about your products, services or brands through any number of means. Whether it be through the sign atop your fruit stand, to a television advert, marketing is a primary foundation of revenue for many businesses, historically, and will continue to be moving forward.
However, there is an avenue that all marketers in the 21st century can no longer ignore, and that is the marketing of products over the internet. Whether it’s affiliate marketing, or ecommerce, goods, or services, marketing over the internet relies heavily on where websites show up on search engines.
Why this is impossible to ignore, is because there is a staggering percentage of the population these days spending enormous amounts of time online. Studies show that we spend an estimated 100 days every calendar year online. That’s almost a third. People search for information of all forms, and it’s generally the websites that have the best SEO, ahead of the best information that gain the most traffic and interaction.
In SEO, there’s a saying that goes “there’s no better place to hide a dead body than on the second page of Google”. What this basically points to, and builds on the last paragraph, is the fact that in our day and age, it is not necessarily the best product that will pull in the most customers over the internet, but rather the websites that are best optimised to show up on Google’s (or any search engine) front page.
These days, many businesses almost feel incomplete without a website. Websites can be a powerful tool in introducing what it is that you’re doing, who you are, and provide expert insights into products, services and more.
These can all be things that can be used to your advantage within an SEO strategy. What’s more, is that certain crucial elements of marketing could now be considered poorly done if not SEO optimised. Copywriting in particular is an avenue that must have an SEO focus when utilised in the online space.
What makes the world of online marketing that more complicated is that it is constantly changing. Google comes out with updates four times a year that can greatly impact rankings and visibility, which can in turn have significant effects on your web-based revenue. It can therefore be argued that if you are looking to dominate the online space in your selected field, you cannot do so without establishing a rock-solid SEO strategy, or, alternatively, outsourcing it completely.
The truth however, is that while there are plenty of SEO specialists out there that can help your website along, getting SEO right lies upon a number of easy to follow foundations. Ofcourse how well you rank and much money you make can be greatly determined by the competition you’re facing, but with time, effort, research and constant analysis of your competitors, it is possible to pull away from them, and eventually outrank and beat them.
Furthermore the beauty of SEO lies in the fact that it has opened up so many avenues to endeavour. There are so many niches out there ripe for the taking, which require some time and effort, but that can yield results in no time at all. For example, you could easily launch a website within any number of affiliate spaces and market products without actually having to conceptualise or develop them yourself.
All you’d need to know is SEO, and how best to sell them. For example, if your interest lies within betting sites, you could market betting sites with the best welcome bonuses in South Africa, and find that there are not too many other websites covering content related to this little niche.
While there are some underlying principles that need to be followed in order to ensure rankings and eventually paying customers, there is also a lot of leeway in SEO, meaning that you can target certain keywords in creative ways, and often see very exciting results. Either way, establishing somewhat of a template, and then adjusting it depending on the competition you are facing is always a valuable approach.
At the end of the day, to overlook SEO is to overlook a huge marketing channel. Today, there is no separating SEO from marketing. With the amount of time people spend on the internet, it is unwise to ignore the power of a high ranking website, and the opportunities it can bring for your business. While there may be alternatives, such as paid media, ranking organically is more sustainable, cheaper, ensures steady inflow of traffic, and inevitably conversion.
A solid SEO strategy is as good as gold, and has the ability to turn valuable content into money. When it comes to websites and online marketing, discarding SEO is as good as discarding cash.
