What Internet Marketing Clients Are Worried About for 2014

In the recent Google Hangout, Arnie Kuenn, along with three expert speakers in the field of internet marketing (Matt Siltala, Rhea Drysdale, Topher Kohan) discuss some of the most probable client concerns heading into 2014 and offer some helpful insight on what to expect. A major takeaway from their talk was that all clients are going need to continue to be actively involved in their own marketing strategy. The old approach of sitting back and waiting for the marketing company you hired to do all the work is becoming virtually extinct. Taking the time and effort to grow a strong partnership between your business and the marketing company who is putting together your strategy is going to be vital.

Am I Going To Be Penalized?

Clients want to be re-assured that the keywords and anchor text they have been using are not going to cause issues in the near future. They want to have an idea of what algorithm updates are going to occur, if any, and when they can expect them to happen. As difficult as it is to predict what changes Google is going to roll out, clients would at least like to receive regular updates. Even no news is still good news to them, ideally. They just want to make sure they will have ample time to make any modifications to their SEO strategy that need to be made.

Everyone Needs To Be Involved

Another key concern for clients is not understanding why they need to be held accountable and integral to the marketing strategy as well. Throwing money at a marketing company and wiping their hands clean of any additional involvement is not going to cut it these days. Marketing should be thought of as an equal partnership. Clients need to help align their resources internally to coincide with the work their vendors are doing. Along with that, the clients need to take the time to audit their marketing efforts currently in place to ensure they are on the right path toward achieving the amount of growth they are striving for.

Technical Innovation Is Always Growing

For the foreseeable future, technical SEO is going to continue to expand. Along with that, mobile SEO is experiencing infinite growth as well. To ease any anxiety about adopting these new strategies, clients will need to understand how much effort needs to be placed into developing quality content. Not just for the home page either, but practically every page on their site needs to be a priority. The more a company can strive to innovate with their content, the easier the transition will be when it comes to technical SEO implementation.

Creating Content As Smoothly As Possible

Moving forward, a concern that most clients are aiming to eliminate is the inefficiencies that occur when creating content. It has been fairly common in recent years for businesses to create unnecessary obstacles for pieces of content to travel through before being finally approved. Companies must make streamlining their content process a top priority in 2014. Time is money, and it makes no sense to cost your company more money by taking twice as long to produce something fairly simple but effective. The biggest step is trying to get a client’s editorial team and the SEO team on the same page.

Thinking Outside The (Google) Box

Obviously what Google does informs a large portion of what clients do with their marketing, since algorithm updates affect more than just rankings; it can affect business itself. But the start of the new year should also welcome the adoption of new outlets for marketing efforts outside of focusing on Google. Despite the widespread use of social media on the personal level, most clients are under-utilizing these types of resources for their own company. Diversification is always a good concept to embrace. Be creative. Sometimes simply adding a video clip or infographic to a client’s site or blog posts can attract more users and keep them frequenting the site. And isn’t that really the main point?

There are going to be some unique marketing challenges presented in 2014. Google’s algorithm updates are commonly a bit of a surprise to most, even within the industry. But the companies and agencies that are going to overcome those challenges are going to be the ones that have a strong sense of cohesion and aligned vision. Effective marketing efforts rely on just as much help from the clients as the clients seek in return from marketing agencies. Collaboration is going to be key.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/KCUjEn