For some reason, the one thing which people most regularly get totally wrong about SEO and marketing is the most basic- Content must target consumers. SEO isn’t about “clever” manipulation of algorithms at the business end. It’s about information relevance and values to the consumers.
Let’s start at the beginning- The theory that a lot of keywords and links will naturally get conversions is as idiotic as the theory that people naturally go into a shop and buy everything they see. They don’t, and they won’t. It’s time to debunk the marketing myths and concentrate on sales, not theory.
SEO and content- An important relationship
The first thing that needs to be explained is the functional importance of SEO and content as sales assets:
The reason that SEO exists at all is to provide search terms to make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for. Note that expression- “…to find what they’re looking for”. People do not search the Internet to do marketers and advertisers a favour. They search in their own interests and for their own reasons. They also tend to react very badly to useless search results. It’s not “clever” to annoy customers.
Sales result from consumers getting the information they need about their purchases, not “Hey, this is a great product!” hype. This is where the content comes in, and that content has to be good. The demand from the big search engines for unique content and relevance is perhaps the most useful thing the search engines have ever done for marketing. Internet consumers can go looking for information anywhere, and they’re picky. The “great product” approach is utterly irrelevant. There are millions of pages online using that approach, and you can literally hear the wind howling through the lack of conversions.
The Internet isn’t the same thing as the old media. The attention span of a customer can be as long as it takes for them to click to go somewhere else. If you don’t have both relevance and information value, you don’t have a sales method. Forget the gimmicks and concentrate on delivering value.
Targeting and marketing
The best salespeople, advertisers and marketers all use the one and only surviving principle of the old marketing principle: “Who needs it?” They don’t spray their marketing materials all over the world. They focus on the interest groups. If the product is a car, they sell to motorists, not just anyone looking at any web page.
The result of this process is that their returns are a lot higher. It’s a waste of time selling outside the core market. They also gear their search engine optimization and content to that market. This is absolutely basic targeting. It’s the most important concept in Internet marketing. It’s also cheaper, much more effective, and guaranteed to get sales, simply because it’s directly plugged in to the product’s customer base.
For those people spending hours wading through gimmicky marketing and SEO techniques-Forget it.
Stick to high value marketing options target the right customers, and you’ll get results. Focus your content on your customers, and meet their needs. That’s all it takes.
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