Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’
Most small businesses have limited resources. So when it comes to cutting budgets, it’s important to do it wisely. One great way to cut marketing costs while still being effective in getting your business’s name out there is to encourage your own employees to amp up their social media efforts.
These techniques could either be a blog, a Facebook page, and/or a Twitter account. Having employees use their own personal accounts to advocate to their peers and other consumers about your business is a fantastic way to generate viral marketing while saving you as the business owner, some major expenses.
Bloomberg Businessweek posted 5 tips to get your employees on the social media bandwagon:
1. Hold training/information sessions.
Explain to employees why social media engagement is important. Give examples of the value it brings to the company in terms of return on investment. Explain search engine optimization (SEO), brand awareness, and the leads that can be generated.
2. Seed topic ideas. Hold brainstorming sessions.
Circulate questions about topics to facilitate new suggestions. Share links to recent industry news. Encourage employees to develop ideas for content, based on personal interests and professional experience. It shouldn’t always be about the company. Online content can be used as a way to provide leadership on industry issues, as well to communicate company culture and personality.
3. Identify Champions.
Assign a group of individuals to a social media task force. Their job may be to assist in getting other employees to contribute, setting objectives/metrics, defining SEO keywords, and developing a schedule and ideas for content.
4. Leverage existing opportunities.
Content is everywhere; employees should think critically about what they already have available to them, including training presentations, customer stories, meeting notes, research, and statistics.
5. Help employees feel invested.
For small businesses that are struggling to spark employee interest, making contributions part of their job objectives and even tying them to bonuses can help. A photo and name attached to individual contributions will give employees visibility—and the exposure will motivate them to contribute more frequently and with greater quality.
Web analytics are tools you can use to enhance your online business. Using web analytics can save you time and money in terms of tracking your consumer behavior and preferences. If you have an online business, the most important aspect of keeping up with trends is paying attention to consumer activities on your website.
Why Use Web Analytics
Web analytics are an aggregation of statistics and information based on visits to your website. Web Analytics allows a user to monitor the length of time a visitor browsed through the user’s site, who the viewer is, in addition to the keywords the visitor used to access the site, and what source they came from.
If you use web analytics, you have the power to enhance your search engine optimization techniques. By understanding the keywords people are using to search for your product or service, you can revamp your web content and make it more accessible. You can even use these tools to write ads that better target your audience.
With the power to see how many times visitors visit your site and which pages are more popular than others on your site, you gain great insight and feedback about what your visitors want. This will undoubtedly help you formulate a sales plan that caters almost exactly to what your customers want.
Using Web Analytics for Marketing
You can now derive your online marketing strategy from something more tangible than conventional market research. With Web Analytics, you can monitor viewers’ unconscious preferences as well as their deliberate choices. Also, with a solid picture of what your visitors’ like and dislike, you can adjust your marketing plan already in place to retain returning customers and build a loyal client base.
Google Analytics is a great tool to achieve all of the results Web Analytics can give you. Using these tools will open a door for your online business that will save time, money, and painstaking efforts.
Why Google is Your Best Friend
Posted on: November 4, 2010
Google has monopolized the advertising industry. It’s true. If you want to find a product, service, image, or essentially any information you would ever want to know that’s not in front of you, what do you do? You “Google” it.
Google is not just a search engine anymore, it’s a full service advertising agency – a billboard for companies, if you will. Google (as used in the first paragraph) is now an action verb in the English language. It is a solution to your small business problems.
So how can you make Google your best friend? There are very specific techniques you can use to harness the power of search engines, and use them to help your small business grow and prosper.
Keywords
Good content is the most important aspect of making your site visible on Google. In order to optimize your website for the search engine’s algorithms, you need to have specific words within your website’s content that attract the search engine’s attention.
Your content should always follow these rules:
- Keep it simple, no fancy formatting
- Try to cover the least amount of topics per page (if you need more topics, use more pages)
- Use the strongest keywords you can (words or phrases that directly related to your product or service)
- Don’t repeat keywords unnecessarily (avoid getting marked as spam)
Backlinks
Another very important aspect for search engine optimization techniques are the links on other pages and sites that reach back to your website. The more you have, the higher your page rank is. The higher your page rank is, the higher you appear on Google. The higher you appear on Google, the more credible and reliable you appear to the millions of people using Google to find a product or service like yours.
Post links on other websites (genuinely and with permission), link certain keywords and phrases on your blog posts back to your website. Having backlinks will not only improve your search engine rankings, but it will also drive people who are visiting other channels back to your website.
How To Sell Online
Posted on: October 19, 2010
If you are a small business owner or budding entrepreneur, you probably already know how imperative it is to have a professional online presence. People generally see the Internet as a primary resource when researching information about products and services.
Research on the Internet is also transforming, it is transitioning from personal research to consultation with peers via social media networks. So how does this apply to you as a small business owner with a website? You need a website that promotes your product in the most effective ways.
Below are a few ideas to help your web development:
Sell Products People Want
Selling personal and customizable products is generally the smartest approach when entering the small business world. This will enable you to have control over the trademarks and copyrights. If not, be sure to research the most reliable wholesalers available. Buying wholesale from reliable companies is critical for your business success.
Research your target market and have a clear understanding of what your consumers are looking for.
Purchase a Domain Name
Your URL should always relate to your business. You will get buried in search engine rankings if your URL is something overcomplicated, and does not include the keywords associated with the product you sell. Search engines generally rank .com sites higher than .org or .net, if possible, purchase all three domain names and redirect the .org and .net pages to your .com site.
You should generally purchase a 5-year reservation. Search engines tend to rank veteran websites higher than newer ones. Having an effective URL will automatically boost your search engine optimization.
Build an Effective Website
Your content should be persuasive, credible, and concise. The website should be easy to navigate, easy to find, and easy to purchase from. Have real contact information and as much personal touch as possible. Use social media marketing by having a Social Media Platform in order to gain exposure online and event cut marketing costs.
Have Online Purchase Power
The fastest and easiest way to set up an online payment program is to use Pay Pal. Any individual with an email address can securely and easily send and receive payments online. Pay Pal has a well-known reputation of having a solid fraud prevention system.
Employ Search Engine Optimization
Relevant keywords are critical for your search engine optimization, or your page rank within search engines. Try Google Adwords or other keyword testing programs to see what kind of results you might get on search engines with the keywords you have in mind. Google your own company or product and see what kind of words show up the most often.
Many people are under the impression that search engine optimization is a service for those looking for a “quick fix” or “immediate ROI,” according to Hugoguzman.com. Generally, people have the idea that SEO fits into similar categories as traditional online marketing channels, like paid ads or email marketing. This leads to the belief that SEO should have instantaneous results.
Not only is this paradigm wrong, it is dangerous. SEO is certainly not a short term, one-time thing. This impression can lead people who are seeking SEO services to engage in risky, fly-by-night SEO practices and cut-rate SEO services that take your money and run.
Clients that hire SEO services that promise instantaneous results are almost always disappointed and feel ripped off afterward. This can lead people to believe that SEO is ineffective, doesn’t deliver, and almost always a scam.
What Can You Do?
Trust SEO services that use time-table results. Usually SEO experts that understand the length of time and effort it takes to see results from SEO will show you a period of time in which continuous effort will help to increase your search engine visibility and page rankings.
These efforts include updating your online business website with quality content, effective keywords, and useful backlinks. Hugoguzman.com describes this process as a marathon. However, this is no 26.2 mile marathon, it is a never-ending marathon.
In the SEO marathon, you are generally trailing behind your competition and the effort you put forth is to catch up, because your competition has been in the game a lot longer than you have. People and businesses that are not already solidly ranked by search engines need to understand the effort and time it takes to build those rankings.
The point is this: SEO is not a formula for instantaneous results and immediate ROI. It is a continuous effort and can take more than a year to begin to lead in search engine rankings.
In order for your small business website to gain the attention and traffic you need to start attracting more customers, it needs to be visible. By visible, I mean visible to search engines. While you may have great content, it might not be on Google’s radar.
The best way to get higher search engine rankings is to use search engine optimization strategies. One great way to use SEO is to have a blog on your website, where you post content once a day, filled with useful keywords and backlinks.
David Rothschild, director of marketing at Insight Forge (a San Francisco SEO consultant company), wrote a great brief on Focus.com. He focused on some key points for using SEO in your blog posts.
Use the tips below for your blog posts to create greater visibility and drive traffic to your website.
SEO Blog Writing Tips
- Create linkable content: Page Rank and search engine standings are in part determined by the number of incoming links from content specific sites. These “linkbacks” are most helpful if they are coming from high traffic sites related to the keywords you are attempting to optimize for.
- Become an authority: Use your blog as a means to establish your site as an authority in your industry.
- Fill the Gaps: If you know there are gaps in available information for your industry, then attempt to create posts to fill in the blanks.
- Create a Conversation: Find other bloggers in the same space and write posts that respond to topics they bring up. If you get yourself in the mix of established “topic specific” bloggers, your own credentials will benefit.
- Keep a Narrow Focus: Write a post with the knowledge that you will use a specific keyword in the post title and specific keywords throughout the post copy.
- Make it easy to digest: Social media plays a major role in generating incoming links and readership for your blog. Make sure to write articles that are easy to read and informative for someone who may not be directly involved in the industry.
- Be yourself: Despite the fact that you are intentionally creating search engine friendly content, it is critically important to be yourself. This means writing about industry specific topics that you find compelling and writing in your own voice.
- Feel free to be creative: Feel free to throw out standard SEO blogging conventions and write a post for your own purposes. Just having fresh content in the ballpark of your industry will benefit your search engine standings.
A business website can use search engine optimization in two ways:on-page and off-page. Simply put, on-page SEO is the process of makingphysical content changes to your website to help its search enginerankings. Off-page SEO is the process of posting links to yourwebsite on other sites outside of your own to drive traffic to yourwebsite.
Intentionally building links can be a tricky process because the main thing you want to avoid is being labeled a spammer. By leaving 10 different links on the same website, you risk being blocked and labeled as a spammer, which immediately compromises your credibility. There are a few ways to circumvent this problem and build valuable links at the same time.
Find Related Websites
Find websites that relate to your product or your industry. If they have a blog or forum, or really anywhere you can post a comment, post one! By engaging in conversation you are well on your way into improving your credibility and contributing value to the industry as a whole. At the end of whatever (valuable) comment you post, feel free to leave a link to your own business website to encourage the continuation of the conversation.
Use Social Media to Your Advantage
Social media is basically one condensed conversation about the industry of your choice. Join (or “Like”) a group that relates to your product or service. For example, if you sell athletic equipment, visit other groups on Facebook that sell similar equipment. Talk about new products that are coming out on the market. Talk about products you feel are underrated that you genuinely feel people should try. Truly try to engage in conversation. Afterward, leave a link to your own business website so people can see the validity behind your opinions.
Why it Works
Is this process time consuming? Absolutely. Does it work? Absolutely. There is no better advertising than consumer conversation. If you engage in social media as well as other forms of consumer conversation, you gain the ability to not only build links to your website, but gain insight as to what consumers truly feel about the market your in. You can find out what components consumers are dissatisfied with, and make changes. These changes can do nothing but help your business grow and improve.
Essentially you’re killing two birds with one stone. You are building your company’s credibility while also driving traffic to your website. In addition to building credibility – you are separating yourself in consumers’ minds from other spammers and black hat SEO’s out there.
The whole world is logging on to the Internet each day. As an owner of a small business with an online presence, you want the most exposure possible. The ability to show up higher than your competitors on Google searches will increase customer loyalty, give your business credibility, and most importantly – more traffic.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into the picture. By using the power of SEO, you can give your website the more visibility and accessibility. Optimizing your website properly will give search engines the ability to list your website right at the top of Google.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the process of using keywords throughout your website content that potential customers might use to search for what your business website offers. SEO usually refers to the process a business or an individual uses to opimize their web content for organic search engine rankings.
By organic search engine rankings, I mean those search results that are not pay-per-click ads you see on the side bar of Google searches. They are true websites that appear after Google crawls through several hundred thousand websites to find exactly what your query matches.
How is SEO Helpful?
Search engine optimization will revamp your web site design, menus, content management system, and shopping carts in order to make everything more accessible to search engines. It is a marketing strategy that is sure to get results because increased visibility will undoubtedly increase your website traffic.
How can I optimize my website?
The most effective ways to optimize your website for higher page rankings, is to use effective keywords and create backlinks.
As mentioned earlier, keywords are words and phrases throughout your website copy that relate to your product or company. These words are what you presume consumers use to search for what you offer. By using them often, and bolding them, you allow search engines to see your website more clearly, and offer it as a resource to people who are searching for those words.
Backlinks are links that direct traffic back to your website. By inserting links in your blog posts, or posting them in various social media channels, you can drive traffic back to your website. Search engines also give higher rankings to websites that have more backlinks.
Search engines are getting smarter. In order for your website to appear higher on any search engine, you need to optimize your website with the right keywords and phrases. The problem is, how do we know which words will work and which ones won’t?
Here are a few tips to follow to boost your position in search engines.
Separate Keywords with Punctuation
When search engines crawl through a website, they do not register punctuation, bullet points, line breaks, capitalization, and other stylized forms of writing. They only rank letters. This will help you use more keywords without disrupting the flow of content
Example:
In order to boost your exposure, dive into the world of social media. Marketing towards individual consumers through social networking sites will help build your brand equity.
Put Keywords into Bullet Form
Using lists are great for your readers specifically because they are easy to read and draw the readers’ attention. They are less cluttered than big blocks of text. So by expanding on the frequent viewership of bulleted lists, insert keywords into the list because again, search engines do not register style, only letters.
Use the Opposite of Your Keyword
By talking about the opposite of the image you’re trying to convey, you can still use keywords and also discuss important points with your readers.
Example:
Search engines are getting smarter. In order for your website to appear higher on any search engine, you need to optimize your website with the right keywords and phrases. The problem is, how do we know which words will work and which ones won’t?
Here are a few tips to follow to boost your position in search engines.
Separate Keywords with Punctuation
When search engines crawl through a website, they do not register punctuation, bullet points, line breaks, capitalization, and other stylized forms of writing. They only rank letters. This will help you use more keywords without disrupting the flow of content
Example:
In order to boost your exposure, dive into the world of social media. Marketing towards individual consumers through social networking sites will help build your brand equity.
Put Keywords into Bullet Form
Using lists are great for your readers specifically because they are easy to read and draw the readers’ attention. They are less cluttered than big blocks of text. So by expanding on the frequent viewership of bulleted lists, insert keywords into the list because again, search engines do not register style, only letters.
Use the Opposite of Your Keyword
By talking about the opposite of the image you’re trying to convey, you can still use keywords and also discuss important points with your readers.
