RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — The days of keyword-stuffing your company’s website is over. And if you think voice-based internet search is a gimmick, think again.
Those were some of the messages marketing expert Jon Kinsella brought to the National Air Duct Cleaners Association’s March 19-21 conference here. His March 20 presentation, “Digital and Social Media Marketing for Your Business,” expanded on topics Kinsella discussed at the organization’s 2017 event in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Last year, the senior marketing strategy manager stressed the importance of using good keywords without overdoing it on your website. Today, Google’s ever-changing algorithms have gotten more complex and adept at figuring out what’s quality content, Kinsella said.
“The opportunity to get your message across is ever-expanding,” Kinsella said. “You may not like Facebook, you may not like social media, but it’s your job” to use it.
If you simply attempt to pack a bunch of key phrases and words such as “duct cleaning” on your website without content to back it up, Google’s search engine will penalize you.
And in an era where other search engines such as Yahoo are nearly irrelevant, companies need to focus their marketing efforts at Google, Kinsella said. NADCA members need their websites to be mobile-friendly, because odds are that people will be visiting them through their smartphones.
Kinsella urged the audience to ensure their sites’ “meta tags” — bits of text that are hidden in the website’s HTML web programming language — including crucial details such as your company’s city and state.
Kinsella is also a fan of designing your website to take advantage of what he called “long-tail keywords,” which are the opposite of the short keywords that were commonly used a few years ago. They reflect the way many people really search for information. Many people are more likely to search by asking Google the question, “Why should I clean my air ducts?” in a voice search through their smartphone rather than typing a short phrase such as “duct cleaning.”
And with the growing popularity of devices such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, your website will soon have to be optimized for voice-based searches, Kinsella said. This technology is poised to take over the web, revolutionizing the way people interact with the internet.
“I really think these devices are where iPhones and Facebook were at in 2008,” he added.
Video is also changing the internet. An estimated 50 percent of all mobile data usage is online video viewing, Kinsella said. Within five years, it will be 75 percent. Facebook Live, the social network’s online streaming platform, attracts four times the traffic of regular Facebook posts, he said.
