Digital Marketing is not a simple matter of posting content on your site, your Facebook page, hoping that random traffic to your site will result in eventual customers.
Effective digital marketing means generating engaging and relevant content that your target audience will be attracted to, at the right place and at the right time—and this can be achieved in a variety of ways.
If you’re starting with a small budget, and are willing to work hard and put the time in to build organic, inbound marketing, Google just might be your best friend. Here are five ways you use Google to your digital marketing advantage without splashing out money for AdWords or any paid advertising. Organic marketing and healthy SEO outweighs the short-term benefits of paid advertising, and over time will get your business a higher spot on the results page.
Google Analytics
Want to see if your blog is getting any love from the Internet? Once you have your website up and running, be sure to set up an analytics account using your Google mail credentials. It’s a fairly straightforward process and only takes a few minutes with most sites. With this invaluable tool, you can track everything like conversions (for instance, if your goal is to get traffic to fill out the contact form, you can set it up that way), see where your audience is coming from, and so much more. With this information, you can see exactly what kinds of content, pages, and even products are getting the most hits and attention, and adjust your marketing strategy fueled by solid, measurable information.
Google My Business
This is pretty much free advertising for your business, and all you need to provide is your address to get featured on Google search results, Google Maps, and local searches. It was formally known as Google Places, and unlike AdWords, no businesses can pay to be featured in those spots in local results. It works great on mobile too, and will include a link to your number to directly call your office straight from the Google search.
Google+ Business Page
Google+ goes hand in hand with Google My Business, and is a very important way to connect socially with your customers in both direct and indirect circles. By posting articles from your blog and adding the +1 share button, interaction on your page will increase your ranking factor with Google in general, and will help yield better search results. It’s also a great way to find hilarious memes, cat videos and such….. if that’s your thing (ahem).
Webmaster Tools
Take one step past the effective measurability of Google Analytics and set up a Webmaster Tools account. This will give you an even better glimpse into how effective your site is in the eyes of Google. Red flags appear to alert you, letting you know of any obstacles preventing your customers from finding you. Best yet, its gives a deeper understanding and analysis of your existing search traffic so you can get to the bottom of what’s the most effective.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner can show you which keywords are the most competed-for in the search world, making sure you target the right ones in your content through blogs and other posts.
We’re finishing off this 5-tip article with the golden nugget at the very end. When you’re boosting your organic SEO, start with keyword research first. The Google AdWords keyword planner is designed to help you with paid campaigns, but you can use it for free just to check what the average monthly search, competition and bids are for certain keywords. It might be best to start out learning how to use the keyword planner before you start splashing out a budget for AdWords, which coupled with organic SEO and robust content, can make your business’ site truly stand out amongst the competition.