By Milynn Luong, Bayshore Solutions Digital Marketing Team
We had the opportunity to travel to Austin this week to listen to some key industry experts talk about digital marketing at the regional Pubcon Austin 2015 conference.
This year, there were two big themes:
- Mobilepocalpyse
- Content Marketing
There was even a joke among attendees that for every time mobile, mobilepocalypse, mobilegeddon or April 21st came up that we would drink. It was the day before the impending mobile doom after all. Even then, it seemed that no one was particularly concerned with it being the end of the world. Did they stress having a mobile friendly website though? Yes, but there was a consensus in the room that no big changes would probably be seen; immediately anyway.
Other than that, content marketing was the other player to steal the show. What about content marketing was important? Well 2015 is the year of Content Marketing. This isn’t just about building content on your website, but building content that resonates with your intended audience.
With that said, the key take away is knowing who your audience is. That’s easier said than done of course, since your audience is always going to be a moving target. Searchers are constantly evolving with the changes in technology and the services available to them. And so it’s up to us to keep up.
Then of course, no session about content is complete without asking where SEO fits and what social media’s role is. Despite what Google may say, your content and social media does influence your rankings. Many of the speakers have shared the results of tests they’ve run to see if there any correlation exists between social media buzz and organic search rankings. Simply put, the answer was yes. It’s all about what information is relevant and if there is a lot of people sharing, viewing and talking about that piece of content. If that’s the case, it must be something valuable enough to rank higher.
When it comes to SEO in 2015, marketers need to be sure they have covered the ingredients of the 4 C’s:
- Code
- Content
- Connections (links)
- Communication (social media)
Speaking of anticipated doom, have keywords and link building also died away? Keywords matter in a different way than they used to. Specific keywords don’t matter as much as how they contribute to the meaning of the page. Google pays attention to co-occurring keywords, so create pages that are consistent and have a theme.
With link building, it couldn’t be said any clearer than what’s important with getting links is relationships, relationships, relationships. It’s all about building relationships.
Learn more about how we can help you with your digital marketing strategies; Contact Us today!