The last 2 or 3 years have seen a seismic shift in the way many agencies approach digital marketing, with a large emphasis on content creation and UX but far less attention paid to the traditional areas such as link building within SEO and increasing organic social media following. Within this article we’ll take a look at what Red Cow Media, one of the top agencies offering SEO Manchester has to offer specific areas of digital and see what’s changed.
SEO
Of all the different forms of digital marketing, SEO is perhaps the fastest moving. The noise coming out of Silicon Valley and many of the SEO ‘think tanks’ is that traditional link building is dead and all of your focus should be on content. If you can give a visitor the answer to any question they could ever possibly want to ask and serve it to them in an easy to understand format then you will be on to a winner from an on-page perspective. In terms of outreach, the common thing you hear is that if your content is good enough, it will get shared around and generate links organically, in reality this is not true unless you are a huge global brand. According to Stephen Darwin, SEO Manager at Manchester SEO agency Red Cow Media:
“It is more difficult than ever to generate high quality, relevant links due to the increasing commercialisation of many websites, however it is still very possible and we do it on a day to day basis. In my experience, simply seeding a piece of content for a client who is selling batteries, not matter how good it is, yields no results unless you contact sites on a one to one basis.”
- Stephen Darwin, SEO Manager, Red Cow Media
PPC
The fundamentals of PPC haven’t changed in the last few years, Google have added extra results and extended the length of some ads, added more sitelinks and played around with the design, but in 2018 the focus is now more than ever on how to save money. Average CPC’s have continued to increase with more competition around therefore it is essential to focus your time and effort on looking at bid adjustments, mobile/desktop split in terms of traffic and which generates the most sales as well as focusing heavily on how relevant your targeted keywords are. Your aim in 2018 should be to get the lowest CPC and not waste any budget whatsoever to increase your ROI from PPC.
There are many forms of retargeting now with independent companies such as AdRoll and Criteo offering it as well as Google and Facebook on their own networks. We would always recommend using an independent retargeting company as you are likely to be seen across multiple ad networks rather than just Google or Facebook or Bing (dependent upon which you are using. Dynamic ads are the way to make money in 2018 as well as only advertising to the most relevant, qualified visitors. Forget about the people who bounced and have no intent to purchase.
Summary
In 2018, the focus within digital is about being more qualified and being careful with your budget. Every year more money is spent online and more companies start up, therefore there is more competition, so to make a high return on investment you need to invest wisely yourself. Find our more about changes in digital at https://www.redcowmedia.co.uk.
