In the zombie apocalypse, you’re more likely to end up being food for the hungry than getting fed if you don’t put together a plan before the first walkers rise from their graves. While the zombie apocalypse isn’t a reality, online marketing is, and there are actually striking similarities. The online world is littered with corpses of businesses who have tried SEO only to find they’ve been eaten alive by a more prepared competition! – Stoney G deGeyter
This is a quote from A Survival Guide for the Overwhelmed Online Marketer from Search Engine Journal’s SEO 101 Series. I honestly can say I’ve never equated online marketing with a zombie apocalypse, but I sure see overwhelmed online marketers and it is true that if you don’t keep up with it you will be left behind. In this case, that’s pages back in the search results where people are looking for what you sell or do. Most people don’t go past the first page or so, and that’s why you need to stay on top of things.
Plan Your Strategy Carefully
The Survival Guide suggests a P.L.A.N. That’s P for Priorities, those basic online marketing survival strategies. L for Landscape, determining web marketing facts from fiction. A for Action, optimization tools and tactics you need to stay alive. Finally, there’s N for Navigation, maintaining a healthy web presence amidst evolving algorithms.
The priorities are all the techniques that should be in your toolbox. If you don’t have these, you’ll have a hard time doing the rest of it. What are these priorities? They don’t come in an ordered list, because they all work together. Stoney G deGeyter breaks these down into five areas:
- Quick victories — PPC, remarketing, website architecture
- Optimization essentials — keyword research, titles & tags, text & links, navigation, authority building
- User experience — site navigation, conversion optimization, voice
- Going local — on-page signals, third party signals, reviews
- Interaction and authority building — social media, reputation management, content strategy
I’m not going to go into the rest of the stuff in the P.L.A.N. because it’s a good guide. But before you go read it, think about these priorities and whether you have the time to figure this important stuff out on your own. Sometimes, asking an expert for an online health checkup can target your weak spots and get you ready to meet whatever is out there. There may not be zombies, but it still takes constant vigilance to stay alive in online marketing.