Tag Archive for: News

The vast changes Google has been making to SEO are well documented and discussed, as they have rendered all of the old ways of ruling searches with manipulative techniques obsolete. Instead, the optimization industry is being dominated by content investment. That, of course, means you’ll need to know how to make the best content possible.

We have some quick tips for helping with the shift to content creation. For a longer list, check out Simon Penson’s list at Search Engine Watch.

Idea creation

  • Come up with a list of ideas you can serialize. Regularly appearing content like “Quick Tips”, Top 10’s, and Q&A’s are a good place to start.
  • Identify types of content that would work well for you online.
  • Use Highcharts.com to see a visualization of every part of your content strategy to make sure everything is consistent.
  • There are lots of different and innovative types of content to create now, but the blog post is still the old standard for a reason.
  • Competitions are a great way to grow audiences via social media that you can later engage.
  • Change up your locations for brainstorming. Different environments stimulate creativity.

Creating Structure

  • While serialized content is good, don’t just repeat the same type of content over and over. Try to come up with a pattern of types of different content you can create and publish.
  • Make a 6-month content plan in the form of an editorial calender, keeping in mind industry events and trends.
  • Include your site pages in your initial structural plan. It is essential to include every part of your site in your plan so that every word matches your brand persona and message.

Content Strategy

  • Think about your timing. Time of day has a large effect on online activities and you should try to maximize your potential reach by considering when you publish content.
  • Learn your audience. Use survey for quantitative data and customer meets for qualitative information. This will tell you more about how to approach creating content for your market.
  • Separate your brand into different personas to match three or four demographics with different needs, then create content for these different personas.
  • Create a content flow as part of your strategy creation process.

Content Execution

  • When creating copy keep the details in mind. Font style and size, kerning, and leading all matter. Your presentation is as important as your content.
  • Take time to make a solid headline.
  • When creating a post, plan the structure beforehand.
  • Create persona writers for your brand and build authority over time to grow AuthorRank.

Measure Effectiveness

  • Don’t measure outreach by just the links earned. Take into consideration factors like referral traffic and brand visibility.
  • Keep social metrics in mind during content marketing measurement campaigns.
  • Set up Google Alerts with a snippet from any major piece of content you make so that you will be alerted when someone copies it.
  • Think of content performance like baseball averages. One hit for every three pieces of content is solid performance.

Hopefully these short tips will help you make the transition from the old SEO practices to content creation. The more you invest in content, the more reward you will see later.

 

Consistently creating good quality content is not easy. For copywriters, good content is something that really connects with readers, and while some can churn out content like robots, most of us have to invest a lot of time and effort.

Of course, practice will always make you a better content creator. Having an intimate understanding of copywriting and how it works is the foundation you will be building on. We all know a solid foundation is important.

Thankfully, the folks at ABC Copywriting have everything you could ever need to know about the copywriting processes all in one infographic. They include a walkthrough of every step of copywriting, as well as tips for quality sales letters, information documents and webpages. With it, you will have a solid base of information to become a great content creator and copywriter.

It should be pretty obvious by now that the shift to accessing the internet via mobile devices is not going to wane any time soon. Some have already recognized this and capitalized by integrating mobile into their overall marketing and media plans, but there are still many untapped ways to take advantage of the mobile market.

While one ROI firm recently suggested that marketers allocate 7 percent of the budget to mobile, leaving room for growth to 10 percent by 2016,  Bill Dinan at Search Engine Watch argues that there’s a high amount of opportunities for mobile minimization and you should be giving a higher percentage of your ad budgets.

Mobile consumers tend to be more ready to buy than others, and a study conducted by Nielson found that local mobile searchers are converting at much higher rates than desktop users.

Over 60 percent of those participating in the survey said they ultimately make the purchase. 20 percent even stated that when using mobile they are often looking to purchase immediately or within the hour, which shows a window of opportunity for marketers.

We have 3 tips to help you fully take advantage of the opportunities created by mobile.

  1. Know the Mobile Customer – Any good advertiser should be paying attention to customer motivations and the ways their intents are often connected with their methods. Mobile customers have different needs and desires, and a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t going to cut it.
  2. Contact Info is Essential – Calls and location information are always an important step in the path for mobile users to purchase. Most users will want to connect with a business before making a purchase, so make sure your phone numbers and location info are clearly displayed. If the customer can’t contact you when they want to make the purchase, they will likely move on to the next business.
  3. Understand the Differences Between Tablets and Smartphones – Consumers use smartphones and tablets for different things, and it is important for mobile marketers to keep this in mind. Most smartphone users are looking for and contacting local businesses, while smartphone users tend to do more research activities. Brand websites also tend to be more popular on tablets, while local directory apps are more popular on smartphones.

If your company is ready to leap into the mobile marketing world, and you should, remember these tips. They will help get you headed towards an effective marketing plan.

 

 

Google’s algorithm changes over the last decade have really made huge shifts in the way we search things. They also really help developers stay on their toes.

Initially, the SEO business was all about rankings. You told your client how you would get their keywords to the top of the search, and then showed them how high they were coming up in searches. Of course, it took a while to get their site to the top, but once you did, they were content.

Now, thanks mostly to Search+, it is the job of SEOs to get their clients to stop thinking about ratings. What Search+ has done is customize the results for every search you make based on search history, location, social media usage, and other criteria. That means everyone gets results catered to them, but it also results in your client’s site not appearing high in the rankings for some people.

Sujan Patel offers some other methods of tracking how your websites are performing, all of which can be found in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.

There are simple reports like “visitor growth” that show how your site is trending quickly and clearly, as well as old metrics that have risen in popularity. Such measurement tools like Impressions give you ideas of how your pages are appearing for similar search terms.

Another old metric that has become much more useful is your site’s average ranking. In January, Google announced changes to how they score site’s average rankings and now it gives a much closer average of “how a link’s position in Google search results should be important.”

While the older ways of Google made it easier for you to see how your site is performing, the changes in recent months have actually been an improvement for marketing towards target demographics. Unfortunately, this means improving your analytic skills is essential if you want to succeed. You may not be able to give your client keywords to search to see their performance, but if you know your analytic tools, you can still quickly show them how your SEO path is helping them grow their business.

 

Just about everyone has a smart phone by now, so why is mobile SEO still a poor facsimile of desktop SEO? Even the most basic stats show that mobile SEO is worth paying attention to, as mobile devices accounted for 13% of all searches in June 2012 with 20% of clicks.

The problem is creating a mobile site isn’t easy, and effectively optimizing any given site for a mobile audience relies on several criteria.

SEO consultant Aleyda Solis at the BrightonSEO conference listed seven of the criteria you should consider when optimizing a site for mobile SEO, and we’re here to help you through it.

  1. How does your audience behave on your site? – Before you invest time and money into a mobile site, it’s first important to know if you even have enough of a mobile audience to make it worth your effort. Using Google Analytics, you can create a segment for organic mobile traffic, which will allow you to look at the volume of visits, devices used, and the landing pages they tend to hit, as well as what are the most popular keywords. If you know what type of content is most popular with mobile users, you can prioritize it when creating a mobile website.
  2. Where does your site appear in mobile search results? – Where your site appears in mobile search results is helpful in knowing what content you need to optimize for mobile use. Investigating these statistics, as well as what keywords and pages are already gaining visibility will help you prioritize.
  3. How does your audience use mobile search? – Knowing how your target audience uses mobile search allows you to make yourself more visible to them and increase your traffic. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to find the keywords your audience are using, and Our Mobile Planet lets you check how consumers are using their mobile devices.
  4. How does your site render on mobile devices? – Testing your content on mobile devices is essential when designing a site because if your content doesn’t render correctly, visitors will promptly leave. Using Google’s Getmometer, PageSpeed Insights and the ‘Fetch as Google mobile bot’ in Webmaster tools, you can see how mobile users and bots see your website.
  5. What content and products are you offering to your mobile audience? – Mobile users are often looking for different content than your desktop visitors are. Identifying what your mobile customers are after, lets you know if you are catering to their needs. Often, mobile users focus more on localized content. If that is true for your audience, are you offering localized content? If you’re not, are you able to create some?
  6. Do you have the technical capacity to develop a mobile site? – If your website isn’t rendering correctly on mobile devices, you need to consider if you have enough of a budget to make it responsive, dynamically serve content or build a parallel mobile version. Each method has its pros and cons, but ideally you need to use responsive design. That’s not always possible though, depending on technical capacity, budget, and content needs.
  7. Based on these criteria, decide what type of mobile site you need – Depending on your site’s needs and abilities, you will know how you need to respond to creating a mobile site. David Moth at Econsultancy has a flowchart to use to make it easy for you.

There are different ways to handle mobile optimization, and hopefully this list has helped you identify the best route for you, but there is one thing that is true no matter what. Mobile SEO is becoming more important every day, and ignoring it is only hurting yourself.

 

Anyone reading this should know they should be testing their websites and landing pages, but if you aren’t well studied in optimization, how are you supposed to know what you should be testing? Oli Gardner has some suggestions to get you started testing your site.

1) Test the Headline – Your headline is the first things viewers will see when they land on your page, and to be most successful it should match what your viewer expected when deciding to visit your page. For example, you can test how positive or negative language performs in your headline, such as “Save Time by Downloading Now”  vs. “Stop Wasting Time, Download Now”.

Headlines are also used by your audience to quickly identify if the site they came to has what they want. Make sure your headline lets visitors know what you have to offer immediately. A great way to quickly test this is to just show the headline to someone unfamiliar with your brand for 5 seconds and ask them what the page was about. If they don’t know, you have a problem with your headline.

2) Test Your Forms – Most landing pages will have some sort of form trying to gain information from visitors. Its important to remember however that you should be offering something to your visitors in exchange for this information. What you offer is up to you, but examples could be an e-book, webinar registration or whitepaper.

The question remains though, how do you test to see if your forms are effective? One test would be seeing which forms people fill out the most, if all fields were made optional. The goal is to make sure you’re offering something equal to the amount of data you need. Try to be efficient and only have forms with relevant information and test different arrangements to see what visitors respond to the most.

3) Test Your Call To Action (CTA) – A call to action is your conversion. It is how you get people to do what you want them to do, and if that isn’t happening, you may need to work on your CTA. Make it descriptive, so that your visitors will know exactly what will happen if they follow the CTA,

A way to test your CTA is by changing just one word and seeing how customers respond. Unbounce found that changing the description “order information” to “get information” led to a 38.26% increase un conversions.

While these examples will get you going, if you want a more thorough guide, you’ll also want to look into Oli’s “Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing”.

 

 

As a web designer or developer, it’s always important to understand what the client wants. That’s why it is strange how few designers and developers understand online marketing.

Understanding and implementing online marketing give any developer or designer a great advantage in the marketplace and promises much more of a long term reward than those that fail to learn about online marketing. This isn’t to say neglecting your designing or developing skills is a wise decision, but by combining your skills with online marketing, you can do three things:

1) Get more clients – When clients post ads for developers or design jobs, they often get responses detailing what features and formats the person could implement. They promise so many pages, or list how they are proficient in HTML5, jQuery, and W4C standards. This may seem like a great approach for contacting potential employers, but it has a great weakness.

Potential employers want to know what you will do for them, and what they want you to do is make more money. Employers want to hear that you will raise the number of subscribers a certain percent, or will raise their revenue. Wether you use HTML5 or jQuery is not of much importance to them.

There are plenty of good web designers that can make nice looking websites, but there are way less designers that know how to increase sales. Those that know online marketing will get the better clients, and higher rates.

2) Build Your Brand – The biggest problem for every freelancer is building a base of clients. It would be great for clients to just come to you ready to pay however much you want, but that is a fantasy. Or is it?

Building a strong personal brand online attracts clients by exhibiting your skills to them beforehand. This can be fairly difficult and requires a lot of perseverance, but there is a basic pattern. First, you build a popular blog, followed by establishing a decent social media following. Then, you participate in outside activities like conferences, and make yourself known about.

This path does two very important things for you. It establishes you as a reputable expert, and gains you tons of publicity many would pay for. When employers need work done, they go to the experts they know first, and if you’ve built a strong brand, they will know about you.

If you want to know more about building a personal brand, I highly recommend watching the TED talk by Jacob Cass.

3) Earn extra income – Freelancing is far from a stable career and anyone should be prepared for unexpected problems. That is why it is important to make yourself as financially secure as possible before the problems arrive.

One of the best options for securing your finances is to diversify your streams of income between client work and passive income. If you are already perceived as an expert in your field, creating a passive income shouldn’t be difficult. There are a slew of monetization options, such as creating and selling your own products or even simply displaying ads on your site.

It does take effort to create a product, and even more to market and sell it, but it could be extremely important in your future.

Think of it this way, if you want to run a local bakery, you have to be as good at business as you are at baking. Otherwise, the business won’t get off the ground. The same goes for creating a business online. If you want to be successful online, learn online marketing.

 

If you want to learn more about online marketing and the mistakes you can make while starting out, read more at 1stwebdesigner.

Google has made five recent SEO changes that will make most content marketers, writers, and bloggers quite happy. They play to your strengths. Some users may be less happy about these changes, however.

The changes were mostly made to keep more people on Google products, which isn’t a bad idea from a business perspective, but some may find the changes effect searching negatively.

The good news is, the changes were also made so that your results would be more personal by monopolizing on the fact that people are more likely to purchase something if they know their friend also likes it.

The even better news is these changes are great for anyone who makes content for a living. I will walk you through all of the changes and help you to take advantage of them.

1) Optimize personalized search – One of the biggest changes Google has made completely changed SEO by making search results personal. The results you get for a search will be different than mine, based on factors like your browsing history, the content you create and content shared by your social circles. People are finding their content more and more through social media networks and searching less.

So how can you optimize your content for personalized search? One option is you can increase your Google+ circles. Google is actively trying to get people to sign up for Google+, and in this instance, using Google+ and connecting with more people on there helps improve your search. The more people you have in your circles, the higher relevant content will show up in your searches. This also means that your circles can see your content when they search.

2) Increase social sharing – As a content creator, getting shares on social media is a great way to get your content high in the search rankings. According to a study by branded3, the more tweets leading to a URL you can get, the higher you will appear in rankings. For example, anyone that gets over 7,500 tweets (not an easy task) will appear in the top five results almost always. This type of logic most likely also works for Facebook.

As a content creator, capitalize on social sharing and you can beat your competition in the rankings. Just make sure to make the social sharing buttons obvious so that readers can find them, encourage your readers to share and try to court others with influence in your target social circles. Interview them or offer to do guest posts. Anything to establish a connection.

3) Employ semantic keyword research – Google is improving at segmenting search results, which gives you an opportunity to rank higher in verticals. This is a surefire way to get higher conversion rates because your prospective visitors are better targeted.

To take advantage of this, you’ll need to look for “advanced search” keywords. When you search, there is a way to refine results with a tool hidden in “show search tools”. Within this advanced search tool, you can look at “related searches”. Now you have semantic options you can test for the highest search volumes. There are also ways to improve your keyword list such as Google Insights for Search, which lets you narrow keywords down via categories.

4) Play with the Panda update – Google’s Panda update finally made life hard for spammers and content farms by harshly punishing sites with low quality content. This is good for all of the content creators who put hard work into long blog posts with useful content. Google even offered questions to determine the value of your content.

5) Implement the Google Authorship Mark-up – A search marketing firm proved rich snippet will increase SERP CTR and traffic. It’s that simple. Their analytics show a 150% increase when rich snippet was implemented. You might not get results quite that good, but it’s almost certain you will benefit if you implement the Google’s authorship snippet. It can be complicated, and it is slow to show results, but if you invest now you’ll see results in the not too distant future.

All of these Google changes have radically changed the SEO game, but they have made it a wonderful moment to be a content marketer. Those that put out shoddy content are being penalized, and there are all sorts of opportunities to really get your content out there.

 

For a more in depth look at author rank, read Neil Patel’s article at Quick Sprout.

 

No other industry has benefited from the internet more than the business industry. The internet has given businesses easy ways to market their products or services to a wider audience, and now the creation of websites that appeal to specific audiences is one of the most important aspects of business marketing.

If you are in charge of creating a website, you want to make it eye-catching, but you also want to avoid simple mistakes that make your audience want to go elsewhere. Lewis Hooker at Graphic Design Junction has a list of 8 things to avoid if you want people to keep coming back.

  1. Do not make the design complex – It’s easy and sometimes fun for a designer to be a little overzealous and include a lot of features in their design without considering if these features are really necessary. Going overboard is never good in the long run. Complex designs with an abundance of features make navigating websites difficult and confusing for many visitors. Even worse, it makes changing and adjusting your site later a real pain.
  2. Do not exaggerate the use of Flash – It is a common mistake for web designers to over-do it when using Flash animation. Flash can certainly be a nice touch on a site to make the page a little more eye catching, but too much is always a bad thing. Too much flash slows down your website’s loading time drastically, and visitors often leave if they get tired of waiting for a page to load. If you want to use Flash, just remember that less is more.
  3. Do not use “fancy” fonts – Some designers like to use highly stylized fonts to class up their pages a little. While a nice font can help grab visitor’s eyes if used right, fonts that are difficult to read frustrate viewers. If you want to use a distinct font, go for it, but if you can’t immediately read the text, go with something else.
  4. Do not use music of audio files without permission – Lately many website designers have been including music players within their sites that automatically play music when the page loads. Many visitors find these annoying, and worse, they can get in the way as well as slowing down load times. If you feel it necessary or relevant to include a music player, always remember to give users control to pause or mute the music.
  5. Do not hide the links – Some designers often forget to highlight links on their websites properly. Links are obviously essential to navigation, and users want to be able to navigate websites as quickly and easily as possible. Therefore, always highlight links properly so users can get around.
  6. Do not use pop ups – I don’t know why any designer would use pop ups anymore. They are annoying, and most browsers have software built in to block them.
  7. Do not ask for registration – There are times when asking users to register before accessing content is necessary, but if it isn’t absolutely required, avoid registration. Most viewers will be put off by having to enter their information to see content that should be readily available.
  8. Do not subscribe the visitors to newsletters without their permission – Doing this will make your visitors angry. Period. No one wants e-mails from a website unless they signed up for them. Just don’t do it.

These tips are simple and to many visitors, they may seem like common sense. However, we still see them everywhere. If you want your website to be a success, just follow these rules. Your visitors will be happy and so will your clients.

 

 

Many startup companies make the same mistakes when conducting their sales campaign. We’re here to help you avoid them. Here are the seven most common mistakes for startups. While some of these may sound like common sense, knowing these ahead of time and knowing how to fix them can save your company a lot of trouble.

  1. Not Understanding Your Customer: Treating all clients as the same is a huge mistake many startups make. It is easy to make assumptions about what your customers will want but they will all have unique concerns and problems that have to be dealt with in a personalized way. Not every customer responds to the same sales pitch. Asking questions early on will allow you to answer their questions and sell them on your service.
  2. Not Selling: Rather than focusing on the extras and luxuries of your product, pinpoint the ways it will solve that specific client’s problems. This means asking the questions that will tell you what the customer needs. Showing a few ways your product will directly benefit a potential client goes a lot further than telling them about what you plan to put into the product later.
  3. Being Absent: Failing to meet potential customers in real life to close the sale means missing two of the most essential experiences for a startup. Not meeting in person hinders the ability to directly connect with clients and build long term relationships. It also means not hearing the specific concerns of the customer, which is easily the best way to improve what you are selling.
  4. Failing to Follow Up: After you give your pitch, follow up. While it seems that giving your pitch and traveling onto the next potential client increases prospective customers, moving on actually makes the clients forget about you. Don’t harass your leads, but keeping your product fresh in their memory until they make up their mind never hurts.
  5. No Process: Tracking basic information such as phone calls and emails, connections to decision makers, closed deals and deal values is an essential activity for startups, but many forget to do it. Having a process in place means knowing where you stand with all potential customers.
  6. Charging the Wrong Amount: While skewing prices cheaper seems like it would make your product more attractive, it can sometimes make customers question its value. Don’t undercharge. Set your price at one that will allow for a sustainable business and reflects the value of your product. Attract customers with what your product does, not how cheap it is.
  7. Not Asking For a Sale: If you have been in contact with a potential client for a relatively long period of time, don’t be afraid to ask for the sale. If you’ve put effort into establishing a relationship with the potential client, they should be happy to close the deal.

While startup founders come from all walks of life, knowing how to be an effective sales person is required to make a product succeed. Even if you’ve already made one of these mistakes, they are easily fixable. With these problems solved, you’ll be well on your way to making your service a reality.

 

You can read more in Steli Efti’s article at TechCrunch