Understanding SEO & Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the process by which products and/or services are marketed via digital technologies. This is achieved through digital platforms such as search engines, Google Adwords, Facebook, social media, emails, and company websites to connect businesses and consumers. It is important to realize that most platforms have pluses and minuses and in most cases should be implemented in conjunction with other strategies.
SEO is no exception. For most businesses, SEO is a wise investment, for a few, it may not be. However, just like any other marketing strategy, SEO should not be your only form of marketing. SEO, just like any other form of marketing is just one method used to attract new customers, clients, or patients.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making certain that a website exhibits certain characteristics so they are favored by the search engines to display at the top of the search engine results page. SEO delivers free traffic to your website on a continuous basis once the search engine optimization takes effect. The traffic is free in the sense that you are not paying per click, per visitor, or to place your ad on any other site. Search engine optimization takes time and results are not achieved quickly. It is more of a marathon than a sprint.
Pay per click (PPC) ads are the yellow little boxed ads that you happen to see at the top of the page when you get your Google search results. You can bid on the keywords that are relevant to your business, and your ads will appear at the top of the page. When these ads are clicked on, you will pay a fee to Google. PPC is a perfect way of ensuring that your webpage can be seen at the top of the search results very quickly. 
PPC also allows you to come up with your own budget. However, depending on the business you are in, bidding on certain keywords can be VERY expensive. Also keep in mind that only a certain percentage of people will click on ads, and others will go to the organic search results. This is why in most cases there is a benefit to utilizing SEO and PPC as online marketing channels.
Facebook in another power digital marketing platform. It was originally formed mainly for social networking for college students. However, this platform has changed our modern life in various ways, including how we meet new people, how we receive information, and also how we as consumers and business owners interact with one another.
Facebook has over 1 billion active users, thereby making it a convenient channel of communication and an excellent platform to build a loyal base of customers, clients, or patients. Facebook offers a great avenue for businesses to create, promote, market, and maintain good customer relationships.
Social media marketing (SMM) is another form of digital marketing and involves creating and sharing specific content on social media channels to achieve business goals. This type of digital marketing helps increase website traffic, raise brand awareness, improve brand loyalty, create more opportunities, improve timely feedback, and enhance customer relationships. This can only be achieved by knowing your target audience and learning their favorite hangouts online so you can initiate marketing campaigns in those places.
Another widely used and inexpensive form of digital, or online marketing, is email marketing. This involves the sending of commercial messages to some specific groups of people by using email. Once online, there are no expenses needed to receive or send email messages. Email is quick, simple, and easy to use.
Content marketing is a growing platform for online marketing efforts. Content marketing focuses on the creation, publishing or sharing of relevant, valuable, and consistent content to a specific target audience. This platform helps businesses engage and reach out to current and new customers.
Content marketing can also bring additional traffic to your website, builds brand awareness, and help educate customers. It is time-consuming but can be an effective form of digital marketing. Keep in mind it can be difficult to track return on investments, and may also require diverse skills of bloggers, content creators, SEO experts, and possibly even developers, and this can become very expensive.
Whether we like it or not, digital marketing is not optional, but necessary in today’s business environment to succeed. Should SEO be a part of you digital marketing campaigns? Give the team at St. Louis SEO Stars a call and find out!