ReputationDefender on Tumblr

If you’re looking to develop a successful social media marketing campaign, you may first consider signing up for Facebook and LinkedIn. However, Twitter provides a plethora of opportunities for you to promote your business, but you must first gain an understanding of both the site’s features and how to successfully employ them in advertising. The following list will cover several ways in which you can leverage Twitter to boost your online marketing campaign.

1. Optimize your profile page.

You need to create a fully-optimized Twitter profile to maintain a presence on the site and inform followers of your products. Often, the first thing other Twitter users will see is your username, which should be your company name, or something as close as possible to it. Next, you should upload a business-related icon and header to advertise your brand. If you own a small business, you can make your account more personal by using a photograph of yourself as your profile picture. Lastly, you should remember to fill out your profile’s 160-character biography section, making sure to include pertinent company keywords and a link to your website. These additions not only help your profile stand out in Twitter user lists, but they also allow other users to search for and find your business more easily.

2. Use Twitter applications.

There are numerous support applications that you can use to heighten the Twitter experience for both your business and your followers. For example, web plugin TwitterFox creates a popup menu on which you can view your business’ Twitter feed, so you don’t need to constantly log into the site to view updates. If you have a limited amount of time to manage your account, you can employ TweetLater, which helps you create a queue of tweets that will automatically post at designated times. In addition, this app will send you detailed updates on the ever-changing keyword trends to help you employ them to your advantage. You can also provide a more engaging feed for your users by taking advantage of YouTube’s video URL sharing feature.

3. Connect with other Twitter users.

The success of your Twitter marketing campaign depends on the number of other users you follow, and more importantly, whom you connect with. You should follow the accounts of consumers in your target market, as well as those of your competitors, industry partners, and professional organizations. Twitter’s search feature allows you to easily find these accounts by using keywords related to your company’s line of work. You should also compile a list of the top influential professionals in your field or industry and follow their accounts. Making a point to connect with them daily will not only help you build relationships, but it can also open new avenues for future business partnerships. If you’re a small business owner, it is even more crucial to build a Twitter network of other business owners in your community, including those you know offline.

4. Link your Twitter account with your other social media accounts.

Twitter provides an excellent means of directing users to your business’ blog and web page, where they can obtain more detailed information about your brand and products. You can make better use of Twitter by linking your account to your company’s other social media pages as well. Apps such as Twitter for Facebook allow you to immediately share your tweets as status updates on your company Facebook feed, but you can also use Twitter widgets to post all tweets on your company blog to further increase your cross-platform sharing. It’s also important to allow readers to share your website and blog content through their own Twitter accounts. You can encourage sharing by including a “Tweet This” button on all blog posts and important website pages.

5. Regularly engage with your followers.

You must constantly engage with your followers to effectively promote your brand. Creating interesting, original content will capture your readers’ attention and encourage them to share it with other Twitter users, which will increase your online reach. You should use your Twitter account to tweet relevant facts, news, or helpful advice—every day, if possible. When relevant, you should also include links, photos, and video to pique the interest of those who see your post. Never forget to reply to tweets from other users, as this will help them gain trust in your brand. You should also spend time reviewing your feed so you can retweet and “like” others’ tweets. This can be a good way to obtain more followers.

6. Employ or create hashtags.

One of Twitter’s most unique features is its hashtag system, which helps you categorize and keep track of your tweets and find others’ tweets using specific keywords. If you click on any given hashtag, it will take you to a feed with every tweet that features that particular keyword, including posts from users you do not follow. Using popular hashtags will thus widen your exposure on Twitter. For example, if your company is in the sales sector, you might want to include the hashtags #sales and #insidesales at the end of your tweets. It is even more important to create your own hashtags, which can help you promote a specific company event or product. If enough people use your hashtag, it will become a “trending” topic on the site and market your business to even more users.

7. Use analytics to assess your progress.

Businesses cannot thrive without a loyal customer base. However, many companies struggle to achieve this goal during the startup phases when resources are scarce and few consumers are aware of their products. Thus, growth hacking has thus emerged as a low-cost means of online marketing, helping businesses to build their brands seemingly overnight. As such, a number of popular online companies can attribute their success to this strategy.

Following are seven of the most popular companies that successfully used growth hacking to boost their brands:

1. Facebook

During its startup phase, Facebook implemented numerous growth hacking techniques to achieve the seemingly-unattainable goal of attracting 200 million users within its first 12 months of operation. The site began as a closed network that served as means of communication between college-age adults. By limiting the number of users, Facebook maintained high traffic during all stages of growth and appeared more attractive to prospective members. Perhaps one of Facebook’s most effective strategies was the creation of embeddable widgets and badges. Inspired by traditional word-of-mouth techniques, Facebook encouraged its established users to post these buttons on their personal blogs. This not only generated hundreds of millions of click-through actions each month, but it also helped the site to gain numerous new users.

2. YouTube

One of the largest sites on the Internet, YouTube used a simple growth hacking strategy to rise from its humble beginnings as a simple video sharing platform. The site owes the majority of its success to its share and embed features. The features, which are included with every video, allowed early users to copy and paste an HTML code onto their blogs or websites. YouTube specifically targeted this strategy at MySpace, which had 25 million users, but no video sharing capabilities. This technique helped YouTube advertise its brand to a wide network of online users while providing direct links back to its videos, helping to lay the groundwork for its later success. The company’s other effective growth hacking strategies included account subscriptions, video comments sections, and contests for new users.

3. LinkedIn

Before the rise of LinkedIn, it was difficult for most online users to find themselves or their companies in the long list of Google search results. As a result, the site utilized a basic growth hack to solve this consumer problem and increase awareness of its brand in a short amount of time. The solution was simple: create a website that allowed members to build public profiles. By including these profiles in the Google search engine, account holders could easily find themselves through web searches. This technique helped LinkedIn quickly grow from 2 million to more than 200 million users.

4. AirBNB

AirBNB is perhaps the most popular example of a successful platform hack. By integrating with Craigslist, the company leveraged an established base of users to spread the word about its room rental services. At the time, Craigslist did not possess the application program interface (API) to facilitate this type of partnership, so AirBNB specialists reverse engineered the site to create cross-platform compatibility. Using this literal platform hack, the company saw a dramatic increase in incoming traffic. Craigslist soon fixed its code to prevent this cross-sharing, but not until AirBNB was well on its way to widespread popularity. In fact, this technique helped the firm to become a multibillion-dollar business.

5. Twitter

In its early phases of operation, Twitter did not struggle to draw in new users, but rather to keep them engaged with its services. Many account owners only logged in a few times time before leaving the site altogether, so the firm took advantage of creative growth hacking techniques to retain members. Through studies of repeat members and those who left their accounts, Twitter discovered that those who followed up to 10 other users were more likely to continually return to their accounts. As such, the company decided to abandon traditional marketing methods such as email newsletters and targeting advertisements, and instead remodeled its established services to increase user connectivity. The technique showed dramatic results in a brief amount of time.

6. Hotmail

Hotmail was one of the first sites to increase its user base through innovative growth hacking. Following its inception in 1996, company investor Timothy Draper proposed the idea of utilizing the site’s 20,000 members in a low-cost marketing campaign. As a result, Hotmail began including the tagline “PS I love you. Get your free E-mail at Hotmail” at the end of each message that users sent to members of their networks. This technique was met with almost immediate success, helping the site increase its user base by about 3,000 accounts per day. Within one year, Hotmail grew to 12 million users. Due to its popularity, Microsoft soon acquired the company for a staggering $400 million.

7. PayPal

Keywords are one of the determining factors in the SEO position of any web page, especially when it comes to online stores and e-commerce. If you are familiar with the world of SEO, you may know that the selection of these is not an easy task, since there are many possibilities and a lot of factors come into play while finding the most effective keywords for your SEO strategies and AdWords campaigns, inbound marketing, SEM, etc. Some of these factors are affected by the way users perform searches related to your sector or business or the level of competence of each word or phrase.

There are hundreds of tools to find and select keywords, but today we will talk about the operation of a still little known but very interesting and practical tool, which stands out for its simplicity and ease of use: Übersuggest. This tool is completely free and allows to obtain not only keywords but key phrases, or even the well-known long tail keywords, so necessary for positioning websites, especially when it comes to voice search.

It is important to consider the main SEO problem here: Keywords, when have not many searches, have less competition in Google SERPs and thus are easier for positioning. Of course, the same thing happens in the opposite direction: The more used they are, the more competition you find, and it gets even more difficult to position a website with the regular generic keywords you have been using. If you have a car wash business, it really is not very useful to use 'car wash' as the main keyword to attract web traffic, right?

That is why it is better to focus on long tail keywords. First, because long tail keywords are easier to the position, but also because they usually have a higher degree of conversion. 'Car Wash in Brooklin' is a better option than the one mentioned above.

Now, this is when Übersuggest becomes a useful tool because thanks to this you will get a long list of long tail keywords that people usually type on Google to find what they are looking for. The best ones, the ones that suit you the most. So, thanks to Übersuggest, by increasing your universe of keywords, you increase the possibility of doing a complete keyword research, and you avoid forgetting terms or keywords that you have not considered in your initial ideas which will be very useful to you.

Read also: All you need to know about Moz: The ultimate SEO tool, by ReputationDefender

Truly, this tool is the easiest to use. The first thing to do is go to the main page and type a keyword. Choose the one that best fits your needs. Then you just have to fill the captcha and click on ‘Suggest.’ If you do a couple of tries, you will see a list of several keywords that you may find interesting. You can choose one of them, many, or all, according to your choice. If you want to select them all, you have to go back where you entered the captcha, but you will see a new tab to select all keyboards.

Whether you have chosen all the words or not, on the right side you can see all the selected ones and in the upper side you can see two boxes: "Get" and "Clear." Choose the first option and you will see a new box with all the words you have chosen. Now you have several options. You can save them in a text file, in case you need them for future posts, or you can take advantage of them to do a study of monthly searches for each keyword through Adwords.

As we already mentioned, the other great additional functionality of this tool is the search for long tail keywords. How do you do it? Easy: Just click on the keyword in the general list of suggestions. The long tail list is very useful because it is composed of words from the same family that, although they are not so common in the searches, they have a low competition and can be placed without difficulties in a good position in Google.

Image courtesy of Electric Pinguin at Flickr.com

Like it or not, to have visibility in the network you need this type of tools. The content you have in your blog may be terrific, but if you work with excessively competitive keywords or just traffic visits, you will not get the visibility you want in search engines. Of course, trends in marketing change constantly, and it is very difficult to predict what will happen in the SEO landscape, however, positioning a site through the right keywords is still trendy.

Coming up with genuine ideas for a blog is a dreary challenge. And although that sound a bit edgy, it is true; however, blogging has its perks, of course: connecting with people. But as much as bloggers enjoy reaching out to more and more individuals worldwide with every blog post, they also seem to be not very fond of having to constantly come up with new, attractive, genuine and original ideas.

In accordance with a research from The Content Marketing Institute, near 58% of marketers agree upon the fact that producing and coming up with content periodically is perhaps their biggest and major challenge. And that is indeed quite a challenge: this is particularly true for those freelance content writers who have to come up with up to seven or eight posts per week while carrying out additional endeavors—it is definitely something that might end up being a daunting task.

Be that as it may, out of pure satisfaction or out of pure necessity, the fourth industrial revolution and the digital age has provided several tools that have been developed as an aid for this particular task. We at ReputationDefender have previously addressed several tools that seem to come in handy for generating genuine content ideas, and although some have been very disappointing, there are some that are worth exploring. Using and incorporating the following tools can definitely aid the process of coming up with blog ideas without falling victim of not having enough time for creativity:

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

We have addressed HubSpot in the past. This is perhaps one of the most compelling tools for generating a fistful of ideas. It is quite easy to use and practically within seconds users can get up to five different and legitimate blog post titles. All they have to do is enter three nouns in the search boxes: the tool instantly provides viable suggestions for a title. The important thing here is to have the right keywords in mind and experiment with them. HubSpot Blog Topic Generator is for those who are in need of just a few ideas, it is not the right tool for those who require a ton of suggestions right away; however, it is the right starting point for those who can relate to the struggle.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is actually a great tool: it not only provides content ideas but a lot of more features. It also provides users with the following: BuzzSumo tells its users the number of shares, and pretty much every other social engagement analytic their content receives, Besides, it is capable of identifying key shares, displaying backlinks and showing what kind of content is receiving more traffic and trending.

Simply put, marketers, bloggers and content writers can rapidly get a grasp of how their content is behaving and which posts seem to be resonating the most amongst readers. This information is of course almost invaluable, as it lets users know how to proceed, and which approaches seem to be more adequate when it comes to managing a blog in hopes of reaching out to a bigger audience. Thus, being aware of Facebook engagements, LinkedIn shares, Pinterest shares, Links and total shares is no less than a whole new dimension in regard to content generation: receiving titles suggestions is really helpful, but these additional features make BuzzSumo something worth paying attention to. And although it costs $79 per month, the time that can be saved and the quality of new ideas that can be gotten from the tool makes such amount look like a total deal.

Alltop

Alltop is in short a news provider that lets its users know what is going on on the Internet. The tool is capable of retrieving news from a sheer array of topics, including science, socials, religion, fashion, politics, etc. Thus, given its nature, Alltop is a source of different content—which is, of course, good.

Image courtesy of Phot Mix at Pexels.com

Users can go through the tool trying to find compelling news they can actually use in their content; however, just like with HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generation, keywords, in this case, topics are crucial. Alltop displays five different posts from renowned and relevant blogs for users to use in their ideas. The basic idea is to seize these posts as resources, which is particularly useful for coming up with several ideas in a somewhat short period of time.

It is undeniable: Since the beginning of this decade, Google has provided an excellent series of useful tools for SEO; tools that could be difficult to afford as a whole if we all had to pay for them. However, there are thousands of excellent tools in addition to those created by Google, and in addition, the world of SEO is not confined to Google: It is much broader than that. Bing is still the second most used search engine on the Internet, and, for this reason, SEO experts should not stop working on this great battlefield.

In this post, we will talk about Bing Webmaster Tools: Perhaps the best option to position websites in this search engine (and not only there.)

Recommended: Why SEOs should not ignore Bing Webmaster Tools

The first thing to say here is that to position a website in Bing requires more or less the same as to position in Google, to the point that, if you get good rankings in a search engine, it is highly probable that you also achieve it in the other. So, you have to take into account the following aspects. 

On the one hand, content: As in the vast majority of search engines, the main thing is that you have quality content, easy to access, and simple navigation is the best way to scale positions in Bing. On the other hand, links: As already happens in Google (although every time it seems to be less important,) links bring visibility to your website, so if you want to get good positions in Bing, you should make sure that other websites lead to yours.

In the same way, social actions are a crucial point. As with other search engines, the social signals indicate that the content you are offering is of quality and interest. Moreover, the indexing process should not be overlooked, because, of course, the first step to positioning in Bing is that it indexes you, and, successfully, by the way. Usually, as with Google, you need links pointing to your website for Bing to see you and index you. But, if you find it difficult to get them, you can always get links through Bing Webmaster Tools.

Just like Google's, Bing's webmaster tools is useful to review and manage websites, especially those related to the management technique and the structure of a website, which are important to Bing as a search engine, not only to assimilate and classify a website and to show users the best search results, but because you can improve the positioning of your own site. Like Google Search Console, Bing tools have no cost. Verifying your website and uploading a site map can be done very fast and easy.

Read also: Boost your SEO with Google Search Console, by ReputationDefender

Now, the second thing you'll have to do, as with any other webmaster tool for big search engines, is to create a free account. To do so, you can use your Windows Live ID. If you do not have it, you'll just have to create a new account. After this, you will have to add your website to the tool and then you will have to add different details and related information, as well as sending the sitemap, in the same way as with Google's webmaster tool. When setting up the features of Bing Webmaster Tools, you can also ask them to send you reports of different types to your email, and select the frequency at which you want to receive them.

Image courtesy of Bram.Koster at Flickr.com

Once you have all the options correctly marked and configured, you can save the changes and go to the Bing Webmaster Tools Dashboard. As you may already do it with the Google tool, now you will see that Bing warns you if you have not verified your website. This means that although you have added your website, it can’t confirm whether or not that web is your property. To solve the problem, you have to perform the verification, which can be carried out in three ways. The first is by uploading a file to the root folder of your website. This file has no weight and is a mere identification for Bing to verify that the website is actually yours. Another option is to add a meta-tag in the header of your website. In case you have a CMS that allows you to add a single tag and it appears on all pages, then keep it since it is a recommended option. However, if you have an old design, you'll need to add tags page by page, and that's a hell of a job, really.

Finally, the next thing you have to do is submit sitemaps, just like with Google's webmaster tool. Typically, websites often have a single sitemap, but, in some cases, you might have more. The reason you can have more is that, for example, you may want search engine robots to have different access, to facilitate their work, to a sitemap of contents, another of images and another of videos.

Many things have been said about the myriad of ORM and SEO tools available nowadays. We at ReputationDefender have evaluated many out of such vast spectrum, mentioning the perks and the downsides of each of them; however, one key aspect of today’s Online Reputation Management strategies also has its own tools: although PR and ORM are basically two sides of the same coin, they can be used interchangeably. Thus, PR also plays a vital role in every well-balanced Online Reputation Management strategy.

PR executives are crucial for every ORM campaign. And, just like with every ORM strategy, there are a plethora of tools that might come in handy for coming up with a solid PR campaign, thusly building a media list much faster, connecting with journalists seamlessly and tracking results much more effectively. After going through several tools, here are some of the ones that have proven to be a good resource for PR executives:

PR Newswire

This tool has some outstanding features, the most eye-catching include best-in-class customer service, which allows every release to be carefully reviewed soon before it is distributed. Besides, PR Newswire is pretty much self-explanatory when it comes to setting it up, unlike similar tools and programs that require annoying programming links—which can be a real pain—. With PR Newswire, users and executives can simply upload their documents, decide where they want it to go and send it out to the PR team to start the process. 

Last but not least, the tool comes with a reports feature that tells users which reviews have been most viewed, which publications are yielding the most engagement and which ones are providing higher levels of traffic.

In this sense, and in light of the aforementioned features, an excellent way to get the most out of a press release distribution is to work alongside this tool’s search engine optimization team before publishing it, as they will, in turn, provide useful tips in regard to several aspects of the publication such as headlines, keywords, link placement, etc. And, as mentioned above, once the PR executive has published several releases, they can use the tool’s reporting feature to track them and assess different metrics.

Trendkite

Trendkite, as many other PR tools, has become a priceless resource because it helps PR executives keep up with their progress while validating their efforts by portraying the impact of each online mention they receive. Just like the previous tool, Trendkite possesses several important features as well: the ability to practically track anything in regard to a specific release by creating dashboards. Thus, PR executives can assess where they compare in PR coverage, monitor stories, and trends, and even come across which journalists are writing about their competitors.

Trendkite also comes with the possibility of downloading reports so that executives can show the results of every campaign they venture into, and last but not least, users can always resort the customer service chat just in case they need any kind of support with figuring out how to reach their PR goals.

This tool is useful for creating hyper-tailored dashboards to keep an eye on all the articles and releases that are being published. Users can also take a closer look at those top-performing publications within a specific category to collect more information about those trends, what kind of headlines are the ones proving to yield better results and which articles are getting more traction across the Internet. Of course, all these information is particularly useful when it is time to come up with a press release or a piece of content about that particular topic, as it provides guidance in the form of data to increase the likelihood of reaching out to interested individuals.

Featured Image courtesy of Kaboompics // Karolina at Pexels.com

Muck Rack

Muck Rack is a compilation of relevant information about a myriad of journalists. Basically, it is a journalist research tool that provides users with the necessary things to come up with a well-based and well-researched pitch. 

When venturing into PR campaigns, a lot of information can be gathered just by reviewing a journalist’s articles. Muck Rack, as the other two aforementioned tools, comes with several features: integration with social media—for those avid Facebook and Twitter users—; notations of pitch logs, which ultimately makes the follow-up action more effective and several other media outlet researches.

When it comes to multi-function tools to optimize your positions in search engines, Moz is actually the great referent. Such is its degree of influence in this industry that Moz has developed a complete suite of applications that will make things easier for you or to any expert in the world of Search Online Optimization. Let's analyze each of the applications of this suite and their advantages.

Moz started as a Marketing and SEO blog, in fact, it was originally called ‘SeoMoz’ before being known simply as Moz. After its initial success, Moz began to expand its blog and started developing software to improve SEO analytics, monitoring, and web positioning, becoming one of the most important companies in the digital marketing, web analytics and social media areas. There are thousands of experts making use of it daily.

The Moz suite consists of a set of sub-tools. Some of them are free, and others require a monthly fee (that is why it is considered a Freemium tool.) It should be said that the free ones offer you enough useful information, and many experts affirm that they have been quite generous in that aspect. However, the premium ones add extra information and extremely useful additional services.

Featured Image courtesy of Jonathon Colman at Flickr.com

Let us start with MozBar, a toolbar that you can install in your browser and allows you to analyze the websites you visit in your daily browsing from an SEO point of view. This tool shows you a very useful and revealing information about any website of the competition: Domain Authority and Page Authority (see below,) meta-titles, meta descriptions, H1 and H2, backlinks, social signals, etc. MozBar can be used in two different ways: In the search results or in the SERPs of the search engines, and on the website of which you want to perform an SEO analysis.

Read also: SEOmonitor: Automation was never that efficient, by ReputationDefender

Either way, it gives you valuable information about the most relevant SEO factors that Google has in mind to position any page in the SERPs, such as – as it was mentioned - the Page Authority (PA), which is the rate that measures the authority of the website that you are analyzing in a range of 1 to 100. 

You can also measure the DA (Domain Authority,) the rate that measures the authority of the entire domain, i.e., the entire site. It also ranges from 1 to 100. Likewise, you can measure the Spam Score: The rate of spam that of a certain website.

On the other hand, there is MozCast, an ideal tool to know even the smallest changes of Google's algorithm. Thanks to this you can find out if the new changes in the algorithm will force you to change your SEO strategy. It operates as a kind of weather forecasting service (taking into account that Google's algorithmic changes are as unpredictable as weather forecasts.)

Basically, over 1000 randomly chosen keywords are tracked every 24 hours, and the tool makes a list of the first 10 results of organic searches. Each day, the first 10 organic results are listed and compared with the 10 of the previous day, and an exchange rate is measured. In particular, it uses two metrics called Delta 100 and Delta 10. In short, the hotter the temperature, the more change they see in Google's ranking in the last 24 hours. Each temperature also becomes one of five levels of gravity, ranging from the sunniest to the most destructive storm.

Featured Image courtesy of Bruce Clay at Flickr.com

You also have Moz Rank Tracker, an app that allows you to track keywords and store them for later analysis. This tool also has an alert service. This tool gives you the first 10 results for a keyword by assigning you a level of difficulty, and this is also useful for analyzing the trends of a keyword since you can analyze the trend of each day (although it only shows a maximum record of four weeks.)

It is not one of the most essential keyword tools, though, but thanks to Moz Rank Tracker, you can customize the monitoring of rankings at a national level, and even locally. Imagine that, for example, you live in Germany, but your target market is located in South Korea. In this case, you need to know what position your keywords occupy regarding the public that searches from that country, and this is very easy to do with this tool. In fact, it covers 592 local and international search engines. You can choose between universal, local, or thematic searches, and you can also monitor the results in universal searches.

Why is this important? Very simple: To analyze pages of the universal search of the big engines, a fundamental aspect of SEO. The results show several contents at once: Video, images, maps, books, products, and more.

As today’s digital juncture becomes more complex, it is still common to see that many marketing strategies and activities still take place in silos, and, as we at ReputationDefender have mentioned in previous articles, search engine optimization is definitely amongst them —and maybe one of the most isolated.

Search engine optimization and lead generation are basic drivers of new leads for the vast majority of businesses and organizations: their collaboration only happens whenever new content requires a thorough SEO revision. There is indeed a notion, or a general understanding, in a manner of speaking, that suggest that SEO is a tool for helping websites, and, by extension, the content that lies therein. Thus, leads are generated in a big spectrum sense; however, the whole idea behind lead generation is that it is a completely separate process or task whose major purpose, as it name depicts, is to find and subsequently acquire new leads.

When dwelling within a specific marketplace, marketers and the individuals responsible for addressing a business’s target audience face a sheer array of demands. Lead generation strategies have been rapidly evolving to meet new expectations whose inner nature is increasingly demanding and challenging; nonetheless, one element is still heavily ignored: the one that could actually yield much greater results: SEO. Marketo, as a marketing automation software, can be used as this bridge; as the tool that brings together both lead generation and search engine optimization strategies.

Modern Search Engine Optimization strategies require further research

When bringing together search engine optimization and lead generation strategies, marketers face an initial challenge: the need for them to understand SEO from a rather modern standpoint —paying special attention to the concept commonly referred to as «user intent»—. User intent is, perhaps, the real connotation behind the well known and traditional keyword strategy; the one people type in a particular search engine. That Ben said, there are two main types of user intent: inform, when an individual surfaces the Internet in hopes of learning more about a specific topic; and purchase, when an individual happens to be shopping for anything that can be described by the keyword itself.

Thoroughly reviewing what target audiences seem to mean whenever they use keywords is not more complicated than a traditional and simple Google search: the pages that happen to rank the highest for a particular keyword clearly depict the type of content prospects and target audiences are supposedly looking for when searching, of course, that particular keyword.

Use the following example, for instance: if an individual were to type in «CRM», the search engine would return mostly marketing software platforms as results —which clearly depicts that the user had a purchasing intention in the first place—; on the other hand, if instead of «CRM», and individual were to type in «marketing automation», the intention leans towards something different: purchase intent.

How to use Marketo to bring together SEO and Lead Generation?

Although SEO can be brought together with other strategies irrespective of the tool, from start to finish, here are five basic steps to use search engine optimization to improve lead generation strategies via Marketo:

1 . Come up with a list of relevant keywords:

Prior to jumping into action recklessly, it is highly advisable to first rely on free tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or other tools. Besides, gather enough information in regard to what products and services seem to be more important to the industry in question.

2. Google those keywords: 

Google each one of the keywords collected after carrying out the first step. Also, determine whether the results depict either an inform or purchase intent, and to what extent.

3. Get the results through the sales funnel

4. Optimize already existing content

5. Create new content:

There will be obvious gaps in terms of content, and by filling in the gaps, companies, and businesses will end up having better websites for Marketo to work.

Image courtesy of Mateusz Dach at Pexels.com

The market has changed or is constantly changing, better said. Most marketers know how hard is to keep up the pace in today’s evolving juncture. SEO, as a whole, is definitely constantly evolving as well, and generating content and a steady flow of qualified leads towards software automation platforms require better websites. Just like CRMs, Marketo can be used as a powerful SEO tool for coming up with better content and, thus, acquiring better leads. We at ReputationDefender cannot stress enough the importance of producing accurate, customer-tailored content; however, it is undeniable that it is sometimes a nagging process. And what seems to be the best way to come up with that kind of content?

After the eclosion of the digital era, many tools have been developed to help businesses thrive and get the most out of what this era has to offer. Whether they are CRMs, ERPs, Apps, Software, etc., all of them can be used interchangeably to overcome and properly face today’s challenges. 

We at ReputationDefender have previously addressed many tools that have been specifically conceived as SEO tools; however, and given the fact that search engine optimization is as vast as the individual’s imagination, there are many other tools that, although unorthodox when it comes to what has commonly been conceived as SEO, serve a good purpose for search engine optimization principles. And such is the case of the renowned Customer Relationship Management tool, also known as CRM.

CRM is a crucial, no less than integral, component of any business. Identifying prospects, customers, and leads; building and solidifying relationships; acquiring, tracking and assessing valuable information, is vital for getting and, more importantly, retaining customers. A customer relationship management tool is, by definition, a mine of information. Within it, businesses store all the information relevant to their marketing strategies, campaigns, and efforts —and it often even includes phone call records, meetings, mails, amongst other marketing relevant material such as social media efforts, chats, website analytics, etc.

The idea behind collecting such sheer array of information may be for marketing and sales purposes; nonetheless, it is also arguably one of the most useful ideas when it comes to developing SEO strategies. Here are several ways companies and businesses, in general, can use their CRM tools as a powerful SEO tool as well:

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

One of the purposes of a CRM is to help companies and businesses, in general, manage the relationships they build with customers and leads. Aside from acquiring new prospects, one of the most positive outcomes from taking care of these relationships is the possibility to turn these users into loyal users. Brand advocates often show their love via testimonials that can be used on websites and review sites. As we at ReputationDefender have mentioned before, online reviews and publications are crucial to any search engine optimization strategy. The links and the text are invaluable for outstanding SEO rankings, as they serve as a third-party validation of a particular business.

Content explanation and options

Determining what kind of content should be produced is no less than a daunting challenge for a particular business. We have previously mentioned that, when it comes to content, companies and businesses should strive to come up with original and genuine publications so that it becomes valuable in the end. 

The best way to figure out how to tailor content is by taking a look at what customers, leads, and prospects need. And CRMs make such thing less dreary. Take a look at conversations: what are they saying? Explore the data that has been saved and figure it out. Check previous phone calls, emails and social media interactions: the answer is right there. Assess it from the customer’s standpoint: try to figure out the buyer’s journey, and come up with valuable eBooks, newsletters, blog posts, etc.

Blogging scope

Image courtesy of Pixabay at Pexels.com

Guest publications —or, in short: writing a piece of content for someone else— is perhaps one of the most powerful forms of SEO and marketing initiatives. It embodies a whole new opportunity to reach out to more prospects and increase online presence, which in turn enables businesses and companies to gain trust amongst their audiences. Besides, having guest publications is like having an endorsement. In order to carry out this activity successfully, it is important to determine what bloggers and what websites seem to be adequate for the business in question. Thus, a CRM becomes the perfect source of information and opportunities. Checking contacts and their businesses will end up providing the needed information, thusly realizing which sites seem to be the perfect choice for such win-win situation.

Plus, under today’s circumstances, there is a myriad of writing companies, so coming up with genuine, valuable and original content should not be an issue.

Better Keywords

This free tool is one of the most important for every webmaster who wants to attract organic traffic to his/her website. Google Search Console (previously called 'Google Webmaster Tools') will allow you to identify a large number of technical aspects that you could improve on your website so that your pages have better indexing processes, better appearance, navigability, and rankings in the search engines.

Moreover, Google Search console is an excellent channel of communication between the search engine and you as a webmaster. This means that you can communicate to Google some particularities of your website which will allow the Spiders a much more accurate classification. You can even communicate your geographic location, which helps a lot for the users who want to find information about, for example, local businesses in certain areas. Similarly, thanks to this tool you can avoid penalties in case you have duplicate content, and, instead, receive notifications about these types of basic errors.

Finally, another great virtue of this tool is that thanks to Google Search Console you can identify with accuracy where your organic traffic comes from, and, moreover, get new opportunities to get a lot more traffic, and, for example, better advertising (you can combine the use of this tool with Google Adwords for this purpose.)

The way the organic traffic process works with this tool is especially interesting. What is striking is that in each of the phases of the organic traffic process you can get valuable metrics that can help you re-develop your SEO strategy. Here, likewise, you can combine this task with another awesome free tool: Google Analytics, which has different and complementary functions.

It is important to note that using when Google Analytics is almost essential to simultaneously use Google Search Console. The reason is very simple: While Google Analytics focuses on your visitors' activity (how they get to your pages and what they essentially do in them,) you really need the plug-in of the Google Search Console features since the latter shows you what Google knows about your sites - how it perceives them, so to speak, - and this is a lot more valuable information in terms of SEO.

Recommended: What's the difference between Search Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console)?

In addition to everything mentioned, thanks to this system you can know how to make your pages more accessible (for example, considering that a lot of traffic comes from mobile users,) and other issues so difficult to check if you are not familiar with programming, such as whether your site contains malware or has been hacked. And, of course, Google Search Console helps you to realize if your visitors come through the right keywords.

Getting started with this tool is easy. The first thing you have to do is creating a free Google account (it may be your Gmail.) Then you must register your website, and you must do this before anything else. Then visit the main page and type the URL of the website you want to review:

Image courtesy of Kohji Saitoh at Flickr.com

Afterward, you must verify that you are the owner of the site. The method recommended by Google itself is to download an HTML file and upload it to your server. If you have access to FTP, or your hosting has an interface to upload files, this is really the fastest method. Otherwise, you can select alternative methods, although some of them are for advanced users.

The control panel is simple, even if you are just entering into the world of web mastering. In this menu, you can have an overview of the most important metrics for your website, and those that could give you trouble. The most important thing to know here is that if it is the first time you register a site, you will not see all this data, but in a day or two, you will see all this information coming. You just check your messages in "Important News," and it is a good sign that you have no messages or incidents, by the way. If Google thinks that something bad is happening to your website, let us say, it has been attacked by a virus, is not available online, etc., Google will notify you here. The best thing though is that you can request to receive these notices in your Gmail instead, and you can choose if you want Google to alert you about the smallest problem, or only when things get really messy.

Read also: Google Tag Manager: Tagging was never that easy!, by ReputationDefender

We recommend you watch this video in case you want to learn more about this wonderful tool.