You can automate documents, but not your online marketing. Sorry, but it’s true. Until Skynet goes online and A.I. is real, online marketing and search engine optimization still needs a human touch, specifically an expert’s insightful eye and inquisitive mind. If you want to continually improve website performance and ROI from your marketing efforts, there needs to be some creative thinking, manual work and time. You need an extra 10 – 20 hours a week to spare to stay up-to-date with trends and manage your online marketing.
“Since 2011, Google has updated its algorithm 83 times…” (http://bit.ly/1sXbkwo)
So ask yourself, “Can I keep up with how often Google changes their search algorithm?” because “old tricks” such as link building or keyword stuffing no longer work to beat the competition. Google will even penalize sites for using such shady tactics.
No Set & Forget
There are several DIY automated analytics, tracking and automation tools that will give you TONS of data. However, if you do not have the knowledge to interpret that information, it’s like translating an encrypted code without the key to solve it.
Example:
Business Owner: “I have 4,000 visitors a month!”
SEO Expert: “Do you really?”
Business Owner: “What!?!”
SEO Expert: “According to your analytics, there is an 80% bounce, which means visitors immediately leave your website without taking a single action on your site..so technically you have more like 1,000 visitors.”
Business Owner: “Why are they leaving?”
SEO Expert: “GREAT question! Let me look at your analytics in-depth, analyze it and we’ll work on figuring it out together.”
(One year later, 4,000 grows to 15,000 visitors and the bounce rate drops from 80 percent to 35 percent. True story.)
See? If you do not know what you are looking at, you do not realize it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
To an online marketer, your website is a puzzle: what draws visitors to your site? How can we get inside their minds and understand their behavior? Solving this puzzle will result in improved user experience, measurable statistics, increased conversions, and for the online marketer, that’s a very gratifying reward.
In conclusion, having several automated reports means very little if you can’t interpret the data and more importantly, the questions I ask clients time and time again:
- What is your time worth?
- Do you want a website that produces sales?
Then invest in online marketing. Hiring a pro-active marketer to provide their unique insight is like hiring a fitness trainer— we keep your website lean, mean, and in fighting condition to dominate the competition. Just remember, you need weekly sessions, it’s not a one-time workout. Like exercise, nothing is easy when it comes to online marketing if you want to see results.
