By David Farkas – CEO of The Upper Ranks

5 Keys To Online Success in 2015

Do you wish more customers would walk through your door?

With more and more people going online for all of their needs, online marketing is an opportunity to open the floodgates of boundless leads and sales. The challenge is understanding what to do, where to do it, and how to do it. The benefit of the internet is that it is huge; the challenge of the internet is that it is huge!

During this post, I will give you 5 keys to have a successful 2015.

Here it goes:

Key #1: Go Mobile

According to Pew Research, 58% of American adults own a smartphone, while 42% own a tablet, and analysts expect mobile Internet use to outpace desktop Internet use in the coming year. This means that a lot of people have the ability to connect to the internet from just about anywhere, at any time.

So what does this mean for you? Opportunity. You have an opportunity to reach more people the exact moment they are searching for you, as long as your website is responsive and nimble on all devices.

You may have noticed that Google recently started labeling websites ‘Mobile-friendly’ so that their mobile searchers can avoid websites that require laborious pinching, zooming, and scrolling in order to view. It’s also worth noting that a website that isn’t mobile-friendly is at risk of getting demoted in the search engines.

Having a mobile friendly website is simply no longer optional, so be sure your website looks and operates perfectly on all devices. If you’re unsure whether your website is mobile-friendly, then quickly run it through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

Key #2: Focus On Building Your Brand

You may not be a large company like Coke® or Gillette®, but even a small business can benefit from branding. Focusing your online marketing on branding your company as the authority in your niche is priceless because it enables you to stand out from the crowd.

When you position yourself as an expert, or build up your company as the “go-to” source for the best product and information, you have the ability to capture more of your potential customers and distinguish yourself from industry giants such as Amazon and eBay.

Key #3: Create Awesome Content

Only 23% of companies in 2012 had a content marketing strategy, while today over 50% of businesses, big and small, have now implemented a content marketing strategy.

This involves insight into what content appeals to your target audience, which can be articles, videos, photos, graphics, podcasts, whitepapers and books, just to name a few. One piece of quality content has the potential to launch a multi-million dollar business.

Because content marketing has the ability to bring in customers long after the content is created and published, companies are allocating more of their marketing budget to this form of online marketing, and you should too!

Key #4: Earn Quality Links

Links from other sites pointing to your website remains the strongest signal that search engines consider when ranking a website. After you’ve created compelling content, the hunt begins to find relevant sites that will have an interest in linking to you because of the value that you bring to their own readers. Finding these sites and getting them to link to you is a skilled and time-consuming process, but it is well worth the effort.

What used to be just a numbers games is now more refined and the relevancy of the sites that are linking to your content plays a key factor in how much “juice” that link will give you. People who are building links simply for the sake of building links are wasting both time and money, and low quality links will at best, be of no value and at worst, cause your rankings to drop off the face of the earth.

If your links are not earned, you will get burned.

Key #5: Stop Searching For A (Cheap) Silver Bullet

One thing you will notice when you search for online marketing solutions is the promise of a silver bullet to fully automate your online marketing “for just $99.95 for a limited time, just for you and only for today!”, or you’ll receive an email from a marketing consultant written in a purple font with broken English that begins with “Dear Sir or Madam” promising that they will launch a winning content marketing campaign for you.

That’s sounds pretty tempting, right? Just pay a hundred bucks, download some questionable software or hire an SEO company and wait for the profits to start rolling in. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy, and in fact, you are more likely to do irreversible damage rather than help yourself.

Conclusion

In a web-driven world, online marketing must be a vital part of any business plan, but figuring out an actionable strategy can sometimes seem like a maze of confusion. The good news is that looking back, we can glean a clear direction of what will work and what will hurt, and if you follow the keys I outlined together with a long-term vision, you will experience exponential growth. Quality will dominate 2015.