Industrial Companies & Social Media: How to get started

Social Media

Letter S - Social Media

One of the questions we are frequently asked is, “should our company be using social media?” Our answer is always a resounding yes, especially if your are looking for new ways to connect with your customers, broaden your audience reach and gain new leads. When you talk social media, one of the questions that always come up is, “Which social media channels should I use?” You can ask your existing customers, but if your goal is to broaden your reach and gain new leads, use a

When companies finally decide that social media is an activity they should add to their marketing campaign mix, the next question we are asked is, “how do we get started?. This article is written to help you assess the steps you can take to journey into the world of social media.

Knowing your audience’s habits

When your company decides to take the social media leap, you really need to assess which channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) you should focus on, or better yet, which channels your target audiences use. You can ask your existing customers, but if your goal is to understand the conversations taking place in your industry, and to broaden your reach and gain new leads, use a social media monitoring tool to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. There are many tools out there, free and paid, just choose one that fits your needs (we use Netvibes). You set the tool to monitor search terms or keywords that are relevant to your business. The information you gain from “listening” will help you build a good picture of your target audience, from the channels they use to the conversations they have and the questions they ask (insight into their pain points). Social media monitoring also helps to spark ideas when brainstorming content topics for articles, blog posts, white papers, and web page content — ideas that will help you provide interesting, educational, and relevant content.

So, now I know my customer’s habits, what’s next?

One of the best ways for an industrial company to get started developing social media content is to create a blog on their site. A blog is an excellent place to house and publish relevant and engaging content. But, just having a blog doesn’t mean your audience will see your posts; this is where social media comes into play – you need to tell your audience that new content exists by posting links back to the content on your social channels. Bonus, social media shares and links back to your site improve your search engine optimization efforts.

⇒Key takeaway: know which channels are the best for targeting your audience and then focus on posting to those channels only, especially if your company has limited resources.

I’ve started a blog, how do I keep the conversations going?

Having a detailed content strategy is essential to consistently publishing new content. Brainstorm interesting and relevant information that will benefit your audiences (information that will help them better perform their job). Write about new products, company events, and industry news that they would find helpful.  When brainstorming, use information gained from social monitoring and poll your customer service team – they get all kinds of questions that might spark blog post or whitepaper content. Once you have a list of topics, create an editorial calendar. The calendar should include the content you wish to share; if it exists or needs to be created, who is responsible for providing or creating the content, which customer segments should your target, when should you post or publish, and to which channels. Having a schedule helps keep you focused and ensures you consistently create and distribute information.

⇒Key takeaway: know your audience — what information they find interesting and relevant and the social channels they use. Then, post new information consistently — this means you need to be realistic about how often you can post — is it once per month or once per week. You can have internal contests to generate blog posts and see who can get the most likes and comments

Be social — just get started

Getting started using social media to communicate with your audience can seem overwhelming, but once you have it integrated with your other marketing efforts, and get some practice, you will be motivated by what you learn from your most valuable asset, your customers.

Off-Page SEO

SEO

Industrial S for SEO

SEO: The importance of off-page optimization.

In our last post, we talked about the importance of on-page search engine optimization (SEO), or the elements applied to your website’s front end content and back end code to improve its findability. In this article, we discuss off-page SEO — the marketing factors that play into findability improvements. Let’s get started.

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO are the promotional tasks and campaigns executed to improve a site’s organic search results. Off-page SEO helps you market your website and build brand awareness.

An often forgotten but important element to building a successful off-page SEO program is the creation of an editorial and scheduling calendar. Editorial calendars help ensure you consistently post relevant, quality content (think blogs & social media) and meet your promotional marketing schedules.

Off-page SEO elements

Listed below are the promotional techniques that you should consider when developing your off-page SEO plan.

Blogging

Creating a blog on your site is an excellent way to strut your stuff and build authority. Blogging is a fantastic way to get your employees to participate in promoting your business by sharing their knowledge and expertise. Blogging can also provide the content you need for a successful social media program. Two essential elements to blogging are one, consistency — if one blog post per month is all you can handle, then schedule that. One post each month is more meaningful and keeps your target audience engaged and interested in what you have to say than posting sporadically. And two, sharing your posts. Sharing is especially important when you first start blogging — if no one knows about your posts, they won’t be read and shared. A simple email message to your customer and prospect database is the perfect way to spread the word. Also, mentioning a new blog post on your social media channels will help to broaden your reach.

Social media

It’s time to get social, but only on the channels your customers and prospects participate (and contrary to some popular belief within industrial markets, your customer base does use social media). Social media is about forming relationships with your target audience by engaging them in two-way conversations — it is also an excellent way to share your content. Channels could include Google+ (which is also very helpful in improving your Google page rank), LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Photo sites like Instagram or Pinterest are excellent sites to showcase your products and services, company functions, and employees.

Link building

One of the best ways to improve your ranking is through high-quality link building. Link building should be a deliberate practice — it is always better to have a few links to reputable, authoritative sites than many links to sites that have nothing to do with your business. For industrial companies, reputable and authoritative sites would include suppliers’, distributors’, manufacturers’, and industry relevant online publications and associations.

Participating in industry forums and groups

Commenting and contributing to the conversation in industry groups and forums showcases your expertise, helps build your authority and establishes your company as industry experts. For example, if you are in the pump industry, you can join a pump group on LinkedIn.

Sitemap Submission

You always want to submit a sitemap to all search engines, and any time that you add web pages, your sitemap must be updated. Sitemaps tell search engines how to navigate your site to improve indexing, which in turn, can improve search engine page rankings. Most content management systems, like WordPress, have plugins that can automatically do this for you.

Local SEO

If your business depends on local customers, this should be on top of your list. Local SEO provides search results that are relevant to a searcher’s current location. You should claim your Google Places for Business page, complete all necessary information, and then link your Google Places page to your Google+ Local Page. One important factor to remember when submitting company information to Google is consistency. Choose an NAP (name, address, phone number) format and stick with it — search engines get confused when your listings are not consistent.

Directory submissions

Directory submissions can be free or paid, but you should focus only on submitting information to directories that are relevant to your business. Like local SEO, NAP consistency is important.

Press release promotion

Press releases are an excellent way to share broadly company information and product and service news. There are many press release submission sites, but don’t forget about industry association and publication sites. These sites typically better target the audiences that are important to your business.

Need help with any of the above off-page SEO elements? Give us a call, 360.834.2780, or send us an email, info@pumpmarketingsolutions.com — we’d love to help.

On-Page SEO

Search Engine Marketing, SEO

Industrial S for SEO

SEO: The importance of on-page optimization.

In our last blog post we talked about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), specifically, the importance of planning for it during your next website redesign project. In the article, we just touched on the elements of SEO, but want to take a deeper dive into those elements to help you improve the findability and usability of your website.

SEO elements can be broken down into two areas: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. This article will focus on on-page SEO – and next month’s article on off-page — let’s get started.

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is all the elements you apply to your website to improve its organic search engine result rankings. Elements include front-end content and backend metadata (the codes and tags that comprise front-end content). On-page SEO is the first step to getting your site found and creating the ultimate user experience.

Every SEO project should begin with thorough keyword research. If your site is dependent on ranking for certain keywords – this step should not be skipped — page keywords and phrases should drive front-end content and metadata, but remember, it is important to always write with the customer in mind.

Front-end on-page SEO elements

A good infographic for on-page SEO is “The Perfectly Optimized Page” by SEO Moz. We’ve broken down the elements below and explained them in greater detail.

Metadata Elements

Each page on your site should have unique and page relevant metadata elements — the elements are discussed below.

  • Title Tag ExampleTitle Tag: Title tags are what display in your site’s search snippet and browser tabs. Title tags directly affect a searcher’s decision to click-through to your site. One of the most important aspects of a title tag is that it is descriptive and relevant to the page content where the searcher will land. Keywords and keyword phrases should be front-loaded in your tag whenever possible. For example, if we are creating a title tag for our User Testing page, we’d create it as, Website User Testing – Pump Marketing Solutions. To avoid Title tag truncation by search engines, they should not exceed 60 characters.
  • DescriptionTagPage Description Tag: The page description is not a search engine ranking element per se, but it is important. The Description tag appears below the Title tag in your site’s search snippet – like the Title tag, it directly affects a searcher’s propensity to click-through to your site. In essence, it is the text that drives qualified traffic to your site. A well-written description makes searchers want to learn more about your product or service. Using keywords in a page description helps create relevancy between a searcher’s search terms, and will appear bolded in the snippet. An Important note to remember when crafting a page description is that it must be highly relevant to corresponding page content. If page content does not match snippet content, the searcher will immediately leave your site (in analytic terms, this is call a bounce). When sites have high bounce rates, search engines deduce that searchers did not find the content relevant to the snippet, which can affect how they rank your pages.  To avoid truncation, page descriptions should not exceed 160 characters, but note, the description in the example is only 156 characters and is truncated by nine characters. A good rule of thumb is to try and keep descriptions to 150 characters and keep the most critical information first.
  • URLURL and link structures: A well-structured URL and hyperlink is short and descriptive and should include keywords to show page relevancy. When well-structured page URLs and information hyperlinks are copied in to other sites and directories, they provide easy to recognize site and page identification. When structuring hyperlinks, on the back-end use the “href” tag as the text that displays on the page as opposed to the complete link.
  • AltTagImage Alt Tags: Image Alt tags identify images for search engines and visually impaired site visitors. If your image fails to load, Alt tags provide a text description of the image that should be displayed.

Page Content

Web pages should always be written with your customer in mind — they should be of value and contain content that is designed to inform, entice, and/or educate your audience. Research tells us the keywords customers use most, and it is these keywords that should appear strategically throughout your web page. Each page should also contain at least one image and one link to another page on your site or an authoritative third-party site. Page layout should flow in a way that leads the customer to take some action that is based on a page goal — meaning, the action you want site visitors to take.

Page Headings & Subheadings

Pages should be structured with headings and subheading that are wrapped in H tags — H tags are metadata that wrap the headings and subheadings to help search engines understand page content, flow, and relevancy.  On the front end, headings and subheading call attention to content sections and help site visitors quickly understand page content.

H tags (H1-H6):

  • The most important tag is the H1 tag — every page on your site should contain one and only one H1 tag. The H1 tag generally appears at the top of each page and provides a description of page content and whenever possible, should contain a page relevant keyword. The page’s main heading helps provide relevance to the searcher who has clicked on your search snippet.
  • H2 through H6 tags are typically used to title subsections under the H1 tag on each page. Each page can contain more than one H2-H6 tag. Think of your web page like a book, the book’s title would be an H1 tag, and each chapter would be an H2 tag. If chapters require subsections, they would be titled with H3, H4, H5, & H6 tags.

Other On-Page Elements

  • Social Sharing is becoming a more and more important factor in search engine rankings — if your content is good enough to share, then it must be significant and relevant.
  • Page load time does not directly impact search rankings. However, slow page load times (and image load time) provide a bad user experience, and you run the risk of site visitors quickly bouncing off the site.
  • Mobile Readiness is a key Google mobile search engine ranking factor. You can test your site’s pages mobile-readiness using Google’s  Mobile-Friendly Test. One way to ensure mobile-readiness is to build your site on a responsive platform. This ensures your site renders correctly on all devices.

Summary

On-page optimization is about creating a great user experience while ensuring search engine comprehension. For the user, your site should be easily navigatable, and web page layout should be structured so site visitors can quickly find the information they need. Page content should be meaningful and relevant and written with a purpose. For search engines, the necessary SEO elements should be applied for optimal search engine rankings.

When you combine the user experience with SEO best practices, optimization occurs — as with any process or product, when even one part is defective, performance suffers or fails entirely.

Need help with any of the above on-page SEO elements? Give us a call, 360.834.2780, or send us an email — we’d love to help.

Site Redesign & SEO

Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Strategy

Letter S - SEO

Thinking about a website update? Don’t forget about SEO.

We are asked the same question time and time again from clients, “we just went through a site redesign and our Google Analytics stats are down — what happened?”

We usually come back with the question, “was search engine optimization part of your redesign project?” The answer usually is, “our web design firm said they performed SEO on our site.” But what we’ve learned is that typically means they simply filled in some basic metadata and that was it — far from the rigor SEO requires.

Unless search engine optimization is part of your project plan, it won’t get completed, or if it does, as we mentioned above, it is very limited. The problem with limited SEO is like building a pump or valve with missing or flawed components — the end or produced product is flawed.

What a lot of companies don’t realize is that SEO is a roadmap for search engines. It tells your site’s story and how to navigate it can be indexed and ranked for a spot on a search results page. In a nutshell, SEO is what drives visitors to your site and helps them easily find what they need.

If you’re not familiar with SEO, a basic breakdown of the elements are listed below. Our next series of blog articles will look at each element in greater depth, so you understand why it is important and best practices to apply it to your site.

SEO Elements

  • Keyword research: understanding the search terms potential customers use to find your products and services.
  • Backend data (metadata): applying keyword optimized information to the site’s backend code that meets search engine indexing and ranking factors.
  • Sitemap submission: determining if your sitemap is correctly submitted to the search engines to ensure they understand how to navigate the site.
  • Front-end content: ensuring each web page follows the rules of a well-optimized page (both from a customer and search engine standpoint).
  • Internal linking: does your site’s internal linking follow a logical path and does it help educate and drive customers to conversion.
  • External linking: determining how well your site utilizes external links from authoritative sites.
  • Optimizing for local search: If local search is important to your business, determining how well the site is optimized for local search.

Need SEO planning before or after your website update or redesign project? We’d love to help. Give us a call at 360.834.2780 or send us an email at info@pumpmarketingsolutions.com to get started today.

Local Search

Search Engine Marketing, SEO

Letter L for Leads

Qualified leads

Don’t forget about your own backyard.

Pump distribution is a competitive business — not only are you competing with other distributors, but also with catalog houses and in some cases, the manufacturer.

So how do you reach those highly qualified, potential leads that reside within your region or territory? Local search engine optimization (LSEO). LSEO is something a lot of industrial companies overlook when they go through standard search engine optimization (SEO) activities. Your own backyard is the best place to target the most qualified leads.

There are a few things you can start doing today to help those within your region find your site.

  1. Local On-Page SEO: Adding location keywords to a relevant web page title tags, header tags, page URLs if possible, and page content.
  2. Citations: One of the main search engine ranking factors for local search is the number of citations a company has. A citation is any place on the web that displays your company’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). The most important thing to know about citations is that it is imperative for NAPs to appear correctly and consistently across all citations. Citation consistency allows search engines to trust location information. Citations should include photos and categories when available. To get started, locate and optimize existing citations, claim and optimize unclaimed citations, and uncover opportunities for new citations. Www.moz.com/local is a great way to get started.
  3. Google My Business: Google is still the number one search engine so it is important to take advantage of Google’s free tools that help give your business an edge on search results page. By claiming your Google My Business page, Google puts your company’s info on Search, Maps, and Google+ to help customers find you on any device. Get started today at www.google.com/business.
  4. Local Reviews: Google+ is a great way to build product and service reviews on the web. If you are hesitant about starting a blog on your company website, Google+ is a great format to get started. If you have a blog, you can post your articles on Google+ to help broaden your articles reach and grow your potential customer base. You can use Google+ to showcase your products and services with images and video.

So what are you waiting for? Get started on your Local Search Engine Optimization today and capture that business that is right in your own backyard. If you need help getting started or some guidance, don’t hesitate to give us a call, 360.834.2780.