A recent article over at SEOMoz discussed the importance of diversity in your SEO strategy and it really got us thinking. The idea of diversity is important for your entire digital marketing strategy, from SEO to social media to email marketing. SEOMoz calls it diversity, but here at Astonish, we call it a blended strategy!

Blending your digital marketing strategies may be easier than you think. When looking to diversify, pay attention to your:

Links

Not only is it important to diversify your links to keep things fresh, but it’s also important to stay on the up-and-up with Google. You want to make sure that there is a variety of ways for visitors to get to you and you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you’re getting the majority of your links from directories, try grabbing opportunities to guest blog with a local newspaper (Patch.com is great for this) or a local organization / chamber of commerce. Even the highest quality of link building tactic (PR, guest blogging, directories, etc.) can become low quality if you abuse it. Spread the link love and build your backlink portfolio.

Traffic Sources

Similarly to the places you have links back to your site, you want to make sure you have a variety of outside sources bringing traffic to your site. Whether you’re bringing people in from email marketing or social media, make sure you keep it diverse. If your agency is really strong on Facebook and you’re bringing visitors to your website from there, try integrating more focus on Twitter and Google+ and pushing visitors from those sites.

Point of View

Diversifying your point of view may be a little trickier than your links and traffic sources. For the most part, your point of view is who you are as an agency. But it also has to do with your attitude. You don’t have to change who you are and the message you send by changing your point of view, but rather just change your attitude. The insurance industry can be a tough market for content generation whether it is through email, blogging, or social media. One rut you don’t want to get into is thinking your industry is too boring for creativity – that is the WRONG idea to have! You have to approach your marketing efforts with a fresh perspective and passion for your subject matter. If you’re bored with your content, then your readers, customers, and potential customers will feel that way too. Sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone to come up with new ideas – look at your agency as an outsider, go through some of your sales processes as if you’re a new customer, have one of your staff members explain to you why your agency is different and better than all the rest. Consider the things you’re doing within your community or for charitable organizations. A renewed positive attitude can do just the trick in triggering content ideas.

If you adjust anything in your digital marketing efforts for 2013, let it be the diversity in what you’re doing – make sure you’re using a blended strategy. The change up will pay off, giving you a new gusto for your marketing efforts, improved attitude, and in turn better interaction and engagement for your audience!

The Google Penguin update has come and gone, but many websites are still feeling the after effects (e.g. dropping keyword rankings and traffic). It has not been confirmed by Google whether or not Penguin will continue to roll out updates as Panda did, but many industry experts are expecting it will. Regardless of whether or not your site was negatively hit by Penguin, there are a number of things you should be doing to help make sure that never happens. One place to start your focus is on your link building efforts.

The key to building links in the wake of Penguin is to keep things natural and relevant. You want to post links to your site within websites that are both high quality and relevant to your industry and/or community. Here are a couple of great examples to get you started…

Press Releases

Submitting press releases online provide a great opportunity to obtain a high quality link back to your website and get your business some exposure. Typically, when you write and submit a press release through an online wire service, they will allow you to place at least one link back to your site within the content of your release. However, you want to make sure that you are only putting one link in your release content. Many online PR sites will refuse to post releases that have excessive links – it’s better to stick to one link back to your website. Remember, not only do you want to follow the guidelines of the particular PR service you use, but you also want to link naturally to your site – that means not stuffing the content of your release with links!

Guest Blogging

Writing and posting guest blogs is another great way to get natural and relevant links back to your website. Guest blogging will require a little more work as you’ll need to build relationships and content partnerships with websites and blogs that pertain to your industry, niche specialty, or local community. The days of blog commenting any place you can to get links are over – this is considered a “spammy” practice. Reach out to local community sites (e.g. your local Patch.com site), industry related sites (e.g. PIA), and other relevant websites. Ask if these sites would like to begin a content partnership; you can guest blog on their site, they can guest blog on yours. Not only will it provide you with a chance to post content and a link back to your site on a quality website, it will also allow for guest posting on your site which provides an added value to your customers and prospects.

The important thing to remember in building links post-Penguin is to ensure that your links are always natural and relevant – do not link to excess. With link building, it’s about quality over quantity, always. How are you obtaining links? Tweet me at @Astonish_Shawna with your ideas!

In my last blog post, I discussed the importance of link building on the web, and how links can improve your Google PageRank.  Here at Astonish we have our own link building methods, but these are some you can try yourself.
Although it might seem like a no-brainer, one of the best methods of getting a link is by e-mailing your friends, family, and loyal customers.  You already know that they would recommend you in person, so it makes sense that they would be happy to recommend you on the web as well.  Unless you ask, you’ll never know if one of them might have a popular website or blog on which a link to your site could result in tons of views!

Another way to get links is to ask the owners of other websites if they will link to yours.  A good place to start is with pages that already link to similar content to yours, or that might have content which is related to (but not in direct competition with) yours in some way.  If you sell car insurance, you might want to ask local autobody shops, driver training schools, or maybe even car dealers for links.  Some of these companies may desire some sort of payment for putting a link on their site; in exchange, you could offer to link back to their sites on your webpage.

Making a donation can be another avenue to getting a link.  Frequently charities and nonprofits list the names of the companies and individuals who contribute to their cause as a way of saying thanks.  Some might be happy to add a link along with your name, if you ask.  Check out their website beforehand, to see if anyone else has a backlink.  Not only would you be doing something good for your community, but your company would be benefiting as well.  If you donate to a school or teaching hospital, you might even get your link on a “.edu” website, which are highly trusted sites.

If you try these different methods, you will probably be rewarded with a numerous links from a variety of domains.  This can be a big factor in improving your Google PageRank. A small effort or cost on your part could potentially turn into great results for your company.  Get your links out there, and you never know what the returns might be.

The world of Internet Marketing is always changing, so Astonish Results makes it a priority to provide employees with opportunities to educate themselves and stay on top of the latest trends. On April 2, I was lucky enough to attend Distilled’s LinkLove conference in Boston.

LinkLove is the ultimate gathering of the web’s top link builders. We met at the Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School (I like to think spending the day at Harvard made me smarter by osmosis) and had the honor of listening to nine speakers, each with their own area of expertise. The presenters were the best of the best in our field. If there was a king of SEO, Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz would be the reigning monarch…and he was there! Other presenters included Justin Briggs, Ross Hudgens, Rhea Drysdale, Wil Reynolds, John Doherty, Adam Audette, Colby Almond and Tom Critchlow – all AWESOME.

I learned a ton and look forward to implementing some things I learned in to Astonish’s link building tactics, but there are also some things I learned that are great for you as a business owner to keep in mind:

I want to thank Distilled for hosting such an outstanding conference and Astonish Results for giving me the opportunity to attend. I can’t wait to put all of the speakers’ great tips and tricks in to action for our clients!

Traditionally, Insurance Agencies were “Mom & Pop” businesses located on Main Streets.  The agents typically met their clients in the neighborhood where they worked.  They’d walk out on the street and greet potential clients with a handshake and a smile.  Perhaps they had booths at town events or sponsored the local baseball team.  They’d provide great customer service and their clients would give them referrals.  The best way to gain new clients was to build strong personal links in the community.

Nowadays, potential clients generally search on the Internet for insurance rather than on Main Street.  About 50% of new website traffic comes from search engines, and roughly 70% of that traffic comes directly from Google.  A potential client will probably open a search engine and type in something like, “Rhode Island home insurance,” and click on the results.  They might click a few of the links, and request a few quotes, but chances are they will only click the links on the first search engine result page.  In fact,  the top 10 results receive about 90% of the traffic.  The potential client is not going to go to the 10th results page and start clicking there.  That’s why you need to optimize your site!   Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of helping customers find your website via search engines.  A website with great SEO will come up higher in searches on sites like Google.  That means an optimized site will probably have increased traffic, and therefore, the company which runs the site will have more potential business opportunities and sales.

One way to increase your SEO is through link building…and no, I don’t mean the Main Street kind!  Web Link building is placing links to your website on other websites so that you can generate more traffic.  If a potential client is reading a website or blog about insurance, and it links back to your agency’s website, you might get a new client.  Or, if your website is linked on other webpages which have a high page rank (quality of the site, affecting the order in which results are shown on search engines), that will tell the search engines that your site is important and should show up higher in searches too!  This is really beneficial since we know that a higher search result means more traffic and more potential clients.

While it will always be important to build links in your community, remember the importance of building web links as well!