Inbound marketing should be at the cornerstone of any business that has an online presence. This is where you can build your reputation and authority by placing content and building links into your site.

Gone are the days where having a website alone would be good enough for your business no matter how small. Search engines such as Google are always working to provide the best content for their search results. So, if you look at it logically and imagine yourself as a search engine how high would you rank your site against your competitors?

Does your site have useful and informative content that directly relates to your products and services and will make you stand out from your competitors? If your site is regularly updated with content the search engines will recognise this and will reward you accordingly with a high-ranking.

This is of course based on the content being relevant original and interesting. The search engine algorithms such as Panda, a highly intelligent tool, and can tell how spammy your content may be. If you overload it with keywords this will be noticed, also if the content is poorly written without authority this too will be noticed. The search engines are able to tell whether or not you use industry related terminology in your content so sites can rank highly even if the keywords are not often used the related and relevant ones are.

The other way to see if the content is relevant and has authority is how well it has been received by readers. Visitors view the page and then bounce straight back out it will be noticed and recorded by the search engines and markdown appropriately. However, if a page is visited and then promoted through social media channels or links from their own blogs this will be seen as a sign of authority and will be ranked accordingly.

In summary, never try to trick the search engines, just be true to yourself and your business and post good relevant content on the Internet. If you try to trick the search engines then sooner or later you will be found out and pay for it.

Use your personality and your expertise to promote your business and you will reap the rewards.

Inbound marketing agency in Surrey

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As previously addressed in the Smart Cow blog we’ve mentioned there are two main types of online marketing. These are inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

Outbound Marketing

Starting first with outbound marketing this is seen as the more conventional way to market. Through the more traditional ways of paid adverts and email marketing, this reflects very much old school marketing prior to the Internet, where people would place ads in magazines and drop leaflets through letter boxes.

These are really useful if you have a new product, new website or are in a very competitive market and currently are unable to get good organic results for your keywords. Outbound marketing can be targeted by precisely to your potential clients through data that you or your media channel has acquired. You may have an email list for your email campaign or you may rely on demographic information collected by social media channels to manage your pay per click campaigns.

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a much better long-term strategy to promote your business. As we all get very savvy about magazine adverts, and leaflets posted through our front door the same is said for some email campaigns and online advertising. Most of us these days are very media savvy and can quite easily filter out unwanted marketing material. Reflecting back into the real world, a lot of what you will buy will be through recommendation, whether this is a product or service if one of your friends has recommended it you are quite likely to do the same. This is where inbound marketing holds the key, if you have people promoting your products through you to their social media channels, online blogs, forums or any other method you are more likely to pay attention and if you had seen an advert embedded in a website.

But to build this trust and authority that will get many people to recommend you, your services or products takes a lot of time to invest. Think of being original and using your own personality within your content you place on the web as well as making sure it is appropriate for your target personas you have created.

Summary

Look at where your business is now online and where you would like it to go plan your marketing campaign now. If you’d like more help and advice on how to do this do get in touch, we would be more than happy to help.

As an inbound marketing agency in Surrey, we specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon.

All the very best from the cowshed we hope you found this useful.