3 Do’s and Don’ts of Internet Marketing

 Without a doubt, Internet Marketing is at the centre of any successful business. There are few marketing options that can be said to have the same success and efficiency as that provided by Internet Marketing. However, not all Internet Marketers are successful. The secret to successful marketing lies within the methods used. To achieve this success, every serious marketer has to understand the dos and don’ts of the trade.

 3 Dos

 1.       Provide quality content

 

Although this may sound like a no-brainer, it is just what you need. Consistent uploading of quality content onto your website will always win you new readers and you stand no risk of losing your old traffic either. Do thorough research and only upload content that adds value to your readers. While you are at it, make sure you only have content that is relevant to your niche. Trust you me, you do not want to attract the wrong type of traffic. At the end of the day, you need meaningful traffic that easily transforms to potential customers.

 2.       Website Design

Design sells! Your website design matters. Check out some successful websites like those of Apple, Nike, and Pintrest. One thing they have in common is that their designs are stunning! This is no coincidence. A company like Nike though primarily dealing in shoes, has obviously invested significantly in website design. You do not need to procure a very expensive website. Just find a good web designer who will create a good looking and easy to navigate website.

3.       Go Mobile

With over 1 billion Smartphone users, there is no reason why you should not maximize on the business opportunity created by mobile users. It is clear that many people nowadays prefer conducting their business on the go. There are hundreds of Apps being developed every day and investing in them will see your business grow.

3 Don’ts

 1.       Avoid Duplicating Content

 

To avoid being punished by Google, just keep your content fresh, entertaining, and informative. Last year (2012), many websites fell victim to the algorithm update that saw sites with duplicated content fall in rank. To keep your visitors, provide them with regular fresh content.

 2.       Don’t ignore Social Media

One bad word about your product can completely ruin your reputation. Online, word spreads like wildfire. Intel once made this mistake, ignoring a review from one of their customers about a flawed Pentium chip. This dissatisfaction quickly became the topic in social media circles and technically boiled over to any other forum on the Internet. This in the end forced Intel to make a recall. The lesson here is, always listen to your customers and quickly respond to any concerns/issues they might have regarding your product(s).

3.       Don’t be Rigid

When it comes to Internet Marketing, nothing is cast in stone. What works today might not work tomorrow. For instance, a decade ago, knowing how to manipulate the metatags would have easily won you a top page ranking. That quickly changed when keywords started being used. Today, the type of backlinks a site gets, highly contributes to its ranking. So, the bottom line is, be open minded and flexible. Flow with the river and expect changes. Do not rely on “what always worked”.

 

The SEO Guide for Beginners

Not so long ago, people would fill their websites with words they knew were mostly used for internet searches in order to impress their importance on search engines. Back at the time, search engines weren’t so complex and users were sent to the sites stuffed with particular search words even if their content was useless. Users were greatly frustrated and those sites that had relevance and quality started receiving direct hits, something that was soon noticed by search engines.

Today, the rules of SEO have changed. Essentially, you have to understand how SEO works in order to be successful with your practices. When a user types search words, the search engine makes two determinants: the most relevant pages in its database, and those of them that are most popular. Your objective as a business owner is to make your website both relevant and popular. Attracting the algorithms is one way, and you have to remember these algorithms are designed to weed out stuffed websites. If you offer meaningful information, there are hundreds of algorithmic components that will identify your site’s usefulness.

Do the following:

1. Practice honesty with potential customers by ensuring every word on the website applies to your trade. Using irrelevant words is cloaking, a black hat trick. Distribute your keywords in the URLs, page headers, title tags, image names, and content pages.
2. Keep the text you need indexed clean, by not burying it in images, Adobe Flash, JavaScript, or any other rich media. This is a practice greatly frowned upon.
3. Use strong keywords. These are not the obvious words, as they could be in use by thousands of websites and therefore plunge your website into a deep pool of stifling competition. Take a poll in your target market; find the words specific to your location, nature of your business, and what you offer; and use tools like Google Keyword Tool.
4. Keep off the spam label at all costs as spam engines automatically ignore spam sites. You avoid this by offering concise, keyword-rich content that is unique and natural-sounding. Filler words are a no-go zone.

Why Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the creation and sharing of original media and publishing content aimed at acquiring and enlarging customer base by providing valuable and entertaining content. It’s widely gaining acceptance and usage as a crucial marketing method. As per Content Marketing Institute, over 85% of marketers are now using it due to its effectiveness.

What is Content Marketing?

This is Informative published content in an online environment that can be images, infographics, blogs, YouTube videos etc. It also involves utilisation of keywords to develop content, ensuring website’s visibility. The wealth of content creation methods available means a business is only limited by its imagination. Fortunately, businesses can outsource content creation to creative personalities who, if the internet is anything to go by, are an endless commodity.

What are its benefits?

First, this method is informative. Consumers tend to listen more closely when you aren’t asking them for money or hyping product.  By providing relevant and valuable information you develop a unique relationship with your clientele. This builds customer equity, trust and loyalty.

Secondly, it is neither intrusive nor distracting as conventional advertising is; a survey showed that conventional online advertising is disliked for being distracting, non-engaging and for fear of spam and viruses. Good content is engaging and entertaining; people will trust and like businesses they identify with.

Thirdly, a simple cost benefit analysis shows that content is cheap and easy to create and share as opposed to conventional ad-spaces; simply put, you get more bang for your buck. This effectiveness has huge corporations out of their corporate castles engaging the consumer at his level – and he is responding.

Fourth, most people when making business decisions prefer to rely on informative articles rather than advertising puffery. By engaging in content marketing they are better informed and educated about the product/business. They then are likely to become clients, forming fierce brand loyalty.

Lastly, proper content marketing utilizes keywords and tags to ensure wide and effective reach. This boosts visibility to potential customers and uses existing customers’ equity to reel in new business.

How to do it most effectively?

Study your target audience in order to develop a strategy for effective communication.  Guarantee the highest standards, creativity and variety by hiring a professional. Insure content is informative and entertaining and mirrors the business’s attitude and goals. Last step is ensuring that the content reaches the targets through social media channels.

Read more about SEO and Social SEO here.

What is Content Marketing?

Since man landed on the moon, which is ages ago, the world has changed so dramatically that a 5-year time capsule could easily be mistaken for a 10-year-one. Industries have evolved, great inventions realized, marketing strategies…blah blah blah! This is one terrific start but if the rest of the blog’s content has nothing new, interesting or of value to offer, it’s all garbage. “Why?” you may ask. Hold onto that question, as you read on and discover the greatest secret to getting content that is irresistible for both people and machines.

All around you is the term content marketing. Everyone is talking about it. Even multinational corporations and global leaders like Coca Cola, Cisco Systems and Microsoft are committing their resources to it. The 2010s have started with a hype that threatens to make content marketing the cliché of the decade. People are finding ways around traditional advertising strategies like TV commercials, magazine ads and online click buttons and banners through the use of DVRs and ignoring all banners and buttons when browsing the internet. A war of modern marketing vs traditional marketing has been waged, and content marketing is at the forefront.

Perhaps this is a good thing, seeing as it is that content marketing is at the core of marketing strategies by industrial shakers and movers. Marketing experts and thought leaders perceive it as the path the world is headed for, considering traditional techniques are every minute losing their power. Ask the likes of Seth Godin and other famous thought leaders and you will also realize content marketing is not just the future but already the present.

Without further ado, let’s get down to defining content marketing in relation to a regular online store owner. This is essentially creating and freely distributing valuable and relevant content to existing and potential consumers to make them more intelligent to the operations of your niche and ultimately make sales. It could be defined more simply as informative content development but a little swagger never did anyone any harm, right?

For an effective marketing plan, it is important that you do not just jump in and start giving out stuff across the internet with no concrete plan. You have to first define and understand your target audience. Do a serious research to determine the content platform they prefer, be it blog sites, news sites, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook. Learn their behavioural trends, personality, needs, problems and solutions.

Your content should be developed bearing provision of information or entertainment to this niche in mind. It is crucial that you understand you are not trying to sell stuff to people. Honestly, it’s just irksome when you see a web page that promises heaven but when you open it you find cheap and overused lines trying to lure you into doing whatever the website needs done to make money.

Create content that is compelling using articles, podcasts, videos, photo galleries or even narratives. This is where your creativity serves you perfectly but if you are not much endowed, then for the sake of all you believe in, stop being stringent with your purse and hire a professional content developer!

The good thing about professionals is that they create the content and also upload it on the appropriate platforms. However, you will want to go through their work and ensure it’s what you need. You certainly do not want it to be so dreadfully erroneous or boring that you risk your audience deserting and search engines penalizing you.

Whether you are rebranding yourself or starting out, keep in mind that there are no shortcuts to successful content marketing.  Invest money and effort into making your strategy captivating, or else don’t bother to even try. The game you are playing here involves high stakes and the amount of affinity you create for your website and the relationships you develop will be key in establishing brand preference and making you a market authority.

If you’d like to learn more about SEO and how to make your website visible please read more here.

 

Timeless Tips from Blog SEO Gurus to Help You Rank Better in Bing and Google

Once done with the setting up of a website, you should now think about how the major search engines view your site. Forget about testing for Firefox, Explorer, Safari, and Chrome. Search engines are actually the ordinary browsers everybody uses. Fortunately, search engine optimization or SEO does not refer to any terrible design or some mysterious black magic. Rather, they are good and sensible things you should do to please both human visitors and search engines. Here are all time tips about SEO to help you rank better on major search engine giants – Google and Bing.

Words – Each word posted on your site counts. You should create content for humans rather than search engines. The site content must be relevant to the niche of your site. Do not even attempt keyword stuffing. Low quality content and keyword stuffing are the best way to attract a huge penalty from Google, which includes being blacklisted. To avoid such a mishap, find the right keywords for your site; you can use either the Bing keyword tool or the Google Adwords keyword tool.

Links – This is another element that distinguishes boys from men in the SEO industry. The best way to make search engines ‘smile’ at your site is to integrate in some links from other sites. Google and Bing will approve your web pages, as they will see the links as a recommendation for important information. Of course, include reputable links. Moreover, pay attention to the words used in links. To win the approval of search engines, you need to have well-spread, relevant keywords in your content.

Tags – This refers to those special tags that you may add to the webpage’s head section that search engines read. Meta tags are the best way for webmasters to offer search engines with information relevant to their sites. With the meta tags, you can provide relevant information to all kinds of clients. Do not skimp on the meta tags. If you want to see long-term fruits on your site, spend more time working on these tags.

Reputation – To earn a good reputation, post fresh, unique and relevant content to your site regularly. Additionally, include quality, incoming links from several reputable sites. The regular flow of content will signal the search engines’ bots and spiders to come running and look at your site. With great content, your site will definitely be on its way to better ranking.

Implement these SEO tips, and start experiencing a huge difference in your online business. Find more tips about SEO here.

The Greatest Secret to Understanding the Latest SEO marketing Trends

SEO marketing is no longer what it used to be. Nowadays a lot of factors are at play in influencing SEO trends, and only the smartest SEO services experts are able to keep up with these changes. The direct result of smarting up to these changes is websites getting to enjoy improved rankings, while disregarding the changes has resulted in many webpages suffering lowered rankings or becoming webspams. Webspams are websites that are considered low quality by the search engines because of their use of manipulative strategies to try and win traffic and rankings.

Without wasting much time, let’s get to the root of the latest SEO trends. So you want to know why your SEO strategies are not working in spite of trying out all the tricks that the latest trends are bringing up. If you have not factored in the Google algorithm updates, then you might as well pack up and go home.

Google is at the height of its war on webspam, churning out daily updates of its algorithms at an average of one-to-two. When you understand the impact these updates have on your ranking, this is the only time you will be able to redefine your SEO strategy and actually yield profitable returns. Therefore, take time and understand the Panda and Penguin updates, which are the major contributors to the panic that website owners experienced last year and earlier this year.

The Panda Update, which was first introduced in February 2011, focuses chiefly on content relevance, whereby it downgrades content that has no depth or that has been duplicated. Its heaviest impact was felt then, and the updates experienced now are mere tweaks of relatively light impact. The sites that have been affected by this kind of algorithm are those specialized in similar stock product descriptions. Content farms have also been affected; these are the sites that are dedicated to the production of thousands of content pages, but the information they contain is useless. Beating the negative impact of this update simply calls for producing content that is unique, fresh and relevant.

The Penguin Update was launched earlier in the year, in April, and its consequences are still greatly being felt. This algorithm targets those websites whose link profiles are low quality. In past years, link-building strategies have always focused on easy ways of acquiring links, such as through comments on blogs, article repositories and directories. Anchor texts that have been highly optimized then used to be paired with the links in order to increase their value. Google now considers this strategy of building multiple low-quality links to influence rankings as a manipulative strategy. You must, therefore, create content that is valuable and compelling, even in your link-building endeavours.

As you rethink your SEO marketing strategies, be guided by Google’s algorithmic mantra of high quality and compelling content.