Digital Marketing

The difference between organic and paid for search engine optimisation

Paul TagentLeave a comment

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. It involves optimising your website’s content and structure to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more traffic to your site. The best and most effective SEO is achieved through combining both organic and paid methods as each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

What is organic SEO?
Organic SEO is the process of optimising your website’s content and structure to rank higher in search results pages naturally. It involves creating high-quality, relevant content that is optimised for specific keywords and phrases, as well as improving your website’s technical structure and user experience (UX). Building a strong, organic position in search is a long-term strategy that takes time and effort to implement, but it can yield significant results in terms of increased traffic, engagement, and conversions; 33.59% of people searching click the results that show organically.

One of the main advantages of organic SEO is that it is cost-effective in the long run. While it may take time and effort to see results, once you have achieved a high-ranking position in the search results, you can continue to generate traffic and leads without having to pay for each click or impression. Additionally, organic SEO can improve your website’s credibility and authority, as search engines like Google tend to favour sites with high-quality content and a strong user experience.

What is Paid SEO?
As it says, paid SEO, involves paying for advertisements that appear in search engine results pages. Paid SEO, also known as search engine marketing (SEM), involves creating ads that are displayed at the top of the search results page for specific keywords and phrases. Although the percentage of people clicking ads is lower than organic results, paid SEO can be a highly effective way to generate traffic and leads quickly, as you can target specific audiences and pay for clicks or impressions.

One of the main advantages of paid SEO is that it can generate results quickly, often within hours or days of launching a campaign. Paid SEO can also provide highly targeted traffic, as you can target specific keywords, geographic locations, and demographics. Additionally, paid SEO can be highly flexible, as you can adjust your campaign settings and budget as needed to achieve your desired results.

However, paid SEO can be expensive, especially for highly competitive keywords and phrases. For example, terms like ‘business services’ can cost over £60 per click. Additionally, paid SEO does not improve your website’s credibility or authority in the same way that organic SEO does, as search engines prioritise organic results over paid results.

In conclusion, both organic and paid SEO have their advantages and disadvantages, and the best approach will depend on your specific business goals and budget. Organic SEO is a long-term strategy that requires time and effort to implement, but can provide sustainable, cost-effective results. Paid SEO, on the other hand, can provide quick results and highly targeted traffic, but can be expensive and does not improve your website’s credibility and authority in the same way that organic SEO does. By understanding the differences between organic and paid SEO, you can make an informed decision about which approach is right for your business.

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What are the facts about digital marketing

Paul Tagent

Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels and technologies to promote products, services, and brands. The rise of the internet and social media platforms has transformed the marketing landscape, allowing businesses to reach a wider audience and engage with customers in new ways.

The Importance of Digital Marketing

In today’s world, digital marketing has become an essential component of any marketing strategy. With over 4.9 billion people using the internet, businesses have the potential to reach a vast audience, regardless of their location or industry. Moreover, digital marketing is cost-effective, allowing businesses to save money on traditional advertising methods like print and television.

Digital marketing is also highly measurable, meaning that businesses can track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions. This is particularly important for small businesses, who may not have the resources to waste on ineffective advertising.

Types of Digital Marketing

There are many types of digital marketing, each with its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Some of the most common types of digital marketing include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This involves optimizing a website’s content and structure to improve its ranking on search engines like Google. By ranking higher on search engine results pages, businesses can increase their visibility and attract more traffic to their site.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: This involves placing ads on search engine results pages or social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Businesses only pay when a user clicks on their ad, making it a cost-effective way to drive traffic to their website.

Content marketing: This involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and engaging content with the aim of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience. Content marketing can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, social media posts, and infographics.

Social media marketing: This involves using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote a brand, build relationships with customers, and increase visibility.

Email marketing: This involves sending targeted emails to a list of subscribers with the aim of promoting a product or service, building brand loyalty, and driving traffic to a website.

The Future of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, with new technologies and platforms emerging all the time. As the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning becomes more widespread, businesses will have even more tools at their disposal to create personalized, targeted marketing campaigns.

Moreover, as more and more people use their smartphones to access the internet, mobile marketing will become increasingly important. Businesses will need to ensure that their websites and marketing campaigns are optimised for mobile devices if they want to reach this growing audience.

Conclusion

Digital marketing has revolutionised the way businesses promote themselves and interact with their customers. By using a range of digital channels and technologies, businesses can reach a wider audience, build brand loyalty, and drive sales. With the continued growth of the internet and social media, digital marketing will only become more important in the years to come.

How do I drive traffic to my website

Paul Tagent

This is called digital marketing and, this might be stating the obvious, but websites need lots of traffic 
from as many different sources in order to help them get more visitors and ultimately appear higher organically in search results. The little spiders at Google want to see lots of different platforms linking to your website so that they sit up and take notice. So much so that they want to see what all the fuss is about and go and take a look themselves (this is called site indexing)

But how do I do this?

I have banged on and on about this, but content on a blog within your website should be one of the first things that you do. You need your content to be written for humans, be localised wherever possible, be fresh and authentic and be content that people engage with. Your content should also be regular so that you have a dynamic area on your website that visitors almost come to as a source of information or a point of reference. 

Other key ways to drive traffic are – 

Optimise your website for your search terms.
Google wants to see that the websites it lands on have been put together correctly with nice, ‘clean’ code, labelled images, correct page properties and the right balance of appropriate words for it to scan read.

Submit your business to search engines
Use Google Places for Business
https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/business/ 

Submit your site map to Google Search Console
Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console

Add new products or content to your website daily
….or as often as you can. Sites that display lots of products for you to browse and buy generally get lots of visitors as there is so much more to look at. 

Add downloads or whitepapers to your website
A report or a guide that informs readers about a complex issue and presents your philosophy on the matter is a good way to attract attention. Write something that can be downloaded which helps readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision

Use email marketing and send out campaigns
Use a platform like Mailchimp. https://mailchimp.com/en-gb/?currency=GBP 

Guest blog for other websites
You are the authority in your sector. You know what works, what doesn’t, what people like etc. Offer to write about it on other blogs as your knowledge WILL get noticed.

See what your competitors are doing! 
AI like SEM Rush allow you to see exactly what your competitors are up to; what works for them, what content has the best reach etc.

Google also wants to see answers to questions that you put into its search bar or via Siri so that it can direct you accurately to what you are searching for and it doesn’t want to see the same information multiple times (duplicate content).

Other ways to drive traffic to your website is to keep active on social media. It’s no surprise that what someone types in the search bar of Instagram or YouTube is the most important signal to search. Social Media looks for relevant usernames, bios, captions, hashtags, and locations to send you to.

The above initiatives are all ‘free’ to use. However, they need a strategy to be effective and need doing professionally. Once you put something out there, it is out there for life so do not just jump straight in and start sending out poorly written content or shoddy eshots. Similarly, social media is called social media for a reason. It is a dialogue not a monologue so interact with people. And by the way, nobody really cares about your evening meal or your son’s birthday (sorry!).

The next part of your strategy to attract more site visitors is to use paid traffic and I will give you some pointers in my next post.

Implement Google Adwords into your Digital Marketing activities

Paul TagentLeave a comment
Google Adwords

When a company first opens its doors, one of the biggest initial challenges it will face is awareness; the prospective market becoming conscious of you and what you do. Roll back the years and building a brand was a long, slow process that took time, money and a lot of perseverance.

Nowadays, however, the internet has revolutionised how brands, organisations and businesses become visible to their target audience. Digital marketing such as social media platforms, websites, SERPS, influencers etc are all fast and costs effective routes to market, but I want to talk about one particular initiative that should now form a part of your digital marketing strategy – Google ads.

As we know, digital marketing has gone from being a specialist approach for innovative companies to being a vital part of any marketing strategy and today businesses of all shapes and sizes, from start-ups to huge international brands, are turning to Google ads to target potential customers directly via what they are searching for.

Fact. Google is the most widely used search engine fielding more than 3.5 billion search queries every single day and it offers advertisers access to an unprecedented and unequalled potential audience of users who are actively looking for goods and services. But……with these sorts of numbers and a global platform, using Google effectively is definitely a specialist skill.

Having an SEO strategy, no matter how large your business is, is vital, but getting to the Holy Grail position of page 1 organically takes time and not all businesses have that luxury.

Fact. Google ads are faster than organic SEO. In fact, this is arguably the biggest advantage of using Google adwords to reach your audience. Yes, there is leg work required to research, write (and/or design) the ads, create a bidding strategy and implementing, but the campaigns can be launched pretty much immediately….and you only pay if people click your ads!

What PPC do I do?

Google’s advertising initiatives are split across two main networks – the Search network, and the Display network. The Search network encompasses the entirety of the Google as a search engine, and advertisers can bid on millions of keywords and phrases to target prospective customers.

The Google Display Network, which offers advertisers more visual ads such as banners, spans approximately 98% of the World Wide Web, making it a great choice for advertisers who want to accomplish marketing goals that aren’t necessarily as conversion-driven as those of PPC ads, such as raising brand awareness on a large scale using banner ads.

Yes, but why launch a google adwords campaign?

In a nutshell, Google Adwords is an effective way to drive traffic from the search engine through to your website. Google plays a vital role in increasing the reach of your marketing campaign and adwords can get your company or product there quickly. Adwords however, is an auction so the more budget you have, the more your ads will show.

Google does have support on offer and can talk you through how to set up adwords, but……I very much feel that it is very much worth hiring an independent expert to research keywords and then set up a search ad campaigns. Ongoing, campaigns also need monitoring and optimising to make sure that you are getting the best bang for your buck.

Digital Marketing. How do I do this?

Paul TagentLeave a comment

Sometimes it’s impossible to decipher the wood from the trees when it comes to developing a digital marketing strategy. There are so many online platforms available these days and the vast majority are free to configure making each one saturated with millions of companies “shouting” online.

Similarly, some companies quickly configure accounts on platforms like Twitter just to be “on there.” They then do nothing with them and subsequently have accounts with no activity, no interaction and no real point. This actually damages a companies’ marketing rather than supports it as there is nothing worse than looking at a time line to discover that the last tweet or blog update was in 2016!

Putting together an effective digital marketing strategy is a common challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels actually are for acquiring and retaining customers. But they don’t seem to have a plan to how they intend to engage with their suspects and prospects or even a plan as to what content to use, when or even on which platform.

I also think there can be a fear that a massive strategy report is required which then requires a huge execution budget, but we believe that lean planning works best. Start with a separate digital marketing plan defining what you want to say, why and to whom. i.e do you want to enhance your “digital footprint” and sector credibility, raise awareness or target specific search terms and drive more traffic to your website.

Either way, begin with some R&D to find out which platforms your competitors are using and what are they saying. Look at what content are they posting. Similarly, research whether they are running Google adwords and if so, what terms do they target.

Then talk to your clients. What platforms do they use? If you are an SME, Twitter is a good platform to use to market your business. If you sell to consumers, then Facebook will be key and you may well consider implementing Facebook ads.

You need to make the case for an investment in digital marketing and then create an integrated digital plan which is part of the overall marketing plan – digital should be fully aligned and becomes part of business objectives.