I am often amused by people’s fascination with getting themselves on page one of organic searches – as an agency we have never tried to achieve this – rather it has beeen a pleasant and surprising side effect of what we consider as “just doing the job right”.
To the point where we have clients with from 100 to over 200 keyword searches that we check 3 monthly and find them on page 1 of organic searches for anything from 50 to 100 of them. It is quite a buzz to put in an industry relevant search term and find our client on page one 5 times - the client is pleased too!
There seems to be confusion over what is important and what we are trying to achieve – yes it is great to get your own website high up the listings – but there are a number of other considerations:
1. 3rd party listings gained through PR, Content Marketing and Social Media will get listed much more easily and more quickly because the directories and journals are more valued than a single manufacturers site – and their listing for you will still take people to you. Such listings will also keep out your competition. We frequently find our clients listings appearing on page 1 a number of times eg 3, 4 or 5 times for a single search string. These listings seem to get picked up very quickly and to stay relevant for many months.
2. Your blog is likely to get higher value than your website if you are keeping it active – not only does a blog get picked up quickly it can be quite a stable listing.
3. Your website can get up the listings supported by the value accrued from your total activity and traffic. Once there it is usually quite stable if you maintain your online activity.
I have heard a lot recently about the value of adding video to your website home page – as you know I have been keen on clients using video for at least a couple of years – for its intrinsic value as a good way to get information across – although as you see we don’t have it – but some really useful videos are in the pipeline as soon as I can face the camera!
Now it seems Google has caught up and I found this this blog piece http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/01/the-easiest-way.html which gives SEO figures to show you have about a 50 times better chance of your website getting to page 1 with a video than without.
That’s the sort of odds I like:^)
Interesting too that the “advanced” SEO he talks about are exactly the sort of things we are doing all the time!
Following the success of our early 2011 program of seminars, registrations are invited at www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration for a free seminar on 23rd September on the subject of “Industrial PR and Social Media Marketing”. We are delighted that these free seminars are proving so successful for the delegates, since all seem to go away with a much better insight into the roles of PR and Social Media in the industrial marketplace – which is very different from the mainstream perception – and since we are an active and experienced company we are passing on what we actually do and what we know works – not just a theoretical training.
The seminar will cover the basics of Industrial PR and how to do it for yourself – press relations vs. public relations, keywords, directories, printed and internet media, press releases, features, building a database, web profiling, with “hands on” exercises. Other topics will be Marketing for Industrial SMEs – building a cost effective Promotional Pyramid – blogs, newsletters, website SEO, video, advertising, exhibitions and social media – with a guest Social Media Manager from our associate Lesley Whiteman Social Media Agency.
We believe that PR is cheaper and more effective than ever, PR is the cheapest promotion a company will ever do and that based on a solid foundation of PR a company can build the other major elements of online marketing, content marketing, social media, exhibitions and advertising into a worthwhile long-term investment that will protect a company through the downs and leverage growth in the ups of the economic cycle.
One day free PR seminars are planned for September and October 2011 at a quiet relaxing venue near our offices in Bedfordshire, with complementary networking lunch and free car parking. To register for the September seminar please go to www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration
I hear that job creation in the private sector is running ahead of job losses in the public sector ( here ) and we ourselves know companies in the manufacturing area who are growing 20 to 40% and have been doing so for the past year.
Meanwhile in the East there is a notable growth in wealth and China ( as has been historically the case ) is once again beginning to have problems supplying its own people with food and goods and even experiencing some credit problems.
Here in the UK we now have relatively low-cost components and raw materials with low-cost labour – compared to previous times when manufacturing was 25% of GDP – now it is half that we are coming up from the bottom of the cycle, and could well yet see a new flowering of UK industrial growth based on enterprise and innovation in spite of recent stalling in the process.
With the Eurozone pre-occupied with balancing one economy against another and the USA simply getting further and further into debt, they are both likely to meet the need for structural change in their manufacturing industries. The UK has already done this and is well positioned to take advantage of new industries in green engineering and a new balance of wealth and power in the global marketplace.
Our old connections around the globe may yet serve us well – given that we have not really offended anybody in recent years and that British engineering retains a strong reputation for quality. If only we could get the support of government expenditure on major projects being sourced in the UK we could well help to pull the country out its economic malaise more quickly.
The connections between mainstream economy, e.g. retail and financial sectors, and the manufacturing sectors, are somewhat flexible and indirect to the point that their growth cycles are completely out of step. Once again the mainstream economy has dragged down the manufacturing industries and again manufacturing is one of the engines pulling the country out of recession. This makes the job harder but without the dips we would not have the ups! So let us look forward to an extended growth cycle for UK manufacturing in the next few years and remember the hard learned lessons of how to market ourselves through the whole of the cycle so as to best take advantage of the upturns and best survive the downturns.
Professional marketing in the industrial marketplace has never been cheaper, more extensive or more possible. There is simply no reason not to benefit from simple, cost-effective promotion either bought in or done in-house – click here to see how.
