The dark art of SEO and Social Media Marketing

By May.13, 2014

I run, Umega Lettings, a residential letting agency in Edinburgh. We understand that a critical source of new business is found online and that in order to secure this business we need to be found at the top of the online search rankings. Furthermore, as a business keen to push our personality to set ourselves apart from our, very-traditional, competitors, we see an opportunity to share our personality, and engage with customers, via social media.

We previously employed an SEO specialist to help us to climb the search rankings which was directly related to an increase in online new business leads. However, following google’s recent Panda and Penguin updates our google ranking fell off a cliff and consequently, our online leads dried up. Furthermore, earlier this year we launched our new website, following which our google rankings fell further which was extremely worrying (I have since learnt that it is common for rankings to drop 10-15% following website redesign).

From some online searching I found that the main message was that in order to climb back up the online search rankings, online activity must be ‘honest’ and must be written for humans. No more tricking google with irrelevant back links to get to the top of the search rankings. It became apparent that instead of hiding behind the business I would now need to act as an industry expert, sharing our expertise online, becoming involved in relevant online discussions and providing ‘value’ to users. With regards to social media, we have always struggled to engage ‘properly’ with social media. We have tried and failed to gain momentum in relation to our facebook and twitter profiles. So….in order to climb the google rankings ‘honestly’ and to learn how to engage properly with social media I enrolled in Salford University’s 10 week Search and Social Media Marketing Course, via distance learning.

The Search and social media marketing course has had a phenomenal impact on Umega Lettings. We are now confidently pushing forward with a wide number of online initiatives and, although I understand that many of these will take time to ‘bed in’ we are already seeing the benefits of these. The course is extremely practical and so learnings can be applied right away. From going through the 10 week course I am now confident I am not missing anything and I can push forward, with confidence, knowing that the hard work we’re putting in will get us where we want to be, at the top of the online search rankings and that our brand and reputation will continue to grow via social media.

It’s hard to cover all of the learnings in a short blog however a couple of key tips include;

Onsite SEO – it’s important for the content, titling and descriptions on our website to be well planned. WordPress enables us to revise all content and titling easily in order that it can be constantly reviewed to be relevant and easy for google to find.

Keywords – We’re now targeting a number of short-tail and long-tail keywords. Not only is it important to target the obvious short-tail keywords (in our case ‘letting agent edinburgh’ and ‘letting agents edinburgh’) but we should think about what people will type into search engines to ‘catch’ these users online. Phrases including ‘how to change letting agent in edinburgh’ and ‘how do I get a free rental valuation’ are the types of things that potential clients may search for.

Blogging – Blogging is a great way to provide fresh content for the website and to target these long-tail keywords. We now try to blog once a week to keep the content on our site fresh and relevant.

PPC – Facebook advertising and Google Pay per click are excellent ways to generate online leads, provided they are used correctly. As our google ranking has taken a dip over the last year, PPC is a great way to generate leads while we work hard, in the background, to push our website up the organic search rankings.

Strategy – It’s essential to have a strategy when it comes to online activity, otherwise the return on investment (financial and time investment) can be low. Furthermore, search and social media marketing does not end online. An online strategy must be incorporated with offline activities and more traditional business networking should be included in a strategy to promote link building and social media engagement with relevant businesses.

Monitoring – Every week I look forward to checking www.smallseotools.com to check our position in the google rankings. Only 3 weeks ago we were sitting 18th and 19th for our two target short tail keywords. We’re now bouncing around 9th-11th which is having a direct impact on new business leads. Looking forward to when we settle into the top 3 with a bit more work! I’m also never off google analytics as we closely monitor the impact of our PPC campaign and our organic search keyword targeting.

Online tools – there are powerful tools available to analyse the domain authority of your site and of your competitors and to investigate links that competitors are benefiting from. There are also small tools such as word clouds which can have a big impact on your business.

These are just a couple of examples of what is covered on the search and social media course and there are too many elements to cover in one short blog.

We’ve got a lot of exciting work to do. We need to keep working on pushing up the google rankings via the techniques we have already implemented and I am excited about including new aspects into our search and social media strategy including YouTube integration. We also need to work hard on building a strong community on social media and it will be interesting to run competitions during the summer, (making the most of the football World Cup and the commonwealth games) in order for people to engage with Umega lettings.

To summarise; search and social media marketing is not a dark art! It is all about honest, hard work. Business owners must now illustrate their expertise online and content must be relevant and interest. Gone are the days of taking short cuts and you now have to walk the walk if you want to beat the competition online! There is no better way of learning how to achieve this, and to give you the confidence that you are doing the right things, than participating in Salford University’s Search and Social Media Marketing course. At Umega Lettings, we know our stuff and and we do a great job for our clients. We need to continue to share what we know online in order to continue to climb the online search rankings and for our business to continue to grow.

Andrew whitmey

Umega Lettings

Www.umega.co.uk