Content Marketing Today

Lessons from an Eye Doctor Website That’s Not Visible Enough for Search Engines

Of course, your website must provide relevant and compelling content for your prospective customers.

Ideally, that content should combine both text and images to grab your visitors attention and to keep them on your site long enough to get to know and trust you.

Here’s what is less obvious. Google does not see your site exactly the way your visitors see it. As far as Google is concerned, your website is a bunch of text whose structure and formatting make clear what is most important to the visitors who will benefit most from the site’s content.

Therefore, although you may have a beautiful website with strong visual appeal, it will fail in findability, unless Google discovers text information that it sees as truly relevant to a keyword search.

Google Needs to Find Text on Your Website Structured and Prioritized the Way it Wants

While I was doing competitive research for a doctor client, I uncovered  an example of a missed SEO opportunity by examining the website of one of his competitors.  I found it by doing the opposite of what real patients would do. I dug many pages down on Google search results. In fact, among the top keywords, this competitor’s best ranking is #32. For eye doctor, he comes in at #58 and for eye surgery he comes in at #113.  That’s much too deep for most patients who are looking for eye care solutions using the most popular keyword terms.

The problem boils down to failing to give Google the text and structure it needs to generate valuable search results.

B Squared Marketing Shares Its Wisdom While Making It Short and Sweet

I might be getting carried away. But, I loved this very brief bit of marketing advice when it showed up on my iPhone this afternoon.  I think it proves how brevity can be the soul of content marketing brilliance in a social media milieu.

B Squared is an established SW Florida Advertising that does great work and has won a ton of awards. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought of them for ages until I saw their Facebook post this afternoon.  I was so struck that I had to write something right now.

Advertising Tip of the Week: Want to drive more traffic? Consider condensing a 3 to 4 month advertising budget to just 6 weeks and build a promotion around it.

Six Reasons Why This Makes for Fabulous Content Marketing

Unless You Address This Top of Mind, Unspoken Question, You are Out of the Game

Imagine for a moment, that you are looking out at a hoard of your customers in an actual or virtual audience and that each and every one of them is wearing a hat.

And, on each and every hat, are the words "so what?"

Essentially, that's what they're thinking when you are talking, sending them an e-mail, inviting them to your website, sharing an eNewsletter, mailing them a brochure or presenting them with an advertisement.

Your Content Marketing Must Make It Easy for Your Customers to Understand How You Benefit Them

You may not love Apple or Steve Jobs or their groundbreaking series of  iPhones first launched in 2007 Conversely, you may love much of what Microsoft has brought us in terms of operating systems and office productivity applications.

But, it’s hard not to love the way Steve Jobs keeps it simple and compelling as he introduced the iPhone 4 at their Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2010.  And, it’s hard to find much to love about Steve Ballmer’s own recent presentation on their upcoming smartphone strategy.

So, when you present information, I recommend emulating the Jobs’ simple and graphical approach: Few words and powerful images.

Classic Truths about Skeptical Customers Remain Modern Business Realities

More than 50 years ago,  McGraw-Hill created an ad that became legendary in the decades to follow  among business-to-business marketers--and among those folks like me who were selling advertising to those skeptical business executives.

As you can see above, the print advertisement featured the ultimate skeptical prospect who says:

• I don't know who you are.
• I don't know your company.
• I don't know your company's product.
• I don't know what your company stands for.
• I don't know your company's customers.
• I don't know your company's record.
• I don't know your company's reputation.

Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

In a single powerful page, McGraw-Hill made the case for business-to-business print advertising.  I used this on countless presentations because it makes the point so simply and eloquently with its visual representation of one very hard-nosed customer.  He is one tough cookie, who is absolutely not predisposed to accept what you have to say at face value.