It’s extremely important that you actually have an online marketing budget. The Yellow Pages are dead – have been for many years now – and judging by the number of my clients who have tried Yellow Pages Online Marketing and ditched them in frustration at the lack of results they achieved, it might not be too long before their online division goes the way of the dodo as well.
When it comes to online marketing, many business owners have a tough time figuring out where they should begin. They know that they have to market their company on the Internet if they are going to succeed, but there are many avenues to take as far as online promotion is concerned.
Do you have a marketing budget? Or is it dead like this bird?
The thing is that most companies often jump around from one method to the next without ever really giving any single one a chance. This is the wrong way to begin your online marketing efforts and quite frankly it’s going to frustrate you and potentially turn you away from the Internet altogether.
In order to succeed and bring new business into your company, businesses need to spend their marketing budget wisely. And the wisest way to spend a marketing budget is to focus on search engine optimisation.
There are many reasons why companies should focus on SEO, and this is especially true when first starting out. We will highlight some of the main reasons why this is the right choice to make. It goes a lot deeper than you might think.
Stop Wasting Your Much-Needed Advertising Dollars
The most important thing to note about search engine optimization is that when it is done correctly it will put your website at the top of Google for the most coveted keyword phrases in your market.
Why is this so important? The reasoning is twofold.
First off, having top page rankings on Google in your market will bring much needed traffic to your website. And when these visitors begin to come to your website, they will see that you offer the products and services that they are looking for.
But this is not the only reason.
Second, it’s important to get high rankings on the top of Google because this gives off the appearance that you are the “go to” company and authority in your market. It really does not matter if you are or if you aren’t, because the high first page rankings automatically make your visitors assume that you are the biggest company in your niche.
Why do searchers make this assumption?
For the most part, Google favors the top dog companies in every market. If you search for electronics, books, DVDs or more on Google, more often than not the first result you see is for an Amazon listing. This is not an accident. Google looks at Amazon as the biggest company in their market – and rightfully so – and places them at the top of the search engine rankings.
People realize what is going on when they search, even if they only realize it unconsciously. So attaining a high first page ranking in Google automatically makes you look like the biggest company in your market. And it makes you look like the overall authority in your niche. This is a good place to be, because people are attracted to the top dog. They want to work with the best. They want to buy the best products and services.
Clearly, attaining high first page rankings means a lot more to your business then the additional traffic that it will deliver. It means that you are the biggest, baddest and toughest company in your market.
Now go kick some ass and take some names!
SEO Is One Giant Call to Action
“How so?” You may be wondering…
Simply put, if you set up your website right and focus on turning website visitors into paying customers, delivering new traffic to your website is immediately offering visitors a call to action.
Maybe you want these new website visitors to join your mailing list. You should put an opt-in box (Call To Action) on the top of your website. This is very important. If you look at the websites that SEO Gold Coast designs, you’ll see that everyone of them has at least 1 call to action above the fold (above the fold means the part of the website you can see before you start scrolling down). If your calls to action either don’t exist or the visitor has to spend 15 minutes trying to find a phone number, an email or a quote form, you have wasted your time getting them to the site. A good conversion strategy goes hand-in hand with SEO and something we here at SEO Gold Coast are extremely passionate about.
Or maybe you intend to have your website visitors call you to set up a free consultation. This information needs to become the main focus at the top of the page. Make it so visible that nobody could possibly miss it.
At the end of the day, it’s real easy to waste your marketing budget on social media, pay per click advertising, banner ads or anything else for that matter. While these methods are certainly effective in their own way, the best thing to do is to spend your marketing budget wisely by focusing on SEO.
