Digital Marketing Tip – Inform and Educate

Part of the 999 Digital Marketing Tips Series

By Dave Ingalls
Digital Marketing Consultant
November 22, 2010

Link to main Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Web page

If you read Digital Marketing Tip #1, then you have specific end goals in mind for your upcoming Internet/Web endeavor.

Before we get down to the specific Digital Marketing techniques that you can use to meet those end goals, let’s discuss one more general attribute your online presence should have.

Digital Marketing Tip #2: Your online content should INFORM and EDUCATE, and that information/education should be FREE.

Why should your Internet/Web endeavor inform and educate? Because one of the most important Digital Marketing techniques we’ll be covering in future tips is Search Engine Marketing (SEM), specifically the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your online content.

If you start with the mindset that your online content is meant to INFORM and EDUCATE, then you’ll be more than half-way home at optimizing that content for the major search engines.

As an Internet/Web entrepreneur, you want people searching for information on the major search engines about the specific products or services you offer TO FIND YOUR INFORMATION FIRST.

Search Engines want to be known as the Internet/Web resource that provides the BEST ANSWERS to their visitors’ search questions.

Because of this, search engines spend countless dollars and man-hours optimizing their search formulas (“search algorithms”) to find and rank the BEST ANSWERS (content) to those questions as highly as possible in their search results.

So the BEST WAY to get found for your specific product or service in the major search engines is to become the BEST SOURCE OF INFORMATION about those specific products/services. And the best way to do that is adopt the attitude that you will make your online content the best source of EDUCATION and INFORMATION about those products or services.

Finally, why should you inform and educate for free? Because you do NOT want to place any barriers between your information and the ability of the major search engines to find, index and rank it highly in their search results.

Please don’t think of “free” as only meaning that it does not cost money to gain access to it. Making site registration a requirement to consume your information has the same effect on Web site visitors and on the search engine “spiders” as charging money for the information – most Web site visitors will not register to consume it, and no search engines can register to consume it!