This is due to the fact that consumer habits have changed significantly in recent years. If you cannot keep up with the growth of digital competences of your target group, a problem will arise. Your customers – both a large proportion of the current ones and a large number of potential new ones – are already online. If you do not wait for them there, when the moment comes when they will start looking for services or products offered by your company, they will turn to the better digitally exposed competition.

Internet marketing, especially if your company has not carried out such activities before (or has conducted them to a minimal extent), is an activity that requires a large dose of knowledge at the very beginning. Moreover, to say that later the necessity to broaden marketing horizons grows exponentially would be a delicate hyperbole at best. It is also worth remembering that while some of the elements that make up the digital image of a brand can be done for free or with a low effort and budget, costs will increase as they develop.

How to start internet marketing? Which tools to use? Which are essential at the beginning and which can be postponed when the brand grows digitally?

SEO

Virtually every brand should have its own website. Thanks to this, you can provide customers with basic information about your services / products and, above all, let them find you. A well-made website will allow you to make the right first impression and provide the necessary contact details. The website should be readable, aesthetic, fast and adapted to User Experience standards (more about UX later in the text).

However, in order for the website to be properly visible, it is important to properly approach its positioning. When a user enters a phrase that interests him / her, it returns a list of several dozen or several hundred thousand results in a specific order. It is not accidental, and the constantly evolving Google algorithm is responsible for it. However, you can live in harmony with it and use good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices from the very beginning.

The SEO of websites and online stores can be divided into two categories. The first is changes that we can make on the website itself – sometimes the whole process is called on-site SEO, i.e. SEO performed directly on the website. They mainly include the creation and optimization of content in such a way that it is “easy to digest” both for the user and for the search engine bot who will regularly visit and analyze the website.

It also means that the content is saturated with keywords for which we want to position the page – they should appear in several places in the text (possibly also in the headings), but you should not overdo them with excessive, unnatural intensity, because this will reduce the readability and quality of the text itself. To gain space for content that does not overwhelm with quantity (no one likes to read a wall of text), you should think about starting a company blog. This will allow not only to increase the amount of content, but also to present the brand as it deserves – i.e. as an expert in a given industry. In addition to substantive articles on a given branch of the market, the blog is a great place to present employees, current achievements and corporate culture – so that customers can also see the “human face” of the company.

On-site SEO also focuses on the technical refinement of the website:
– improving its loading time (the vast majority of users will resign from visiting if the page loading takes more than a few seconds) – this can be achieved, among others, by image compression, code minification, transfer to a faster server, etc .;
– adaptation to display on screens of different resolutions (most of the internet traffic takes place via smartphones, which requires the use of other solutions than in the case of typical desktop versions – users of desktop and laptop computers, however, cannot be forgotten, there are also tablets);
– SSL certificate installation – it ensures encrypted communication between the website visitor and the server and is taken into account by Google bots;
– And many other aspects.

The second, no less important part of SEO is getting links leading to a given website, which is referred to by the term off-site SEO. It is they who signal to the network bot that, according to the social proof of rightness, the website is probably valuable and it is possible to raise its position in the search results. The key, however, is not to “hack” the right number of links from random pages – in SEO, the number must go hand in hand with quality. Tools such as Senuto or Ahrefs help in analyzing the link profile.

At the initial stage, the key information about SEO is the fact that SEO is a long-term process. Achieving satisfactory results is not possible in a week, month, and often even a year – it requires creating a plan and its proper implementation, adapting to the current algorithm updates and continuous training. What’s worse, once the results are achieved, it is easy to lose, for example, due to an ill-considered website update, which, for example, will cause problems with indexing individual subpages.

SEO audit

If you already have a website, it is worth checking carefully how it is doing in the search engine and what can be done to improve its positioning status. We are talking about performing an SEO audit, thanks to which you can check both the elements that can be improved on the site itself (on-site SEO) and the link profile (off-site SEO). On the web you can find many sites – both free and paid – with which you will automatically collect basic information on this topic. At Paraphrase Online com, we also prepared the possibility of conducting such a quick audit. The Google PageSpeed Insights tool, which checks the speed of operation and other basic elements that make up the “performance” of the website, may also be useful.

As a collection of general information, automatic SEO auditors and similar scripts are the first base for further actions. They only take into account the very basic factors influencing the position of the website, so if you think about SEO “seriously”, a professional audit by a specialist will be necessary. Multifaceted analysis allows you to develop a detailed SEO strategy, which in the vast majority of cases (except for extremely niche market sectors) is necessary to bring the website to meaningful results.

Google My Business

When a potential customer enters a company name, a section with details about the specific company often appears on the right next to the search results. Setting up such a business card is free, so you can display the most important data – phone number, address, opening hours or photos of the registered office. Thanks to this, the user has access to basic data without the need to search further, and you can make the right first impression. We write in detail about the GMF in a separate article on our blog.

Social Media

Social media is the modern equivalent of city centers. Depending on the current status of a given portal, they can be bustling (like Instagram or TikTok) or abandoned (like MySpace used to be). There is no doubt, however, that the presence in social media will be useful for most brands – they are perfect platforms for quick contact with the client – not only announcements “I am a given brand”, but also “maybe it’s worth establishing a dialogue?”.

The first question to be answered when considering setting up a brand account on social media is “which website is your target audience on?”. Each website is characterized by a slightly different user profile – due to the skillfully built up position of Facebook over the years, theoretically, you will find all age groups there, but Instagram and TikTok reach younger users better. Each platform has its own code – IG is an image-based platform, TikTok is mainly short videos, Twitter is primarily based on 280-character text messages.

Think about which website your brand fits best. A dynamic brand aimed at teenagers, with skilful profile management, will be great on TikTok, while in the case of care products for seniors, the presence there will probably end up in business terms as a waste of time and resources.

There are many brands in social media. This is a huge overload of information for the user. Due to this accumulation in social media, the company should stand out – not use a clichéd, boring narrative. You have a split second to catch the eye of a potential customer – don’t waste it on overproducing clichés.

It is worth knowing that the era of organic reach (that is, achieved without the support of paid ads) is gone forever. Your fanpage on Facebook will not be displayed to all users who once clicked “I like it” and they hope that it will allow them to update about new posts. Social networks are increasingly monetizing their activities and focus on presenting paid ads. For this reason, bearing in mind your presence in social media, it is worth allocating part of the budget, for example Facebook Ads – it is a waste of time for content creators to see the posts by a dozen or several dozen people.

Google Ads is a powerful advertising system that allows you to reach millions of potential customers.

The Google Ads ecosystem allows, among other things, to show ads:
– In search results – above and below organic results. This placement guarantees adequate exposure of the advertisement and is usually associated with clicks. An advertisement placed especially at the very top of SERPs, although marked appropriately, is sometimes confused with a traditionally positioned page.
– On YouTube – the largest video content portal in the world is also an excellent advertising platform. You can place ads before, during and after your videos (in the form of videos), as well as text overlays, product overlays. The system also allows the use of several other formats (e.g. at the top of the column with suggestions for other movies to watch).
– On millions of portals associated with the Google Display Network partner network. Thanks to this, you can display ads on many lifestyle, news or journalistic websites – the network brings together both small blogs run by hobbyists and the largest wide-range horizontal portals in the world. Furthermore, your ads may be shown to specific users – those who, for example, have previously visited your website or expressed interest in similar products. This is a great way to remind customers about yourself.
– In Discovery Ads – a graphic and video format based not on the sent ready materials, but on a set of elements that, based on self-learning algorithms, the system dynamically mixes, thanks to which it selects a creation that will generate the best results in a given place and under given conditions. Discovery Ads appear on Discover tabs, Gmail (“Offers” and “Communities” tabs) and YouTube (“Watch Later” panel and the platform’s home page).
– In Google Shopping – In the “shopping” tab of the search results page, there is a product price comparison platform. In addition, you can also advertise specific articles there over the “normal” results. What’s more, product ads can also appear in traditional SERPs – when a user enters a phrase in Google that suggests a product (for example, a drone or a thermal mug), Google Ads may display an ad for your product with an image, name, price and, of course, a link to the store’s website.
– And this is only a part of the possibilities of Google Ads!

What else is worth knowing about Google Ads? Out of reach, the system is distinguished by enormous targeting possibilities. Unlike, for example, a TV advertisement, we have the option of precisely specifying to whom the message is to be displayed, which prevents the budget from being wasted. The platform also enables dynamic adjustment of the target group based on the collected data, thanks to which it can rotate ads in real time to people who, according to the system, have the best prognosis for conversion. Supportive solutions such as POCM are also available, which adapt the data 24/7 thanks to self-learning algorithms.

Related to this is the fact that in order to take full advantage of Google Ads, the system must have “what” to collect data on, which is why it is a solution that requires a financial contribution.

How to start internet marketing?

The channels presented above are a good start for a brand that wants to start online marketing in its company. Of course, this is only the tip – digital marketing offers basically endless possibilities. The key is to choose the right channels – so that communication is consistent and results grow.

Why is blog content important?

Content marketing is also content marketing – everything we publish on our website. Thanks to it, we can reach more recipients and provide users with interesting information.

We can write them in the form of blog posts, reports, guides, product descriptions or interviews. Here, we can only be limited by creativity (and the scope of our activity), because there may be many ideas for showing uniqueness and the way of presenting content.

Articles on the site are usually created by copywriters, but not only. Articles can also be written by owners or people working in other departments of the company. Thanks to this, we can write more specialized articles on a given topic and save money.

Why does content matter in SEO?

Uniqueness, timeliness and high quality are of great importance for a good ranking of our website. Before the implementation of the algorithms: Penguin, Panda or Koliber, it was possible to “spam” the text with key phrases – this was often enough to achieve high positions in Google. Fortunately, we have long since passed away.

New algorithms evaluate the quality of our content, so we must ensure that it is of the highest level. The article not only has to meet the user’s requirements, but also has to be optimized for search engines such as Google or Bing.

SEO + Content are inextricably linked. Without content, we will not do internal linking well, we will not saturate the page with key phrases and we will not present the user with information about our company, product or values that we want to convey to him.

Content update – why is it important?

We already know that the content affects the position of our website and we should take care of it. So why are there articles that used to be 1st in Google, and then dropped? After all, we put a lot of time and work into them. There can be many factors that influence it. One of them may be that our content has become outdated.

Attention!
Of course, this is not the only ranking factor we should consider. Great content without any other SEO efforts may yield zero or very low results.

Over time, the information we post on the website loses its value.

Content that was created in 2017 may not be up to date this year.  Especially if in the article we referred to the legal provisions in force at that time (which were amended at that time), the prices that were in force at that time (during these 3 years the costs of products could change) or statistical data from that period.

Google tries to provide users with not only the highest quality content, but also tries to provide up-to-date information.

Content update – how to choose the ones that need to be changed?

A. Content that is no longer relevant
Over time, our content may become obsolete, and the things we wrote about no longer apply. We can then redirect them 301 to a similar entry or try to bite the topic differently if users are still looking for information on this topic.

Example:
A few years ago, we wrote an article about loans for own contribution. Currently, banks do not allow financing of own contribution from such a source.

However, they allow loans from developers for own contribution and some users are looking for information on this subject. We can rewrite the article from scratch in this regard to provide the user with the necessary and current news.

B. Articles with specific time periods
If we can – avoid giving dates in articles. If this is not possible, let’s make a spreadsheet in which we write down the content that has it and when we should update it. There are content that we can update annually, and there may be content that we should change every month.

C. Comments below the article that may expand it
Users often pay attention to things that the writer may not notice. The comments may contain interesting information or questions about which we can update our content. Not every user reads the comments posted under the articles (especially if there are many of them). Thanks to the expansion of the main content of the post, we can provide all readers with interesting information.

D. “Walls of text” without highlighter
We can try to make our content more attractive to the user to make it easier and more pleasant to read. Here we can use various types of sections, for example:
– highlighted examples,
– lists of bullets,
– quotes,
– graphical linking to other related articles,
– expert advice,
– summary,
– infographics.
Thanks to such measures, our content can be clearer for the reader.

E. General Content
It happens that we write an article that is very general or touches on many topics a little. We can expand it with new information or write new related articles, where we will explain all the issues to the user in detail.

Example:
We have a summary article about the most important Google algorithms. Each of them is briefly described to provide the most important information about them.

We can do 2 things with it:
– expand the article and describe each algorithm in detail. Thanks to this, we will have an article that is very extensive and comprehensive topic. When new algorithms are entered, we can add them to this article in an equally exhaustive way,
– we can write separate articles, where we will describe each algorithm in detail. From the base article about the most important algorithms, we can refer the user to separate articles on the topic that interested him by internal linking.

F. Duplication of content
It may happen that we have several hundred articles on the website and we forget that we have already written such an article. It turns out that our content cannibalize ourselves with keywords. Let’s check which article appears with a larger number of phrases and which users visit more often and combine it into one. Remember to redirect the article from which we resign to the content left on the website.

G. Is the article we wrote easy for the user or is it incomprehensible?
Remember that we do not write content only for Google – they are created primarily with the user in mind. It is he who will read the article and should understand everything from it. If it seems to us that the article we wrote is very specialized and we use heavy terms in it – let us read it to a person who is unfamiliar with this topic. If the reader does not understand a part – it is worth simplifying it, because another person may also have a problem with it.

Example:
One of our editors is a lawyer who uses many specialized terms or quotes from statutes. They may be incomprehensible to some users. By using examples where we realistically present a given situation, it may turn out that it will be a sufficient simplification of the content + we gain valuable content.

H. Short, low-quality content
If we have an article on the website on a topic that has a large number of searches – it is worth expanding it. Thanks to this, we can provide valuable information to the user and appear in the search engine for more searches. It is worth the article to be exhaustive and to convey everything possible.

Content update – minor changes

Let’s start with the content that is, for example, from this year and requires only minor updates. We don’t have to rewrite the whole article then (although it may turn out that a minor update will change the meaning of the whole article – then it is worth rewriting it) – we can only change a few small things in the article.

If we only make minor changes – it is worth adding the update date section in the article (we then show the user that the article is already on the website for a while, but is constantly updated).

Examples of what we can pay attention to with minor updates:

A. The prices given in the articles are no longer valid
If we are a comparison engine or we run an online store – the prices of our services or products may change dynamically. It is worth that the price offer that we present in the articles should coincide with the prices that we place in the product categories. This saves the user the trouble of figuring out which price is correct.

Attention!
This is especially important when we raise the price of a product. If we do this, and in the article the price we gave was lower and we did not mention the promotion there – the user may start looking for a product at this price on other websites and not come back to us.

B. The products we wrote about are no longer available for sale
If a product has been permanently withdrawn from sale, will the user want to read about it? What if the product has only been recalled with us? We can then expect 2 things:
– if the user is interested in this product – he can leave our store again and go to the competition, where he will get the product
– the user may waste time reading about a product that they will not get anyway. Here, too, negative emotions may arise because he will be disappointed with the inability to buy.

It is then worth updating the article and replacing this unavailable article with a product with similar parameters to the withdrawn one. Thanks to this, we will present the user with information about the products that he will surely get from us in the store.

Attention!
If the product has been temporarily withdrawn – it is worth mentioning with the product that it is a temporary shortage and we will give the user the opportunity to set a reminder when the product is available for sale again.
If the product has been permanently withdrawn – we can compare different versions of this product (if of course they are and we can compare them) or make a comparison with similar products. Then we can encourage the user to buy a new and improved model.

C. The links to which we referred the user have changed
Both external and internal links are important here. After all, we do not want to send the user to page 404, where he will not find the information he is interested in.
When updating your content, it’s also worth taking a look at because we may have missed some deleted link and not redirected it to the correct URL.

D. Title and meta description
If we change the content of the article – it is also worth updating the metadata. Thanks to this, we will show the user in the search engine that our content is up-to-date. If we change the whole and leave “2019 ranking” in Title -> the user can skip our entry and move to another, thinking that ours is not up to date enough.

E. Infographics
If we rely on infographics in our article, we must also remember about them. If we change the prices in the content and leave the old user in the infographic, he may get lost and not be sure which ones are up to date.

F. Legal regulations / sources we rely on
If we rely on legal provisions / statistical sources in our articles – remember that they may also change. When updating the content, let’s also take this into account so as not to unnecessarily mislead the user.

G. Structured data
More and more websites use the FAQ schema. It is worth checking whether the change of content on the website also causes a change in the structural data. It may turn out that the website is coded in such a way that IT sets this data. We must then remember this, because the schema should contain exactly the same information that appears on the website.

Attention!
If we update an article – remember to check the entire content. The update date indicates that it is up-to-date at the moment. If we update only part of it, the user will be misled by us because some of the information will be up-to-date and some not.

These are just a few examples that we can pay attention to – it is worth reviewing what we write about on our website and finding out for yourself which information, in our opinion, may be outdated for the user.

Examples of tools to help us update content

Google Analytics
We can check which content has a high bounce rate and a small number of hits. It may be the fault of the articles we published. Let’s find out what’s wrong with them and try to update them.

SERP
Let’s check TOP10 search results – thanks to this we will find out what is missing in our article. It is also worth using similar searches and Google hints.

Example:
We have an article on business activity. Thanks to Google’s hints, we can check what information users are looking for.

Ahrefs
Ahrefs provides a “Content GAP” feature, so we can compare our article with articles on the same competition. Here, we will also receive information on which phrases our article does not appear in the search engine.