Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
If it ain’t broke….
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a rule by which to live. Google Plus Your World launches today, and will roll out over the next few days to everyone. Basically it is a huge change in searches on Google, and it incorporates not only searches from the public web, as usual, but also searches that have been shared with you privately.
Personalized and social search results are not new to Google. They have been around since 2005 and 2009, respectively, but not included in the regular searches. Now personal, social and public algorithms are all rolled into one happy (for some) search algorithm.
For more detail, you can read all about it.
Inbound & Outbound Marketing: A Perfect Marriage
Continuing the inbound marketing conversation, let’s talk about how to marry inbound and outbound marketing campaigns for optimum reach in today’s crowded home care market. Outbound marketing efforts, like PR, advertising, direct mail, and email campaigns are a vital part of an agency’s success. But, when combined with inbound marketing tools like blogs, social media, and search engine optimization (SEO), the two make an unstoppable pair.
Due to the advancement of mobile technology and ad screening/blocking software, businesses of all kinds are focusing more on being found online than pushing their products and services out to potential clients. Knowing your target audience can help you narrow down your focus and attract the clients that are most likely to buy what you’re selling. This blog from corecubed provides more information on how to use inbound marketing to get clients knocking at your door.
For home care agencies, regular blogging, maintaining a presence on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and optimizing websites for search engine rankings are the top ways to boost your inbound reach and ensure you can be found online.
Want a visual of how inbound and outbound marketing work together? This handy infographic should do the trick.
Click image to enlarge
Home Care, inbound marketing, inbound marketing infographic, infographic, outbound marketing, ROI, SEO, social media
Quality Wins in Google SEO Update
Google’s latest “Panda” update has many folks who follow website rankings and SEO all in a twitter, so to speak. Last week Google made some major changes in their algorithms affecting website rankings on search engines and how internet marketing works. As in most things, there were some winners and some losers.
And, right now, no one really yet knows what the strategy is going forward, but it seems that the sites that really do have solid content, are well designed, and updated frequently are the winners. Basically, this means, that if you are offering some good information, have it organized correctly, and are legitimate, then your may have won out over those who have been trying tricks to get ranked.
Design seems to be a factor in better rankings. Clean code and simple design helps the search engines crawl a site unimpeded. Also, page structure seems to matter.
Not too many ads. Better to have none than too many.
Relevant content that makes sense, and is not just content stuffed with keywords. Length of articles may also play a role. ”It seems that excessive amounts of very short articles may be a factor taken into consideration, because if that’s the majority of what you put out, the majority of your content is likely “shallow”. ” says Chris Crum of WebProNews. Also, if you just cannot do without autogenerated content, then it needs to be kept separate from the real content, and not indexed for search engines.
Backlinks are still important but they need to be relevant backlinks from relevant sites.
Basically, these are the things that corecubed has focused on because selling over the web is like selling in person. You have to be genuine, have a good product, and position it correctly supported with good design. There really are not shortcuts to winning. Perhaps those who got ranked because they used shortcuts are now suffering from that strategy, and the search engines will start to work better based on REAL search results, for REAL content, and not just manufactured communication that is irrelevant and created just for rankings.
Win at Home Care SEO Even with Fierce Competition
SEO for home care. The competition is fierce. More and more people are finding home care through internet searches. I just did a comparison of key words searched on Google that related to home care. I first looked at all searches since 2004 and then looked at the last 90 days.
Amazingly the trend is for people to search by company/agency name. The keywords for which people search has not changed hardly at all except that home care jobs is now in the top ten and health care is also right at the top, replacing the “home” in home health care.
What does this mean to the agency wanting to get ranked? It means that traditional marketing and branding are increasingly important in addition to using tactics to get higher ranking.
So, how does an agency with a limited budget compete with the large organizations that are spending mega bucks on marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC)? It means that you had better find a way to get your agency name out there in many different ways that are all internet marketing related. It means that using social media, using strategic internet marketing and having a well designed website are all things that should be in your corporate marketing tool box. It means that back links to your site are also important. It means that you had better be out giving presentations and educating on home care and making certain that your agency is seen as a leader and an expert in home care. Sounds daunting, does it not? Well, the only program that I know of that accomplishes this is the MOST program. Now in its 3rd year, with over 30 themed complete packages for agencies to use for their corporate marketing, the MOST program delivers content, design and a team of professionals to implement. Give it a look see and ask me for a special deal that we are running through September 15th.
The Silver Bullet Exists
Everyone is always looking for that silver bullet. That one thing they could do differently, better, faster or cheaper to gain market share. And, sometimes it does appear that the silver bullet has been found, but, more than likely, it is simply the result of some good strategy and following the basic marketing tenets that bring success. (more…)
