Consumers are bombarded by digital marketing messages every day. And business owners and entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that digital marketing and SEO are essential to their business growth. In fact, they may be critical to their very survival. But many of them don’t have an understanding of this “black box” technology. Watch for answers in this episode of SCORE Business TV.
SCORE is a 55-year-old nationwide non-profit organization providing free mentoring services to business owners. Our SCORE experts are here to guide you safely through that minefield.
In a recent episode, we explored digital marketing and social media. Today, we will delve deeper into digital marketing and learn the fundamentals of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. What is it and how do you use it? Mr. Freij shares his opinions with business owners and entrepreneurs on a variety of digital marketing and SEO topics. Nabil Freij is a Certified SCORE Mentor and SEO Specialist in the Manasota area.
In this video, host Dennis Zink and his expert guest discuss the following topics:
What are the digital channels?
What is the most important channel?
Why is a USP important for digital marketing?
Are there any other important elements to a successful digital marketing strategy?
Example of P.I.E.
What is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization?
How to create a keyword driven content strategy?
What is a long tail keyword?
What is On-Page Optimization?
What is Off-Page Optimization?
How do you get backlinks to your site?
What is black-hat optimization?
What SEO tools should small companies use?
Do you recommend for companies to do their own SEO or hire experts?
How does one choose the right SEO service provider?
How can you tell if your SEO firm is doing a good job or not?
How can SCORE Mentors help?
Correction: “99% of organic traffic from Google searches comes from its first results page!”
“Keywords are extremely important in that process. I tell my SCORE clients, you have to make sure that the keywords become the DNA of your content. You must build a list of the keywords that your defined target personas (DTP) are using. If you have a unique selling proposition (USP) and if you know who the target market is, you could pretty much come up with a list of these keywords. Once you come up with that list, then what you got to do is either modify your content or enable your content with these keywords so you stand a much better chance of being found online when people use these keywords in their searches,” said Nabil Freij.
“For smaller businesses, it's very important for them to focus on what we call the long tail of the keywords. This is basically three or more words that are used in one keyword. The popular keywords are typically one or two words. Popular keywords are much more frequently used online than long tail keywords, so they drive a lot of traffic. However, they are very competitive. So if you're just getting started, if you just built a website, it's very hard for you to show up on the first page of Google using these popular keywords. It's better to focus on long tail keywords,” Freij added.
“With off-page, what you have to do is influence content that you don't really have control over that belongs to somebody else. Just to give you a little background. In the early and mid 90s when the early search engines emerged, the way they ranked pages is by looking at the meta data, the meta descriptions that is embedded in a code, which the content provider created that data. Then Google came into the picture in the late 90s and they turned the industry upside down. They said, "Wait a second, we're not just going to go with the way you promote your own content. We're going to look at how other people promote your content or other people refer to it." So, just like with scientific journals, you identify the journals with the highest authority, the ones that receive the most citations. Same thing, Google said, "Now we're going to look at how many websites are going to cite your website. The more higher authority websites that cite your website, the higher authority your website becomes." Here citation online is actually a back link,” said Nabil Freij.
“What you want to do is to pursue aggressively going out and building backlinks back to your website because that's how you elevate the authority of your website. As you elevate the authority of your website, it's like a rising tide. It's going to lift all the ships and those ships are your web pages. So, it will raise the authority of all your webpages,” added Freij.
“You have to do your due diligence. So, I would go online and I search for the companies that I am potentially considering hiring. I will look at their websites and I will analyze them. I will see, are they actually practicing what they're preaching? Is their website showing up on the first page of Google or not? If it isn't, it's unlikely that they could get your pages to show up on the first page of Google. So, that's the first thing that I would do,” said Nabil Freij.
“Then I will talk to them and I will gauge the questions that they would ask me. If they indicate interest in trying to learn what my USP, my unique selling proposition is, and what my DTP, my defined target personas are, then I know they're homing in on what's important to build those appropriate channels. If they're not asking these questions, then that's a big red flag,” added Freij.
Dennis Zink, SCORE Manasota Chapter Chair
Nabil Freij, Certified SCORE Mentor, SEO Specialist
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