9
O P I N I O N
Content is king If you want to drive traffic to your website and your brand, it helps – a lot – to be an expert in your given field.
I t’s true. The origin of your web traffic is most likely from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, or maybe even Amazon. Your average web user begins looking for your service or product via web search, leading to you, your product listed elsewhere, or worse, your competition. Learning how the modern web works and how to work within those systems and practices can make or break a company at an alarming rate. Before we get into a few strategies, let me give a little introduction and disclaimer.
Jay Thornton
Most importantly, I’m not an “SEO vendor.” Google has gotten way too good at indexing the web to be fooled by tags, link pools, and other old strategies. The words for the day are “context” and “relevance” within a subject matter. You genuinely have to know your business to consistently rank well within your category, industry, or service. “You’ve got to get the best content out there, know what other people are saying about you, and address them, good and bad.” Here are a few strategies that are proven through my years of building web and social marketing platforms and businesses: ❚ ❚ Content is king. There’s a buzzword you might have heard before. Today though, it is more relevant than ever. Not only do you have to know your business, you have to write, record, and post about it. Your average search engine is indexing your entire site, all
the discussion around it and any reference, review, or rich media content on any and all sites. You’ve got to get the best content out there, know what other people are saying about you, and address them, good and bad. ❚ ❚ Location, location, location. Be everywhere your target market might be. Do your clients play a lot of golf? Maybe it’s time to enter a golf scramble, and place an ad in a golf magazine, and target a social media ad buy to golfers within 25 miles of your target region between the ages of 38 and 55 with a median annual income of $155,000 (yes, you can do that). Once all that is done, talk up your golf game and what your service or product has done or is doing to improve their experience every day on the course. This establishes contextual relevance between you, your customer, and the industry you are working within. The entire concept is to be wher- ever your customer already is, with your message in hand. ❚ ❚ It’s not a broadcast, it’s a conversation. The broadcast days are done. If you’re not communicat- ing with your customers, you’re going to fade away. See JAY THORNTON, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 24, 2016, ISSUE 1173
Made with FlippingBook Annual report