30 online marketing quick wins you can do right now

Digital marketing

Marketing is not just about the big campaigns, flashy new technology and large budgets.

Successful marketing is made up of hundreds of quick win marketing ideas that work together to achieve a goal.

In this post you’ll find 30 online marketing quick wins you can easily apply to your digital marketing today.

5 Onsite SEO quick wins

What is onsite SEO?: Onsite SEO covers all the factors you have direct control over on your website to influence your position in a search engine’s organic results.

Boost content ranked 11-20 on Google

If you have content currently ranked between 11 and 20 on Google, these are golden opportunities to focus on trying to get them on to page 1.

To see a list of queries your site has appeared in search results for, go to the Search Traffic > Search Analytics section of Search Console.

search console analytics

Make a list of the keywords and pages you are on the cusp of breaking in to the top 10 for, and audit them for opportunities to optimise them further.

Areas to look at include keyword usage in your…

  • URL
  • <title> tag
  • <h> tags
  • <p> tags
  • Internal linking (volume and anchor text)
  • Image meta data

Audit and optimise your internal links

Internal links are a major ranking factor, but so often overlooked. The number of internal links to a page and the anchor text are used by Google to determine a page’s relevancy for a keyword.

(Image source)

Always link from one page to another when an opportunity presents itself, and never use anchor text like “click here” when linking to a page; always use one of your target keywords. Have a read of Neil Patel’s in depth guide to internal linking.

Use Google Webmaster Tools as your technical to do list

90% of onsite SEO is surprisingly easy to do once you know how (i.e. keyword research and usage), and a lot of the other 10% can be done simply by providing Google with the information in the format it asks for through GWT.

This includes:

  • Your XML sitemap
  • Country targeting
  • Structured data e.g. recipes, reviews etc.
  • Mobile usability issues
  • Page load speeds
  • How Google views your website

Here is an excellent guide from backlinko.com on using GMT (aka Search Console) for SEO purposes.

Do real keyword research

Yeah, yeah we all know keyword research is important. But how do you actually conduct keyword research without spending a fortune on professional SEO software?

Google Trends

Have a read of ahrefs.com’s “8 Free Keyword Research Tools (That CRUSH Google Keyword Planner)” to find your answer.

Always think mobile first

Nearly 60% of all searches are now done on a mobile device, and it is still growing. Google’s search index is now powered by their mobile index, whether the user conducts their search on a mobile device or desktop.

Mobile first search

(Image source)

This basically means “mobile SEO’ IS SEO. Read this guide from Backlinko.com to get yourself up to speed and for practical ideas you can apply to your website today.

6 Offsite SEO quick wins

What is offsite SEO?: Offsite SEO covers all the SEO factors that are not part of your website e.g. links from 3rd party websites

Find brand mentions without links

There’s no harm in asking a site that has mentioned you to add a link as well. Think of these sites as warm leads. You can automate this link acquisition process by setting up alerts for your brand name using tools like Google Alerts.

Find where your competitors are getting links from 

Your competitor’s links are always a great place to start.  Are there any sites linking to them that look open to linking to you as well? If you find a website is linking to two or more competitors, and not you, then there is a good chance they will add you as well.

ahrefs backlink checker

Paid tools such as ahrefs.com or Moz.com make this task very easy. Finding free versions isn’t terribly easy, but most offer free trails or access to limited data for free. I would recommend checking out…

  • ahrefs.com
  • moz.com
  • majestic.com

Submit your website to all your local supplier sites

If you are a local/regional focused website make sure you research, identify and contact all the websites who cover your area. These can be directories, news, community sites etc.

Submit your website to your industry’s niche sites

Following the same principle as above, follow exactly the same steps to find websites that cover your industry.

Offer testimonials

Approach suppliers and software you use to offer a testimonial (along with a link). This is a win-win situation for both parties. You get a link and they get a positive testimonial to sell more of their product.

Testimonials for SEO

Get listed with HARO

Help a Reporter Out (HARO), is a website dedicated to helping reporters get quotes and sources.

HARO will alert you when a journalist is looking for a quote in your field. You simply respond, providing an insightful quote about your industry and thoughts.

4 Local SEO ideas & quick wins

What is local SEO? Millions of customers use local search (usually via a mobile device whilst on the go) every day to find the best local businesses in their area. Local SEO helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them, and often nearby.

Optimise your site for location based keywords

Maximise your geographical relevance using location based keywords in your site’s meta data and copy. For example, if your homepage’s title tag is currently “Men’s hairdressers,” change it to read “[City] men’s hairdressers” etc.

Local SEO

Optimise for “near me” searches

Thanks to the rising dominance of mobile based searches, people searching for keywords along with “near me” have become a critical issue in Local SEO (e.g. “men’s hairdressers near me”).

As well as optimising for your location, ensure you are using that phrase in your page copy and creating internal links to your store locator with the anchor text of “[keyword + near me]”.

Claim your business on Google My Business

Claiming and optimising your GMB listing is one of the most important actions any business can do. This information (open times, business address, phone numbers, reviews, services/product categories etc.) is used in Google Maps and Google search, and is is an influential discoverability and ranking factor. Read more about optimising your GMB listing.

Use reviews on Google to boost your rankings

Google wants users to have the most relevant experience. For local search they are increasingly using reviews as a factor to determine the quality of a destination, and the whether that destination should be part of any maps search.

Google Reviews

Additionally, Google is increasingly expecting business’ to respond to reviews on their platform as well.

Want more SEO quick wins? Check out these SEO quick wins for five really easy to do, but often overlooked, SEO quick wins that will have a positive impact on your rankings and traffic. Alternatively, if you’re new to SEO, click here for more resources to teach yourself SEO

6 Social media quick wins

Use tweets as social proof

Add a  Twitter widget to your website to show prospective customers positive tweets about your company.

Tweets as social proof

Treat your accounts like TV channels

Would you watch any TV channel that simply ran adverts 24×7? Then why would anyone follow social media accounts that just posted ads for their products?

Apply the same principles as a TV station, and primarily share useful, interesting, insightful and funny content mixed in with the product messages.

Run a competition using rafflecopter

Use rafflecopter to run a social competition tied to people following, interacting, sharing etc. your content.

rafflecopter

Share 3rd party content

The primary goal of your social media accounts should never be traffic or conversions. You’ll be sorely disappointed if you do. Social media works best when used as a branding tool.

If you want to position yourself as a thought-leader and to become a useful resource, sharing great content from (no-competitor) sources is an easy way to achieve that goal.

Use Open Graph and Twitter Cards to the max

Control how your content is shown on social media. Set-up Open Graph and Twitter Cards across your website and make sure you use bespoke, unique data and images for each page.

Register your brand name across the major social media websites

I would recommend doing this regardless of whether you will use them right now. Think of you social media accounts in the same way as your domain name. It is your brand and yours to protect. These include:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • Flickr
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn

5 Analytics quick wins

Use Google Tag Manager to get access to some cool features

I am am a massive fan of GTM, it makes life so much easier. It also gives you easy access to some advance features in Analytics that would normally be a real pain to set-up. e.g.

  • Scroll depth tracking
  • YouTube video watch time
  • Event tracking without having to change any links
  • Cross-domain tracking
  • and so much more…

Don’t guess, install Clarity

Get real data about how people interact with your site. Clarity offers heatmaps for clicks and scrolls, as well as visitor recordings, funnel reporting and more. Read our Clarity review.

Microsoft Clarity

Consolidate Facebook referrals

If your website gets traffic from Facebook, and you use Google Analytics, then you’ve seen there are multiple Facebook referrals listed such as l.facebook.com, m.facebook.com etc.

What do Facebook’s referral URLs mean?

  • facebook.com: someone came to your website directly from Facebook.
  • l.facebook.com: whenever someone clicks an external link within Facebook, they pass through a Link Shim before they arrive at the next page. This is Facebook’s way of protecting the privacy of the user and protecting the user from any spammy websites.
  • m.facebook.com: the user came to your website from a mobile device.
  • lm.facebook.com: is the same as l.facebook.com, but just from a mobile device.

It kind of makes sense, but it is all still pretty annoying from an analytical perspective. Here’s how to combine them.

  1. Sign into your Google Analytics and go to the ‘Admin’ section of your account.
  2. In the ‘View’ column, click on ‘Filters’.
  3. Click on the red button that says +ADD FILTERS.
  4. Your are using the ‘Create new filter’ option.
  5. Under Filter Name, type what you would like e.g. Combine Facebook Referrals (you can choose what you like here).
  6. Underneath ‘Select filter type’, choose ‘Custom’.
  7. Choose ‘Search and replace’.
  8. Under ‘Filter field’ choose ‘Campaign source’.
  9. Under’Search string’ enter this: ^[m|lm|mobile|I|web|touch]\.facebook
  10. In Replace string’ enter: facebook
  11. Click ‘Save’ and you are done.

Connect all your Google services

Make sure you connect your AdWords, Webmaster Tools and AdSense to get the full picture. Go to Admin > Property > Product Linking to set this up.

Run A/B tests for free

Thanks to Google setting up basic URL split tests or A/B tests are easy to do, and free. Head on over to Google Optimize to get started.

Google optimize

4 Quick wins for your website

Update your about us/ meet the team page with the latest information and pictures

There’s nothing more off putting than out of date information about a company. Your company history seems to end two years ago, are you still in business?

Put your telephone number on your website’s home page where people can see it

Anyone is their bedroom can make a great looking website that looks like a multinational business.

A phone number helps to reassure prospective customers their are real people behind your business.

Add customer testimonials to your website (plus one or two on your home page)

People like dealing with people, and showcasing your team members is a great way to add a personality to your website.

Cut out the fat: Is every page as lean as it could be?

Content for contents sake is an easy mistake to make.

Most traffic now comes via mobile devices, and people will not scroll for days to get to the information they are looking for. Make sure each page is succinct and gets to the point ASAP.

SEO concerns? Keyword stuffed long-form pages are a relic of 2008, the Google index is mobile-first now, and so should you.

Even more marketing quick wins…

Digital marketing quick wins you’ve probably overlooked. Simple, but often overlooked, ideas for you to use in your digital marketing. Applying these to your digital marketing will create instant results, quickly and easily.


9 thoughts on “30 online marketing quick wins you can do right now

    1. Hi Jason,

      That’s great, thanks. I enjoyed reading the post, it’s a really interesting angle. Managing the manger is a key skill many people forget.

      Matt

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