PDF Marketing and SEO can’t work miracles, much as my colleagues and I would love to claim that they do. If you want a great search engine ranking for your site, you can’t get there with just a marketing plan and a prayer.
SEO and marketing are crucial multipliers; but much of the fate of your site is governed by its own structure, content and size. Another key factor is the way your competitors have set up their sites. When setting goals for marketing, it’s important to first survey a number of underlying factors that I call the building blocks of a great search engine ranking. If your site doesn’t do well on these, it’s time to work on transforming it into a site that’s ready to compete and be seen.
How important are these factors? Well, a single-page site with very little content and a lot of outgoing links simply isn’t going to get a first-page ranking for highly desirable keywords like ‘Technology’, ‘Development’ or ‘Consultancy’. Let’s see what are the important ranking factors to look at:-
- Your site’s age: ranking improves as a site becomes more established, builds up a good pool of content and backlinks
- Number of pages: The more pages you have, the better as long as they contain useful, attractive and keyword-rich content
- Your home page’s- page rank: A good home page is highly visible to search engines and increases chances of your whole site being found
- Page rank of your top-level pages: Your first level pages are usually landing pages for specific offerings or topics. The better the individual raking of these pages, the greater are your chances of a high overall ranking
The next step is to apply this list to competition. After all ‘know your enemy’ is a dictum equally applicable in war and marketing. Understanding what your competition is doing helps you see where you stand relatively and what you should be doing to make sure you are truly competitive.
First of all, find out how many sites are competing for the same keywords. Identify the top 10 sites and then apply the same list of building blocks listed above to each of these sites. If that seems like too much work, you can shorthand the process by studying the #1 site and the #10 site. This will give you an idea of what actually differentiates the leader from close competition which in turn will help you shape your own strategy and better it.
Looking for online strategies that are based on research and facts rather than guesswork? Your search leads right to i-Vista’s Digital Marketing team. Drop us a line!