Tuesday night I had the pleasure of speaking at Techmakers, a new industry group of Rainmakers here in Indianapolis. The speech/skit that I did was tongue in cheek - I wanted to get a single point across but keep the presentation short and funny.
To start, I opened a scenario where a local business had a Microsoft Exchange server issue and needed assistance.
Do you go to Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? Visit a referred website from one of those resources? The 4% of people that utilize those sites may say yes, but 90% of people would say they'd use Google.
Local search is even on the rise on Google. People trust the accuracy of a search engine to find local resources than possibly their own network. The lesson, of course, is that you need to be where people are looking for you - and that's on the Search Engine Results Page.
There are 4 Typical Strategies to get on a SERP:
- Blogging for search as a customer acquisition strategy.
- Website Search Engine Optimization
- Optimized Landing Page Strategies
- Pay-Per-Click
Utilizing an optimized, automated corporate blogging platform such as Compendium enables any company to gain search engine traffic - all they have to do is write relevant content and write it frequently.
- Website SEO is a bit challenging. You're limited by the number of pages you have (or pay for additional pages), and limited to the number of keywords you wish to target. As well, if you pay for a one-time SEO expert to come in, their work is lost when the next competitor pays to get their site optimized. SEO is a long-term strategy, not a one-time event.
- Optimized Landing Page strategies work well (that's why we use this approach on our blogs) but the time, development and research is extremely expensive. You have to write pages to cover each combination of keywords - and not come off as search engine spam.
- Pay-per-click has far more accuracy than these other strategies, but you're severely limiting yourself (only 15% of people click on paid search ads). You get what you pay for with this method, though. ROI is simple to measure, but it can be an expensive endevour, especially as you decide to expand your reach.
With blogging, the platform enables the person to step on the gas and go as fast as they'd like. If you want more results, blog more. If you want to expand your base, expand the number of keywords you're targeting.
Blogging is a democratizing medium for businesses without the human and monetary resources required when using other strategies. All it takes is some creative content and a few minutes each day to write a blog post (or two). Want to double your content? Add another employee blogger!
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