What does it mean to be marketing your business in the 21st century?
Marketing in the modern world is to be open minded to deviations that may occur anytime in accordance with changing market behavior. Although it is quite challenging at first, but the rewards are great for modern marketing because it actually implies a global impact.
The good news here is that modern marketing methods have a stronger and more varied support system to begin with. Through technology, marketing methods are able to thrive in both traditional and digital environments. As market competition becomes tighter and more players begin to flock, technology is in a continuous supply of new ideas and opportunities to assist businesses with their needs.
Today, a 21st century business must understand that people are starting to populate online and as a responsible business provider, must also follow and update itself too. This migration appears to be a trend, but logically there is no turning back. We are all going digital, and there is no stopping with its influence over our purchase behavior.
SEO Overview
Why does a 21st century business needs an SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the only way for your business to effectively navigate in the internet and find its way up the top search result pages of search engines. SEO itself has already evolved in many ways, and as a business owner, you must know how to constantly update your website with the best practices involved in modern SEO.
To better appreciate the role of SEO in the way your business website thrive in the internet, one must know its purpose in your marketing strategy.
In this digital age, marketing strategies have expanded online too, not only because of its convenience and simplicity, but by the mere fact that customers are moving in as well. Modern marketing strategies included online engagements as a form of expanding channels for communication. With the overwhelming turn out of the explosion of digital technologies in the field of business, more vendors are utilizing the internet today as not only the means of communicating, but as an alternative venue to conduct their businesses as well.
As business websites populated the world wide web, combined with other data that is continuously being uploaded every day, resulted to a densely populated platform. With so many businesses selling more or less the same product or service as you do, how would you be able to manage to be on top of the search page results?
Modern SEO focus on two things: increase your web traffic, and put your website on top of the page ranking. In the past, this is easily dealt with spam-based link building and black hat SEO. These are the methods that drive the traffic and ranking that you need, but not for long term. And with the recent updates done in the more popular search engines, these hasty activities are easily tracked and won’t have any impact on your SEO at all.
Today, modern SEO strategies are advocating clean and accurate content marketing plus clever link building techniques, in order to promote impartial and more purposeful business tactics in the world wide web. Yes, these methods entail more elaborate and attention from you, but it is necessary to be responsible users of the internet to create order and system even as it grows.
What Is a Link?
Links in the 21st century online marketing serve as your “votes” gathered from the users on the internet, whether from a person or another web page or site. In an honest-built link building strategy, websites are able to achieve higher ranks through these “votes”. It also serves as signals for your website’s, or webpage’s, integrity, usability and authority in the industry it is operating.
Links are foundational tactics that must be dealt appropriately with SEO, and without it, there will be no other means to get through the maze of internet data.
Links also serve as network builders and indicators of relationships among other sites. It is an element of trust given to another site or page about the accuracy and truthfulness of its content.
In modern SEO, relevance is another important quality that search engines are looking for to give your website a higher ranking. In the past, link building was merely all about quantity, but single-handedly basing on it won’t yield accurate results anymore today.
Since the analogy of votes and links is established here, it is important to note however that the votes in modern SEO aren’t created equal. Votes are not counted, but instead, weighted, by the sophisticated algorithm of search engines in order to accurately rank websites according to different levels of trust, spam and quality.
Link Spamming Risks
As previously mentioned,the risks involved in modern SEO are more gravitated towards penalizing abusers and manipulators of SEO data. Although there are still some that are existent nowadays, diverting into these techniques might render your effort futile altogether. Search engines are continuously improving on its algorithm to make ensure the integrity of all information accessed and retrieved from the internet, and anything shortlist with a specific set of criteria will be surely put down.
Gathered here are some common link building strategies that may, or may not give you the best results for your SEO. It is up to you to do the weighing.
- Forums
One of the quickest ways of link building is to write comments in almost every forum you will encounter, and affix your company’s signature link as you finish it. Signature links are of the least quality among link building techniques, but somehow it can still generate some traffic. However, when page ranking is considered, search engines don’t give any merit to it and just ignore it instead.
- Link Farm
This is one of those legitimate “manipulation” of link building systems, wherein a link building firm capitalizes on creating many websites which serve as “estates” and link them altogether to establish its own network in the world wide web. Link building agencies then get businesses to pay in order to get a spot in any of these “estates”. This spares the businesses from doing the tedious work of network building. But the problem here if the link building firm lost its control over the networks and search engines sense some suspicious signals arising from it. When finally discovered, the risk is greater since all the sites associated with these link farms will cease to operate altogether.
- Directories
Especially when links are neatly categorized within it, directories are useful in building some sort of publicity and visibility in the community that a business operates in. In more aggressive listings, directories may be even considered as a spam technique, which also bear no merit in web page rankings.
- Hubs
Hubs, like Hubpages, are user generated content sites which enable people with no website creation skills to instead create a “hub” of his articles in relation to several categories within the hub platform. Users can generate income through ads on their own pages. In regards to link building, some discovered this as a way to embed their links on the articles, whichever was used, search engines took notice it to be as widespread as a spamming technique as well.
- Blogs
The use of blogs is actually subjective whether the one you commented in does generate high traffic volume or not. Irregardless though, links in comments have generally no effect on web page rankings except to generate some traffic. But the link itself is not recognized as a meritable basis for search engines to account for.
To build a bigger picture here, is to emphasize that the quickest methods in SEO aren’t the ones which could generate the greatest impact on your SEO in general. Link spammers are going to give you the best deals with instant results, but isn’t sustainable, and one that lacks a lasting impact which is a big contributor to the aspect of authority. Building a solid SEO strategy is one that is built on foundational values such as quality, integrity and creativity.
Legitimate Link Building Strategies
Following the best practices for SEO isn’t just for the merit itself, but on a more in the depth and positive relationship with the internet. With the advancements in technology that businesses enjoy nowadays, it is a wise move to investin something that has a more beneficial impact for your business other than web rankings or traffic, especially on the tangible aspect.
Legitimate link building strategies go beyond as far as establishing an outstanding reputation and best of class credibility for your business in the industry you are operating in – both in the online and offline aspect.
Achieving success in link building in SEO is a package – wherein you offer excellent service, great content, and optimized website which contains accurate information about your company. A responsive website is one of the keys to promote your aspect of customer service, which as well as an indicator of your reliability, which can attract the traffic and ranking you want.
It is also important to note that the mobile optimization aspect of your site can also affect the ratings that search engines can give you. Especially with the growing number of mobile device users nowadays, the opportunities to expand in mobile internet access should not be disregarded. According to an internet user engagement growth study conducted by KPCB in 2015, about 51% of the total time spent per day with digital media can be attributed in mobile device use. The Pew Research Center’s Technology Device Ownership study in the same year also mentioned that in the US alone, 68% of adult Americans already have smartphones, and 45% have tablets. These numbers just imply that mobile optimization also increases your web traffic by letting users gain access to your site seamlessly over multiple platforms.
Sign of an Effective Link Building Strategy
Clearly, the most obvious and ultimate sign that you effectively executed your link building strategies is the achievement of its ROI, or Return of Investment. And this doesn’t just constitute on the financial aspect alone, but with the time and effort you put on it. As for the article writers, recognition in the field is also an indication and great ROI for you personally.
Hiring a Link Building Company
The top link building companies are not necessarily the cornerstones of modern SEO. But the fact cannot be denied that a dedicated workforce for a particular aspect in business operations may render the advantage in handling the most critical ones. As for link building, there are businesses that achieved success with the help of link building companies.
To help you with your hunt, check out CrowdReviews.com’s link building company reviews that came from actual clients and SEO experts who gained firsthand experience with agencies that specialize on implementing link building strategies.
Keith Moore
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