Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a topic we hear a lot about and, like other facets of digital marketing, it has evolved considerably over the years. The very question, “just what is seo marketing?” itself can’t be answered as it once would, as SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) have differentiated themselves over the years, with the former centered on maximizing organic traffic and the latter encompassing both paid and organic traffic.
Moz, a high-profile company in the Inbound Marketing niche, defines SEO as “a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results.”
Exactly what constitutes those practices seems to be in a state of perpetual change — often for the better. There was a time when Google, as well as other search engines, lacked the ability to effectively detect keyword stuffing (the practice of a company or website proprietor inserting the pivotal phrases — or keywords) that prospects use in their searches in an unnaturally high frequency to rank higher in organic results.
Thankfully, growing sophistication in this area has led to an improved user experience — keyword stuffing not only rarely works but is grounds for search engines to punish offenders by pushing them lower in the search results. Instead, putting in the due diligence to determine what keywords best serve a company’s interest in the form of mirroring user intent, then creating helpful, valuable content along those lines constitutes the best practice in this area.
Over the years, we’ve been advised that email marketing would one day become secondary in priority to social media. As far back as 2012, internet keynote speaker Jay Baer noted that “email is like Madonna and Facebook is Lady Gaga”.
Some prognostications turn out to be wrong. This is an example. Email is still very much a priority for nearly all companies. After all, who doesn’t start their day by checking their email — business and personal accounts alike — before even getting on social media?
The priority of email marketing has also increased by virtue of an important reality in the social media realm. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or any other platform, a company is just renting space on that platform’s real estate and the platform can ultimately decide if a company’s organic messages get through to its audience, or the price the company will pay to get that exposure.
By contrast, assuming that company has efficiently and ethically compiled its email list, that audience remains ITS audience, unless of course subscribers opt out.
Like other aspects of digital marketing, email marketing has evolved. The skillful use of automation and audience segmentation can drastically increase the open and clickthrough rates of an email campaign and are now among the most important email marketing services an agency might offer.
There was once a time when a company could boast of having the most talked about website by virtue of aesthetics alone — never mind the website’s overall effectiveness — but sound website design now involves plenty more.
For example, SEO results are directly affected by HOW a website is constructed — the compression of its images and the clarity of its text being among the most important elements. While hand coding may no longer be an essential part of the mix, effective website design services require a broad knowledge base on the part of the service provider. Simply entering the search term, “website design near me” might not get you what you need.
Luckily, platforms like Zoom have bridged the geographical divide, so consider searching instead for the best website design, whether that provider is just down the street from you or clear across the country. In fact, this same priority should extend to all the digital marketing help you might seek.
At the same time, because of the introduction of a variety of tools — both free and paid — the ability to measure key website metrics has become easier than ever before. Why are analytics important in marketing? First and foremost, the priority of web analytics is to facilitate determining what is working, what isn’t and what can be improved.
As they say, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Digital marketing analytics is your means of measurement. Putting a company in a position to accurately analyze areas of potential website improvement is among the most important benefits of web analytics.
How can businesses benefit from using analytics on their website? A sound web analytics strategy centers on determining the metrics that are most important to a company’s online success — often conversions geared toward maximizing subscriptions or purchases — then tracking and testing variables to optimize these metrics.
Should a company find that a key conversion area isn’t performing as they would like, based on these analytics, changing the call to action on a button or asking for less invasive customer information can often make a huge difference. This is a clear example as to how web analytics helps business.
While SEO is a rock-solid strategy for businesses of nearly all types and should remain a priority, it does have its limits. One of those limits is time — it can often take a while to see your SEO efforts pay off in the form of seeing better results on the search engine results pages (SERPS).
Paid advertising has become an increasingly important part of an effective social media marketing strategy and the same goes for paid search. As more and more companies devote time and resources to SEO, creating and implementing sound paid search campaigns that are based on well-chosen search terms — and just as importantly, exclude unnecessary search terms — will be an increasingly valuable element of search engine marketing.
As digital marketing has grown from being somewhat niche to inarguably the most dynamic variation of marketing itself, it has seen a lot of change — not just in terms of what might constitute “best practices”, but also as far as the wide variation of tools and platforms it can offer.
There are several universal marketing principles that will probably always remain constant — catchy graphics and a compelling message will always be pivotal, although what might constitute either of them will no doubt change over time. But with digital marketing proving to be so dynamic while also occupying an ever more dominant place in the overall marketing universe, it begs the question, “Just what is digital marketing?”
Mailchimp, creator of one today’s most popular email platforms, defines digital marketing as
the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.
That’s a lot of territory when you think about it. So many digital platforms with so many individual nuances. And when you consider the subclassifications that stem from these primary channels, the scope becomes even more vast. There was a time when social media marketing — that ever-changing off-shoot of the larger digital marketing sphere — used to center on what a company might post in its organic feed, but that’s changed in recent years, due to diminishing organic reach necessitating a greater emphasis on paid online initiatives, including pay per click advertising, commonly referred to as ppc. For this reason, astute ppc management has become among the top digital marketing services companies are seeking today.
Once those ppc marketing efforts prompt prospects to act, a more comprehensive plan has to be in place to maximize the effectiveness of the marketing funnel. Those prospects have to be nurtured now more than ever before, as they’ve been bombarded by so many marketing messages that they’re rarely compelled to make a purchase right off the bat, except perhaps in the case of products with relatively low price points. Keeping a close eye on ppc management as prospects make their way through the sales funnel is the best way to ensure that a company is getting the most from its investment.
And let’s not forget the ever-important province of search engine optimization, or SEO. As organic reach dwindles over time, companies of all sizes are putting increasing effort into optimizing the content they put out via blogs and company websites to increase their chances of rising to the top of the search results when prospects enter relevant search terms.
It’s a pretty complex landscape, isn’t it?
Why is a Digital Marketing Strategy Important?
Viewing digital marketing options in purely quantitative terms, it’s apparent that there are more tools at your disposal than ever before. To provide maximum results and take full advantage of all that digital marketing has to offer, these tools — in the form of digital marketing platforms — should be employed holistically, and not just as individual marketing efforts. Your digital marketing initiatives should ideally support and complement each other.
In this regard, consistency is vitally important, not just in terms of the basic information a company provides on its website, email marketing efforts, social media platforms, but in terms of its overall voice, the marketing messages it puts out and even the individual aesthetics of these platforms. It’s rare that a single marketing impression — or even a few of them — provides enough impact to compel a prospect to act. Designing and implementing a comprehensive marketing strategy that effectively layers in these individual elements should be a priority, so prospects are not only exposed to more marketing impressions of the same type (that alone will not only reach a point of diminishing returns, but can eventually become counterproductive due to consumer annoyance) but marketing impressions that remain consistent while reinforcing each other.
Digital Marketing Services
As the digital marketing environment grows more complex, the digital marketing services an agency offers must grow along with it. And not just in terms of the variety of the services it offers — the individual needs of the businesses that agency seeks to serve must also be considered. The effective digital marketing services for small business that an agency might provide will differ from the digital marketing consulting for midsize business it might offer — by virtue of available budget, for starters. Also, some business segments benefit more from some marketing initiatives than others. Visual media like Instagram and TikTok may be indispensable for an aesthetics-centered business such as hair styling, but far less so for a CPA, for example. The best digital marketing consultant can discern a company’s needs and strategize accordingly.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the digital marketing services a company can take advantage of to improve its bottom line.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a topic we hear a lot about and, like other facets of digital marketing, it has evolved considerably over the years. The very question, “just what is seo marketing?” itself can’t be answered as it once would, as SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) have differentiated themselves over the years, with the former centered on maximizing organic traffic and the latter encompassing both paid and organic traffic.
Moz, a high-profile company in the Inbound Marketing niche, defines SEO as “a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results.”
Exactly what constitutes those practices seems to be in a state of perpetual change — often for the better. There was a time when Google, as well as other search engines, lacked the ability to effectively detect keyword stuffing (the practice of a company or website proprietor inserting the pivotal phrases — or keywords) that prospects use in their searches in an unnaturally high frequency to rank higher in organic results.
Thankfully, growing sophistication in this area has led to an improved user experience — keyword stuffing not only rarely works but is grounds for search engines to punish offenders by pushing them lower in the search results. Instead, putting in the due diligence to determine what keywords best serve a company’s interest in the form of mirroring user intent, then creating helpful, valuable content along those lines constitutes the best practice in this area.
Email Marketing
Over the years, we’ve been advised that email marketing would one day become secondary in priority to social media. As far back as 2012, internet keynote speaker Jay Baer noted that “email is like Madonna and Facebook is Lady Gaga”.
Some prognostications turn out to be wrong. This is an example. Email is still very much a priority for nearly all companies. After all, who doesn’t start their day by checking their email — business and personal accounts alike — before even getting on social media?
The priority of email marketing has also increased by virtue of an important reality in the social media realm. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or any other platform, a company is just renting space on that platform’s real estate and the platform can ultimately decide if a company’s organic messages get through to its audience, or the price the company will pay to get that exposure.
By contrast, assuming that company has efficiently and ethically compiled its email list, that audience remains ITS audience, unless of course subscribers opt out.
Like other aspects of digital marketing, email marketing has evolved. The skillful use of automation and audience segmentation can drastically increase the open and clickthrough rates of an email campaign and are now among the most important email marketing services an agency might offer.
Web Analytics
There was once a time when a company could boast of having the most talked about website by virtue of aesthetics alone — never mind the website’s overall effectiveness — but sound website design now involves plenty more.
For example, SEO results are directly affected by HOW a website is constructed — the compression of its images and the clarity of its text being among the most important elements. While hand coding may no longer be an essential part of the mix, effective website design services require a broad knowledge base on the part of the service provider. Simply entering the search term, “website design near me” might not get you what you need.
Luckily, platforms like Zoom have bridged the geographical divide, so consider searching instead for the best website design, whether that provider is just down the street from you or clear across the country. In fact, this same priority should extend to all the digital marketing help you might seek.
At the same time, because of the introduction of a variety of tools — both free and paid — the ability to measure key website metrics has become easier than ever before. Why are analytics important in marketing? First and foremost, the priority of web analytics is to facilitate determining what is working, what isn’t and what can be improved.
As they say, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Digital marketing analytics is your means of measurement. Putting a company in a position to accurately analyze areas of potential website improvement is among the most important benefits of web analytics.
How can businesses benefit from using analytics on their website? A sound web analytics strategy centers on determining the metrics that are most important to a company’s online success — often conversions geared toward maximizing subscriptions or purchases — then tracking and testing variables to optimize these metrics.
Should a company find that a key conversion area isn’t performing as they would like, based on these analytics, changing the call to action on a button or asking for less invasive customer information can often make a huge difference. This is a clear example as to how web analytics helps business.
Paid Search
While SEO is a rock-solid strategy for businesses of nearly all types and should remain a priority, it does have its limits. One of those limits is time — it can often take a while to see your SEO efforts pay off in the form of seeing better results on the search engine results pages (SERPS).
Paid advertising has become an increasingly important part of an effective social media marketing strategy and the same goes for paid search. As more and more companies devote time and resources to SEO, creating and implementing sound paid search campaigns that are based on well-chosen search terms — and just as importantly, exclude unnecessary search terms — will be an increasingly valuable element of search engine marketing.
Paid Social Media
One of the seismic shifts in digital marketing strategy stems from the fundamental changes in organic reach on seemingly all social media platforms. As social media becomes more of a “pay to play” proposition with every passing year, creating well-crafted paid social media campaigns becomes an ever more essential element in digital social media marketing.
This has changed the landscape as far as what constitutes effective digital marketing services on social media. Gone are the days of an individual or small group simply posting on behalf of a client being able to pass muster as a social media marketing agency. Companies looking for digital marketing services — whether that be in the form of strategy consulting or actual digital marketing support — are often disappointed when the individual or agency they put their trust in can’t provide the results they’re after.
To really be effective, an agency’s social media marketing services must include a paid social media strategy. Small wonder that the plethora of self-help books centered on “how to digital marketing on Facebook”, many of which never go beyond mere posting strategies, are no longer adequate.
The best digital marketing strategy consultant will be one that has both fundamental knowledge and practical experience in both the paid and organic social media worlds.
Get Digital Marketing Consultation with Astoria Advertising Today
The world of digital marketing has changed quite a bit and just what constitutes the best digital marketing service provider has changed right along with it. Truly effective full service digital marketing requires a fundamental knowledge of what’s working at present and incorporating it into a sound overall plan that fits your business.
If you’re looking for digital marketing support that will actually make a difference and take your company to the next level, you need more than a mere practitioner — you need a digital marketing consultant who will prioritize your business’s best interests. As we’ve noted, this is an area where technology has bridged the geographic divide. It no longer makes sense to prioritize seeking out local digital marketing services. You should avail yourself of the best digital marketing services. We pride ourselves in providing just that.
Schedule your digital marketing consultation with Astoria Advertising today!
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