Posted by Stoney Williams on Wed, Apr 18, 2012 @ 09:14 AM
Is Your SEO Project Failing and Why?
The majority of internet marketers fail, it’s a fact. They put up a site, pour their heart and
soul into it but fail miserably even though they understand the basic rules of SEO. There is any number of reasons for this and we’re going to list below the most common reason why
Poor Execution/Lack of Analysis
Whether you’ve studied everything you possibly can about SEO or you’ve paid an SEO company to write up a strategic marketing plan for your website it will be necessary to follow a certain number of steps.
You’ll have to constantly review your procedures to make sure you’re staying on track. Just because somebody says if you do this you will succeed, don’t rush off and blindly do it - you may be wasting your time and efforts. Find someone who knows what they’re doing and ask questions. Lots of questions.
No SEO company worth its salt will ever tell you that by using their methods your site will be number one in the Google SERPs within x amount of time, or you’ll be able to increase traffic x 50 in a month. What they will tell you is you should be looking for increased referrals from specific keywords. This doesn’t just mean watching your ranking; you have to refer to your analytic information. You need to look continually at the cause (changing meta-tags or titles, for example) and the effects.
If you’ve been told or you realize that one area you’re lacking in is backlink building you should have a means of tracking the quality of the links you get. That means looking for more traffic related to specific anchor text placed on other sites and they should ideally be good quality, high traffic sites.
Misplaced Ambition
If you’re in the business of SEO don’t blind your client with science. He may be in the shoe business and all he wants to do is promote his Italian winkle-pickers. It’s up to you to ascertain whether your client is up to the task of performing fundamental site SEO. This means writing well optimized content and participating on social media sites for example. You can’t just issue a plan to somebody who has no idea how to execute it. Guess whose fault it will be when his site fails? You certainly won’t retain that client if his expectations are unrealistic. It’s part of your job to tell him exactly what to expect. If he doesn’t like it say buh-bye – it’s better than a lawsuit.
If he believes that by using an SEO company he’ll instantly get masses of traffic then unless he’s willing to get out his credit card and pay for PPC ads it ain’t going to happen. That isn’t SEO anyway. With a cost-effective SEO strategy, executed in steps, you should be able to show your client how the marketing plan is paying for itself and stress that it will take time.
Too many people are unrealistic when it comes to SEO and the expected ROI, especially in the beginning. To cover yourself, make sure that you have a written agreement with your client stating clearly what the risks are, what your company’s obligations are and any liabilities, you don’t want to end up in court – and it happens.
Unreliable Resources
It’s understandable that many small-business owners who wish to have an online presence start out by following various blogs, many of which will recommend certain iffy SEO practices.
It’s pretty easy for most people to understand the concept of using keywords and the reason behind producing regular, well optimized and well-written content. Unfortunately certain bloggers will then start talking about link building. They’ll say it’s probably the easiest way of attracting traffic to your site, and they’ll probably also say it can be time-consuming and tedious. If they are shady they’ll tell you that buying links is okay. They may even have a nice ad on their site for automated software that will do the job in a fraction of the time, by broadcasting (crappy) comments onto blogs and forums willy-nilly. There’s also automated article submission software and the same for doing press releases, not to mention accursed article spinning software. They’ll probably promote them all.
This stuff is like anti-wrinkle cream. If there was something on the market that really worked, we’d all look like twenty-somethings and have million dollar online businesses!
It’s hard to see the risks involved if you don’t understand the negative repercussions from doing things the wrong way. These negative results will not only waste your time and money but they will probably end up getting your site penalized. There is no need to pour resources into backlink building; you just have to use sustainable efforts to find the right ways to leverage a site’s visibility.
Article spinning software is one of my pet peeves, as are website owners who are only willing to pay peanuts for worn out PLR or writers with English as a third language. They deserve to fail and as someone who provides SEO, quality cannot be stressed enough to a client. Incomprehensible, badly written and spun rubbish may get your site to the top of the SERPS briefly. It certainly won’t attract natural back links or human readers, and when big G finds it the entire site may end up getting flushed.
Stupidity and/or Gullibility
There are dozens of popular blogs out there offering bad advice, the problem is if you’re just starting out how are you going to differentiate between good and bad advice? As a clue, if the person running the blog starts telling you to buy his products immediately, it’s best to walk away. There are plenty of bona fide SEO blogs written by people who know what they’re doing and who would never think of asking a new visitor for money. If they have to, it’s certainly says something about their SEO skills! Duh.
Basically if you can’t explain to someone else what the risks and/or benefits of certain SEO techniques are, you shouldn’t be doing it. If SEO Joe tells you to do something, don’t just go off and do it. Definitely do not buy their e-book before you’ve Googled it and got some intelligent feedback about it. Remember these people also set up affiliate schemes so all their shady friends can benefit too. The truth is you don’t really have to buy anything to do with optimization; there are some very smart people who are willing to share all the successful techniques they use every day for free. So wise up.
Just because some internet marketing “guru” says you can be successful doesn’t mean you can. One of the biggest mistakes is choosing a niche that simply isn’t profitable. You could spend $1 million on SEO services and PPC ads but if you’ve chosen crochet hooks as a niche, you’ll earn more money making blankets.
One thing that amazes me is the amount of people who get into internet marketing who’ll admit they’ve never read Google’s Webmaster guidelines or seen any of the videos put out by Matt Cutts. Why would he offer bad advice? Illogical Captain.
SEO Projects Fail Sometimes – Get Over it
The internet is dynamic, algorithm changes happen every day and many SEO projects fail for other reasons not set out above. Perhaps the site was rolling along successfully promoting something that all of a sudden became obsolete or consumers changed their mind about it. Look what happened to MySpace.com when FaceBook came along.
The good thing about understanding and practicing good SEO is that if this happens, you can always confidently start afresh. SEO is an ongoing learning process.
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Posted by Jim Monk on Wed, Mar 28, 2012 @ 09:19 AM
SEO Trends of 2011 and 2012
Another year has begun and not only is it a time for looking forward but also for assessing our success in 2011 and for looking at tomorrow’s SEO trends. We can only move ahead if we have plans for the future and I wonder how many people decided to quit their internet marketing efforts as a resolution, and how many others resolved to start a brand new internet business.
Bruce Clay discussed the main points of 2011’s SEO trends on his website www.BruceClay.com and where they are leading us in this New Year.
FaceBook
Marketing on FaceBook has definitely not been easy, although so many internet marketing gurus have managed to bring out their particular spins on this “fantastic opportunity” for only $97 or whatever.
FaceBook was invented as a people-to-people site with marketing as an afterthought and it shows. It’s now gotten down to businesses swapping Likes for something free – I don’t Like it and I’m sure I’m not alone.
FaceBook is for talking about how much we enjoyed Colonel Potter (RIP) from MASH, the latest royal wedding and sharing pictures of a new baby with family members. Leave the business side of it to Google who already have all the tools.
Twitter
Many are using Twitter’s hash tags to allow users to classify their comments, which mean staying on top of the latest trends. Apparently Twitter peaked with a mammoth 9000 Tweets per second when Beyonce announced her pregnancy, with Steve Jobs’ resignation and untimely death being not far behind. Again it would seem the KISS principle applies here – but this time it’s “keep it social stupid”.
I’d like to see some verifiable facts about how useful Twitter really is for business. It may be useful if you’re in the news or PR industry but anything else? – Your comments are invited!
YouTube
Here we get into a better area for SEO trends where business is concerned. For branding purposes video is still leading the way and the majority of top business videos were all well-produced and informative. Look at Volkswagen’s The Force video/commercial as an example, it made the Top 10.
If you can offer helpful information to your target audience then YouTube will continue to be an extremely effective marketing platform for any business.
Google Plus Business Page
The biggest upcoming SEO trend has come alongside the launch of Google’s Business Plus Pages announced in early December 2011. This brings a behemoth into the social media game and the platform allows brands to engage customers, attract new prospects and become more user-friendly.
If you haven’t included Google Business Plus in your marketing plan for 2012 then it’s probably time to go back and revise it quickly. There is no doubt that Google will be offering some extremely useful and easy-to-use features for businesses and the number of apps and tools it will offer will be substantial. They’re all there; it’s just a matter of careful integration and compliance.
To start, you have to set up a profile page as an individual first; it only takes about ten minutes. Perfect for small businesses but I wonder how larger businesses can go about this? That person is the only allowed administrator and the privilege cannot be transferred to anyone else. This is going to be very problematic for big brands that have multiple account managers.
You’re then allowed to pick one category from five that fits your business.
Local Business or Place
Product or Brand
Company, Institution or Organization
Arts, Entertainment or Sports
Other
Local (Business or Place) Google Plus pages are different because they include features that make it easy for users to connect with the physical location of a specific business. Google already offers Local Places Pages to businesses.
Google Places Pages have not been integrated into the Google Plus Pages (yet) – it’s no doubt coming. FaceBook hasn’t a hope of being able to do anything like this.
Google Plus pages give business owners the opportunity to build relationships with their customers and to get value from Google Plus; you need to have a community of people there to engage with your content. To encourage people to add your Google Plus Page to their Circles, you will have to continue to promote pages in places where you normally attract visitors.
Google Analytics will integrate with Google Plus Pages probably within the first quarter of 2012.
If you’re looking at SEO trends for 2012 we’re quite certain that Google Plus Business Pages is going to be the big one.
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Posted by Will Byrd on Wed, Mar 07, 2012 @ 08:44 AM
Adding Revenue to Your Website or Blog
Deciding you want to build a blog and make some money online can be exciting and a
temptation for many people is to grab an idea out of the air and start building but a lot of consideration should be given to adding revenue to your website or blog.
Without thorough keyword research it will be nearly impossible for you to attract organic searches. If your intention is to promote affiliate products then it’s important to find relevant products that will pay a good commission and be useful to your reader.
Affiliate Products
There are hundreds of thousands of affiliate products you can promote and a mix of affiliate products will be safer for you rather than going with one company. Businesses do change their affiliate programs, can go out of business or you may find their products are not as popular or desirable as you thought.
If you have a mix of products from different companies then it’s much easier to change your ad for something that pays its rent. Think of all the advertising space on your site as being valuable real estate. If something isn’t paying off, then it should be easy for you to change it out for something that will.
While you should always keep the products you promote relevant to your main subject, think outside the box. Put yourself in a visitor’s shoes – and think about what you can promote that will be useful to her.
There are many reputable sites that offer affiliate products from hundreds of different companies in one place, Commission Junction is a good example. Amazon.com is another popular choice and the eBay affiliate program can help to monetize your site and promote any of your own items that you have listed on eBay.
Your Own Products
One of the most lucrative ways to make money from a blog or website is to promote your own products. If you feel you could produce a good quality, original e-book for example that will help your readers, then go ahead and do it. Marketing an e-book is no more difficult than marketing a site and if you list your e-book on Clickbank, you have the opportunity for other marketers to promote it and bring you additional revenue.
If your intention is to build a list and conduct e-mail marketing campaigns giving away good quality free products will encourage people to sign up.
Adsense & Contextual Advertising
Everybody’s heard of Google Adsense and most marketers will include it in their advertising mix. You earn a commission when somebody clicks on an Adsense ad. Commissions vary widely and depend on the subject of your blog. Adsense serves up advertising it sees as relevant to the content near to it.
If your blog is about car insurance you could earn anywhere between $40 and $50 per click but many clicks will only earn you considerably less. It’s up to you to decide if Adsense is going to pay you enough per click to warrant including this kind of contextual advertising. You can get an idea by using the Google Adsense keyword tool which lists the approximate cost per click alongside the keywords you have chosen.
There are a number of other kinds of contextual advertising you could consider such as Chitika. Many work on a pop-up system, so when the reader passes his cursor over a contextual link a small add will pop up. Make sure these ads are relevant to your readers (very often they are not) and having too many on a page can be extremely annoying. You will have a choice, so probably five or six per page is sufficient.
This Space for Rent
You may find that when you’re getting a considerable amount of regular traffic to your site you may be approached about direct advertising. This is a lucrative way to get a regular payment from another company for allowing them to advertise on your site. You can give the potential advertiser accurate traffic statistics if you use a third-party service such as Quantcast. You could also put a box containing the words “this space for rent”, it’s up to you to figure out how much the space is actually worth. The higher your traffic numbers are, the more valuable it becomes.
Membership Sites
If your blog or website is about a highly specialized subject and your content is unique and valuable people may be willing to pay a monthly subscription to access it. The key here is to provide subscribers with consistently excellent value for their monthly payments.
If you can, then it’s one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a site. Many sites offer free memberships for limited periods but with limited access to information contained on the site. If people like what they see, then they’ll sign up and you will benefit from their regular monthly payments.
Recently Matt Cutts announced that Google was looking at sites that have too much advertising above the fold or too much advertising in general that detracts from a site’s content. You don’t want your new visitor to be confronted by a wall of ads, especially if you’ve taken the time to write valuable content.
Adding revenue to your website or blog should be done very carefully, keep experimenting until you find the perfect mix.
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Posted by Will Byrd on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 10:08 AM
A Few Tips on Backlink Building
One of the first things that many internet marketers are advised to do immediately after
adding some quality content to their site is to start link building. It is a necessary task, but it has to be done in the correct way. Google looks for “natural” links to a website and rushing off and getting hundreds of backlinks from poor quality sites every day is certainly not going to look natural.
Backlink Building Error #1
It’s good to get into the habit of building a number of backlinks each day but where they come from is vitally important. They should be from relevant sites that have something to do with the subject of your site. If your website is about dog training and you get a link from a pet healthcare site, then it’s going to look perfectly okay to the search engines, get one from a football site and it certainly won’t seem right.
What a lot of people do is try to get a backlink from every site they encounter and that won’t impress Google.
Backlink Building Error #2
Feeling lazy? Can’t be bothered to build some backlinks this week? Don’t ever be tempted to pay for backlinks from a “link farm”. Google knows all about them. In most cases, all you’ll get are irrelevant low-quality links. Besides, dumping a couple of hundred backlinks on your site one day will throw up a red flag with the search engines and you can be penalized.
Backlink Building Error #3
Getting backlinks from the same sources continually won’t work either. It’s okay if you participate on a relevant blog but if you do, diversify. Anchor text should vary and don’t just leave a link to your homepage, link to the most relevant content on your site.
Google is looking for the best possible experience for its users. It uses backlinks as a measure of trust and quality. By far the best way to get high-quality links is to produce the kind of content people will want to share. Then link building becomes natural and passive, which is ideal.
Instead of stressing about getting backlinks by posting comments on other people’s websites every day, spend a few hours a couple of days a week doing that, other days posting articles to article directories and participate on social networking sites. It will certainly make your day less humdrum and by doing that you will be spreading the word about your website across many platforms. That looks far more natural to Google than suddenly getting 100 links in one day from a bunch of crappy sites.
Getting backlinks from higher PR sites than your own has always been a good strategy. The problem is the importance of PR ranking appears to be waning. Until Google actually makes an announcement about its stance on PR ranking, keep aiming to get backlinks from high PR sites. It won’t do any harm.
As your website and your reputation grows you’ll be surprised how many backlinks your pick up without knowing it – especially if you concentrate more on producing and creating content that visitors will want to read and share. So,
-
Aim for high PR backlinks
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Diversify
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Vary anchor text and landing pages
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Produce high-quality content that people will want to share
Link building doesn’t have to be a tedious daily chore, concentrate on creating good quality content instead.
Posted by Will Byrd on Fri, Feb 17, 2012 @ 08:53 AM
The Future of SEO… What You Need to Know
We can’t really say for certain what the future of SEO will be in 2012 and in the future but if
you’ve been keeping up with the latest developments by watching Matt Cutts’ videos and subscribing to at least one trustworthy SEO blog, you’re probably a few steps ahead of many other people.
If you own or bricks and mortar business you are constantly making sure that the fabric of the building is not going to or harm your business – and you want it to look attractive. People with online businesses also need to stay constantly aware of trends and other factors that may also affect their businesses. Look upon Google as being a landlord who is constantly revising his rental agreement! You don’t want to do something inadvertently and be out on your ear so pay attention.
Content is Still King
Why was the Google panda algorithm change in spring of 2011 such a surprise to so many people? Why, some people moaned, had their 75-page site promoting chicken coop building plans being kicked to the curb? They had, after all, remembered to spin that one dollar PLR article at least twice a week, and had submitted it to thousands of article marketing directories using automated submission. Good grief. Bye. Those were exactly the kind of spam-filled websites that Google wanted to get rid of and many of those crappy article marketing sites took a direct hit too.
Let’s be clear about it, the search engines are there to make money and Google does it very effectively but they can’t do it if the results they serve up are seen as being lousy. The secret to staying in the search engines’ good books will always be to provide high-quality content that people want to read.
Too many people are caught up in tactics designed to fool the search engines in order to get into the top positions in the SERPs. Why? Because people have been brainwashed into thinking that you make loads of money being in that position. Horse hockey. Nobody is going to buy anything from you if you have a poor quality website with content that’s unreadable and offers nothing of value.
To those who think that that particular Panda slap was a one off, you can forget it, all the search engines are working extremely hard to get rid of low-quality sites. Their algorithms are tweaked daily.
People that work hard every day to provide useful and valuable content for their readers will win out in the end which leads us to our next heading which is
Backlinking the Natural Way
Provide people with content they enjoy watching and reading and they will want to share it. It’s not rocket science. It takes time to build a business online – didn’t anybody tell you? Do you think that your six-month-old website is really going to benefit from purchasing that automated back linking software? Okay Google may miss the initial spike in (poor quality) back links but when they do see them they will depress the lever and your business will go swirling down into internet hell. That also means no buying links from spam sites or paying little Johnny to leave stupid comments on hundreds of different blogs and forums.
Why not invest your time and efforts into something a little more positive? That would be writing good articles that people will naturally want to link to. Even if you’re lousy at writing you can pay somebody (and please pay them well) to write articles that can be submitted to article marketing sites and as guest posts. It’s all so simple, I just can’t fathom out why people don’t get it - the only conclusion I can come to is that they’re lazy or they’ve been fed a line of BS.
Personalized Search
Like it or not personalized search is probably well on its way. This makes SEO somewhat more difficult but not impossible. Every search you do online you can guarantee somebody is watching and taking careful notes.
Eventually two people who put in the same search will be served up two totally different sets of results. If you already subscribe to some popular blogs through Google Reader then you may notice that those results appear in your own (now nearly-personalized) SERPs. Some people look upon it as a convenience while others see it as a Big Brother tactic.
Whatever your thoughts, personalized search is here to stay and will only continue to expand. If the majority of search engine customers are happy with what they get then those search engines make more money.
As an internet marketer all you can do is go with the flow and build your own professional network the right way, and that includes interacting on all the large social networking sites - especially Google Plus.
Mobile Optimization
Gone are the days when people only accessed the web via a PC or a laptop. With the huge increase in portable WiFi devices such as smart phones and tablets it’s a good idea to ensure that your website or blog can be accessed by the people who use them. You can guarantee the number of devices and different platforms is going to grow so don’t get left behind. Work on getting a mobile-ready version of your site and maintain an up-to-date profile on Google Places and Yahoo’s Yelp.
Social Activity
It came as no surprise when Google announced that it has started using social signals as part of its ranking process. It stands to reason that Google is probably going to attach more importance to its own Google+ concept. However, there are a number of legal hurdles that Google will have to jump over including laws concerning restrictive practices.
A 132-person panel of SEO experts contributed to the 2011 SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors study that rated social signals at page level and domain level. These were numbers one and two of the top three factors that are most likely to increase in importance. Analysis of a site’s/page’s perceived value to users was third.
It’s pretty obvious that social signals are going to be playing a bigger role within the search engine algorithms. And when Matt Cutts says it’s so then you’d better believe it.
You may begrudge the amount of time you spend (or don’t spend) on social networking sites but you’d better do more of it, especially as Google Plus rises rapidly in popularity.
Just like your website, provide regular helpful information to your target market and build a following who will repay you by sharing your content even further.
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Posted by Will Byrd on Wed, Feb 08, 2012 @ 08:44 AM
Title Tags and Best Practices
Coming up with nifty and eye-catching titles for a page can be quite a challenge and if you
find writing effective 140-word posts for Twitter difficult, think half that amount of characters for titles. Undoubtedly the best way to attract visitors via organic traffic is to use this one highly effective on page SEO tactic and keep title tags to 70 characters or less.
Remember that “characters” include everything from spaces to punctuation.
The Importance of Title Tags in the SERPs
Although Google will index more than 70 characters, it depends a lot on keyword placement and other factors. By experimenting with your title tags and the amount of characters you use, you will probably come to conclusion that a 70-character limit is best. Remember you should be writing your titles to attract readers first and search engines second.
If you have a number of posts that you think should have attracted more traffic than they did, try changing the titles to see if organic traffic improves to those pages. Using your knowledge of on page SEO, it will probably make sense when we tell you that using your keywords as close to the beginning of your title as possible will bring the best results. Run an experiment on some of your poorly-performing pages for about 45 days, and you’ll see a difference.
Why Only 70 Characters?
The main reason is that Google only generally displays 70 characters in the SERPs, after that the words are cut off and nobody can see them. Here’s an example of 70 characters exactly: “Has social media been around long enough to be a field of expertise ...” So you do have plenty of characters to work with. If in this example there were further keywords used to attract search engines after the first 70 characters, then that effort was probably wasted. You should be writing to attracts readers, using a keyword they would have used to find your webpage at the beginning of your title.
If you use your keyword as the first word in your title tag then it is the largest on page SEO factor, and this correlation has been holding steady for years and experienced webmasters know it.
Back to Twitter
If you stick to the 70-character rule, you will have no problems at all with Twitter’s 140 character limit. If your title is over 140 words long when your webpage is automatically Tweeted what results is unattractive and hard to comprehend and consequently people will not want to read it, share it, or reTweet it.
70 characters is not a hard-and-fast rule, but if you experiment enough you will see that it’s a good rule of thumb. A few extra characters isn’t going to kill your title tag stone dead but if some of your pages aren’t performing as well as you think they should be, then try tweaking the title and see if there’s an improvement.
Why Write for Users?
If you use a keyword in the title of your page only to attract the search engines, then when someone comes along and opens your page, they are probably going to feel mislead if the content doesn’t correlate with your keyword(s), bumping up your bounce rate. Google wants to provide the best experience for its users and you should comply by providing content relevant to the keyword(s) you use.
Many people are afraid to go back to existing posts and change the titles. Don’t be, by experimenting a little with on page SEO and changing the title tags you may see a flood of organic traffic coming to a page on which you had given up all hope of attracting readers.
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Posted by Will Byrd on Mon, Feb 06, 2012 @ 10:22 AM
The Latest Social Media Trends and Facebook Marketing
Facebook has a member base approaching 800 million, although other social media trends have appeared such as Google+, effective Facebook marketing is essential to attract and retain potential customers, keep them engaged and build brand awareness. It’s certainly never going to go away, and with an increased number of business owners reporting they are attracting new customers from Facebook regularly, it’s a marketing platform that should be mastered.
It’s very easy to get distracted on Facebook, so if you want to get your Facebook marketing campaign underway, concentrate on a few tips we have included have for you below.
Create a Business Page not a Personal Profile
You can’t run a business from a personal profile page, you can only have 5,000 friends maximum but a Business Page is unlimited and obviously a much better choice for Facebook marketing. Don’t worry, if you created a Profile for your business, you can easily convert it to a Business Page.
Use your business or brand as an extension on the Facebook URL. It’s more memorable and looks more professional. Your URL would be http://www.Facebook/yourbrand.
Add Content from Different Sources
Just like a website or blog add fresh content to your wall daily to keep visitors engaged. You can connect your own blog to your Facebook business page and publish content automatically if you use WordPress.
If you are familiar with WordPress, they offer a way to add any number of posts that can be scheduled to post at different times. This means you’re not completely tied to your site posting content every day. You can do the same with Facebook by using Hootsuite.
Let other people create your content for you by tagging other users and Pages. This will make your Pages more interactive and retain visitors longer. Under “Manage Permissions” simply enable “Users can write or post content.”
When you post a link make sure it has a snappy meta description for when it gets shared on Facebook.
One of the reasons you’re running a Facebook marketing campaign may be to generate leads. Optimize your business pages for lead generation with calls to action via one of your custom tabs.
Engage your fans even more by placing a poll on your business page, find out what they want, what they like or don’t like so you can tailor your Facebook marketing to their needs.
Keep Your Content Organized
Keep your Facebook Business Pages tidy by creating custom tabs for different functions. Make a Welcome Page and use it as a landing page, then add a tab for customer testimonials, one for special offers and promos etc. A Welcome Page can be set as the first page your visitors come to. Use it as a landing page to gather leads, introduce yourself and encourage people to like Like your business.
With any marketing campaign you need to see what’s working and what isn’t. You can use Facebook Insights, a built-in tool to help your business gather data for your Facebook marketing campaign.
Pictures & Video
Recycle your YouTube content so it can be seen on your Business Pages.
SlideShare allows you to post five pictures. It doesn’t sound much but if you look around at how big businesses use the application, you’ll get some great ideas for building your own SlideShare presentation. You can also hook up to your Flickr account and show off those photos on your Facebook page too.
Communicate
There are two main aspects that can be automated in Facebook using third party software and that is content posting and scheduling. Remember this is social media so you need to keep a hands-on personal touch to your site to engage your readers. You will never be able to press a button and forget about your Facebook pages for weeks on end. Answer your comments promptly and interact. When people visit your website and hit the Facebook Share button, they will expect to see totally different, dynamic and more engaging on your Facebook pages.
Group chat has recently been introduced on Facebook which means you can chat with any user who is active in the Group Chat Box or pane. This has many possibilities and could be used for running a small focus group or a Q&A session.
If you work with others who are willing to participate in your Facebook marketing efforts, give them permission to become an Administrator. It will add more voices, opinions and content to the site, and can give you some necessary time off!
Customize
If you run a bilingual business, you can post in Spanish and English for example, and send the appropriate post to different fans. This gives a more personal touch, and doesn’t clutter their pages up with stuff they don’t need or understand.
You can also grab the Google+ extension, add a tab to your Google+ account to access your news feed. You can perform many tasks on your Facebook pages from within your Google+ account.
Advertise
Once you’re satisfied that your business pages are set up correctly, functioning well and attracting new business, the next step in your Facebook marketing campaign may be to pay for some effective and highly-targeted advertising.
Posted by Will Byrd on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 @ 08:28 AM
SEO for Realtors and the Real Estate Industry
If you’re a realtor then you probably been struggling for a couple of years. This bad economy
means that you’re probably looking at many ways to get your listings in front of as many interested buyers as possible.
Real estate websites are typically templated, cookie-cutter sites that are not SEO friendly. 90% of people begin their search for real estate online so you must be able to reach that market effectively. This means being able to attract people from all over the country who may be interested in moving to your area plus being extremely visible to local buyers as well.
You may be considering dumping your present a website because it’s not attracting traffic, many templated websites actually deter search engines because they are built within frames that search engines cannot penetrate.
Keywords
The best traffic is free traffic and you can attract it by using effective keywords. If you’re in Houston for example people will type in terms such as “real estate Houston”, “houses for sale in Houston”, or perhaps “foreclosures Houston”.
Finding the right keywords is essential and unfortunately you may not be able to get accurate data about the keywords that a searcher would use because there are too few searched done every month.
You could use Google’s Insights for Search and find useful data, for example you may find people are using “real estate Houston” more frequently than “property for sale Houston”. It will take some time to do your research but it will be well worth it in the long run.
If there is a realtor in your area who has already built a successful site, do some a little espionage as there are ways of finding the keywords that are bringing him traffic. Don’t feel bad, people do it all the time! Use the Alexa toolbar and you’ll be able to find that information when you punch in his domain name. this also allows you to see where he’s getting his backlinks (see below).
Content that Attracts
Optimizing your site is essential for bringing traffic and SEO is proven to be the most effective way of attracting search engines and visitors at no cost to you.
If you have not yet purchased a domain name, do your best to find one with a .com extension. If HoustonRealEstate.com has been taken, you have the alternative choice of Houston-Real-Estate.com for example. Although many people say that hyphenated domain names are not a good idea, the fact is they make little difference and often the search engines find them easier to “read”.
Always include your city or county in the name along with the most searched keywords, which could be “foreclosures” or “executive rentals” if that’s what you specialize in. If you’re a broker you will probably want to use your name plus “realty” to start branding yourself. There’s nothing to stop you from thinking up a snappy slogan too!
Titles
You have to include keywords in your title as near to the front as possible and make your titles interesting. To attract the search engines you’re going to have to write articles – as many as you can to do with real estate but you’re not limited to describing properties.
Many people who live outside the area who may be thinking of moving will want to know about available amenities such as shopping in the area, roads, public transport, schools, parks, hospitals etc. The more information you can provide the better.
Offering information about local sales tax rates, property taxes and major local employers will also help. The more information you can provide on your site the fewer questions you may have to answer on the ‘phone.
SEO for realtors and real estate industry doesn’t have to be difficult. Simply provide all the information people will be looking for and help them.
Content
The word “content” covers everything you put on your site for a visitor’s benefit, it’s not just written articles. One of the most effective things you could use on your site to promote individual properties is video. By using video editing software such as Camtasia you’ll soon be able to produce professional looking videos of the best properties on your list.
Don’t just list an address with a video and nothing else (remember SEO?), underneath you should write a bulleted list of the property’s most attractive features – number of bedrooms, bathrooms, the size of the lot, proximity to major roads, schools and shopping etc. Blend in some keywords such as “the best priced property in Houston” – use this as a title if those keywords are attracting traffic.
Some realtors are using “virtual tours” to great effect to attract clients. This is done by using a 360° camera. They are expensive, but an excellent investment or you could find a local photographer who uses a 360° camera and hire him to showcase the best homes on your list.
ALT Tags
ALT tags are brief descriptions of any pictures or videos you post on your site. If you’re like me and use Google’s images search often, relevant pictures are picked up by the search term used. Adding a short keyword rich description of your picture will ensure your pictures get picked up by the search engines.
Internal Linking
On every page you create, internal links will be important for your visitor to navigate easily around your site. Search engines look for internal links.
For example if you were to write “ “this is one of the best three-bedroom homes in Houston…” you could use the words “three-bedroom homes” to link to other three-bedroom homes you have categorized and if you found the keyword phrase “three-bedroom homes in Houston” is attracting traffic you’ll help visitors and attract more organic searches by using that term.
Backlinks
Back links are essential for building rank with the search engines. To get the most inquiries about your listings your aim must be to be on page 1 of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). The more backlinks you can get the better – they act like votes of confidence from other blogs and websites. They must be from relevant sites but with real estate you have a lot of flexibility.
If you sell raw land you could link to builders’ sites for example. If you deal with rental property and you’re near to a college or university, .edu backlinks are extremely valuable. Most colleges will have blogs, visit them regularly and mention that you have properties available for students. Be helpful and friendly, don’t just use the blog as free advertising - the idea is to build relationships with people.
Social Media
Use social media buttons on your site to attract more traffic. Build a Facebook Page for your business and cultivate relationships. Tweet about new properties you have listed and mention news about your city – perhaps a new company is opening up and looking for employees in your area, this will be sure to attract attention.
Layout
The layout of your site will be extremely important. If you have dozens of different homes for sale you will have to make your site easily navigable. Most people start looking for homes by the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and/or square footage. You can use all three categories to list one home, making it convenient for your visitor to find what she’s looking for.
About Me Page
Always include an About Me page. Tell people how much you love being a realtor, how long you’ve been doing it and why you live in your particular area. Include a professional picture of you smiling and include your achievements, educational background and your license number.
It’s surprising how many people read About Me pages, they’re a trust–building tool and people tend to gravitate towards people they trust, especially when they’re making the largest purchase they will ever make during their lifetime.
Contact Me
Busy realtors know they’re going to get telephone calls at all hours of the day. If you’re a realtor in Florida very often people in other time zones forget the time difference! Having a Contact Me page allows people to contact you via e-mail instead. It’s a good idea to state the times you’re available, ask for their phone number and a convenient time to contact them.
Having your phone number in the header means it’s always visible whatever page your visitor is on, put it beneath your listings too along with your e-mail address. Don’t use your everyday e-mail address, you’ll have an opportunity to set up e-mails @yourdomainname.com with your hosting company, they look far more professional, use your name at the beginning, SusanRealtor@yourdomainname.com makes it more personable.
SEO for realtors and the real estate industry is vitally important for staying ahead of the game and being prominent in the marketplace.
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Posted by Will Byrd on Fri, Jan 13, 2012 @ 09:09 AM
Managing Your Online Reputation
These days whether you have a brand or you’re an individual, managing your online reputation
is very important. Before the days of the internet people would often have to rely on the opinions of the people they trusted before making any major purchases or decisions.
Being trusted online if you’re promoting any kind of product or service is vital. The general public is far more informed where it comes to making purchases and maintaining a good reputation online will mean bring you more trust, and therefore more sales. So how can search engine optimization help to that end?
Reputation management means dealing with people to find out how they feel about you and your product or services. It’s not just a case of getting a thumbs-up or thumbs down from visitors to your website, although it can be a good indication of how well a comment or written article has been received. You have to dig deeper. It only takes one angry, unhappy customer for you to have a really bad month – or worse.
Reputation management has to be a part of any campaign right from the start so any negativity can be dealt with and nipped in the bud before it gets worse. If you’re running a social media campaign and leave the commenting to a member of staff, it’s important to train her properly to deal with negative comments, and bring increased negative comments to your attention immediately.
Many consumers get frustrated when the only way they can communicate with the person from whom they purchased something is via a comment box or e-mail, so consequently comments can be a lot more vitriolic. There is also a certain breed of people who like to leave negative comments just for the sheer hell of it, and sorting genuine complaints from spurious ones becomes part of the analysis.
Take Note
Sometimes you will see the same complaints from a number of different people and this is the time to sit up and start listening. It may be a valid complaint and should be a trigger for you to improve your product or service if it appears to be substandard in one particular area.
Don’t ignore the people who do complain, the least you should do is to thank them for bringing the point to your attention and tell them you’re working hard to rectify the problem. You should never go head to head with a customer, because before you know it your name and brand could be all over social media sites for all the wrong reasons. Some fans may disappear, and you certainly shouldn’t expect those who remain to sort out a problem for you.
Respond
Being a disgruntled customer is bad enough, but being ignored is even worse. You should respond to all comments, whether positive or negative. If necessary get a phone number and talk to the complainant.
If you’re the kind of person who gets angry and may respond in a way that makes matters worse ask someone else to respond for you, or taken deep breath and write your response in a Word document or on a piece of paper. Taking those few minutes to think about what you’re going to say will help you to think more clearly. Whatever happens you should always remain polite and professional. Off-line it’s called customer service – remember that?
If you do come across frequent negative comments, then you can always put your brand name into any of the major search engines to find out exactly what’s being said can you may be able to get to the root of who started it. Then you could address the issue in three different ways:
Write an Article
Post an article on your blog or website identifying the problem. If necessary explain your opinions on the issue and tell your readers exactly what steps are being taken to resolve the problem.
Do a Press Release
Ditto above but write it as a press release that can be syndicated via third-party websites and blogs.
Social Media
Keep a watchful eye on all the social media sites you use to promote your brand, and send them to the article on your website or the press release, but respond quickly and don’t blame others for the problem as this may only make matters worse. If you find that complaints are genuinely malicious and posted with the aim of destroying your business possibly by a competitor (yes, it happens), then your only choice will be to contact a lawyer.
Be proactive about managing your online reputation by paying careful attention to comments in social media and on your blog, a quick search each week on your name or brand will tell you exactly how you’re doing.
Posted by Will Byrd on Mon, Dec 19, 2011 @ 01:59 PM
Tips to Making Your Website Local Search Friendly
It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for locally most people have given up looking in that big
yellow book. Most older people’s eyesight is no longer up to it and besides I could rarely find anything I was looking for anyway. These days if you’re looking for something local 90% of people turn to a search engine. The results show you far more than a printed book ever could. You can get driving directions, hours of operation, special offers, coupons and even pictures and videos of the business.
Ten million unique searches were conducted by the major search engines last month in the US alone, 40% of which were local searches. These searches included:
- The city or state
- The name of a specific neighborhood
- The ZIP code
As a Local Business Owner What Does that Mean for Me?
If you’re a local restaurant or company that doesn’t trade outside of a small area then it’s essential that your website ranks for specific keywords, and essentially the keywords listed above.
This has become even more important because of the huge amount of people who now use their smart phones on the run. People visiting from out of town for business or pleasure look for restaurants, hotels, places to shop and local attractions, and your business needs to be attracting those people.
There are many SEO experts online who can help you optimize your website to capture all this potential business, they don’t have to be local. Combine an effective off-line marketing strategy along with a place on the top of the search engine results and your business will flourish.
With the recent launch of Google Offers you will also be able to offer many things that your competitors cannot.
As a small business you’re probably working long and hard through this difficult economic period so anything that can help you stay afloat for such relatively little cost will be an enormous financial boost.
Search engine optimization for local business is not something that most small business owners have the time to deal with, it’s not as easy as many people think. A good SEO company will work with you to build a plan to send your business to the top and keep it there.
Name/ Address/ Phone Number
If you’re a local business but perhaps part of a franchise then it’s essential that the franchisor has one page dedicated to each of its franchisee locations containing their name, address and phone number. This is not something you as a franchisee should have to deal with, it’s something that head office should be doing for you. If they’re not, then we suggest you start making some calls.
If you are a truly independent small business then the whole burden of local SEO will fall on your shoulders if you are the webmaster of your own site. It’s far better to have an expert do it for you if you really don’t know what you’re doing.
Citations
Relative to the internet citations are basically like good back links are to a website. They are votes of confidence from established sites which verify your address, name and phone number for credibility purposes. Some of these are:
- Yelp,
- Judy’s Book,
- Merchant Circle,
- Insider Pages,
- Kudzu, City Squares,
- BOTW Local,
- Hot Frog.
If you’re really set on dealing with the SEO aspect of your website then apply to every one of these sites. There are others that you can find by looking at your competitors’ websites. The more you get the better it will be for your ranking.
Maps Pages
Make sure that you go to Google, Yahoo and Bing to set up your location and make sure you use exactly the same address, phone number and information on each.
Reviews
Asking for reviews from customers is also a great way of building credibility for your business and the simplest way to get a review is to ask. At the Point of Sale or Service is one way, few people will refuse. You could also ask customers to leave a review on a site such as the Google Places page but most people will forget or not bother.
Asking for a customer to leave a review via e-mail can also be problematic because most small businesses are not geared to building e-mail lists.
Email Lists
E-mail lists can be a very effective marketing tool and if you can build them from your own customer base that’s even better because they know you. It will involve a certain amount of data entry especially if you have a visitor’s book on the counter asking for their e-mail address.
If you have an e-mail list it’s an incredibly easy way of telling existing customers about sales and special offers. An easy way to get somebody to leave a review is by offering an incentive such as a money saving coupon.
Having a form on your site that captures e-mail addresses is another option. Then you’ll need an autoresponder service.
The problem is this is all getting too complicated already as most business owners are far too busy to study effective local internet marketing practices.
By hiring an SEO company who is experienced in local marketing for small business you can have everything done correctly for you. You should never look upon this as a business expense; it will be one of the best investments you could ever make.
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