Relying on organic optimization of a landing page to attract new clients is limited, at best. Why?
Here are some reasons why organic optimization of a landing page is limited in reach:
- Often, new web pages and even updated pages don't get indexed right away. So there is a delay in having this info found in search results. Best case is to submit your newly optimized page to search engines so it can be index asap.
- Most websites are associated geographically to a location. Or the user's location will be auto-detected. Users can also have their location manually set. In all of these situations, the ip location associated with the search significantly effects the results seen organically. What this means is anybody outside of your geographic local will have to include your location in their search or have their location set to include your location. In other words, reaching people beyond your stated city or zip code is a real hit and miss, mostly a miss. Unless the searcher's keywords almost perfectly match significant on-page elements such as domain and page title, your well thought out content will remain lost in space most of the time.
- Gaining organic reach takes time. It is, however, something that we should always be trying to improve and work towards. In addition to creating meaningful pages and blog posts, all content needs to be cross-linked or cross referenced. New pages or posts, especially need this type of support from other existing content. If you don't already have a "tight" network of content you will need to create necessary supporting pages and posts to help put a foothold in organic search. Consider this effort to be long-term and on-going.
So you have something to sell or perhaps you want to increase sign ups to your email list, or both.
In either situation you need to drive traffic to the page with your desired "call to action". The best case scenario would be having high qualified traffic find your landing page, organically, and complete the "call to action". That would be perfect. Unfortunately, it's just not that easy.
Step one is preparing your landing page(s).
This is the page of your website that clearly describes what you are promoting, not necessarily the homepage. Perhaps you are having a sale or you are promoting a contest of some type. Having a clear "call to action" is a big step in the right direction if you are serious about a marketing campaign.
Once you have completed the landing page (including best use of SEO techniques to improve the page's organic search quality), you are ready to unleash your marketing campaign. What does that mean any how? Well it could mean you will be sending out an email notification to everybody on your email list about your important event, make a post on Facebook (using hashtags) and even write a blog post. Yes, that will have some effect. This type of campaign will be telling everybody on your email list and your friends of your FB page about your event. It won't necessarily be speaking to the greater public who are looking for your type of event but are not already associated with you. The blog post, hashtags used on FB post, and the newly optimized landing page will actually have the best chance of attracting new clients.
If you are trying to attract new clients versus just notifying existing clients, a digital advertising campaign is necessary. There are several reasons why advertising digitally should be included in your marketing campaign. Please note that I mentioned "included". Digital advertising should be a component of your total marketing campaign.
- You can identify keywords used to trigger your ads and ultimately drive traffic to your landing page. This information helps with landing page and ad optimization.
- You can identify additional keywords or phrases that have triggered your ads that have otherwise been overlooked. This provides additional landing page optimization keywords or content.
- You can perform A/B test on landing page(s) to discover the best user friendly layout that completes your desired action.
- Tracking code can be installed that provides data on actual conversions and goals, and how they used your website to complete the desired action.
- You can see how a visitor entered the site, how they moved around in the website, if they completed the desired action, what pages or content are the most useful, and how they exited the site.
- Digital ads are not restricted geographically. You have the ability to identify locations that are interested in your business and target ads directly to specific locations.
- Digital campaigns can be search, branding or both, in type. Ads can be text or image in type. Digital ads can be turn "on" or "off" and have an immediate impact on your marketing goals.
In a nut shell, advertising digitally provides a wealth of data and analytics that takes the mystery out of just organically optimizing your website. Having an actual resource of user information on how they found the site, how they maneuvered through the site, demographics on visitors, and how they performed or did not perform the desired "call to action" is valuable information when maintaining organic optimization updates on your website.
There is analytical data for organic search; however, the data is more restricted due to maintaining public privacy. On the other hand, this public privacy courtesy does not apply to paid digital advertising. The data recorded is much more granular, specific and useful.
There is analytical data for organic search; however, the data is more restricted due to maintaining public privacy. On the other hand, this public privacy courtesy does not apply to paid digital advertising. The data recorded is much more granular, specific and useful.
Yes, there is a cost associated with paid advertising but you may also say there is a cost associated with not paying for advertising.
Paying for digital advertising has a two fold benefit.
- First your are able to drive qualified traffic immediately to your website to perform a desired action.
- Secondly, you have a wealth of analytical data to better understand your audience and perform organic updates in order to maintain traffic and provide meaningful information.
When you do not have access to all the tools associated with digital advertising you are left to guess at how the user behaves. Couple this with the slow effect of organic updates, your marketing campaign is not going to deliver the immediate results you most likely want. The reach and privacy limitations will not provide robust data associated with paid digital advertising campaigns. Not being able to access a wealth of user data that is provided via paid digital advertising will leave you short when making organic website updates. Essentially, maintaining paid digital advertising campaigns lends its' self to maintaining an organically optimized website.
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