Using SWOT in Online Marketing

If you’ve taken any business courses, you’ve probably come across the acronym SWOT. It stands for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat and is a system for carrying out a rigorous analysis of a business venture both in the planning stage and later at regular intervals.

SWOT analysis is ‘old school’ business process but one that’s well suited to online marketing. Here’s your guide to apply SWOT to your internet marketing and SEO ventures

swot word cloud

First, let’s look at exactly what it is.

One of the prime features of SWOT is its simplicity. It comprises a 2 by 2 matrix with one sector for each of the four components.

One nice feature of SWOT is that it covers both internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) factors.

Here’s a look at how you might carry out a swot analysis for an existing site. Your first sweep should focus on the big picture and not go into too much detail. It could take the form of bullet points. Later you can add extra details to get a clearer picture.

Strengths

Carrying out a content and link audit can appraise you of you quality of your assets. Likewise, analysing your statistics in Google can reveal which of your strategies or pages are working best. Strengths can also include the age of your domain and your reputation.

Weaknesses

Meanwhile you can identify which of your tactics are failing and work to tweak or revamp them so that they’re effective. Statistics can reveal which of your link building methods is not producing results, for example.

Opportunities

Identifying opportunities in the online business environment can involve looking for new markets, new products, new ways of delivering content, and new sources of traffic along with ways to expand and enhance existing campaigns.

Threats

The business environment is a constantly shifting one with new competitors and products coming into the market along with changes in the way the search engines function. Identifying these threats provides the insights you need to deal with them pro-actively.

A Holistic Process

Carrying out a SWOT analysis offers you a clear picture of your position in the landscape of the business field in which you operate. It should encompass all aspects of your operations including keyword and marketing research, web design, traffic generation, conversion, and content strategy.

You can create separate SWOT analyses for each part of your business but you need one big one to cover the whole business and thus guide strategy. Armed with this information you can create strategies and actionable steps to get make your website a success.

In future posts, we’ll look at each of the components of SWOT in more detail and identify ways they can work for your online marketing undertakings. In the meantime, contact SmartSEO for help with developing your internet marketing in a strategic and sustainable way.

About Nathanael Vanderkolk

Nathanael Vanderkolk is the Director of the Smart SEO Company, a SEO Agency in Sydney, Australia. Smart SEO Sydney has a keen awareness of the latest approaches to online marketing. Follow him on , Facebook and Twitter.
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