Today we're going to focus on how businesses from any niche can go out and get new clients with SEO and online marketing.
Whether you’re an app developer in Austria or a doctor in Delaware, you need to make sure you’re marketing to the right clientele and through the right channels.
Why Baltimore SEO?
First and foremost, if you don't have a website yet, you have to make one. Without it, you'll never be able to show off your best work, build your brand, or effectively market online.
Remember, as with most industries, people are going directly to Google to find the companies they want. The one who has the best looking videos and images on his or her website, the best reviews, and a robust blog usually gets called over the company who neglected their online presence and only has a website with a one page landing page that looks like nothing more than a glorified business card.
Next, invest in search engine optimization (aka SEO). Baltimore SEO, when done right, helps get your website on Page 1 of Google for the keywords and phrases your potential clients are searching for. It has the power to bring in a ton of traffic to your website and power your entire digital marketing.
Without SEO, your website could end up invisible to the greater population. Not many people click page 2, so be prepared to hire a professional to help you get on Page 1. (In fact, research shows that 95% of people never search past page 1 of the results.)
Be careful though. Not all SEO companies are good, and some actually hurt your site while pretending to help it. Make sure you thoroughly vet an SEO company before hiring them and find out exactly what they plan to do to your site.
Also, if you don't have tremendous people skills, now is the time to cultivate them. People want to hire a professional who is friendly, funny, down to earth, and likable overall. If you’re uptight, you better do perfect work every single time. Otherwise, you might want to look for a different profession or learn the art of flexibility.
Believe it or not, timeliness is a big deal to many people too. If you’re late for a meeting or waste your potential customer's time, they’re going to get really mad and really quickly. Usually, they will be paying for your time, not just your photos, so be sure to give them your undivided attention.
Getting repeat business is not merely a function of how great you are at what you do. Make sure to provide incredible customer service too. Send follow up emails offering coupons. Remember special occasions and send out personalized cards. If you can hand write them, even better. Provide special offers to prior customers. Remember to be professional at all times. Avoid saying or emoting anything negative. All of these things make up the keys to getting repeat customers.
Ultimately, owning your own business can be really tough and downright challenging at times. Make sure that you're doing everything you can to keep up with your competition, improving your marketing strategy, investing in SEO, and having great customer service.
What Kinds of Baltimore SEO are There?
In the SEO world, there are two kinds of people: those that try to game the system and dupe Google and those who try to work within the Google guidelines and framework to help their clients.
Black hat SEO focuses on finding cracks and holes in Google's algorithm in order to quickly rocket a website to the top of Google. Many times, Google discovers these hacks or technical loopholes quite quickly and de-indexes the site only a month later.
Most people utilizing black hat tactics understand this, so they employ a tactic called rank and bank to beat it. Rank and bank involves using whatever means necessary to rank a particular site that is selling a product of service.
Whether that means pointing tons of spammy links at it or using link farms and prohibited networks, they'll do it. The idea is to get the site listed on Page 1 for the sole purpose of selling as many products as possible before Google penalizes it and delists the site permanently.
After this happens, the black hat SEO will simply migrate the site over to a new site and employ the same tactics on the non-penalized site.
This approach generates sales temporarily and will be caught by Google very soon.
Consequently, it's much more advised to implement white hat SEO tactics. White hat SEO involves giving searchers what they actually want, earning links properly instead of buying them, or making fake spammy ones.
White hat SEO is all about making incredible content that will naturally become number one in Google and employing ethical methods to help optimize for it.
White hat SEO is permanent and will never get you penalized by Google. It's the future of SEO and the way all people should do SEO.
When you try to make your site authoritative and trustworthy, you'll naturally earn the respect of other sites as well as powerful links that organically improve your search ranking.
Not only that, black hat SEO is extremely risky. If you try to game Google, you'll likely lose sooner or later.
Even the heavy hitters end up having entire sites go down. Do you want to explain to a client or a friend that they don't even rank for their company name anymore?
White hat SEO is the way to go. It's the best and safest way to grow your business in 2016 and likely will remain that way forever.
Think about it, the only time you face a Google penalty is when you’re violating their search guidelines and utilizing tactics that wouldn’t pass the red face test.
White hat SEO never does this. It focuses on making incredible content that adheres to the guidelines and optimizes a site for all of the key ranking factors that can help it do best.
Remember, whether you're a high-powered lawyer or a local photographer, you're going to need SEO to improve your search ranking.
Ultimately, whichever route you go, there’s no denying just how crucial it is to implement SEO for your business. These days everyone is searching online for products and services and are clicking only on what they find on the first page.
Make sure your site is what they're clicking on.
