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.

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.

Veteran Sailors, Steve and Doris Colgate, Make Sailing Come Alive on the Web

Sailing is a wonderful, exhilarating sport for those who have the training and experience to enjoy the ever-changing interplay of wind and water on a boat driven by its sails.

First, you have to learn how to sail.  Happily, like 100,000+ students before you, you can do just that at Fort Myers-based Offshore Sailing School.  Once, you have learned from their skilled instructors, sailing becomes a lifelong pleasure.

But, you can learn even more from the Offshore Sailing School  folks. You can learn a lot about content marketing online.

Bringing Modern Marketing to a Traditional Business

Steve and Doris have been running a sailing school for more than 40 years, building a successful business with multiple locations and a world-class repetition. Although they have been doing this for a long time,  there is nothing dated or old-fashioned about their approach to content marketing. They are fully engaged online with a website, a YouTube channel, a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. 

I particularly like what they are doing on their website and on YouTube as examples of how to take a traditional business and bring it successfully into the 21st century content marketing world--with a strong visual approach to everything that they do.

If Your Visitors Have To Search for It, They Won't.

I continue to be surprised by the number of marketing and advertising companies who have websites that hide examples of the great work that they do behind a bunch of content clichés that fail to distinguish them from every other similar company. 

I recently stumbled upon the website of such a company who is missing its primary content marketing opportunity. They have great stuff, but it's really hard to find.

Content marketing is all about providing relevant, compelling, and easily accessible information to your prospective customers.

In this case, what is genuinely relevant and compelling is the work that this agency has done on behalf of of its clients. That  visual content represents potential solutions to the problems that its Web visitors are facing.Unfortunately, the content that counts is lurking behind some same old, same old verbiage.

It’s not an oxymoron. Cool government content marketing is thriving up North.

Surprise! The Liquor Control Board of Ontario manages to tread the fine line of selling cases of liquor while extolling moderation.

Their website, www.LCBO.com, couldn’t be any more graphically pleasing or fun to peruse. Believe it or not, they also entice you to come in and shop for premade cocktails or to select from a huge selection of vintage wines.

It May Deliver More Potential Value Than a Store in a Mall or a Booth in a Tradeshow.

Imagine for a moment  that your website is really a compelling magazine that sits on a giant virtual magazine rack on the Web where only qualified buyers are browsing.

You are better situated than a store in a shopping mall where idle passers by might wander in to kill time. You're also better positioned than you would be with a booth at a trade show, when thousands of theoretical prospects stroll through the aisles looking for something that might be of interest.

In both cases, you will certainly attract some potential prospects. However, only a fraction of those mall or tradeshow visitors are seeking the specific solutions that you can provide.

Your website's presence on that virtual global magazine rack offers you the opportunity to attract visitors who are actively searching for answers to specific problems. They are on a mission to solve those problems. They need to find a company that can meet their needs now.

Why That Very First Impression is Vital to Your Content Marketing Strategy

Your website may be chock full of terrific content that is both relevant and compelling to your ideal target customers. But, you won’t have a chance to share that content unless you communicate  instantaneously that you provide the precise solutions they are desperately seeking.

Your visitors are the potential customers for whom you have developed your content.  But those visitors won’t root around in the hope of buried treasure. They have neither the time nor the inclination to guess whether you understand their needs and how you can help them.  That’s why you have to engage them them immediately on their arrival on your site.

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

Dean Piccirillo Makes a One-Person Blog-powered Website Look like a Major Corporate Presence Online

Building a solid business blog-powered website is challenging for all of us. But it’s even more difficult for anyone who lives in the financial services universe.

Because financial services professionals must adhere to strict compliance regulations, they must be very careful about what they say and how they say it.  Dean Piccirillo a principal in HBK Sorce Financial, LLC, manages to convey relevant and compelling information while maintaining essential compliance.

Even more impressive is the quality of his own site's design which manages to be simultaneously newsy and professional. To build DeanPiccirillo.com, Dean used a WordPress theme called Live Wire that can be significantly customized for the needs of an individual business.  Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that Dean did almost all the work himself. Although this may be beyond the capabilities of many of us, it shows what a non-technical businessperson can achieve using the power of a tool like WordPress.

Effective content marketing online drives LifeinBonitaSprings.com to number four on search rankings.

You might think that Realtor.com, Yahoo real estate, the Yellow Pages, either of the two local newspapers or all of the big area real estate companies would trample an individual realtor on Google. But, you’d be wrong.

In fact, when you search for "Bonita Springs real estate" in Google, you pull up a total of 557,000 results. But, standing at an impressive #4 is LifeinBonitaSprings.com. That's the blog powered website of Chris Griffith, a realtor with Downing Frye real estate. It's worth noting that, although Downing Frye is a successful, well-established local realtor, their company website doesn't show up until page 3 of the listings.

Although Chris gets a terrific ranking, does that translate into business for her? You bet it does.

Chris says that she currently gets more than 90% of all of her real estate business directly from the Internet. Just five years ago only half of her business came from the Web.