Fear not, I shall tell you how with the following simple procedures to get you started!

As according to Pizzi, G (2015) ‘many business owners aspiring for high search engine placement fail to realize that the most important aspects of optimizing their website actually takes place off site’ thus emphasizing the benefits that implementing off-site SEO could enforce for a business. For all those businesses who are aiming to achieve long-term high ranking search engine results, pay attention because these tips are relevant for you! Site rankings are based on SEO authority and that authority is not simply established by your website singularly. This is achieved by a combination of inbound and outbound links and how many of these sites link back to your website. Following this, continue reading for some information on how to begin utilizing off-site SEO!

So..

Social Media

Let’s begin with social media and the benefits that this provides. Social media enables high quality backlinks to be acquired from authority websites. This is possible through the mediums of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. Continuing from this, community creation can be classified as another benefit of social media. The ability to create a community through your social media endeavours. Social media provides an extended online network of which you can connect, share and promote varying elements of the company to build an online reputation and many of these plaforms will presumably have links directed back to the website. See an example below of how Vodafone use links throughout their social media, namely Facebook here.

Blogging

Blogging is also another useful component. The creation of blogs and frequent blog entries conveying precise elements of the company prove beneficial in terms of generating consumers towards the business and if enough links are strategically spread throughout the blog, generate backlinks. Further promotion of the blog and website can be achieved through posting comments in other service-related blogs. This will enable links in the comment section which search engines will deem ‘crawlable’. For example; a blog post discussing healthy recipes could be targeted by a company like Weight Watchers commenting with a link to one of their, also healthy, recipes. However, it should be noted that all blog content should strive to be unique to avoid **duplicate content and consequently less successful SEO. See the below example of an ASOS blog in which they have a celebrity fashion icon with a link driving to a webpage (a webpage on their site – ASOS marketplace) following a fashion recommendation tied to a celebrity.

Forum Content

Forum postings provide another form of generating backlinks. This can be achieved through creating a forum or an online discussion board, sharing relevant topics with acquired followers both on and off of social media platforms. Furthermore, posting and replying to threads within other service-related pre-existing forums containing links directed back to specific areas of your business sites/social media prove beneficial. For example; a hen-party organisation could engage on wedding forums within the ‘planning’ section and reach out to brides who are to arrange their hen-parties.  However, it is important to avoid spamming. Attach links strategically and only if they link to the forum or discussion board directly and will prove helpful to the topic of discussion.

Photo Sharing

Finally, Photo sharing. Publishing and sharing a websites products and pictures and making this publicly accessible enables consumers to see and comment on this content and also make reviews where necessary. This will drive traffic to your website if links are included below said pictures. Examples of these websites include Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket.

HOWEVER..

as with everything, off-site SEO is not easy and can encounter the following problems however being aware of them and knowing how to tackle this is highly beneficial in entirely utilizing off-site SEO.

Problem number one; Flash. Although flash is becoming less common on current websites, it is still around and can hinder search engine robots attempting to index your sites content. As stated by Martin, J. (2014), ‘if the engine bots can’t read or understand your website they’ll have a hard time trying to figure out what to rank it for’. Therefore the best advice is to avoid flash on your website or use it sparingly. HTML 5, CSS3 or JavaScript can be used alternatively.

Slow Page Loads are also another issue that may be encountered. Page speed is important when attempting to attain good search rankings. If your website has many elements on it such as images and videos, this could potentially slow down your website. This can be altered by using Google’s GooglePageSpeed Tools which will help test and increase the overall speed of your site.

Last but certainly not least **duplicate content (as mentioned earlier) provides an issue for companies. According to moz.com (2015) the below problems are faced with duplicate content.

1. Search engines don’t know which version(s) to include/exclude from their indices
2. Search engines don’t know whether to direct the link metrics (trust, authority, anchor text)to one page, or keep it separated between multiple versions
3. Search engines don’t know which version(s) to rank for query results

When duplicate content is present, site owners suffer rankings and traffic losses, and search engines provide less relevant results. Martin J. (2014) however provide the remedy of crawling your site looking for duplications and apply “crawl directives” to inform Google of the relative value of multiple URLs, Stricker says. You can use “robots.txt” (a file that allows you to control how Google’s bots crawl and index your public Web pages) to tell Google the specific folders and directories that are not worth crawling.

Now that we have cleared that up, happy off site seo-ing!

 References

Moz.com (2015). Duplicate Content – SEO Best Practices – Moz. [online] Moz.com. Available at: http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content [Accessed 31 Mar. 2015].

Martin, J. (2014). Top 10 Technical SEO Issues (and How to Fix Them). [online] www.cio.com. Available at: http://www.cio.com/article/2376266/internet/top-10-technical-seo-issues–and-how-to-fix-them-.html [Accessed 31 Mar. 2015].

Pizzi, G. (2015). What is Off-Site SEO?. [online] www.audiologydesign.com. Available at: http://www.audiologydesign.com/what-is-off-site-seo/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2015].

Hopefully you understood the call-to-action and incentive offered in the title of this blog? If yes, we’re off to a good start! Now, let’s talk digital marketing and this time the topic is centered on e-mail marketing and the benefits that your business could encounter from putting some simple procedures in place. As according to Experian.com (2015), e-mail marketing is arguably a vital marketing tool which suggests that your business could highly benefit from adopting an e-mail marketing campaign. Furthermore, e-mail marketing is a great way to reach customers where they are without spending a significant amount of money.

However, although this sounds absolutely ideal and you’re probably thinking why on earth wouldn’t I want to jump on the band-wagon. PAUSE! It is worth noting that maintaining an e-mail marketing campaign is a big responsibility. Nowadays, people are hesitant to freely provide companies with their e-mail address due to potential spam mail among other factors. Continuing from this, research conducted from TheJournal.co.uk (2012) details that deliver-ability rates have fallen to a record 83% since the second period of 2011. Also they discovered that there was a 7% increase in e-mails being sent straight to ‘Spam’ folders and a further 10% increase in missing and blocked messages. These figures paint a (painful) image for marketers attempting to utilize e-mail marketing. This form of marketing could arguably be classified as becoming increasingly diminished as people simply ignore or junk these messages. Despite these factors, e-mail marketing is still a cost effective method. It is just the effectiveness of our marketing funnels that needs to be improved in order to ensure that this is successful – Experian.com (2015) referred to e-mail marketing as vital for a reason now didn’t they…

Not to worry, here are a few tips for you to keep in mind to aid your marketing endeavors…

1.Make it easy for consumers to subscribe

Utilize your social media platforms and post a signup form on all relevant mediums so that if consumers do wish to sign up, it is really easy for them to quickly do so with minimal fuss and maximum efficiency. Plus, this makes it easier for your company as if it is made highly accessible, more people will sign up therefore more subscribers and a wider scope to market your company to!  Through connecting social media to your newsletters, you are also enhancing a brand personality which consumers are more likely to identify with. (For more information on Social Media, check out a prior blog on social media here)

2.Make sure that consumers are well-informed

Provide as much information as possible on the sign-up form so that consumers make well informed and guided decisions when deciding to sign up to the newsletter. This will also be a positive step towards decreasing the amount of consumers who unsubscribe as consumers are fully aware of what they were signing themselves up to. Furthermore if they are choosing to sign up to joining a company newsletter, they are more likely to want to view the e-mail they are being sent hence less chance of this being ignored/sent to ‘Spam’ and so forth.

3.Send a welcome e-mail

Once you’ve completed the initial step and actually acquired some subscribers, why not reassure them that they made the right decision with a introductory e-mail. This could contain exclusive content as a sign of appreciation/incentive for their loyalty and to keep them interested. The below welcome e-mail from SurveyMonkey provides a good example especially for the nature of their product. After being offered a free Survey service online, their e-mail simply provides a basic e-mail driving me to the website to ‘Get Started’ on my Survey outlining the features included which are highly practical for myself and what I required of the service. E-mail marketing should always strive to drive consumers towards the website as this increases not only web traffic but any possibility of the consumer engaging with the product.

4.Fit your brand!

Throughout all marketing platforms and plans, it is vital for an organisation to fit their brand and stay loyal to the brand personality. This is because consumers identify with a particular brand for a reason and if this is well communicated through e-mail marketing then they are more likely to positively engage with the brand and the chances of this converting to sales is heightened. An example of this is below with ASOS’s form of e-mail marketing. Almost all of their e-mails include incentives within the title, this one in particular had the title ‘20% off casual dresses’ and then continues once the e-mail has been clicked and opened to have pictures of young, trendy, fashionable women which is what I associate the brand ASOS with. An additional humorous play-on-words enables further engagement with the target demographic of ’20-something fashion lovers’ (Asosplc.com, 2015). I, myself as a 20-something fashion lover always open their e-mails as I know I can expect to be intrigued enough by the models and captions to visit the website (and, almost always find something I adore).

5.Send only relevant content

This seems like an obvious tip however it isn’t and many times marketers get it completely wrong. Relevant content isn’t as simple as ‘We’re a mattress company so all newsletters will include promotions about our extensive new line of memory foam mattresses with relevant links’ – Yes, but no. I’ll explain. Segment your e-mail subscriber group whether this be geographically or otherwise and send e-mails out to them accordingly. For example, if you are a memory foam mattress company, you probably have consumers whom are within different age groups. Segment these and use this to your advantage. For example, student consumers could be offered cheaper deals for their mattresses due to financial restraints they may encounter or perhaps cheaper deals at the beginning of the University terms as this could be considered a ‘peak’ time for purchases. However, families on the other hand could be offered package deals or buy-one-get-one-free promotions as they will be purchasing for an entire family. There are opportunities for engagement with every different segment (sidenote: segments should be identified following research). So segment, segment, segment! Only send out an e-mail if you believe it is wholly relevant and beneficial to the consumer.

6.Post regularly!

To keep subscribers engaged and wishing to stay positively involved with the brand, make sure that you post regularly and that this is content that the reader will benefit from. This is easily achievable if you have set goals to work towards, potentially distinguish a monthly amount of e-mails to be sent within said time-frame so that consumers have this to look forward to. Also, this is beneficial for your company! Every e-mail is another opportunity for conversion.

7.Test, test, test, test, test (ahem, test)

Make sure that the content of your e-mail is mobile friendly and compatible for both bigger and smaller screens. According to (Info.movableink.com, 2015), 66 percent of emails were opened on either a smartphone (47.2 percent) or tablet (18.5 percent) as according to research collected. Therefore it is vital to make sure that the content of your e-mail is friendly for different types of devices therefore no consumer can miss out on your (hopefully, incredible) content.

References

Asosplc.com, (2015). How we do it. [online] Available at: http://www.asosplc.com/how-we-do-it.aspx [Last Accessed 20/03/2015].

Experian.com. (N/A). Benefits of Email Marketing. [online] Available: <http://www.experian.com/small-business/benefits-of-email-marketing.jsp> [Last Accessed 20/03/2015].

Info.movableink.com, (2015). MovableInk. [online] Available at: <http://info.movableink.com/device-report-q1-2014?utm_source=prweb> [ Last Accessed 20/03/2015].

The Journal. 2007. Problems With Email Marketing. The Journal. [Online]. Available at: <http://www.thejournal.co.uk/business/business-news/problems-with-email-marketing-4408996> [Last Accessed 26/03/2015]