The game and the way it’s played have changed.  TV, yellow page and newspaper ads are a waste of hard earned money.  A top ten ranking in Google puts you on the second page.

So how do you compete in this every changing game?

Two things have to happen;

1.   You have to increase the amount of traffic you are getting.
2.   You have to convert more of the traffic you are getting.

A long time ago we use to debate back and forth about rather content was king or links.  I always took the side of links but never stopped improving my writing skills.  It’s a good thing too, because content is king.

Social media is important and it plays a major role in marketing you site but I want to start with SEO.  The reason being is that I’ve spent the last ten years fine tuning my skills as an SEO, while SMM is still new to all of us.

The number one ranking is more important than ever now as some results are only showing 5 organic.  Number one is most likely #4 as Google has nicely blended the first 3 paid results into the organic listings.

Other words, ranking on Google isn’t what it used to be so you might as well hit it now for everything it’s worth.

While Google isn’t following many of their own guidelines, it’s still a great set of rules.  I want to stress following Google’s guidelines not because of Google but for the web and your web visitors.

Your websites job is to tell a story.  The story is told through your FAQ’s, about us, services, contact us, testimonials, and other similar pages.  This is the main structure of your website and should be built to tell a story so compelling that a web visitor can’t help but take the next step in your sales ladder.

It’s important to have this set up correctly because these are the pages you will be sending your web visitors too.

It works like this;

You build a web page that ranks in the search engines for a keyword like, “free shipping on 216 blue widget”.   When someone searches Google for, “free shipping on 216 blue widget” chances are they have done all their research.  They are ready to make a purchase.  When they land on your page you’ve got nothing their but information on the 216 blue widget and shipping prices.

These searchers are important because these are people that are ready to buy.  If you are not already ranking for these keywords then you could be educating the customer and then sending them somewhere else to make a purchase.

Now here’s the trick;

You build a list of a couple thousand keywords.

Google said that a large percent of their searches are for keywords that have never been searched on before.  HUBSPOT, STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING LEAD GENERATION REPORT, 2010 stated that Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages.  That same report stated that Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.  And that same report said Companies with more indexed web pages get 236% more leads.

This tells me that if I set up a blog on my website, customize the pages so they become something similar to landing pages and then send the traffic back into the main pages that are currently telling a story on my website, I’ll increase sales, conversion, traffic and the authority of my website.