Beat your competitors in SEO

The more frequently your advertisement appears, the more common your company name will become to the audience of that specific medium such as a magazine. Traditional mediums are still important and required for businesses. However, have you ever considered marketing yourself using more inbound marketing methods?  Inbound marketing is now a popular and required medium where your competitors may be already beating you.

The Website

Don't expect to have a good return on investment without having a proper website. At least if your website is good, making it better should make it deliver better results. A website must start with a good design which complements your logo and branding. A proper website must have the necessary functionality which is completely dependent on your business goals. For instance, an e-commerce store must have a proper catalogue and shopping cart. An aspect that is frequently neglected is the website's content. Your content on the website must be unique to achieve good benefits from search engines, which is also of benefit to your users. Another important element which you should choose carefully is your domain name. Don't choose lengthy domain names, as this would only cause issues for users to type-in. In the worst case scenario, people will start sending emails to a wrong email address. You may also have seen the usage of keyword rich domains such as myindustrykeyword.com. While using this technique may give you an extra boost in ranking for that keyword on search engines, it is certainly not the best option. Users are more likely to recognise your domain with your company name in it and even it looks more authentic. In some cases, using a combination of keyword and company name for your main website may still be a good idea, like www.companykeyword.com. If you want a keyword rich domain, nowadays the best way is to create a microsite. A microsite is a 'mini-website' and should be completely separate from your main website, especially its content.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is now a very popular inbound marketing method to drive traffic to your website. This gives businesses a large audience since almost around 82% of online users use search engines. Your competitor may already have taken advantage and is currently outranking your business for specific keywords.  A user interested in your products, even after looking at an advert will more likely proceed to continue in researching online. Your business not ranking for popular searches related to your industry will make you lose added exposure; crucial exposure since it fits right in the buying cycle process.

By going to a search engine and searching for different variations of your industry related keywords you can know which competitors are coming on the first page. Remember, to include the location your company offers its service, such as 'Malta'. Most importantly, you must check what is ranking for your company name. If your company name has a word similar to your products, it can be the case that your competitors also rank on the first page. The best way is to dominate the search engine results page for your company name.  This is possible by having multiple websites for your business rank. Still, you don't need multiple websites but just proper set-up social profiles such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. These social profiles have a high probability to rank for your company name just below your website. This means that you are gaining more 'real estate' on the search engine results page and pushing down competitors that may appear.

Your website must also rank for your industry related keyword and this can be achieved in time with SEO. Optimising the website and creating links back to your website are two core elements that will help you rank. When creating links back to your website, your website reputation from a search engine perspective will increase. In the end, this will result in an increase in rankings. During SEO, you need to make sure to obtain good quality links. Low quality links from bulk SEO directories, just for the sake to get links may get you in trouble.

Conrad Bugeja is a Search Engine Optimisation Consultant and Pay-Per-Click Consultant at Alert eBusiness Internet Marketing Division - www.alertemarketing.com