Last night I took a rare moment to clean up the desktop on my laptop and discovered a few interesting pearls. Specifically I found a some notes from Wordcamp Denver last June (2015). First of course I had to figure out what the heck I was looking at, and next I realized… damn, there is some great stuff in here.  I always like to share great stuff. Happily this is all still relevant, so here it is.
I had to do a little digging to find out whose session my notes were from but thanks to Google, not too difficult. These gems are from Cyndie Shaffstall, founder of Spider Trainers whose talk was entitled “50 Good Ideas for Getting to Google’s Page 1”. I didn’t get all 50, but here’s what I did get. I’ve highlighted a few of my personal favorites…
“Tell a good story, understand who is coming to your site and use relevant keywords for that audience.”
- Benchmark where you are now, use analytics (Google Analytics is free) – also check out this tool from MOZ
- Block your own IP from analytics so your data is not skewed
- Avoid influencing your competitors site or your own site, stop clicking on them
- Keywords and keyphrases are still important, don’t abandon
- Your company name is easy to get, move it down the priority list
- Your domain should be easy to type and remember
- Get relevant links (from others) to inside pages not to your homepage
- Be professionally visible as a person (LinkedIn profile, bio on your website, etc)
- Know your personas
- Use & love Google Analytics and Webmaster tools (again, they are free!)
- Map and remap your content –Â make sure you are using a sitemap and that you have submitted to Google Webmaster tools
- Be professional! @gmail is a NO NO. (Note: you can still use the gmail interface with your own domain – see Google Business Apps)
- Tell a good story, understand who is coming to your site and use relevant keywords for that audience
- Have a set of keywords for every persona
- Use alt tags, title and description on every image – use your keywords. This is SO easy, but tedious.
- Create targeted landing pages and squeeze pages with consistent design (should be no links on a squeeze page, focus on your conversion goal)
- Leave a trail (everywhere you can on the web ie. comments on other sites, email signatures, traditional marketing), promote your blog
- Reciprocal linking is a good strategy only if RELEVANT.
- Share and share
- Ok to take up to 2 sentences of third party reviews and use them on your own website.
- Be social
- Automate! Check out Social Oomph or Buffer App
- If you use Google Adwords, setup phone extensions to track calls from your ads
- Create a news section
- Do online press releases
- Use a testimonial widget
- YouTube is #2 search engine, get up with video
- Repurpose, repurpose (your content)
- Offer a downloadable resource center
- Use progressive forms (smart, only show new fields to return visitors)
- Use inbound to email RE: specific interests. I heart INBOUND!
- Have a privacy policy
- Have a cookie policy
- Put an arrow on your buttons, they will always performs better. Simple, so simple.
- Use CTAs throughout your website (calls to action)
- Note: I’m adding this. Email is a viable and inexpensive marketing tool – use it people!
- Use lead scoring for email signups (will help you understand who to market to)
- Use drip marketing – drip hi, drip hi, drip hi, consistent and predictable
- Use nurture marketing – hey thanks for buying X, did you know we also do this?
- Make sure your campaigns are consistent (design, message, headlines)
- Create multi-touch campaigns
- Employ surveys, how often would you like to hear from me?
- If using QR codes, use targeted landing pages
- Do A/B testing, change one thing ONLY at a time
- Consider PURLs (Personalized URLs)
- Participate in groups, Linkedin, Facebook, etc.
How many of these things do you employ in your online marketing mix? Never heard of some of them? Get with the game or get left behind! We can help…
