In a previous post, we mentioned that the customer for whom Google is working is NOT you and your business or website. Their customer is the consumer who is searching for you – or your competitor. This begs the question of what exactly Google is looking for to satisfy the needs of their customer and, even further, the role of content in online marketing.To quote the folks at Google:
“Understanding the meaning of your search is crucial to returning good answers. So, to find pages with relevant information, our first step is to analyze what the words in your search query mean. We build language models to try to decipher what strings of words we should look up in the index.”Yeah, that’s as clear as mud, right?To make it as simple as possible, let’s think of it like this: Google’s goal is to offer a choice of websites that offer the highest quality information possible in answer to a search query.To accomplish this, they use what they’ve decided to label “synonymous search”. In other words, if you type a search for “How to change a light bulb”, the algorithm will also search for websites that tell you how to replace or exchange a light bulb.Google will also look for the most timely version of the information available, with a clear and succinct explanation for swapping a burned-out bulb.Quality Content is Critical to Your SEO StrategyContent marketing is a marketing strategy that revolves around the creation, publication, and distribution of content to a target audience in order to bring new traffic (and therefore new customers) to your business.Quality content writing is the most important part of your SEO. With quality, SEO-friendly formatting is very important because the Google algorithm looks for important words (keywords) at particular places on your web page or blog post.In other words, you can no longer simply stick the phrase “change a light bulb” in your content over and over again in the hope that Google will rank your site higher than your competitor’s. You must offer a better reason for them to rank your site higher, such as a better explanation of how to change that light bulb.Plus, as light bulbs and lighting fixtures evolve, you must continue to offer high-quality content that reflects and includes those changes. You can also offer a step up in the quality of your content, by adding “how to safely change a light bulb”.While search algorithms are constantly changing, there will always be basic SEO strategies that work for you and your website because finding quality content is, and always will be, the goal of search. This means that the role of content in online marketing will always be important to your ongoing success.Looking for more interior design marketing tips, trends, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today. And, if you need help developing or improving your SEO strategy, we can refer you to our favorite SEO Strategist!
Designer Marketing Tips – The Role of SEO in Online Marketing
As part of our series on the importance of SEO in online marketing for interior designers, there are a few important points that must be made for those of you who continue to resist developing an SEO strategy, for whatever reason.
- Underperforming Website – In its simplest form, an underperforming website is one that attracts little attention from potential clients. If your website struggles to attract fresh traffic, it’s likely that you are failing to attract attention from simple internet searches. There will usually be two reasons for this: your website has little fresh, relevant content, or you have not optimized the pages and posts properly.
- High “Bounce” Rate – The bounce rate at your website the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate is a strong indicator that your website lacks high-quality content and that you need to offer something more to keep visitors interested.
- Low “Conversion” Rate – In a strict sense, “conversion marketing” involves making a serious effort at increasing conversions, that is, attracting site visitors who are, or will become, paying customers. However, a conversion may also be defined as enticing a visitor to take a specific action; that is, clicking on a Call-to-Action such as: “Click here for more information” or “Click here to schedule a free consultation”.
Each of these problems indicates that you have failed to fully engage your visitors and that you need to improve your online marketing efforts – and your SEO strategy – if you wish to make the investment you’ve made in your website pay off.Who is Google’s Customer? Not You!It’s important, if not critical, to remember that the customer for whom Google is working is NOT you and your business or website. Their customer is the consumer who is searching for you – or your competitor.In other words, Google works for the searcher, not the content provider.After all, when you perform a search are you worried about how hard a website has worked to attract you, or do you just want to know which site(s) will provide the best information to satisfy your search query?Understanding this is the first step to ensuring that the time and resources you're investing to make your design website as attractive as possible to the search engines and potential clients is worth it.While Google and the other search engines have expanded the influence of other factors when determining rankings, SEO and online marketing specialists can maximize their traffic and conversion opportunities through keyword rankings by creating quality content around niche concepts and phrases that their target audience uses or searches for.This allows brands to increase their monthly traffic and receive qualified conversions based on the type of consumer research that guides their content development efforts. (SearchEngineLand.com)Looking for more interior design marketing tips, trends, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today. And, if you need help developing or improving your SEO strategy, we can refer you to our favorite SEO Strategist!
Designer Marketing Tips – Online Marketing: “Oh no, not more SEO!”
Well, yes; when it comes to designer marketing tips about online marketing, we need to get past the fear and talk about SEO (search engine optimization).For help with this subject, which sometimes frightens website owners (and more than a few website designers), we turn to the inbound marketing experts at HubSpot. Not only do these folks know what they’re talking about, they happily share quite a bit of their high-value information for FREE.First…
Benefits of organic SEOWhile offering no guarantees of placement in the search results (SERPs), organic SEO is a proven strategy for gaining the attention of the search engines and bringing traffic to your website. It is cost-effective and, once a list of keywords has been developed and the techniques have been learned, is fairly simple to implement. However, it is not an overnight solution. Effective SEO requires patience and a commitment to consistently implement the strategies and techniques outlined below.Compared to pay-per-click advertising, however, organic SEO has two great benefits: 1) it is less expensive and 2) your placing in the SERPs will hold greater value with your target audience (since they tend to heavily discount the paid ads seen in the search results).Keyword Optimization for Your WebsiteYes, keywords still matter and knowing the phrases that are being searched by your target audience is critical to improving your ranking in the search results and building traffic to your website.But, the traditional view of keywords in search has changed. Where just a few years ago there were maybe 10-20 “big keywords” that would be sought after for ranking within a specific topic or niche market, there are now hundreds or thousands of long-tail variations that are regularly searched within a topic and which can change based on location.Simply dominating a few high-value phrases is no longer enough to produce successful results and, while search engines of the future aren’t going to punish your website for underusing keywords or failing to have an expertly crafted keyword-optimized page title, they will continue to punish you for overusing keywords.What does all of this mean? You should execute proper due diligence and perform market research and keyword analysis to discover high-value phrases to use while creating content for your website.Local SEO Strategy Has Real Value for Interior DesignersBecause most interior design work is local, your online marketing should be targeted accordingly. Both your target audience and your SEO strategy must be focused on the needs of your marketplace – not a national audience.Many marketers and website designers believe that “local SEO” has no value. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth. Since Google's algorithm treats local search rankings more like traditional search rankings, they now take hundreds of ranking signals into account; going so far as to improve the way Google evaluates distance when determining rankings.In other words, if you’re a local interior design business, optimizing for local search won’t only help you get found – it will help you get found by people who are nearby and more likely to buy from you. And, if you’re a national or global business trying to rank for a local term, you might as well give up. Local SEO is that important now.While there is a great deal more to say about how and why you should focus on SEO for your design business (and we’ll have more later), we understand that it’s easy to become overloaded with information. On the other hand, if your interior design website is underperforming, it may well be that you’ve ignored this area of online marketing for too long already.Looking for more interior design marketing tips, trends, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today. And, if you need help developing or improving your SEO strategy, we can refer you to our favorite SEO Strategist!