With search engines changing their algorithms on a monthly basis, users changing to newer devices, and search queries changing for increasing number of people on the go, SEO tactics too have been forced to change to keep up with changing times. If you want your site to keep featuring high on SERPs then you need to expand your SEO knowledge to overlapping areas in order to retain or enhance your rankings.
SEO now needs to merge seamlessly with marketing in order to leverage the impact of all applicable methodologies. This strategy will help meet higher and tougher marketing objectives as well as boost the bottom line of your business. A study in 2012 by Gartner revealed that on an average, companies spent around 2.5 percent of their yearly revenue over digital marketing.
Within their digital marketing budget, 12.5 percent was spent on online advertising, 11.6 percent on content creation as well as management, and 10.7 percent on search marketing that included paid search. Search marketing perceptions do affect marketing budgets and SEOs now need to actively learn more about branding, PR, content, and other related activities to work towards a common marketing goal.
There is no doubt that Social, PR, and SEO are now inter-connected and can help each other even when executed without that intention. For instance, if you attribute credits to several people for a story while making a pitch, then you may have inadvertently achieved excellent link building even though that may not have been your main goal.
An example that best illustrates Social, PR, and SEO is the Best Job in the World campaign launched by Australia.com. One could only apply for the listed jobs through Facebook and the campaign was also listed on the main domain of Australia.com. The campaign quickly garnered over 483,000 likes as well as received thousands of links from root domains such as the Daily Mail, ABC News, the Daily Mirror, and many more.
Using PR and SEO together can help extract specific targeted keywords for your campaign and tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Trends can help out a lot. Such collaboration can also help pinpoint target sites for publicity and link equity by way of using metrics including PA and DA as well as credits that you may want to get such as image vs dofollow link, and others.
Offline campaigns such as billboards, print advertising, events, etc., also need to merge with online campaigns that now include mobile SEO. One innovative offline campaign merged with an online one was launched by Debenhams. The company released a mobile app that required users to visit several prominent sites in London and virtually try out various outfits with the featured London landscape in the background. This move entitled them to a 20 percent discount in case they chose to purchase the outfit that could also be uploaded on social media sites for opinions. The campaign received success from all avenues including offline and online.
A wonderful combination of PPC, Content, Branding, and SEO can be witnessed in the ad campaign of Snickers. The “You Are Not When You’re Hungry” campaign actually featured misspelled words that merged humor and branding to arouse the curiosity of hungry users. The result was a very high CTR of 1.05 percent brought in by over 558,000 impressions within two days of the three-day campaign and a subsequent sharp rise in sales of Snickers bars.
Content too plays a crucial role that can be written as well as in images. One example is that of the Robin Hood Foundation website. This website delivers clear and clean content in precise segments that can be understood with ease. In fact, their Hurricane Sandy webpage has got links from Forbes, Foursquare, and MTV, among others.
Achieving your marketing goals in ever-increasing completion and changing times can be challenging and even intimidating. However, if you understand the importance of SEO and integrated marketing in these changed times and adapt your campaign to include all facets of SEO and marketing towards reaching a common goal, then it is possible to reach those goals in a truly innovative way.