Managing your Digital Footprint
- Developing a Thought Architecture to underpin the Digital Footprint
- Digital Footprint Policies
- Website
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Design Standards
- Analytics and reporting
- Social Media
- Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
- Community Management
- Analytics and Reporting
- Online Publications
In the business world, digital technologies often reshape the way work is done. Organisations know that if they are to stay relevant, they have to embrace digital. But the way they execute this transformation makes a big difference in whether they achieve what they’ve set out to. Jorge Becerra (BCG)
The porous internet
The internet is porous; information and opinions flow freely to and from multiple platforms. They are redacted and added to along the way, and their consumption is also clouded by people’s personal knowledge, filters (religious. political etc,) and biases.
When developing a Digital Strategy, it is critical that consideration must be given to all these aspects.
Online Reputation Management
ORM is the activity of monitoring conversations taking place online with the intention of understanding stakeholders’ views towards an organisation to inform strategies and to manage reputation. ORM will empower the organisation to manage opportunities and risks to allow for tactical responses, in near real-time.
Reporting on and Measuring the Digital Footprint
When you’re looking for areas to grow and improve your business, reviewing and analyzing your digital footprint is a great place to start. This audit of your online presence and marketing is also called a digital marketing report, and it’s a critical part of your marketing strategy. By understanding where you can improve online and what’s working well for your business, you’ll figure out where you should focus your attention and other areas where your efforts may not be paying off.
Taking this digital footprint of your business includes looking at several factors of your online presence that include:
Website
For many businesses, your website provides the first impression your potential customers will get of you. An extensive digital marketing report will look at several components of your website and determine which areas are working for you, and what can be improved.
To create this portion of the report, we look at:
- Aesthetics;
- Front-end functionality;
- Do the links work?
- Can you complete forms?
- Does it return the appropriate responses?
- Back-end functionality;
- Content
- Is the Architecture logical?
- Is it written for SEO?
- Are there outbound links?
- Does it follow a consistent style guide?
- Readability;
- Mobile device responsiveness.
These factors each contribute to a user’s overall impression of your website. For example, a digital marketing report might find that your website doesn’t include an email signup so you could be missing out on potential business that way. Similarly, examining the content might highlight that key messaging isn’t as visible as it should be, so you may not be making the impact you desire.
SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way of boosting your online presence by helping you rank higher on search engine sites like Google.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of boosting your online presence by helping you rank higher on search engine sites like Google. Search engines look for relevant content on your page when deciding how you’ll be placed in search results pages. A digital marketing report will not only determine how you’re ranking on search engines but also where you can improve your ranking by looking at factors like keyword-rich content and meta-tagging.
Be careful only to use white hat SEO.
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is the body of approved search engine optimization tactics designed to increase a website’s position on a search engine results page.
Search engine results that appear as a result of approved methods, rather than payment or trickery, are referred to as organic search results.
9 White Hat SEO Techniques
It’s important to understand not only what tactics work, but how to pull them off so that they make the biggest difference for you.
Prioritise Quality Content
The content on your website is one of the most significant search ranking factors within search engines, and becoming even more important in the future.
It’s not as simple as just writing “good” relevant content though. Google’s search engine evaluates your site content based on a range of different signals that include:
- Length
- Topic
- Keyword distribution
- Links (and their anchors)
- Age
The right way to write content is to make sure that it is appropriately long, relevant and well-sourced.
Plan ahead whenever you create a piece of content to make sure that you have enough information to fill your article with valuable information.
A quality piece of content can be an engine for the development of a page, multiple pages, or an entire website. However, content needs a long time, sometimes even the best content needs between 3 to 5 months to mature.
Your site is required to satisfy your user’s intent.
Satisfy The User Intent
Google’s search engine has long been obsessed with delivering search results that more accurately match the motivations of searchers, a mission that has been called “user intent”.
Every update has been about building up the number and accuracy of the factors that go into guessing user intent.
Everything you do, from your content to your site layout and images should be based around matching the intent of the users who are navigating to your site via online search engines.
Focus
Google’s search engine prioritises toward content that can be easily read on mobile devices.
Claim Your Local Business Listing
Delivering locally relevant results is just one more way that the Google algorithm is trying to match user intent. Naturally, users who are looking for home services, restaurants or some outdoor fun don’t want to see search results that are hundreds of kms away.
Make User Experience (UX) a Priority
Meeting demands for better website UX is one of the ways that white hat SEO tactics have pulled so far ahead of black hat SEO techniques in recent years. Google’s business model is predicated on providing a great and accurate search experience to their audience. They now have a massive range of signals that allow them to identify (and punish) bad site experiences.
Bounce rates help Search Engines identify when a site is delivering a bad experience because a user’s requirements aren’t being met if they immediately leave a site.
Excellent Keyword Research
Google’s search engine considers an entire constellation of signals around certain terms to determine if they are being used appropriately, authentically and with consideration for the requirements of the user.
“Keywords” doesn’t refer to single terms anymore, but instead the whole body of terms that is used in a niche, including longer phrases that point to intent and the context in which they are used.
The techniques employed to properly use keywords is to use them all, use them naturally, and ensure that they fit the topics in which they are being introduced. Keyword research tools are playing a new role in campaigns. The website be it a business or blogs need to be looked at holistically.
Keyword research is important, but it takes time.
Focus on Content Marketing
Content marketing is another of the most significant ranking factors. Think of it like the way that you grant authority, prestige and greater lifespan to your quality content.
It involves the ways you get high-quality pieces in front of the right people, hopefully prospects or customers. This can be accomplished by sharing via social media, linking to other pages, publishing on more prestigious sites, or delivering directly with mailing lists.
Focus on creating content about subjects you understand so that you can establish yourself as an authority. Build relationships with the people who promote your content.
Good content marketing is all about relationships, and when done authentically, that can take a long time.
Use Schema Markup
Google has a powerful algorithm that relies on many factors, but it can have trouble understanding the context of certain information or sometimes, what it’s even looking at.
Schema markup is a way of structuring the data on your website so that Google’s search engine gets additional clues into what information is being presented and why. This goes well beyond simple meta tags and title tags.
For example, you can tell Google that you’re serving up a post detailing a recipe, or a video, or a certain type of data.
Quality Link Building
Link building is one of the most fragile processes in the white hat SEO toolbox. Links are vitally important, in that a site with none of them is going to limp rather than dash to the top of search rankings. However, it can be easy to overdo it.
What makes a link-building strategy “white hat” SEO is a dedication to getting quality links that are relevant to your own.
Most links are going to come from the content or other resources that you create for other sites or their audiences.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is a practice against search engine guidelines, used to get a site ranking higher in search results. These unethical tactics don’t solve for the searcher and often end in a penalty from search engines. Black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and using private link networks.
Performance Metrics
Performance metrics look at the demographics of visitors to your website, as well as how they behave once they’re there. By understanding how your visitors find your site, where they live, what they do once they’re on your page, and how long they stay, you can focus on ways to better target your audience by creating content and services that appeal to them.
Performance metrics look at the demographics of visitors to your website, as well as how they behave once they’re there. By understanding how your visitors find your site, where they live, what they do once they’re on your page, and how long they stay, you can focus on ways to better target your audience by creating content and services that appeal to them.
At this stage it is critical that you have your data standards applied consistently, including pages and sub pages, taxonomies, content standards, internal links etc. This will ensure that the data you are working with is clean and you can trust the results.
The following metrics are the most commonly used:
- Number of visitors
- Bounce Rate
- Route navigated through the site
- Most popular pages
Social Media
For many businesses, their social media channels are the primary way their customers find them, and it’s also a cost-effective form of advertising.
Social Media
For many businesses, their social media channels are the primary way their customers find them, and it’s also a cost-effective form of advertising. When putting together a digital marketing report for your business, look at how diverse your content is, how often you post, how many followers/likes your pages have, click throughs to your website, shares, hashtags and engagement. Once these areas have been examined you can find potential weak spots and strengths in your social media strategy and where you can make improvements.
Digital Marketing Strategy
When developing a strategy to improve the Digital Footprint you now need focus on the following areas
