Best SEO Plus Other Advantages Of Using A Free Blogging Platform Instead Of Developing A Website
Continue reading this article because I am going to share
with you cost-effective digital marketing tips that can help you save
money. This is experiential knowledge I earned by experience as an ambitious
entrepreneur in Zimbabwe. You
know how I got started it was after experiencing poor sales results as an
estate agent. I moved from one agency to another hoping to find a change of
fortune but thinks appeared like they were getting worse. I remember one of my
former bosses telling me, “ Cain I think real estate isn’t for you”. I was
depressed but I refuse to give up. I tried this, I tried that but nothing
worked until a friend introduced me to a blog.
A turning point …
The year 2014 was a turning point because I managed to
attract a client who would later pay me USD 1 000.00 commission after she read
a blog article titled;
“ Financial
consequences of purchasing property from a seriously-ill seller and other
purchases to avoid ”.
This article resonated with the
lady because she had purchased a Harare house in Msasa from a seriously ill
seller. There was an outstanding balance. She decided to clear the balance by
selling a piece of land in Madokero.
I was very excited about this.
I continued to build my knowledge of a blog. I got better and better until I
begun getting clients who would want me do digital marketing on their behalf. A
blog has been key in all this and what has excited me about it is that it can
do the digital marketing job exceptionally well. As a small business you can
save hundreds of dollars by using free website templates for blogging like
Blogger instead of developing your own. Consider the following points for a
moment.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The primary purpose of a website
to a micro, small to medium enterprise is to market products or services and
generate sales through search engines. Therefore, that website must be
attractive enough to catch the eye of search engines like Google and Yahoo! through
a technic called search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is a huge topic in the digital
marketing field because it is what determines the difference between profit and
loss. A website with good SEO is one that appears on the top of search engine
results for key words.
The best technic for search
engine optimization is regularly sharing posts, articles or content that
answers people’s questions on a particular topic. You might have heard of
others but be wary of some like link baiting because they constitute what
Google deem SEO Spam. The issue of SEO Spam is serious no wonder why Google
developed an algorithm called Penguin to penalize websites that engage in this
activity.
Search engine optimization
through the use of content is a topic known as content marketing. A blog is the
best website design for content marketing. So approaching the issue of digital
marketing and online presence as a small business with a tight budget I advise
that you simply set up a website using free blogging templates like Blogger instead
of developing one at a cost. Here is a simple illustration;
SEO = Content Marketing = Blogging
So what is content marketing ?
Content marketing is all
about the idea that before you charge a price you must first share value.
Advantages Of Content
Marketing
(1) The first has already
been alluded to which is content marketing improves your website’s ranking on
search engine results for certain key words. This translate to increase sales.
However, there is more to content marketing than what meets the eye as follows.
(2) Prospects are educated pertaining
your product’s benefits and uniqueness before they buy it. It is said you can
not sell to a person but you can help them buy by showing value.
(3)It allows you to
pre-emptively answer objections. As a new business selling new products or
services people have more objections and questions like an old product like
Coca Cola. Content marketing provides an opportunity to preemptively address these
objections.
Three Types Of Content In
Content Marketing Strategy
(1) Open Content
This is content created with
the idea of getting at the top spot on Google search results ranking.
Technically this idea is called search engine optimization (SEO). Everyone
today when they want information on the internet they search for it. If you do
your key word search and other SEO technics right open content can be as good
as getting a license to print money in terms of increased sales. Open content
is called open content because its content that any one can access through the
internet without having to satisfy certain conditions like first submitting one’s
contact details e.g name, surname, phone. This blog post is an example of open content.
So open content is absolutely free.
(2) Gated Content
This is content created with
the idea of pre-qualifying leads. In digital marketing wisdom pre-qualification
of leads is a cardinal rule and how you get contact details is pivotal in how
its executed. It is what makes the difference between poor sales and good
sales, profit and loss. Gated content is content that a person access in
exchange for contact details. A person who willing exchange his or her contact
details for the gated content becomes your lead. Together with such other
people they are the only ones who qualify to form a mailing list a gold mine. So
gated content is also free except that to access it you must submit your
contact details. But other content can be sold. This is premium content.
(3) Premium Content
Premium content is your product that people may
be willing to buy after being educated about its benefits through both the open
and gated content. It can be a DVD that you ship or a book on Amazon. Sometimes,
you may not be selling information products but you will be selling such
services like accounting, consultancy, building material, health supplements
etc these replace premium content. This means instead of buying a DVD or a book
on Amazon they contract your service or buy your physical goods that are
delivered through physical means as opposed to virtual ones.
The importance of a blog has rose with the rising
importance of information to the internet in fact another name of a blog is
information management system. Here is the second point to consider.
2. Opportunity Cost
After years of
struggling, lone nights trying to figure out digital marketing on my own this
probably is the biggest success principle I must share with you. Before getting started developing a
website you should first ask yourself “What is the cost of this opportunity ?”
What are other
things you are giving up in order to pursue this opportunity ?
So let me
simplify opportunity cost for you. Let me give an example. Developing a new website also means the technical
burden for search engine optimization will be upon you. You will spend a lot of time every day trying
to do this. You continue doing this for
year one, year two, year three, year four and year five.
On the other hand
what you could have done is set up a blog a website tailor made as an
information management system, very good with SEO and which can short-circuit
your success path. So that instead of spending five years struggling to improve
your SEO you spend just one year.
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