Top 6 Ways to Improve Your Website’s Google Ranking

ALICIA BRADY DEAUST

Below I’ve compiled the top 6 ways to improve your website and get the best SEO bang for your buck with the least amount of time/energy. Why? Because I believe through giving we all benefit. Part of my gift to the world is this blog. Let’s call it karmic insurance.

Now if you want to skip below to the list then go for it, however, you’ll miss out on why improving traffic to your website won’t necessarily improve your business.

For the sake of this article I will refer to the multitude of search engines simply as ‘Google’, although there are others such as Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, etc.

I’ve been out of formal schooling for a long time. In marketing you need to become a chameleon and adapt to your ever changing environment. This is why it is critical to be an avid learner seeking constant growth so you can…

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What is Marketing? And Why do we need it?

ALICIA BRADY DEAUST

Let’s start with the answer to the ‘What is marketing’ question.

Google search ‘what is marketing’ and you will be bombarded by definitions that claim marketing is  ‘the action of promoting and selling products or services’. But as a Marketer and philanthroper who loves communication and works for impact-driven organizations I would argue that marketing is more than this.

Here is a definition of marketing which I feel is more accurate from the American Marketing Association:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
(Approved July 2013)

Now let me give you my opinion on ‘Why’ we need marketing.

I would argue that we have been doing marketing since the beginning of time. You do it everyday. In every conversation you have you are offering up something of value to others.

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Why Small Organizations Can Make Use Of New Social Media Sites

With new social media networks arriving on the scene each year with potential to grow in popularity, sites such as Sulia, Bubblews, and Learni.st are worth a look for small organizations and businesses as a promising avenue to reach new people. Start up sites can be valuable for small organizations or businesses because they are new and will have less competition for user attention from some of the more established companies that troll Facebook.

However, user beware. New social media sites can go under, as was the recent case with Sulia. It had all the potential to be the next best new social media site. Providing a platform instead of the “noise” of the traditional social networking sites that are a mix of advertising, selfie’s and pet videos. Sulia’s content was segmented by topic to make it easy for users to connect with the networks they wanted. Members could choose from various channels, such as politics, arts and entertainment, sports or business. Content was curated by users. Unfortunately, it was so long to Sulia. By their own account “there were many many things that Sulia did better than any other platform. But we learned that those things weren’t popular or lucrative enough for it to succeed as a business. That’s often the way it is with startups”.

So, wade into the waters of new social media and devote some hours each week to testing and exploring their offerings. As you reach to give a voice to your marketing campaigns or brand yourself or your business through social engagement, look at major social media platforms and new social media sites as possible additions to your strategies.

However, make sure you aren’t just focusing your efforts solely on social media. To increase brand, visibility and ultimately grow an organization’s membership, customers, funds, or sales there needs to be a synergistic system with SEO, and content as well as social media.

Moving Away From the Typical And Blazing A New Trail For Your Brand

I often recommend to my clients to engage in social media. Never a bad idea since social media provides a platform to engage with other people who like what you are offering. Take Twitter, for example.  Get on Twitter and start following others who are industry colleagues, then follow people who they are interested in. Be active and engaged and contribute to conversations. Don’t just talk ‘at’ people.

With some consistency others will see you re-sharing (re-tweeting) interesting and useful information including your own original content about your business. Also, if used wisely you can let your followers into special contests or events and you can track your click-throughs to monetize your social media effectiveness on sales. After all, when marketers can draw a direct line between a social-media campaign and sales, all the guessing over the value of engagement ends. The return on investment is indisputable.

So, it wasn’t out of the ordinary when recently I was contemplating how to help a socially conscience clothing company expand its brand reach and find new customers by engaging on social media sites. However, the type of work this company does is part of a niche market and I was struggling to see how all the typical social media sites would truly benefit their unique brand and business. I started to wonder, what if you are struggling to find a social media site that suits your needs? In this day and age dare I ask, what if the platform you need doesn’t seem to exist?

Why not create your own social media site and bring like minded people into the fold with you? It is in times of need that the best inventions are formed. What is the saying? “Necessity is the mother of all inventions”? This was certainly true when I found myself in my own recent predicament, searching endlessly for a metal and leather bracelet that I’d seen a girl wearing on a television show. My husband often accuses me of being a ‘dog with a bone’; and in this case I most certainly was. I searched all over Pinterest, shopped through Etsy and browsed endlessly through Google’s image database to no avail.

Sick of searching, I wondered how hard must it be to make what I want? Well, as it turns out jewelry making is in fact a skill. And, in the case of curved metal I needed to take a silver smithing class for that. Then it was just some determined phone calls and visits to a couple of stores where I was able to accumulate the rest of the materials needed to put my YouTube learned techniques into practice, and make the darn bracelet.

The point is, when you can’t find what it is you’re looking for to expand the reach of your business or cause then perhaps you need to be the trail blazer. Devote some time and resources to making what you need, whether it be a social media platform, or a bracelet. The result will not only empower you and your brand but set you apart from the rest, just like me and my new one-of-a-kind bracelet.