The IT Nerd

Dating back to Ancient Greece and Egypt, monumental structures have relied on the strength of stone pillars, working together to support an immense amount of weight and pressure. Over the past 2,500 years, the Parthenon has been rocked by earthquakes, blown up by exploding gunpowder and suffered severe fire damage, yet it and its pillars still stand today.

The way you apply digital and online marketing to a business is no different. You need to have a range of marketing pillars to uphold the pressure of its success, and together produce significant results. RankHigher.ca which is a Burlington, Ont. based digital marketing, and SEO firm recommends “the Parthenon approach” online marketing using these four pillars: 

• Search Engine Optimization: Earning top rankings in natural organic Google search is still one of the best ways to grow a business. When a consumer is searching for a product or service, cutting through the clutter of over 130 trillion web pages to end up among the first few results is crucial. A great tip is to write 2,500 words of unique text, inserting your core keyword up to but no more than 19 times.  The use of latent semantic language lets Google find relationships between those keywords and the ones in the search query. Consumer testimonials are also a great method to include keywords and improve your Google ranking. 

• Search Engine Marketing: While it may take a while to earn Google’s trust through SEO, Search Engine Marketing can be turned on fairly quickly. With SEM, businesses pay to play, while maintaining full control of speed and budget. SEM allows for targeting of prospective customers through search engines such as Google and Bing. SEM is also a great way to do A/B testing on coupons and special offers to find the one that resonates with your perspective customers. Once a winner is established this can be used with SEO, social media or print media. 

• Paid Social Media Ads: Social media advertising allows businesses to target customers based on location, demographic information and interests. This provides a far better ROI than traditional marketing because you have laser beam focus on your potential customer. 

• YouTube: Having a branded YouTube channel for a business can be a powerful marketing pillar as many consumers go to YouTube to search information about a company, and to gain a better understanding of the product or service they offer by seeing it in action. The most powerful YouTube videos explain the benefit of what the company offers, and the function of a specific product or service. These videos can be easily embedded to social channels or websites, and integrated with SEO and SEM for optimal results. A YouTube video of customers telling the story of how a product or service helped them has proven to be a highly effective marketing method.

For more information on RankHigher, please visit http://www.rankhigher.ca/. ‘Like’ them on Facebook or follow @RankHigherCa.