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Digital Marketing Isn’t All About Rankings

In the old days of SEO, the end target of almost every company’s strategy was to rank at the top of the search results for their targeted keyword terms. However, site owners and search engine marketers would go about any means to achieve this – using methods like black hat strategies, keyword stuffing and spammy link building.

Nowadays with Google’s updated algorithms these methods will drop your rank rather than raise it. In the present day there’s a lot more competition all fighting for that first spot in Google. As sites have developed to be much more appealing to customers, ranking in position 1 in Google isn’t enough to get you sales anymore.

So what’s digital marketing all about these days, and how can you get consumers to convert?

Aim For The Top, But Don’t Make It Your Priority

Obviously having your site featured at the top of the search results is very beneficial. Anyone who searches a particular query will see your site first (or close to); which is bound to lead more traffic through than if your site is sitting at the bottom of the page.

However, ranking first organically is nowhere near as important as it used to be. As search behaviour has changed and the amount of alternative methods to reach the top of search results has risen, pushing everything into the technical aspects of SEO is not as important as it once was.

Google’s Algorithms Are Changing

On top of this, Google’s algorithms are changing. Their focus is moving more off of technical aspects of search optimisation and more on to the performance and quality of the user experience that your site provides. So by making your site more user friendly, you’ll probably see yourself moving closer to the top anyway.

So What Is The Goal Of Modern Day Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is all about getting products sold. There’s no point in ranking first if no one’s going to make it far enough through your site to buy anything.

What’s better: getting 1000 visitors and getting 10 sales, or getting 100 visitors and 50 sales? The absolute key to modern day internet marketing is to create the best possible version of your site so that users are enticed. This means stylish professional design work, informative, useful and persuasive content along with minimal on-site issues and fast load speeds.

If you really want to achieve online success you need to push your focus to creating the best possible site for your users, because it is this that will make them convert.

How Do You Get Users To Convert?

Now that you understand just what the focus of digital marketing is, it’s important that you know what you can go about doing to make sure your site achieves online success.

Create A User Friendly Website

Before you begin on other areas of the site your first focus should be on making your site smooth, professional and good to use for potential customers.

This means you should cut down the amount of third party ads on the site as much as possible, remove any intrusive adverts that pop up and block users’ ability to use the site, make sure page load speeds are as fast as possible, and ensure every aspect of the site is working how it should be.

Create High Quality Content

When you’ve made sure that your website is in good working order, you want to fill the pages with high quality content. The content you will want on your site should be straightforward, clear and well optimised with relevant keywords. You should approach content creation with your focus on providing users with valuable, informative and easy-to-understand content. It’s this that will get people to trust you and share your work, which both – in turn – bring willing consumers to your website.

Write Gripping Meta Data

To suit your new brilliant online site you’ll want to create some gripping Meta data for each page, else searchers won’t even make it past the search results to your site. You’ll want to optimise your meta title with relevant keywords and make sure both the title and description are well written and persuasive – it’s the first thing a user will see about your site when entering through search engine results pages.

There’s More Ways Than SEO To Get To The Top Of SERPs

Though good search engine optimisation is undoubtedly a brilliant way to secure a place at the top of search results for a significant amount of time, there are other ways to get there, and if your business is small or you can’t compete with huge international brands for some terms, there are other ways to reach the top.

  • Featured Snippets –A brilliant way to get yourself to the top of search results. A featured snippet is the small piece of information that sometimes appears at the top of SERPs when you ask Google a question. Aim to create a piece of extremely relevant and valuable content that answers searchers questions, and when certain queries are searched you have a chance of showing up right at the top of SERPs, even before the ads. Featured snippets have been known to bring as much as a 516% increase in traffic in the past.
  • Paid Advertising –This jumps you directly to the top of search results for your desired search terms. Paid advertising allows you to showcase a link to your site at the top of the search results, and each time someone clicks this advert, you pay Google a certain amount of money. 

 Want Your Site To Be Successful On The Web?

Do you need a helping hand achieving online marketing success? UC4 is a trusted, established digital marketing agency in Birmingham that provides services for web design & development, SEO and paid search advertising.

Contact us today to discuss your new marketing strategy and get your business on the path to online success.