5 Online Marketing Golf Shots You Need for a Par

Have you ever played golf? As I was thinking about golf compared to inbound marketing, I realized many similarities existed. If you are familiar with golf, but still learning inbound marketing, hopefully this post will help make some details clearer.
5 Inbound Marketing Golf Shots You Need For a Par
The Drive
You’re teeing off on the first hole that’s a long par five with water directly in front of you and sand traps bordering the fairways.  It’s one of the most difficult shots in golf. You haven’t taken a swing yet and you’re not quite sure how you should play the shot. Are you going to create yourself a high quality playable second shot or in the water or sand trap with a low quality second shot?
The same question applies to inbound marketing. Should you go for long-tail keywords that give you higher quality traffic or for keywords that are single words that usually send a lot of lower quality traffic? Definitely, go for the high quality traffic. Research and build out hundreds of long-tail keywords related to your business that will produce a lot of relevant, high-quality traffic to your website.

Create blog posts that are compelling, controversial, and unique. Use your long-tail keywords in the blog title, URL and content.  Make sure you’re creating content on a weekly basis so you can rank for your most relevant and important long-tail keywords.  Each blog article is an asset for your business that will continue to pay you back overtime.
The Long Second Shot
You took a controlled slow swing and now you’re within striking distance of reaching the green. You must optimize your next shot so you’ll make a birdie or a par. Do you try to reach the green if it’s just slightly out of reach or lay-up and hope your short game will come through. Bet on your short game and play it safe.

The same is true for optimizing your content. Make sure your blog articles are optimized for search engine optimization best practices. If you follow SEO best practices you’ll start ranking on searches related to your blog article topic and people will start linking to your content.  Just like your short game in golf, those links are you’re shot for success.
The Short Third Shot
So now you’re within 100 yards of the hole and in striking distance to make par. You better take a controlled well thought-out shot to promote your chance of making a birdie. Make sure you select the right club so you reach the green and have a makeable birdie or two-putt for par.
The same holds true when promoting your content through social media to ensure you reach the right audience. You need to listen to relevant conversations and find industry groups so you know where you should promote you’re compelling content. You need to continuously be growing your reach through social media so you get more visitors, leads and customers.
The Birdie Putt
You hit a terrific third shot, reached the green and are in striking distance to convert a makeable birdie putt. Now, you must execute your putt with accuracy and the right speed. Study the green and align the putt to the path of the green and you’ll make an easy birdie.
Same applies to once a visitor lands on your site. They should be guided through a conversion path that includes a call-to-action with an offer, a landing page, and a form that converts them to a lead.
The Par Putt
So you either made or missed the birdie putt, not to worry. Regardless of the outcome you must analyze what your next option is. Preparing for the next hole or making the short putt for par.
Same holds true for inbound marketing. You must continuously analyze what’s working and what’s not. For inbound marketing you need to measure your keywords, calls-to-action, and landing pages are converting to leads and customers. If you do this, you’ll continue to see better results overtime, just like practice makes perfect in your short game.

article was first seen on hubspot

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Search Engine Optimization and Social Media are two relationships vehicles meant to work together.  We have Google to thank for making this happen. I believe it’s a relationship built to last.

Google determined ”links” to be of primary importance for a high search ranking.  What matters to Google is who goes to your site and who goes to the sites of people who go to your site.  These links means your site has “authority” and authority establishes a high rank by Google’s standards.

Simply letting viewers know, on your website, they can follow you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. increases links.  Since Facebook and Twitter friends and followers can be substantial (130 and 129 on average), social media is important to search.  If you blog, publish frequently and readers follow, your site gains: Frequency X Links X Time spend on your site = A powerful effect on search ranking.

What this is doing is changing online marketing for a monologue to a conversation.  In the old world of search, everything was focused on winning over Google.  Now, it can be balanced with winning over people.

For any business or brand, search and social media should support one another.  Here are 5 ways to use Search and Social Media for better results.

1. BALANCE KEYWORDS WITH CONVERSATIONS:  Keywords are the currency for search and social media but conversations around them matter.  Social media lets you listen to what people say, see how much conviction they have and understand what is their emotional involvement.  For your key keywords, do a little investigation on conversations around them.
2. LOOK AT DESTINATIONS WHERE KEYWORDS ARE FOUND:  Where keywords occur is important.  For example, we recently did a “Social Search” for a company that markets over-the-counter female contraceptives.  The keyword used most often to find contraceptives is “birth control.”  It is most  often found in blogs and communities for women like iVillage.  There, it is associated with passionate discussions around a “woman’s most fundamental right.”  ”Birth control” is also found on questionable Facebook pages that serve as cheap dating services.  Same keyword.  Same search value.  Where would you choose to begin a discussion about your brand?
3. FIND ADVOCATES AND BUILD RELATIONSHIPS:  There are online conversations happening about your business right now.  If you’re done #1 and #2, you can find advocates.  Engage.  Be human.  Show appreciation.  Build relationships.  I guarantee it’s worth the effort.
4. EXECUTE SOCIAL MEDIA “CONTENT SEEDING” WITH SEARCH “LANDING PAGES:”  In order to benefit from keywords, many companies build “landing pages” with content including important keywords.  This helps benefit from keyword searches, establishes links and avoids having to make frequent changes to website pages.  Now, social media gives an additional option.  Put these keywords in social conversations.  It adds reach and valuable connections in visible and targeted online destinations.
5. MEASURE RESULTS, LEARN AND REPEAT: Both search and social media share the same characteristics of giving real time results that are easy to modify.  For both, establish a schedule for measuring and increase what’s working and pull back on what’s not.

IEG Marketing

URL Rewriting MODULE
How it works?
Internal links structure is nearly as important for Google as the external links pointing to your website. We were inspired by the ‘tag clouds’ which appear commonly on internet blogs. The links are populated randomly in similar way from a file uploaded to the server. The module can be placed anywhere on the website – navigation, sidebar or footer.
The module utilises web server capability to serve 404 errors, when a page is not found on the server. We replace the error page with a custom, automatically generated page. This page becomes a landing page and is easily optimised and highly ranked by Google quickly. It condenses all best from SEO world – unique and specific title, search engine friendly URL. The keywords are inserted into a predefined template, making content valuable and unique to Google.
Benefits
 Landing pages generated dynamically – on the fly
 Allows you to optimise for hundreds of keywords
 No need to care about content – all pages are generated from a template
 Increased conversion from both organic and PPC campaigns thanks to customised landing page – people find exactly what they are looking for
 Unlimited number of custom landing pages ranking high in Google
 Dramatically improve website visibility
Implementation process
 Research long tail keywords – low competition keywords that will deliver results fast.
 Implement 404 Replacement module – writing rewrite rules for the server to replace any page not found with our landing page
 Design and customisation of landing page and template development
 Content writing for the groups of keywords – this can be taken from existing website. Some logic needs to be implemented to make the output look natural
 Images with customised ALT tag can be added as well, increasing keywords density
 Setting up monitoring software to check current ranks in Google (starting point)
 Generating import list for rotating links system – external linking of the landing pages
Requirements
The website needs to be dynamic (ideally based on a PHP framework – Joomla, Wordpress, Kohana) and needs to be hosted on IEG’s server. Due to licence restrictions and copyright protection IEG does not allow running this module on other servers.

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Google’s AdWords system continues to be a popular vehicle for small businesses to advertise their offering using targeted keywords.  On the off-chance that you are unfamiliar with AdWords, here it is in a nut-shell:  You “bid” a certain price for certain search phrases and based on that price, your advertisement shows up in the paid search area on Google when users type in that search phrase  The paid search area is usually along the top area of the page and a list of ads along the right.  For many businesses, picking the right search phrases to target can drive well qualified traffic to their website.

AdWords uses an auctioning process to figure out which ads show up for certain key phrases.  Based on the level of competition for that phrase, and your bid amount, Google determines at what position your ad should show up.  There are other factors that go into the algorithm as well, such as how “successful” your ad has been at getting users to “click through”.  This should not be surprising as Google has an incentive to reward ads that have a higher click-through as these are the ads that make them more money.

There’s a certain psychology that goes into the bidding process when using AdWords.  I’ve seen many people think along these lines (and have done it myself in the past):

Step 1:  Find an attractive search phrase that is targeted for my business and that will generate great potential leads.

Step 2:  Determine the price that I will need to pay to get into the top spot on Google for that search phrase.

Step 3:  Place a bid that will likely increase the chances of getting into the top slot (or pretty close).

The rationale here is simple:  If the search phrase is highly relevant, and you’re willing to pay a price that is far below the “value” that you’re going to get, might as well bid high to get the top spot to drive as much traffic as possible.  The theory is that the #1 spot in the paid listing area will drive much more traffic than the other ones.  Though it is easy to believe this (because this is definitely the case in the natural search area, it is not necessarily the case for the paid search area.

Jason Miller wrote an article recently titled “Bidding On Top Ad Spot A Waste Of Money?” in which he cites a recent study involving measuring click-through rates for paid search.  This study concludes that “While there is some advantage to the number one and number three slots, all positions in the listings show roughly the same click-through rates.”

If you’re spending any money on AdWords, this should be of significant interest to you.  If the click-through rates are about the same, you can get away with bidding less than the amount necessary to get to the top spot.  If this weren’t reason enough to bid lower than what is required to get the #1 spot, there’s an even better possible reason.

There is a chance that the actual quality of users that click through for the lower ranked ads might be higher than those that click on the ad that is in the top spot.  Why might this be?  Well, think about it this way.  The user that clicks on the #2 or #3 spot on the paid search area will likely be a bit more determined to find what they are looking for.  There is a possibility that these users are more qualified and more likely actually looking for what you have to offer.  Granted, this particular argument doesn’t have any evidence to back it up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

In short, I’d suggesting thinking about how much you are bidding for your paid search campaigns and see if you can get away with lowering your bid (and dropping a couple of spots) and see if that has any measurable impact on your traffic.  If you have already tried this, or have an opinion on the matter, please leave a comment.  Would love to hear your thoughts.

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