Are Google Services Worth Paying For? Search Optimization will help you rank more organically.

Paying for Google services to help you rank at the top of a search engine is not necessary.  There is an easier (and cheaper) way to get traffic, and that is by creating quality content.  Using inbound marketing, which was discussed in my last blog post here. This will draw people in organically without the use of Google services. The antiquated thought that “website optimization” means ranking at the top of a search engine no longer holds water.  Optimizing a website is much more than that, ranking is only a small piece of the puzzle. 

The first way to optimize your website would be to have a goal in mind for what you'd like to accomplish with your site, and the second would be to make it easy to understand and easy to have the Googlebot crawl. The Googlebot will assist in searching your page for its purpose and help rank when a user searches on Google. We will be able to get more traffic through website optimization. There are a few ways to do this:

Types of Website Optimization

• Search engine ranking
• User experience
• Lead conversion
• Customer acquisition
• Customer Delight

(These relate back to the Inbound Methodology.)

We will optimize our website by making it more friendly for both searchers and search engines. The key is to focus on the searchers. The searchers will pay for your product or service, without the searchers we serve no purpose. The search engines are there to assist the searchers to find us.

Searchers	Search Engines
Searchers are people. They buy your product or services. They’re searching to accomplish something, know something or to navigate to something.	Search engines crawl content to understand the purpose. Googlebot is Google’s spider.  But there are people too. They index content based on the perceived purpose for the content. Uses lots of ranking factors in indexing.  (Over 200!!!)

*Remember* your website must be easy to crawl and understand. Ease of understanding is key to attracting visitors and having them stay. There are 3 ways to ensure the visitor's experience is a pleasant one: have a great design, quality content, and format the content well. Design will make certain the user experience is satisfying. Content overall will attract visitors that are searching for your page and will create hits organically. How the content is formatted is also important. Subheadings, font styles, colors, and other various content formatting is another way to create an exceptional experience.

Here is a great example of website optimization. Design, quality content, and the content is also formatted well.

So, I've done a lot of talking about "quality content," Google has put together a guideline that I will link here.

Traditional Marketing Vs. Inbound Marketing and Learning What Exactly Inbound Marketing Is.

What is Inbound Marketing? and Why is it Important?

Traditional Marketing and Sales are an interruptive process.  Marketers force people to listen to their unwanted ads whenever they want by bombarding them.  Traditional marketing techniques include cold calling, SPAM e-mails, interruptive ads, and are completely marketer-centric.  Inbound Marketing is a marketing strategy where businesses implement tactics to attract customers rather than assault them.  Inbound marketing techniques attract customers by creating quality content and are more customer-centric.  

Inbound Marketing is important because marketers want to get your attention.  The traditional way used multiple techniques to be in your face and get in the way of what you were actually seeking out. Inbound marketing is becoming what the customer is actually looking for from the start.  “Don’t interrupt what people want to consume, be what people want to consume.”  By sharing helpful and relevant content, ideal customers will find you and what you have to offer.  This will result in customers being drawn to your site, rather than reaching out and “grabbing” them while they’re on the web.  

Buyers Have ALL the Power

Another change that has recently happened is that buyers now have all the power.  Previously, traditional marketers had all the power and information.  Buyers now have the ability to jump online and find reviews of products and services before they buy.  This may sound daunting and scary for a company, but if customers are led directly to the source they have the ability of getting raw information from the sellers themselves.  Of course, the best resource to find information about a product would be the seller’s page, right?

Inbound sounds great, how do we DO IT?!

We will use Inbound Methodolgy

There are over 2 billion internet users today.  We don’t want to attract everyone, we only want to attract those who will be most interested in what our business does.  The next step is convert these visitors to leads.  And after the company has done that, we would like to close and turn those leads into customers.  The final step is to go above and beyond.  Loyal promoter guests are the key to delighting customers.  A happy customer that loved their experience will most likely share it and start this process all over again with a new set of visitors. 

Here is an article written by Alec Biedrzycki that will help you begin learning about Inbound Marketing: The 45 Inbound Marketing Terms You Should Know