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Barbara Cook
BBB Serving New Jersey
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Rafiu Sadiku
RDS Associates Consulting Engineers, Inc.
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My rep
Barbara Cook
BBB Serving New Jersey

Ask Me

Manage Frequency

Me
Rafiu Sadiku
RDS Associates Consulting Engineers, Inc.

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My Account

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3 Outdated Digital Marketing Tactics You Should Stop Using Now

Is your business’s digital marketing out of style? Like a bad perm from the 80s, some businesses stick to what they know, using outdated tactics that don’t get them the positive attention and growth they’re looking for.

If you are one of these, have no fear. We’ll get you all straightened out--along with your 80’s perm! In this article, we’ve outlined our top three digital marketing tactics you should stop using immediately and what to do instead to market your business successfully online.

OUT: Copy Only SEO


Text-based SEO (Search engine Optimization) practices have been around for a while now. It has become a commonly used digital marketing practice to help optimize a company’s website for search engines. For years, many {industry specific} businesses primarily used articles, ebooks, and other forms of written content to improve their SEO and increase traffic to their websites. With this information, Google was able to determine the best ranking for each website, based on what content users were searching for and engaging with.

However, things have changed a bit in SEO land. Today, ONLY having written content as part of your SEO strategy won’t help you stand out in search engines. Why? Customers aren’t just engaging with articles and ebooks when researching brands. They’re also clicking on photos, infographics, memes, and videos. Research shows that multimedia content formats like these have a significant impact on Google rankings. For example, one study recently analyzed one million Google search results and found that pages with at least one image had better rankings than content with no images.

IN: SEO for Multimedia Content


Today’s business consumers aren’t just looking for articles on business. They are also searching for videos, images, and other types of content that will help them find and learn about the products and services you offer. 

To fulfill the needs of what your customers are searching for online AND appeal to search  engines, here are two things you should consider doing right now. 

  1. Create more multimedia content, especially video. Video is a great place to start, because it is currently one of the most powerful content mediums out there that can help your business specific rank high on search engines and engage with your prospects and customers.Videos have the ability to get the point across in a more visually compelling and appealing way than almost any other medium. Images, infographics, gifs, and other types of media are also great for users and search engines!
  2. Make sure ALL of your content is optimized for SEO.
  • Add descriptive and informative text to your video and image filenames.
  • Add smaller image files to your website to decrease load time (Longer load times negatively impact user experience, which then hurts your Google ranking.)
  • Make all images mobile responsive.
  • Add alt text to all of your images and don’t use dashes in your alt text. 
  • Add a transcript for your videos.

OUT: Organic Facebook Marketing


Most businesses using Facebook aren’t getting the engagement, volume, and results as they once did from organic traffic. In 2018, after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would prioritize posts from friends over businesses in people’s news feeds, many businesses with Facebook accounts started seeing dramatically less engagement on their posts. Now, if businesses want to be seen, they must pay to play.

“Business owners who were hip to Facebook Pages when they first launched in 2007 will remember a time where organic reach was near 100%. That means back in the day if you posted content to a business Page with 500 “Likes”, almost every one of your fans would see that content. What a time. That organic reach number has since declined to -2% or less (Inc.com).

IN: Pay to Play


Although the days of free social media marketing are over, you still don’t need to break the bank to make your posts on social media work for you. Compared to other paid advertising channels like print, commercials, and radio, Facebook ads are fairly affordable. You can pay to boost a post or create an ad for as little as $5 a day and still get a decent return on your investment. The trick is knowing how best to use those dollars to get the return you’re looking for--whether it’s more likes, followers, or website clicks.

For example, if you’re wanting to target potential customers in your city, you could run a Local Awareness Ad. If you wanted to get more people to your business website, you could set up Facebook’s Website Conversion Ads. And finally, if you want to build some awareness around your new products and services, you could use Brand Awareness Ads to get the word out to your ideal customers.

OUT: Content Quantity


Just a few years ago, every marketer was preaching “Content is king!” The more content you created and posted, the more traffic you could expect to your website. More content would mean more pages with links that could be indexed and found on search engines like Google. It didn’t seem to matter if the articles were bad as long as they were stuffed with the right keywords. Then everything changed in March 2019 with Google’s algorithm update. Quantity was suddenly trumped by Quality.

IN: Content Quality


What makes quality content? In the latest version of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, it’s “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). When you create content that is well-written, well-researched, and provides unique and real value for your audience, you will likely achieve E-A-T. In 2020, you don’t just write for search engines, you must also write for people.  

Social Media Today breaks down the key elements of high quality content in their infographic, “Steps to 10X Content.” Some of the steps include: how to identify the pain points of your customers, essential research tips, creating the perfect message, and more.

Bonus Tip: 

Building and maintaining a high quality website should be another vital part of your overall digital marketing strategy. It will provide a better experience for your visitors, thus increasing conversions AND achieve you high marks with Google. Here are several things that make a high quality vs. low quality website.

In with the New! 


For most businesses, digital marketing can be a huge cost. Make sure you’re not throwing those precious dollars away by using outdated tactics. You’ll get way more bang for your buck by following and staying updated with current trends.
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