The Digital Age Of Marketing
The digital age is said to have begun as far back as 1940. With the invention of the punch card system. And since then technology has been advancing at a rapid pace. It wasn’t until the advent of the world wide web in the 90s that we really began to see the most drastic changes to the world.
Before the digital revolution marketing was a very different game. It was still as complex and competitive as it is today. But it was also far more limited in when it could reach people. And the way that the general public received and consumed information and content was also vastly different. TV commercials, radio advertisements, billboards, leaflets, magazine ads. These were the powerhouses of the marketing world until the 90s. People would still use business directories like the Yellow Pages to find services.
The internet changed all that. With the introduction of search engines. Google is the undisputed king of the search engine world. Being the standard search engine globally. There are an estimated 8.5 billion searches made on Google every day! This is more than the entire population of the planet! But people rarely look beyond the first page of a search engine. The best results for their query are often at the forefront.
This meant that businesses needed a way to get their site on the first page of relevant search results. The most obvious way is to pay Google to have their page featured. But smaller businesses can’t outbid the larger ones for this privilege. This is where search engine optimization comes into play!
What Is SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, has drastically changed the nature of modern marketing. Whereas before the name of the game was creating eye-catching and memorable content. This is still a relevant part of digital marketing, especially on social media. But SEO is one of the most pivotal elements to any businesses online success.
SEO is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a website by increasing the websites standing on various search engines. This is done through a number of different methods. The most important being keyword relevancy. Keywords are the words that people use when searching for something. For example, someone searching for ‘A cheap new smartphone’ the keywords would be cheap, new, and smartphone.Â
The example above is a very simplistic example. Keywords go a lot deeper and often focus on every aspect of a website. Search engines like Google will look at your website and rank it based on the total strength of all relevant keywords in connection with one another. This is often called a website’s authority. Authority is based on how relevant your website and its content is to what people are looking for. A blog about cooking will, naturally, be an authority on the subject.Â
How It Changed Marketing
One of the biggest changes SEO has made to the marketing world is forcing companies to better curate content that they post. Both on their websites and on platforms like social media. Because they don’t just have to try and appeal to the customer anymore. They also have to work around search engine algorithms.Â
This has been a huge boon for customers though. With companies being forced to ensure their websites are relevant to specific searches, customers can be more assured that the search results they receive are going to be what they are looking for.
It has also opened up an entirely new industry. We have only touched on the basics of SEO. But it is a vastly complex marketing tool that requires a lot of knowledge and technical skill to master. This has given rise to SEO agencies. While you could learn a lot from an SEO blog or through SEO guides on YouTube, an SEO agency is always the best choice for getting good results.
Content quality is also very important in SEO. Especially now that we are seeing a sharp increase in AI content being published online. When SEO first started being relevant we would see a lot of people publishing click-bait content that was filled with waffle. Designed simply to meet keyword requirements. Search engines have gotten better at detecting content that is actually genuine against content that is designed to be filler.Â
SEO also relies on using multiple platforms to advertise your business. Social media in particular has become a necessary component of digital marketing. And the strength of a company’s social media presence does play an active role in increasing their standing on search engines. The relevancy of content posted on social media platforms will have a direct impact on a website’s standing. Which is forcing companies to better curate what they post and how often they post.Â
