Digital Marketing 101: Communication, Keywords, and Website Quality
Essential Starting Points
Many of you might be asking, "How do I get started?" The first step is understanding what it means to optimize a website. Key factors include effective communication with your audience, selecting the right keywords, and ensuring your website is of high quality. These are all essential starting points!
Communication
Effective communication with our audience is crucial. People prefer to connect with real individuals, especially in video content. They want to engage with voices that feel genuine, not robotic or scripted. This makes it essential to consider the tone and voice of the content we create.
What we say and how we say it matters to our listeners and readers. Whether you’re using text or video, strive to be relatable and show genuine interest in your audience. Keep your buyer personas in mind, focusing on the types of people who are interested in your products and services. Tailor your brand’s voice and tone to resonate with them.
The keywords
Keywords are the terms Google looks for when someone performs a search. There are different types of keywords, including exact match keywords, broad match keywords, and phrase match keywords.
Exact Match Keywords: These are straightforward and directly related to the searcher's intent. They usually consist of one or two words. For example, someone searching for “2023 Chevy Silverado” is using an exact match keyword.
Broad Match Keywords: These target a wider audience and are less specific. An example would be “roof repair,” which captures a range of related searches.
Phrase Match Keywords: These are specific phrases entered into a search engine. For instance, “Pizza in downtown Richmond” is a phrase match keyword.
How to Choose the Right Keywords
Finding the right keywords requires some analysis, but here are a few tips to help you get started:
Use Variations of Keywords: Incorporating different keyword variations makes your content feel more natural and increases your chances of being discovered on Google.
Check Google Suggestions: Look at the suggestions that appear when you type in a search. These are based on actual queries and can provide valuable insights.
Think Like Your Consumers: Consider what your target audience is typing into the Google search bar, and use those terms in your content.
Focus Keywords for Each Page: Assign specific keywords to each page of your website. For example, on my "About" page, my main keywords are “small business” and “small business marketing.”
By following these tips, you can enhance your website's visibility and connect with your audience more effectively!
Quality websites
What Comes to Mind When You Think of Clean and Professional Websites?
Chances are, you’re thinking of many of the right elements. A good website should have a seamless flow, tell a compelling story, be highly responsive, easy to navigate, and keep the audience engaged with high-quality content.
The Importance of Content
Content is essential; it should be valuable and designed to attract, engage, and delight your audience. It serves as the cornerstone of every effective digital marketing campaign. However, be mindful not to overload your site with content.
Performance Matters
Page load speed is crucial in determining whether visitors stay and engage with your site. Ensure your images and videos are compressed for optimal performance—there are many online tools available to help with this! Both the quality and size of your media should be optimized to prevent slow loading times.
SEO Essentials
Your content also needs to be properly sitemapped, crawled, and indexed by Google. Indexing allows Google to recognize your URLs in search results, while sitemapping provides Google with a pathway to access your content. And don’t worry—we’ll handle all of that for you!
User Experience
Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and navigate your website as they would. Ensure your link placements guide the audience smoothly through the site and lead them to calls to action (CTAs).
Quick Recap:
Ensure your site features high-quality content that keeps your audience engaged.
Compress your images and videos for faster loading.
Make sure your site is properly crawled, indexed, and sitemapped. We’ll cover this in detail later!
Design on-site links that effectively guide your audience to CTAs.
By focusing on these key elements, you can create a website that not only looks professional but also provides a great user experience!
Start Enhancing Your Online Presence
Great communication, smart keyword usage, and a quality website are essential steps you can take right now to enhance your online presence. A well-constructed website is the foundation of your digital identity. If you implement the strategies we discussed, you’ll be off to a fantastic start. Trust me, there’s no substitute for an exceptionally appealing and highly functional website!
In this blog, we touched on the importance of content. Next week, we’ll dive deeper into what content truly is and explore what it means to have high-quality content that drives traffic to your site.
Thank you for reading! 😊