Welcome to my marketing blog where I plan to share with you some of the best tips and tricks regarding online marketing. It is such a broad subject with so many different facets and you might find that there are a few nuggets that might just give your business the extra edge. So, visit us from time to time and hopefully you will find what you are looking for.
How To Develop An Effective SEO Strategy
SEO is an important aspect of any successful online marketing strategy, hardly privileged information, but many online marketers are unsure of what the best practices are for using this formidable tool to their advantage.
In order to get the best results for your efforts you must set very defined goals and specific tasks for your strategy to address, with this in mind, following are some important questions to ask when developing your marketing strategies.
1. Who am I trying to Reach? How will I do this and how will I know if I am successful?
Keeping these questions in the forefront of your considerations will keep your strategies performing effectively in front of the right audience? To do this you will need to know as much about your customers as you can. Dive into your Google Analytics account and won’t emerge till you have found the details on your customer’s way of thinking and shopping.
This will lead you to developing a campaign that attracts and engages these valuable clients, then you can set some goals for yourself in accordance with projected growth. It is important to constantly be assessing your progress, or you could run miles in the wrong direction before realizing your efforts are not reaching the right audience.
2. What Keywords Do I need?
After you have thoroughly considered your target audience, you must spend time getting in their head and coming up with the keywords they will most likely use when looking for the very option you are offering?
This in itself is an essential part of developing your strategy, categorizing your keywords will quite literally make or break your campaign. A PPC campaign based off poorly chosen keywords can be both costly and completely ineffective, the same holds true for any online marketing strategy. If you are not selling the products that your customers are looking for or calling it something completely different, how do you expect to make a sale?
3. How does my site appear to the Googlebot?
Search engines crawl the internet indexing the sites and the content they have, this is to provide the most relevant results to users. SEO is not just about how attractive your site will be to visitors and possible clients.
Another important aspect is making sure the site, pages, keywords, internal links and external links are well appointed and the valuable content is easily visible. To do this it is important that the site contains no broken links, that the loading time is optimal and that it presents unique content and good overall navigation.
If you do great work with your search engine optimization (SEO), it could mean a significant amount of revenue for your business. At the same time, however, it is also an ongoing initiative. Once you generate a steady stream of traffic from SEO, you need to constantly be maintaining and improving your SEO in order to keep those rankings you worked so hard for.
Generally, the two most important items needed to rank well in search engines are links to your website and content — the hard part is creating great content and generating those links. It is also important to note that Google, the largest search engine, has hundreds of ranking factors with some factors having more weight than others.
Here are six important SEO strategies outside of the basics, that are critical to getting to — or staying at — the top of the search engines in 2016.
1. Create an influencer who is a subject-matter expert.
An influencer is someone who people listen to online. When it comes to search engine optimization, having an influencer in your corner will mean more people link to your website, share your blog posts and trust your content. If possible, have an influencer who is a subject-matter expert head up the content creation on your website. This person can be you, someone from your company or someone you align with.
2. Develop a content-marketing strategy.
Every website should have a content strategy focused around your top keywords. When you create content such as blog posts, videos, whitepapers, research reports and webinars, it gives people something to link to. In addition, the content you create can rank by itself in the search engines. For example, if you write a blog post on “How to Pick an SEO Company,” there is a possibility it will rank for some of the keywords you use in the title and in the body post, especially if the post gets linked to from other websites or shared a lot on social media. It also helps if your website as a whole already has significant high-quality links.
This results in high domain authority, which translates into better rankings for all of your content. In addition, regular content creation shows Google that your website is alive and active. By sending this fresh content signal to Google on a continual basis, it will result in better rankings for your website as a whole.
3. Generate powerful backlinks to your site and pages.
Having an influencer and content marketing strategy will help you develop backlinks to your website, but it is also important to actively be seeking ways to get people to link to you. Some of the best ways to do this are to write for a large publication, do industry interviews and recommend your powerful content to people who matter. You can also hire a public relations (PR) company or an SEO company that has a strong digital PR division to help you with this initiative.
In addition, you can also use tools like Majestic SEO to see who is linking to your competitors. Once you identify the links to your competitor’s sites, you can analyze these links, learn how they got them and implement a similar strategy for your website. For example, did they donate to a charity causing the charity to link to their site? You can do the same thing.
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252954
Filed under seo
How SMS Can Help Grow Your Business
How can SMS help in the growth of a business?
The world is growing and people are coming up with new ways of doing business. There are a lot of ways in which business can be enhanced. In order for your business to
expand, you will be required to come up with an entirely new way of doing things, such as contacting your clients via SMS. Therefore, you should look at a variety of options for SMS so that you are able to keep the clients engaged with your company. There is a lot of competition out there and there are plenty of businesses that are being developed everyday and you should therefore, spend some time on discovering new ways of enhancing your business, updating your business strategy and remaining highly competitive within your niche. This short piece will aim to give you some information regarding some of the various advantages of using SMS online so that you give your business the best possible chance for success.
Helps in showing the customers that you care about them
The text message will help you provide excellent customer service by showing the customers that you are really do care about them, what they think and what they want. Clients love dealing with businesses that have owners that are interested in them. Therefore, sending SMS to the clients will help you to come up with various important strategies that will be aimed at giving the clients all the attention they need, hence enabling you to be in a position to offer them exactly what they want, when they want it.
It is cheap
It is very cheap to send the text messages to your clients. There are also programs that will allow you to send the bulk SMS to your clients so that they are able to access your services in the right way. Therefore, you should identify the various positive things that you should do so that you are able to offer your customers the services they want without being aggressive about it. It is also easier for businesses to attract more customers without having to use expensive advertising methods in order to win their custom.
You are able to get feedback
If you really want to create a good future for your business, you should come up with a range of procedures that will help you to develop a sound strategy for improving your services. Feedback also helps you to know whether the things that you have been doing are convenient for customers and this will help you solve any issues and move forward with your business.
You reach out to a lot of people
The technology has improved and these days, most people have access to a mobile phone or other mobile device that allows them to communicate. Therefore, business owners are able to carry out all the important activities that they need to be doing in order to keep their clients happy. Using SMS means that you can reach all your clients who have signed up to receive such messages. Purchasing services from a provider who will allow you to send SMS online will make the whole process much simpler for your business. Remember, if you offer excellent customer services, clients will return time and time again.
Filed under sms marketing
Why You Need To Use Long Tail Keywords
Lots of websites are built in rush by their owners, without much consideration offered to properly optimising their material. They do some fast research study into which keywords they must target based upon the item they wish to sell or niche they are in.
Typically, the resultant keywords they decide to use are exactly what we call short tail keywords e.g. running shoes, washing machines, HD TVs etc
These key phrases get countless searches every month and to a beginner, it might seem like a good idea.
The issue with this is, that the keyword phrases they have chosen are not actually purchaser keywords however, they are too generic and have very little value when it comes to the optimisation of their content. Likewise, they would be competing against huge corporations who have been around for decades and have a large marketing budget.
You might believe that the more searches conducted for a keyword expression will drive more traffic to your site or blog. This cannot be further from the TRUTH …! However, in this post I will tell you why this is not so and why you should be using long tail keywords for search engine optimisation.
Long tail keywords
Long tail keywords are keyword expressions that have a ‘tail’ added to the natural keywords entered in an online search which your website visitors make use of (or ask questions) when searching the internet whether they are merely searching for info or to acquire your certain product or service.
Short-tail key phrases are usually no greater than 1 or 2 words. Long-tail key words are usually a lot longer, but much more significantly, they’re also a lot more particular.
So! Whatever is a Long-tail Keyword?
As pointed out above, these keywords are expressions linked to your primary topic. Long tail keywords have a lot less competitors as people rule them out due to not enough individuals doing a search for that particular set of words. They are a lot easier to target and continuously produce more purchaser friendly web website traffic.
Unlike conventional keywords (HD Televisions or washing machines), long-tail keyword expressions are normally 3 words or more and usually no greater than 5. They are a direct connection to a keyword phrase that an person would type into a search engine (Google, Bing or Yahoo) which will certainly aid in limiting their search. These key phrases are whatever you need to focus on and make use of when optimising your website’s content.
By using Long-tail keywords, you will significantly enhance the possibility of your possible consumer being a buyer. This is compared to making use of short-tail keywords which will certainly create more search results page, however, not necessarily produce buyers.
Long tail keywords examples
Try typing “washing machines” into a search engine, it will certainly return about 27 million websites, but if you type “Bosch washing machines Leominster”, just 16 thousand websites are returned. 16 thousand search results page are still a bit too high. Other specialists may go as far to state that the returning search results page of 16 thousand is okay. It does go to show that by utilizing more particular keywords, you can cut the competition and improve your chances.
My individual suggestion and preference is to try to find search results page in the region of three hundred to eight thousand. Now this might not constantly hold true. If you are taking a look at regional searches then these figures would become unimportant and you could be taking a look at just a few hundred searches.
As a rule of thumb, when deciding to utilize regional searches anything listed below 50 searches a month is unworthy going after.
It is less complicated to get a very first page ranking in addition to obtaining web traffic with long tail keyword phrases, as compared to brief trailed, less particular keyword expressions.
Other Long tail examples:
- HD smart TV Herefordshire
- cheap (brand) trainers with free shipping
- hotpoint aquarius washing machines midlands
- washing machine repair work costs
Long tail keywords SEO
Targeting Long Tail phrases is a necessity for SEO purposes as well as to assist you get your company or blog site indexed much faster, as a result of less rivals and it’s more than likely you are found by the right audience i.e. consumers who are ready to purchase from you. You also need to use them in all the content you publish on both your website and blog. If you produce your own videos, make sure you use long tail keywords for them too.
Long-tail SEO Method
Online search engine are becoming more sophisticated and the searches that people type in are becoming more precise, so it is essential that you do pay attention to the long-tail keywords in all your SEO campaigns.
Ways to Find Long Tail Keywords For SEO?
There are many different methods of finding long tail keywords. You might potentially make use of keyword research tools or you can even spy on your competitors to come up with special keywords that nobody is making use of.
Below are some the devices I use to find long tail keywords:
- Google Keyword Tool
- Google Auto Complete Tool
- Using Google Search
- Google Auto-suggest
Finally, when carrying out research into which keywords you are going to use, keep in mind that you need to be eyeing stages which include in between 3 to 5 words related to your primary topic. They are narrow and buyer specific which should lead to an increase in turnover.
Filed under seo
Top Tips For Effective Website Design
When considering the design and layout of an ecommerce website, be aware that you must create something that not only looks professional but that is also pleasing to the visitor. The site must be a pleasure to view and to use, it should be clearly laid out so that visitors can find what they are looking for with as few clicks as possible. It is a good idea to be aware of the type of customer you wish to attract and try to design your site to appeal to them. Make sure that the shopping cart and checkout are in plain sight because there is nothing more off-putting to the visitor than not being able to see what they have in their basket and then go and pay for it.
Navigation must be easy, keep it simple so that visitors can find their way around and get what they want. You can build the most elegant website ever but if visitors cannot find what they want, it will not bring you new customers or success. Although it should be easy to navigate, do not treat your visitors like idiots, this will make them leave too. Keep descriptions short and above all, they must be accurate. Be open about prices and ensure that your shipping costs are easy to find. Include a FAQ page and answer 
all the basic questions that are likely to come in. If your site appears to be clear and honest, you are more likely to be seen as trustworthy. I saw somewhere that one of the most successful websites ever is one about swimming pool maintenance which was set up by a small business and its success is due to the FAQ page which answers virtually every possible question about swimming pools. There is a lesson here for all businesses, be transparent and helpful and you are more likely to attract business.
Another vital factor in a successful ecommerce site is customer service. If your business can offer excellent online customer care, this will also aid your online reputation. Nobody wants to put up with poor service and if you can make high quality customer service a focus point, this can have a big influence on potential customers. If new customers think that they are going to be well looked after, they will be more likely to make a purchase.
Building a successful ecommerce website is a bit like making a cake, there are a number of key ingredients and the rest is down to personal flair. The key points to remember are: keep it simple, make it easy to find things, make it easy to pay and look after your customers. This will give you the basis for a good ecommerce site.
On Google’s list of philosophies, the very first one is “focus on the user and all else will follow.” But in the past, many SEO professionals have ignored this advice, crafting web pages designed primarily for Web crawlers, and crammed with keywords.
While such an SEO-only strategy worked well 10 years ago, Google and other search engines have since come a long way. In particular, Google’s sophistication is such that designing for UX (user experience) is much more valuable than designing just for SEO (search engine optimization).
That said, totally abandoning SEO in favor of a UX-focused approach is misguided. While it is true that SEO and UX have become more and more complementary — and that designing for UX does often result in improved SEO — there are some UX elements that affect Google’s ability to crawl a website, and some areas in which they benefit each other.
Web designers would be wise to design for, and take both into, account, but focus on the user above all.
Going mobile
In April 2015, Google rolled out a mobile-friendly update that boosts the rankings of websites to make them legible and, most importantly, functional, on mobile devices. It is now absolutely necessary to ensure that a website is designed not just for desktop but for mobile screens, as well.
In fact, the search engine stated on its Inside Adwords blog that, “More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U.S.”
There are three Google-acknowledged ways to design for mobile devices: responsive design, dynamic serving and separate URLs. Of these three, responsive design is the best choice for both SEO and UX. With responsive design, the website is essentially the same, only serving up different displays according to the device. Separate URLs is the least favorable choice, as the mobile must then rank for itself.
SEO and UX go hand in hand when it comes to mobile sites. Not only is responsive web design user-friendly: Users aren’t redirected to a different website with which they must become acquainted. And the newly-launched mobile-friendly update makes it SEO-friendly, too.
If you must use infinite scroll, use it wisely
Infinite scroll, in which more content continues to load as the user scrolls to the bottom of the page, has been thought to be a friendly and sleek design for UX. Many popular website utilize this feature: Pinterest and BuzzFeed are examples.
However, Web crawlers cannot mimic user behavior in this way, and the content that would be visible to users remains invisible to Google. If infinite scroll is a design element you would rather not forfeit, Google recommends creating a paginated series (pages of content) alongside infinite scroll, ensuring fast load times and letting users easily find the content they wanted in the first place.
Furthermore, there is a design misconception that content is best served “above the fold,” i.e., content that can be seen without the user having to scroll. In fact, research shows that users do scroll. And, besides, with screen displays so variable these days, it’s hard to tell what will be viewable without scrolling.
Avoid click-to-expand
Along the lines of infinite scrolling is click-to-expand, or tabbed content. This design uses links or tabs which, when clicked, “open” more content. Although Google has not definitively acknowledged whether this hidden content is ignored, there has been much discussion over it: namely, that Google is not indexing it.
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247683
Filed under web design
Why Responsive Websites Are Important For Business
As a business owner, we know that you are inundated with ads from companies promising that you need this new thing for your business and without it you will be left 
behind. Most often when you receive an email like that, a letter like that or see an ad like that, it is garbage and just a ploy to get your money. We come to you today not as a snake oil salesman but as a company who actually has something that will benefit your business. In this article, we will show you how a responsive website will allow you to engage with more customers on the internet and get their business. You do not need to take our word for it, but after reading this article please use your own intellect to see if this makes sense to you.
What Is A Responsive Website?
A responsive website is one that can alter its look, display and dimensions based on what type of device is accessing your website. What this means is that if someone is using an iPhone with a 5 inch screen, then the mobile version of the site will be shown to that person. It also means that when that same person goes to their laptop with a 15 inch screen it shows them a version of your site that perfectly fits this larger screen. With more and more people using mobile devices and other forms of computers with varying screens sizes, your website must be able to display content that is easy to read on all of these screen sizes. This is what we call a responsive site— one that is responsive to the device that is accessing it so that the user has a good experience. We bet that you have viewed websites on your phone or tablet that look horrible because they do not fit the dimensions of your phone’s small screen. As a business when this happens you lose those visitors, they click back and leave your site and go to someone else’s site, maybe a competitor and spend their money with them.
It Is More Than Just Having A Mobile Version
It is more than just having a mobile version of site, which is by the way, very important but more about seamlessly having a site that perfectly display your content. Have you noticed how most mobile versions of sites all look the same and aren’t that good? We want to avoid that and you don’t want that type of mobile design, instead you want a rich experience for all users and you don’t want your mobile viewers to miss out or have an inferior version of your site. A responsive website solves this problem.
How Important Is This?
We believe that it is very important because over 70% of people use their phone or tablet to access the internet. With people constantly on the go, they are more likely to use their mobile devices to access the internet and to browse your site than wait to get home to use their computer with a larger screen. You want to give these people a good experience. You do not want them to leave your site because it doesn’t render well on their phone or tablet. If you are a content provider, a store or a service based business, your site needs to be able to serve pages that look great on any device. When you can’t achieve this objective, everyone misses out.
Hopefully, this article will allow you determine if a responsive website is going to be good for your business. It is our opinion that all websites should be responsive because it allows everyone to easily assess your content and it keeps them on your site longer.
Filed under web design
Building Brand Loyalty Using Text Message Marketing
In order for a business to remain at the forefront of their customers minds, businesses need to take a modern yet creative approach. It is not really enough these days just to complete the usual things like print media and phonebook advertising and still expect a similar sort of result that would’ve been achieved 2 decades ago. The world has changed, the business climate has changed and the way that customers look for companies to do business with has changed.
One more thing which is changed is the way that customers form loyalties with the companies that they patronize and just how they whether or not to continue spending their hard earned money there. It used to be that habit was the overriding force when it came to buying goods or services. Once someone starts using certain brands or visiting the same restaurant every weekend, a habit has been formed and would generally become a regular thing for them. This isn’t always the case these days, shoppers are much more likely to try new things particularly if they think they are getting a bargain.
The most important difference is that there are simply more choices accessible to consumers now than there have ever been in the past. Not only that, but there are more avenues for finding details about brands and getting together with representatives of brands than there have ever been before. So, where once force of habit was the overriding force, it is now brand loyalty and connection.
Many consumers now wish to have more of a relationship with the brands they have chosen to spend their cash on. They want to believe that they know what that brand is cantered on and what they represent, just what the story is behind the logo. They want to feel that the history matches their particular sensibilities and values.
So, precisely what does a brand name have to do to be able to foster that kind of loyalty? Well, the answer is simple, it has to be able to connect with the consumer so that it is relevant and important to them. Basically, you need to be speaking the same language.
There is really no better vehicle for delivering a product message than SMS marketing for a number of reasons. To begin with, it comes with an immediacy with text messaging that you just can’t get with everything else – not social networking, not email, and definitely not with traditional advertising. People these days almost always have their mobile device with them. A mobile phone is rarely further away than in the person’s hand, pocket or handbag. Some people point out that they feel completely lost without their mobile. Others consider their phone to be an extension in themselves. Having the ability to reach people along with your brand message through that device that they hold so dear in order to gain loyalty to your brand is quite amazing.
Another thing that makes text message marketing so powerful is that your message will likely be seen by more of your target audience than from most other kinds of traditional outbound marketing, including direct mail or email marketing. Text messages receive an open rate of well over 90 percent – this blows the statistics on other sorts of outbound marketing completely out of the water and there really is no comparison.
An additional benefit of SMS marketing is that the vast majority of Smartphones are web enabled, your call to action for making any purchase is only the short distance away from the person clicking a hyperlink as they read your message. The beauty of this is that they are not required to remember anything, they don’t need to make notes, it is so easy for them to carry out the whole transaction just by a few swipes of the screen. They hear the notification, check their messages, they tap the link contained within the message, then they complete the purchase. This makes the whole thing quick, simple and hassle free, just the way business is evolving nowadays.
When you think of all the ways that you can reach your clients more efficiently, both logistically and emotionally, the question really has to be why wouldn’t you be using SMS to promote your business. As technology has moved forward, so has the sensibility of your own target consumer. It used to be that people used the phone directory as their main tool in choosing a company to patronize, but those days are well and truly gone. People now use the internet with more and more of them using their mobile devices to find what they want when they want it. If you have not yet joined the digital revolution, what are you waiting for?
Filed under sms marketing
Linking Is Still A Valid Strategy
Link building is still a relevant part of any SEO strategy however, care must be taken that the links created are good quality and are to sites of similar or higher standing. There are many myths surrounding linking and these have increased following Google’s penguin algorithm.
Directories are still worth using to build links. It was thought that linking to all directories was a very negative thing to do but it is not. However, it is vital that you choose the directory or directories very carefully so that you are only linking to directories that are relevant to your niche or business. Local directories are particularly useful as they are pertinent to where your business is located and as such, can be accessed by customers in that vicinity. Always check out the directory site and make sure that it is not part of a link network, is not a link farm and that it is not in penalty.
There is an SEO value to reciprocal links if it is done correctly. It is essential to ensure that the site you are linking to and from is relevant to your niche, for instance, if you are an accountancy firm, there is no point in linking with a shop selling pet accessories, it is not relevant and will therefore be detrimental to both websites. Another factor to consider is the page rank of the site you are linking to. If possible, link with sites/pages that have a similar or higher page rank as your own site. Make sure that your link is not no follow as this will serve no purpose.
Do not underestimate the power of links from social media sites. Social bookmarking has the potential to make a significant difference to your site’s ranking. However, it must be used as part of a multi-pronged strategy, it won’t be much use on its own. If you can get Joe and Jill Public to like and share your submissions, the search engines will take note and this will improve your rankings.
Be careful about paying for links. There are many directories and professional organisations where you need to pay to be included however, providing you are included in the correct niche, there is no problem with this. Do not be tempted into buying links and then try to disguise them as organic links, this will get you noticed for all the wrong reasons and you could end up being penalised.
Link building has been a subject of controversy for the past few months, as comments from Google’s own John Mueller and evidence from the latest round of the Penguin update have called into question the overall legitimacy of link building as an SEO strategy. Up until recently, link building was considered to be indispensable to any SEO campaign—because Google considers the quantity and quality of external links pointing back to a domain as a major indication of that domain’s authority, it only made sense that building more links would have a proportional effect on increasing that authority.
However, Google appears to be cracking down on the practice of external link building, putting new regulations in place to closely scrutinize the quality of external links and in most cases, recommending that search marketers avoid the practice altogether. The SEO community has responded in a deep divide, with one side claiming that link building should be avoided at all costs and the other insisting that it’s still a viable strategy.
I believe that link building is still an important part of any SEO campaign, because correlation studies continue to indicate that links have the heaviest impact on the ranking algorithm, but I do recognize that its power has weakened and its risks have increased in recent years. While inbound links are essential for any SEO campaign, link building as a tactic is no longer essential. Instead, a quality content strategy which attracts links like a magnet (rather than engaging in outbound efforts to acquire links) appears to be what Google is trying to nudge webmasters toward. Still, there are dozens of other fundamental factors far more important than link building that should take immediate priority. These are some of the most important:
1. Mobile Optimization. First, make sure your site is optimized for mobile. After Google’s recent “Mobilegeddon” update, there’s now no excuse for having a site that isn’t mobile-compatible. Hopefully, your site is responsive, which will allow it to be viewed consistently no matter what type of device is used to access it. Without some level of mobile optimization, your site may be doomed to low search visibility. Beyond that, it’s worth optimizing your site for speed as well—the faster your pages load, the better your overall user experience will be, and Google will rank your pages higher as a result.
2. Site Navigation. Google rewards sites that make it easy for users to find what they want, whether that’s information, a service, or a particular product. Optimize your navigation so it’s easy to find any page; the common way to do this is to group your pages in a single, minimalist navigation bar with descriptive core headings and full lists of pages underneath. It’s also helpful to include a search bar and interlink your content deeply so no single page of your site is ever more than two or three clicks away. Your goal should be getting your users to their ideal destination as quickly and easily as possible.
3. Full, Informative Content. Every page of your site needs to have a full section of descriptive, accurate content. On your home page, users should be able to immediately tell what your business is. On your About page, you should list important facts about your company. On your Contact page (and home page), you need to list your business name, address, and phone number at the very least. The more accurate and the more thorough your content is, the higher you’re going to rank.
4. Regular Ongoing Content. Without an ongoing content strategy program to support it, an external link building campaign is practically useless. Every business needs to be developing and publishing least one new piece of content every week—the more the better. This content needs to be wholly original, informative, and useful for its target audience. Without that ongoing fresh content, your site will quickly fall to the competition.
Continue reading at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/05/04/7-seo-fundamentals-more-important-than-link-building/
Filed under seo
Using HTML And Semantic Coding
It goes without saying that everyone wants a website that looks good and functions properly. After all, a well designed and aesthetically pleasing website will encourage more visitors to come and stay on the site, which is of course, the whole point. A good website is designed to be accessible, usable and has structure. Many sites are written using HTML code and semantic codes are there to help that every page is structurally coded. There are tags within the coding that give the structure to each page. Semantic coding for HTML is written so that the text is enclosed between the tags is easily expressed. For instance, the H1 tag is used everywhere for headings as a common standard because the alternative would be a whole variety of custom tags depending on the location and choice of the designer. This is important because web browsers require clarity, so having certain standards in place means that for both browsers and search engines the meaning is clear.
HTML coding is also essential for search engine optimization as the search engine spiders do not see how the pages look, unlike visitors to the site, they are just interested in the coding and how well structured it is and how relevant it is. What they can decipher from your HTML coding depends on how well written it is and how well structured it is. The spiders search through the tags that you are using and will search for what they consider to be important. When they come across text that is enclosed between strong tags, they consider this to be vital information and take note of it. This is how they decode the site and decide what it is about and where to categorise it.
Semantics also help to make your website accessible and by following the basic rules of code semantics, you will be able to organize the content in such a way that it will be visible and understood regardless of how the page has been accessed. These codes also assist visitors with disabilities or impairments, for example, people with poor vision who make use of speaking browsers will be able to navigate the site from the table headers and link titles will tell them about a page before they click on it.
You might think that code semantics do little to help improve the look of the site but when you think about it, using and applying code semantics does allow for a degree of 
versatility and flexibility in terms of design. By using strong tags, you can emphasise how you want words to look through CSS. Virtually every time semantic code is used, it results in a smaller page file size which allows for quicker downloading. This of course is becoming ever more important as visitors do not like to be kept waiting. So, you see there are lots of benefits to using semantic coding for HTML.
Filed under HTML
3 Ways Secure Video Streaming Can protect Your Content
In case video is a big part of your business, you can face many great risks when self-hosting your content. Providing access to your content can prove difficult especially in 
terms of the technology you need to store and deliver the content through a searchable website. The most critical question however is how to ensure that only your intended audience gets access to the content and that they or someone else does not steal it.
Third party open hosting websites such as YouTube are great for providing open access for your content to the public. However, there comes a time when you need to regulate the people that have access to your content as well as what they can actually do with it. If you want to ensure that only people that you select have access to your content then you have to put some restrictions in place.
The only way to guarantee protection of your content to a high degree of protection is by use of streaming server or secured streaming. The streaming server is a specialized application that runs on an Internet server. The only two ways of getting access to a streaming server is by either operating your own by leasing or purchasing one or signing up for a hosted streaming plan with an Internet Service provider.
It is important to understand the golden rule when it comes to streaming any time of content whether secured or not. There is simply no way to prevent that video you stream from being stolen. If someone can watch the video on his or her computer screen then he or she can steal it. Many businesses and individuals often struggle with this fact but it is the truth and you need to start getting used to it.
The best thing you can do is to minimise the probability of thieves stealing your content by making it hard for them using such facilities as the secured streaming. The following are some three ways in which secured streaming protects your content.
- Password Protection
With secured streaming, you limit access to your content by having a password-protected page for your player. This means that for anyone to have access to the content he or she must have login details.
You can be sure to limit theft of your content because you know exactly those people that have access to it. In case of a leak, it is much easier to find the culprit since you will have a records of each person who accessed or tried to access the content. Having a password-protected page for the player also dissuades potential content thieves since the system will record any attempts to access the content.
The process of setting up password protection is straightforward using .htaccess or any other method. For most uses, password protection is usually sufficient and it usually is not that hard.
- No Downloads
Secured streaming using a streaming server is quite advantageous since the system never downloads much content to the viewer’s computer. Streaming servers provide the viewer with real-time access to the content and this makes it very difficult to steal. The way real-time streaming works is by downloading just a snippet of the content at a time and deleting already viewed content. Actually, the viewer of the content has no more than a few seconds of the video downloaded to their computer at a time.
Compare that with unsecured open source video sharing sites such as YouTube whereby the user can check the HTML file to find the source of the video and he or she can then easily download it. Secure video streaming will usually stop most thieves dead and only those that are determined enough or have some technical knowledge will attempt to steal your content.
- Access Restriction By URL, Country, Protocol Or Referrer
If you so wish you can secure your video stream by restricting access based on the viewer’s country, protocol, referrer, or even URL. This secures your content since only those that fit the parameters you have set will get access to your content. For instance, if a content thief from a different country attempts to steal your content he or she will be unsuccessful if you have restricted access to the content to only those people from your country.
In conclusion, those are some three ways in which secured streaming protects your content. It is important to understand that a content thief that is determined enough will always get access to your content. The only thing you can do is limiting this theft by using secured streaming techniques.
Filed under video marketing
Top Tips For Designing A Top Notch Ecommerce Site
The online presence of your shop is important to your company success. Your website has direct impact on your sales. Managing your ecommerce business has many similarities in managing an actual shop. You must keep your shop front appealing and welcoming. Your products must be arranged well so that your customers can find exactly what they need quickly and easily. You have to cultivate an environment that urges searching so that your customers will want to remain on your site and find out more. Based on these criteria, exactly what would make up an excellent ecommerce web design?
The visual display of your web site must be pleasing to the eye. When your visitor lands on your site, he or she needs to get the feeling that this is a place that has exactly what they are searching for. Aspects of your internet site have to be well arranged. The colours you choose need to be appropriate to exactly what you are offering. Capture your visitor’s attention with something unique, however, if you are using advertising or a sales pitch, don’t be completely blunt about it, a bit of subtlty goes a long way. It needs to be done tastefully. It must offer your visitor a good enough reason to stay and take a look around your site.
When you walk into an actual store for the first time, you would most likely go straight to the shop’s directory to try to find the section you are looking for, so that you can find the goods you wish to buy. The very same logic is put on your website, only the directory is your navigation menu. Every page of your ecommerce site must have this menu located in a position that is easily found. Near the top of the page or on the left column is the norm. The menu options ought to be plainly identified. Your goal is to help your visitors find what they are looking for with as few clicks as possible so that they can make their purchase quickly and conveniently.
It is vital to ensure that each product is provided with an accurate description as well as a high quality image. Remember that your potential customers can’t touch or hold the item, so their choices are made purely on pictures and description. Supply a zoom function on your images so the buyer can get a close-up of the item. The item description ought to be both helpful and honest because you want the buyer to be confident and happy to buy from you.
An important part of a superior ecommerce site design is having a shopping cart that is not only easy to use but easy to find. Once the shopper clicks a button to put the 
product into the cart, exactly what takes place then? The checkout procedure must be structured so that the shopper can complete the purchase quickly and easily. The last thing you want is for the person to get to checkout and then find it is long winded and complicated. Use one of the great platforms for payment, there are quite a lot of really good ones available that are fully secure and safe to use. Take a look at Sagepay, Paypal and Worldpay as good examples of secure, speedy payment platforms. Make sure that you include details of your shipping costs and delivery times BEFORE they get to checkout. A very large number of shopping carts are abandonded due to shipping costs and/or delivery times so don’t fall into that trap. Be transparent about your costs so that it is not a nasty shock when the shopper reaches the checkout.
When you are checking out options for a great ecommerce web design, just imagine you are a first time visitor to the site and look through their eyes. If they do not have a positive shopping experience with you. they will go elsewhere and may well tell their family, friends and aquaintences not to bother with your shop. Think carefully about what shoppers actually want from you. Having a strong customer-focused strategy in place means that your business is more likely to have return visitors who will in all likelihood, share their experiences with others and this in turn leads to an increase in business.
Filed under Ecommerce
How To Use SMS Marketing Successfully
The rise of the mobile industry has led to tremendous opportunities for both; businesses and marketers alike. In order to really compete in the marketplace in this day in 
age, it is important to adopt to new technologies when they come to the market. One of the newest and best technologies is SMS marketing. Many businesses have already started to apply SMS marketing to their core marketing mix. These businesses/owners have a huge advantage because of the inherent advantages that SMS marketing provides as a marketer/business owner.
Advantages of SMS Marketing:
- Speed.
Marketing is all about speed and timing. In order to effectively market to your prospective customers, you need to contact them and offer your product and/or service when they are looking for it. The best part about text message marketing is that 90 percent of mobile users read their text messages within 3 minutes of receiving them.
Strategy #1: Send Time Sensitive Promotions and Offers.
Because SMS marketing allows you to connect with your prospective customers almost instantly, it is one of the most effective means of marketing for using time sensitive deals and promotions. By being able to offer time sensitive deals through SMS, you are able to increase your chances of convincing a prospective buyer to purchase your product or service now. This is especially good to use if you are selling a product or service in a fixed cost environment. For example, a restaurant owner is going to be paying for their rent and gas/electricity every single day. If the restaurant owners know that they are going to be slow on a certain day, they can effectively utilize text message marketing in order to fill their seats during those days and/or hours.
- Flexible Platform.
Text message marketing has the advantage of being accessible on every single Smartphone operating system because it does not utilize this type of technology. Because messages are sent over the air, even those without smartphones can receive them.
Strategy #2: Keep your message short. No one wants to read a long text message. Keep your message short and sweet. Not only does SMS give you flexibility in who you can send it to, but it also enjoys an extremely high open rate in comparison to email marketing and other forms of marketing. By using SMS and keeping your message short and sweet, you will be certain that everyone you send your message to will both see and read your text message.
- Reliable.
SMS is the most reliable marketing platform for business owners because it is the most reliable. Email marketing has a ton of spam filters and because of this, it is less effective as SMS. Because users have to opt into your campaigns, you will be able to enjoy better reliability.
Strategy #3: It is important to get as many prospective customers opted in as possible. A good thing to do in order to effectively market to your targeted customers is to organize your customers into specific groups. By organizing your prospective customers into specific group sets, you will be able to better and more effectively market to them.
- Coupons.
Text message marketing allows you to offer coupons directly to your prospective and current customers in order to entice them into your place of business. Because you have direct access to your customers via SMS, you are able to cut down significant amounts of cost that it would take to do it via any other method (i.e. direct mail). Because sending an SMS is relatively cheap in comparison to your alternatives, it can be extremely cost effective and really impact your business.
Strategy #4: In order to really make your coupons as effective as possible, you are going to want to place an expiration date on them. This will create more of a urge to use the coupon before it expires and will act as a call to action for the consumers. Without an expiration date o your coupons, the prospective customers may delay their purchase and/or visit.
- Links.
Because almost 40% of all purchases are now made on a mobile device, it is important to be able to provide quick and painless ways to purchase your products and/or services. Because text messages are not filtered, you can provide quick and easy links to your mobile optimized website in order for consumers to take advantage of your deals. You simply cannot do this with direct marketing and it is a lot less effective with email marketing due to most consumers email inboxes being extremely cluttered and filtered.
Strategy #5: Make sure that your mobile website and/or landing page is optimized for mobile devices. You should do a test run for yourself with different mobile devices before you send out the text message campaign in order to ensure that your prospective customers will be able to access the link easily.
Filed under marketing
Using SEO That Does Not Attract Google Penalties
Unless you have been living on the other side of the moon, you will be aware of Google algorithms and the fact that they do affect rankings. Most website owners worry about every new version that is rolled out and yes, you should be concerened to a point. If you have been careful with your SEO and used approved methods, then you have nothing to fear. However, some have used methods that are in a bit of a grey area and have found themselves having been penalised without really understanding why. The fact of the matter is that Google is just refining what it has always wanted to do and that is to give searchers high quality, relevant results. So, the answer is to provide the search engines with this ammunition so that you will rank on the organic searches. Only every publish content of the highest quality that has been written for a human audience and not for search engine spiders. It must be interesting and engaging so that visitors will enjoy it and share it as well as come back for more. Make sure that any links to your site are pertinent and of good quality, any that are even slightly dubious will attract the wrong sort of attention and must be removed promptly. Be careful with keywords, use them wisely and do always ensure that they are woven into the text so that they read properly.
On the subject of keywords, have you done a thorough keyword research project before writing your piece? This is a very worthwhile project to undertake and will give you a great range of appropriate keywords and phrases that are actually being searched for so you can incorporate these into your articles without fear of punishment. If you do find yourself in the unfortunate position of being penalised, take a look at the following article.
No one gets a site penalty on purpose. Sometimes it happens through carelessness, sometimes through black-hat techniques and, sometimes, through honest SEO mistakes.
I’ve watched four such mistakes happen recently. These sites were honestly attempting to follow SEO best practices, but they were penalized. Why? I’ll explain all.
It is worth noting that I wrote this article based on a real-life experience, so this isn’t pie-in-the-sky theory. Each point that I discuss below is tied to a real life ranking problem. Each example that I discuss is connected a to a real-life online business. (However, company details have been changed to protect their identities.)
A Disclaimer: If you find any points of connection between your site and the examples, don’t panic. Millions of sites have affiliate programs. Millions of companies engage in cozy relationships. Just because you share a commonality does not mean that you’re careening for a penalty.
1. Link-Leveraged Business Relationships
The problem explained: Many businesses create relationships with other businesses. As a way of cementing the relationship, the businesses offer to create links to one another in order to enhance SEO and click-through traffic.
Sometimes, however, these good intentions – trading links – end up hurting one or both of the sites.
Example: A major online retailer of greeting cards – we’ll call them “FaithCard” — entered into a relationship with a major brick-and-mortar retailer, “AM Stores.”
Every AM Store (and there are thousands of them) carried FaithCard’s products. FaithCard’s arrangement with AM Store provided a discounted product price, as long as AM Store’s website would include a link to FaithCard’s website.
So, AM Store placed a footer link to FaithCard.
Obviously, FaithCard got a ton of links as a result of this footer link – 16 million, to be exact. Every page of AM Store’s website included a direct link to the homepage of FaithCard.
This became highly problematic. Soon after the footer link was added, FaithCard got hit with a manual penalty.
Investigating the link profile, it was obvious that FaithCard had a highly suspicious link velocity (rate at which inbound links are acquired), a disproportionately high number of links from a single site, and link positioning in the footer.
The problem with FaithCard was compounded by the fact that they had quite a few other harmful backlinks. The footer link buildup from AM Stores, however, was the last straw. Footer links are notoriously slippery for SEO. Their impact ranges from negligible to dangerous.
This issue could have been worsened if the two sites had swapped links – that is, if FaithCard linked to AM Stores, and AM Stores linked to FaithCard in a reciprocal way. Reciprocal linking is a shady area and needs to be entered into with extreme caution – i.e., as naturally as possible. No footer link swaps.
Solution: In this case, the solution would be to have the partner site remove the footer link to FaithCard. Obviously, FaithCard will now have to deal with the fallout of the penalty, but one of the best ways to swiftly and conclusively deal with it is to have an actual link removal rather than a simple domain disavowal.
2. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate linking can either help SEO or it can kill it. It all depends on how you implement it. Rand Fishkin once called affiliate links “a nasty gray area and a frustrating one for many SEOs/webmasters/sites over the years.”
It’s true, and it leaves many SEOs scratching their heads to how exactly to deal with affiliate links.
The Problem Explained: Online affiliate relationships are big business. For the most part, they’re spam free. Companies can engage in affiliate relationships without fear of penalization.
But if a company goes into affiliate linking willy-nilly, they can get bit.
Example: In my client’s case, they put together an in-house affiliate program pretty quickly and rolled it out without a very clear explanation to their affiliate partners.
Their business — we’ll call it “ZoomZoomPic” — did brisk sales in the stock photography business. Their affiliate program was designed to help existing customers gain some income while also growing their subscriptions.
When it rolled out, however, the existing customers weren’t told how to implement the affiliate link successfully. Many of these customers, amateur photographers, added sitewide links to ZoomZoomPic’s homepage. These weren’t affiliate links, though. They were just generic homepage links. Read more http://searchengineland.com/4-easy-honest-mistakes-that-could-penalize-your-site-207392
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Filed under seo
Use These Tips to Make Ecommerce Marketing Work For You
If you own a small gift shop, you are probably always looking for ways that you can be successful attracting new customers and keeping your loyal customers happy. That’s 
why you need to use ecommerce marketing.
If you aren’t used to marketing online, it’s a lot like marketing offline. You need to consider you target audience, and you have to make sure that all your marketing materials are focused on your target group. However, ecommerce marketing requires a few more skills than you may have at the moment. But you can learn them. Here are some ecommerce marketing tips that will help you improve your business.
Get a Web Site
There are still businesses out there that do not have web sites. Don’t let that be you. No one will be able to find you on the internet unless you have an online home base for them to go. Make sure to at least come up with a basic site that lists basic information about your products and how to reach you and your company for any reason.
A website can be the first step toward attracting new business to your gift shop.
Use Social Media
A lot of business owners fail to understand how much social media can help your business. If you are not using your social media profiles to talk about your business at least some of the time, why not?
Social media allows you to have a direct relationship with your customers. Depending on how much you share, you can build a strong relationship with your customers. You can tell them about special events, sales and other noteworthy things. They can almost instantly get in touch with you, should they have any questions or comments.
Kick start Things with a Sale
One of the best ways to keep things fresh and exciting is to do a giveaway every now and then. Everyone loves free items, and if you can offer them something that they love, they will be likely to tell all of their contacts and friends about it. In fact, you can make it so that people aren’t eligible for the giveaway unless they refer a person or two. That will drum up more business for you, because people will hear about your items.
You don’t have to give away the most expensive gift in your store, because the gesture is what counts. However, make sure that it’s a good representation of you and your brand.
Make Sure Local Listings are in Place
Google Maps and other search engines are now offering free location services, so that people know more and more about where you’re located and what people think. These local listings are free, so you will get exposure for free.
Make a Video
The internet has really made ecommerce marketing so much easier than ever. You may have never been able to afford a television commercial or a radio spot, but for free you can create your own video and upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, or any number of other video sharing sites.
Creating a video allows you to do two things. First, you are able to show off your personality and your mission. Secondly, it allows you the chance to appear as an expert in your industry. Share information that people can use, and, you will discover that a video can boost your website visits and your store visits as well.
Start Using Affiliates
If you get a little tired of selling your own products, you can enlist people to help you with an affiliate program. An affiliate program allows you to have a team of people selling your product; all you need to do is offer them a percentage of every sale they bring in. This will motivate them to work as hard as selling your products as you work.
After reading this article, you have a number of tips that you can start using as soon as right now. Try each of the tips listed above, to see which tips work best for you, so that you can start building a business that attracts new customers and keeps the old ones.
Filed under online marketing
Understanding SEO
If you have your own online company, then you definitely understand just how essential it is to have search engine optimisation working for your web site instead of against you. From keyword positioning to meta tags and even more, online marketing can be downright challenging to totally understand. Nevertheless with my experience with, I’ve made a huge list of do’s and do not’s when it comes to SEO marketing. I can certainly make a minimum of 5 important recommendations that can help get your web site off the ground and get your online company or individual website in position to be successful on the internet. These worked for me and can undoubtedly work for you too.
This may not be evident to lots of, however a.com is the most typed ending to a sites URL. For this fact, I can not stress enough how important it is to now merely buy the lower level domains for the sake of making use of those keywords in your web address. You really wish to just acquire another domain tag such as a.net or.org if the name you actually want for your domain is merely not readily available and the.com alternative is simply not going to work for what you want with your web site. As another fast pointer, I would also recommend staying away from tags such as. info, as those frequently appear to be spam signs. The least thing you want to do is scare away a potential customer. The concept is to enhance organic internet traffic, not defer it elsewhere.
A back link occurs when another site links back to yours. Think about it as someone putting in a good word for your reputation. This is a means for online search engine to determine your website worth and ultimately assist get you ranking number 1 for your keyword desires. Sounds basic right? Not necessarily so. Building back links takes a little networking. Some simple methods I have actually done this is by participating in blog sites and forums. In a sense you can practically develop your own back link by posting appropriate information, then including your internet site or company link within that post someplace. For SEO functions, the text links are of primary importance with the objective being to get links that consist of the keyword phrases you’re searching for. Simply to go more in depth, state you want to enhance your rank for words “glue”. You would simply want to get your website URL connected to that word, so when a user looking for “glue” click that word, they are directed straight to your website. That my friends is what we call organic traffic, a natural way to gain site visitors interested in exactly what your site has to provide.
Anytime you can add anchor text to an image or video, that’s a chance for that specific item to be indexed in the online search engine for the keyword of your selection. Much like a back link, anchor text is something that you can manage from within your own web page in addition to being a back link tool you can leverage from another web site.
In order to have a successful online marketing project, one should know what the people are actually searching for. With keyword suggestions being made by popular online search engine such as Google, lots of people are not typing one or two words to obtain the outcomes they desire. Everything is becoming a lot more phrase based. People feel that the web is somebody they can really speak to, which is how search terms are being formed these days. For example: a person searching to purchase a canine online would have typed “dog online” in the past. However, nowadays they are most likely to type “buy a canine online”. A long tail keyword is exactly that, the long version of exactly what you would anticipate somebody to go and type.
While I agree with the majority of that the meta keywords are rather worthless, it is very important to know that over occupying this area of your web site might actually end up penalizing you in the online search engine as opposed to assisting you. Never ever utilize more than 5 terms total for this area.
While we can help each other as competitors, in a joint venture style, to link straight to a competitors website is just not wise. Seriously, that’s totally free marketing for your competition. One way to maintain a visitor and to keep them coming back to your website is to simply link them to informational material just, such as a Wikipedia page. Linking to your competition could lose you that visitor permanently. If you drive traffic to a competitor that has far more to offer, that loss can be even more significant for future engagements for that client. Keep in mind, the internet teems with details hunters. Individuals are looking not just for quick answers to their requirements, but quality responses too. It is your task to show that you have all of that to provide in your bundle.
Building back links is important, and the internet is becoming a lot more content based than ever. Individuals have actually constantly been searching for info, and obstructing the online search engine with keyboard abuse merely does not work any longer. Those web sites are in fact getting penalized for lacking material. A blog site is an easy method to produce great content that you develop yourself. It’s also an simple method for you to build connections with others and possibly have them connecting to your material, which in turn will certainly connect back to your website. I extremely suggest using blog site services such as Blog owner, Tumblr or WordPress. Exactly what is unique about Word Press is the quantity of widget options you have. This can help ensure that your blog is in fact search engine optimised before you put it out on the web.
Online search engine really keep in mind of strong and italicized text. They show importance to that word, much like it would to the average person. Bullet points are likewise important to utilize too. Using these is simply another neglected marketing method that will certainly obtain you some credit with the search bots.
Anytime you have a keyword phrase, you want to hyperlink it. This is simply another possibility to send it to another page within your web site, or to something that can produce your link association with it.
Having an excellent source of information streaming into and out of your website is very important. You can do this using search engine analytics programs, these are usually free to access, all you need to do is set up an account. Using analytics will show you what works and what does not so that you can optimise your campaign.
Running an internet site is more than just stunning content and tons of keyword rich clutter. You need to be diligent in your SEO practice. Having a firm grasp on the fundamentals is crucial. Search Engine Optimization is a effective device and if utilized improperly can wind up doing more damage to your website rather than assisting it.
Filed under seo
Social Media Is Not Suitable For Every Business
Social media is used by many businesses these days but there are many more who have not yet made use of this medium as part of their marketing strategy. Obviously, it will not suit every business, but for many, there is a platform that can be very beneficial. It is important to understand which platform will work for your business, there is no point in you setting up an account on Twitter if your customers/clients/business associates are all using a LinkedIn. Being able to connect with others in a professional capacity is quite important and using social media for B2B purposes is now beginning to increase. This is because businesses are starting to understand the value of social media as a tool which is part of a larger strategy. Increasing your business’s online profile and branding is the goal so being prepared to invest a little bit of time on it is well worth the effort. Do some research before embarking so that you understand how it works and whether it will be suitable for your business.
I remember when I first adopted social media marketing as a way to promote my business. It was January 2009—just over 5 years ago so the memory is fairly clear. At the time, I knew intuitively that social media would be useful, but I didn’t have a good handle on my goals.
So I recruited a social media pro to help. Not surprisingly, one of the first questions she asked me is what did I want to accomplish?
“I don’t know,” I responded with more than a hint of frustration. “What can social media marketing actually DO?”
It wasn’t until I immersed myself in social, and the content creation that goes along with it, that I truly began to understand its potential. The experience of connecting to people online, learning from them, helping them and even developing offline relationships is something no blog post or book can fully convey.
If you’re still finding your way in social media marketing, trying to understand how it can—and cannot—help your business, read on. I’ve been thinking for some time about sharing the insights I’ve gained through working on my own business and for clients.
Build relationships with key influencers
The first social media platform I experimented on was Twitter. I began using it to build relationships with other professionals in marketing and public relations. This approach quickly proved to be an effective way for me to learn how my peers were using social media and to compare notes with them on common challenges.
For any business, social media can serve a similar purpose.
For starters, it’s a powerful tool for getting to know the important influencers in your niche. Once you identify them, you can follow them, engage with them and, ultimately, implement strategies to build deeper relationships with them.
While the percentage of the population on Twitter is relatively small, the active users frequently wield significant influence elsewhere.
For example, many thought-leading journalists and bloggers use Twitter (and other social platforms) to promote their latest published writing. To forge relationships with them, follow their social media activity and make thoughtful, relevant contributions to the discussions they participate in or initiate.
Social media is a way to establish and build new business relationships, but it’s not a substitute for actually getting together with people. You still need to meet people one on one, participate in networking events and attend industry conferences.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-marketing-can-business-0962382#xyAQxhqAVcExBoEu.99
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Filed under social media marketing
Using Your Blog For Marketing Purposes
What is your motivation for composing an article? To produce content which will drive traffic back to you website instead of relying purely on online search engine optimisation? To be ahead of the game with your company’ Social network and construct brand-new connections or solidify your existing relationships?
Or maybe you merely discover blogging an incredibly rewarding activity particularly when you begin to see followers, likes, shares and comments? Whilst your objective for composing article might be subjective and individual, your objectives should not be. We share the most advisable objectives you need to be abiding by for blogging success.
Blogging has become one of the most popular online activities in the last few years following an ice age of content publishing which was mostly the domain of journalists and novelists. These days, anybody can write material, publish or share it online, be it housewives, cooking area table companies and smallholdings to professional SEO company owners and internet marketers, all sharing the online space. People now mainly accept that there are people who a natural passion for writing, whether it is something that they skilfully. Generally speaking, bloggers are valued more for the reality that they can identify with the routine folk and engage them with their writing.
Comprehending the requirements and motivations of not just individuals who read your blog site but likewise the potential followers who discuss it is the lynchpins of successful blogging. And, this presents a real chance to be considered as an authority in your industry. Instead of competing with others, don’t hesitate to be yourself – this will certainly ensure that you are being initial and an genuine voice which is ultimately exactly what will certainly make your voice heard. By being someone who people feel they want to being familiar with, your business or services will certainly become of interest to them likewise.
Whilst the remark that you compose will certainly exactly what helps this process along, a little online alchemy goes a long way. Look into Social Mention, a extremely advised search and analysis tool which keeps an eye on and determines exactly what individuals are stating (user-generated material) about your business, industry etc. throughout 100+ Social Media channels including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google+. Social Mention will then aggregate that material into one stream of info and also send you daily social media informs allowing you to keep an eye on all activity in real-time and react if proper.
Never undervalue the value of this. Reader engagement is a litmus test for how useful your content is considered and ranked by its readers and fans.
If no one is connecting with it, most likely it will not be doing your company or your Website any favours. And if they are, then you are on your way to becoming a vital influencer and market which Google will certainly likewise award you for (see Social Proof).
Social network has to do with resolving individuals’ problems, simply puts providing answers to concerns they may have, empathising with and helping to resolve bug bears and concerns they could have eventually comprehending their online habits and most likely end-user activity. Are they wanting to buy a services and product, searching for answers to burning question which if you solve, will compel them to advise your company and end up being a brand name ambassador or simply to engage with them and hear exactly what they need to state. Hang around considering what kind of relationship you wish to develop with your followers to make sure that your material delivers the most reliable and targeted messages.
Whilst your blog site will slowly (or swiftly if you’re doing actually well!) attract brand-new fans, unless they are engaging with that content, i.e. by means of Comments, ReTweets, Such as, Google +!’s and so on, this will certainly not affect your website traffic or search engine position.
The primary factor for this is that readers engaging with your material by commenting and sharing to their own Social network channels makes it possible for the online search engine to determine your social evidence, simply puts it showed that your content has some kudos and you are thought about an authority in your industry in regards to content writing. The advantage of this? Ultimately Google, Bing and so forth will certainly rank your blog site and site higher in online searches.
You can also produce customized reports in Google Analytics to track which posts are resonating the most with people and which are way off the mark and tweak your activity appropriately. Facebook Pages and LinkedIn Company Pages to name a few likewise have their own inbuilt analytics which allow you to do the exact same and continuously evolving as easy to use and easy to understand devices for keeping an eye on the influence of your content.
Whilst a very effective means of promoting your blog site is to see other blogs and internet sites and discuss them, exactly what I do not indicate by this is to merely leave back links to your very own blog site or web site. Followers will rapidly cotton on to this method and honestly, most of the times, be shut off by the outright self-promotion.
So how do I drive traffic to my own blog then, I hear you ask? Well, the act of commenting itself will offer a link back to your blog or site – all a reader or fan needs to do is click on your name if they wish to find out more about you or what you have actually composed and, ideally, follow you as a result. Nevertheless, this just has the tendency to happen if you have actually composed a educated, articulate and well-thought out comment and your own blog is extremely relevant to what’s been written.
Considering that the inauguration of Google’s algorithms, the days of weaving backlinks and keywords within your text are now over.
Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird are essentially algorithms Google has established to try to weed out poor quality, spammy or irrelevant sites from searches. They are also used to penalize sites that are in violation of their standards. Whilst the earlier versions of Panda sought to remove sites which offered ‘poor user experience’, Penguin is used to mark down websites which use manipulative strategies to attain high rankings.
It’s everything about the material! In other words, the higher quality your written material on your blog site or website page(s) is, the higher your brand name or company will appear in the online search engine outcomes. When composing your material, make certain that you include basic synonyms of your keywords and make use of long-tail keywords, i.e. phrases and links as calls to action such as ‘take a look at a few of the other services we provide’ or ‘visit wwwdotourwebsitedotcom for more details’ as opposed to simply specific keywords.
Whatever your inspiration for blogging, keep the end-user in mind the whole time. Whilst it is crucial that you are interested in the content you write in order to establish an enthusiastic and prominent voice online, it’s not about you! Followers of you blog need to likewise feel amazed, interested by and even more knowledgeable as a result of reading your posts. Blogging, as with all other Social media site channels is everything about important exchanges and reciprocity – they’ll make the effort if you do.
It’s all about the material – what, not where!
Filed under google algorithms
Online Marketing Tips That Can Really Help Your Business
Your online marketing plan needs to be integrated with your general company advertising technique. That said, there are three broad techniques you can employ for your online presence.
The decision to carry out any of the three broad online advertising plans depends, obviously, on your business goals and how you anticipate to use your website to grow your company.
They are: 1) no online marketing strategy, 2) normal business with no e-commerce element, and 3) e-commerce business.
Some online marketing experts say, it is possible to simply have a site with no online marketing plan. As an example, a well-coded internet site with a solid built-in seo focus can be enough for many company. For example, a pastry shop in a small town with restricted online competitors probably does not have to devote significant resources to online advertising if the original web site was made with a design and material that is conducive to good online presence with organic searches.
Another example would be a company that expects to obtain the huge bulk of its web site visitors with references to the internet site in print or other media. If most of the anticipated traffic is type-in; that is, through visitors understanding of the website address and typing it in, there is little have to have a moderate or strong online advertising plan. Again, a little, regional business in a non-competitive advertising would fit this description.
For most companies, focusing on an online marketing plan can yield fantastic outcomes. For example, we now know that more people browse online for regional services than those who utilize yellow pages directory sites. This is a powerful shift in how individuals look for product and services providers. In spite of this truth, numerous companies will certainly invest thousands of dollars a year on phonebook directory advertisements and nothing on their internet site.
At the minimum a business ought to enlist the services of a company that focuses on search engine optimization and online marketing. This might be your web design business or another company, however it is extremely important to have some professionals offer ideas how your business can be discovered more easily online. There is 
no greater financial investment you can make that will certainly have long-term benefits to your company if even more individuals find your services or products online. A great S.E.O. company will help your website do this.
Another possibility is a pay-per-click ad campaign. These are the advertisements you see on the best column and at the top of the page when you query Google, Yahoo! and Bing for a keyword search. Fortunately is that you just pay when somebody clicks the ad. Envision a person searching for “hawaii diving,” as an example, and afterwards clicking your ad for a Hawaii diving company. You cannot get any more pre-qualified site visitors to your website than those that will come through a pay-per-click ad.
There are millions of online stores. Sadly, the huge majority fail to produce substantial earnings. One reason, of course, are the products, however more essentially, many fail due to the fact that they lack a seriously prepared and executed online marketing strategy. The truth that a website exists does little to ensure that it will bring in site visitors and offer items.
If you have an online shop, do yourself a favour and discover a good web marketing business with which to work. You will certainly conserve a lot of time, cash and stress by having some experts focus on advertising your products online. There are online marketing companies for lots of budgets, and, if you are fortunate you might find one that will certainly work for a percentage of the income with no upfront expenses.
At a minimum, an e-commerce business needs to have the attention of a qualified seo company. An S.E.O. company will take a look at the design and material of the site and make recommendations on how to bring in even more natural (non-paid) visitors to the website. This will certainly consist of on-page aspects like the page material and off-page elements like the number and quality of connected to the website. A competent S.E.O. firm will likewise consider to make sure the site has been submitted to all the major search engines in the proper format.
Another vital part of an e-commerce business’ online development strategy is online advertising. This includes pay-per-click advertising and other online marketing alternatives consisting of affiliate programs and paid display marketing. Once more, unless you wish to invest numerous days and nights trying to determine the intricacies of online advertising, working with some online marketing professionals will not only conserve you time and money, they will certainly likewise make you make a lot more money.
A business’ online marketing plan ought to not be taken lightly. The trend for people to search online for services and products is just most likely to continue. Failure to put your business where people are most likely to find you is not just missed opportunity, it can mean the distinction in between a rather successful company and a very successful business.
Filed under online marketing