Tag: SEO

Can You Increase Traffic Without SEO ?

Yes, but it takes a lot of creativity, ingenuity and content creation.

First off, create a constant flow of good, quality content. Update your website content everyday. Include links to outside sources and use high quality graphics (.png). New revolving content is CRUCIAL. Content is king. New content updated daily will catch the search engine’s attention. You must do one thing: provide a daily flow of content.

More traffic without SEO tips also include:

  • Search for an aggregator within your vertical and see if they will pick up your content. Contact the editor. Get a conversation going through email. If your selling something (retail), try and get a coupon aggregator to pick you up.
  • Make sure you have an RSS feed subscription. Make it easy for visitors to get your daily updates.
  • If your using a WordPress (publishing platform) site, download and install a SEO plugin at the WordPress Plugin Directory. Let the plugin do all the work. You don’t need to know a damn thing about SEO to install one of these plugins. This is easy and will help get you that low hanging traffic fruit. Good WordPress SEO plugins include: Meta SEO Pack, SEO Ultimate, SEO Tools, Platinum SEO Pack.
  • Get users to comment and engage in some sort of discussion on your site. This generates more content and more search engine juice. If your starting out and don’t have any users, create numerous dummy email accounts and post comments thru these accounts. Make sure you add/post a DIGG, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Tweet your website and every content post.
  • Pay for online ads (Google, Twitter, Facebook). This is good if your selling a product, but bad if your just promoting a content site that isn’t selling anything but click-through ads. SPAM tends to gravitate towards paid online ads promoting content while trying to get paid through google ads or banner advertisement clicks so be careful. Go with PPC (if your budget permits) if you have an actual product or service to sell.

How To Make Your Website More “Shareable”

If your producing great content, why not make it more shareable. This helps create and drive traffic, conversions, and ultimately SEO.

For LinkedIn, make sure your source code complies with “Open Graph Protocol (OGP)” and certain image requirements specific to LinkedIn.

Below are the og: tags that must exist and their correct format:

    <meta property=“og:title” content=“Title of the article”/>
    <meta property=“og:image” content=“http://media.example.com/ 1234567.jpg”/>
    <meta property=“og:description” content=“Description that will show in the preview”/>
    <meta property=“og:url” content=“http://www.example.com/URL of the article” />

Here are the image requirements specific to the LinkedIn sharing module:

    Max file size: 1 MB
    Minimum image dimensions: 80 x 150 pixels
    Recommended aspect ratio: 4:1 or 1:4

For Facebook, add Facebook Like Buttons to your Content. Embed Facebook Sharing in Text and Images. Debug Your Website for Facebook Graph. You can run a quick audit with the Facebook Debugger. Always beware of the Open Graph Protocol requirements on Facebook.
 
For Pinterest, choose Eye-Catching Images.  Once an image draws someone into your post, they’ll want to know more about what your post covers. Create an attention grabbing description. Also, make sure you add a website widget and Pin It buttons your website. A great resource on how to add these buttons (and even build it yourself) to many popular platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc., can be found here. Make it easy for people to collect things from your site.
 
For Twitter, add a Twitter icon on all your website content (this also goes for Facebook, Pinterest, LinkeIn, etc). To increase Retweets and shareability, use Twitter cards. You’ve probably seen these cards before if you follow any news organizations like the New York Times. There are currently 8 types of Twitter cards. Two are specific to sharing apps. Integrate the card code into your site either via plugins or custom code.

There are three high-level steps to this process:

    1. Add the code to your site
    2. Validate (test) it using Twitter’s validation tool
    3. Get approved to use Twitter cards for your account
    
Steps 2 and 3 are repeated for each type of card you’d like to use for your site. You can either use card code PlugIns or build it yourself to use for your website. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpage, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a “Card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers. A good tutorial on adding Twitter cards can be found here.

If your website publishes a lot of content like “articles” or “reviews” or long-form journalism, its imperative to add a Instapaper widget to let your readers SAVE interesting articles, videos, cooking recipes, song lyrics, or whatever else you create. Instapaper syncs your website articles and videos/content so that your visitors can save on all their your devices – iPhone, iPad, Android, or Kindle. Visitors can read anything they save, anywhere and anytime you want, even offline. Instapaper is the only app that supports advanced kerning and ligatures for a better reading experience.

How To Set Up Your Small Business on Instagram

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  1. Grab and download the Instagram app in the App Store on an iOS device (iPhone, iPod, iPad), or in Google Play for an Android device.
  2. Open the App, fill out and register. Your Username will be visible and is how people will search for you. If it’s a business account you are creating be sure it reflects your organization. For your profile name, choose an account name that’s the same as the Twitter handle of your business.
  3. Your given many options like “search for contacts based on contacts on your Phone” or "invite your Facebook friends to follow”, do what feels natural if your customer are on your Facebook or contact list. 
  4. Once your Instagram account has been setup, along the bottom, you will see 5 different icons. Press the rectangle icon that looks like a newspaper (far right) . This takes you to your profile settings. Click ‘Edit Your Profile’. Here you can add additional details including Go to Account, Edit Profile to finish your profile settings. Enter your First and Last name (if you want them shown), your URL, a short bio, and whatever other information you want to complete for your public and private profile. You can also add a profile picture. Add some of your business personality to your profile. This can include having an image of your office or employees, or your logo, rather than personal profiles which often have a photo of the user. A key to good business is responding to your customers, enable notifications so you can see when people share or comment on your photos. This will let you engage with them more quickly. Be sure to hit “Save” when you are done.


Getting started. Start taking pics! Be innovative. One example might be to brand your photos so they all have your logo attached. A simple way to do this would be to have a small printed out logo to hold up (by hand) in the corner of your shot as you take it.

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  • Post pictures of your place of business/work.
  • Post images of your products or related services.
  • Post pictures of your team doing innovative work "behind the scenes”.
  • Post pictures of your customers happy faces.
  • If your a restaurant, post pics of your signature dishes.
  • If your a clothing boutique, post pics showcasing your new clothes. Tell your story behind your fashion brand.
  • If your an artist, showcase your latest work, crafts, or inspiration.
  • If your a contractor, showcase your latest project.
  • Add a caption to your photo and upload it. A good tip for business users is to ask questions in your captions to increase the possibilities for engagement. Asking questions increases engagement. 
  • Use Hashtags! Hashtags are a key tool for organizing your photos and helping Instagram users to find photos on topics that interest them (such as your products or service).

A promotional tip: Bring the customers to you. If you make updates based on a geographical location, mention that you’ll be there and to come on down for a free prize giveaway or to check out the new items in the store.

Lastly, Monitoring Your Analytics! You need to know what people are responding to. Analytics can help you with your goals (increased sales or brand awareness).

How To Set Up Your Small Business on Pinterest

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First, create a business account. Start with an eye-catching profile. Start here pinterest.com/business/create

1. Verify your website (business website). 
> Go to your profile and click on the pencil in the bottom-right corner of the name box. Don’t see the pencil? Go to the menu in the upper right corner, select Settings, and go to Step 2.
2. Enter your web address in the Website field, then click Verify Website.
3. Follow the instructions on the next page. You can verify with an HTML file or a META tag.
4. Once your website’s been verified, you’ll see a checkmark next to it and will have access to your web analytics when you’re logged in

Add the Pin It button to your site. Make it easy to Pin from your website or blog. Go here business.pinterest.com/pin-it-button

Now that your set-up with a business account, below is a quick guide tips, tricks and best practices on using Pinterest. 

1. Get creative. Make your Pinterest board stand out in the crowd. Use high quality .png images. Example, If your a clothing boutique, take digital pics of all your new inventory (clothes) hanging in your store. Images sell. Your selling your store, your style, your products, your design. High quality digital pics drive customers to your store. Think about it being an online mall your walking through. Create a range of boards that showcase your store’s personality and taste, and make sure each board has enough pins to make it feel substantial. Remember that people can choose which boards they want to follow, so not every board has to appeal to everyone. Pinterest users have been more heavily female (about 65%), so keep that in mind as well.  If your customer base is mainly men, Pinterest might not be right for you just yet.
2. Make sure you have your Pin logo up on your website that will allow online traffic to click over to your Pinterest page.
3. Use rich pins to automatically include information like prices, availability, ingredients and reviews with your pins. All you need to do is add some meta tags, keywords, and .
4. Learn and keep checking your Pinterest Analytics dashboard! Pinterest Analytics dashboard shows you which pins are most popular with pinners and which ones are driving the most traffic to your site. You can also see what boards your stuff appears on, how the pins are described and what people pin along with your stuff. All of these insights will help you make smarter choices about your merchandising, product development and pinning strategy. 
5. Motivate people to pin. The more people pin your content, the more discoverable it becomes. To encourage more pinning, make it easy to pin from your website and email marketing, and promote pinning in your social channels Like Twitter & Facebook, packaging and advertising. Push people to your Pinterest website and in turn they will visit your actual business website and store in real life. Be sure to add links to your company website and Twitter page on your Pinterest profile. You can also bring users to specific web pages by adding the URL in the pin description.
6. Pin at least once a day so your followers get fresh content in their home feeds. Just like with boards, thoughtful descriptions will make your pins more inspiring and searchable. Never Pin inappropriate material. Keep your personal Pinterest account separate from your business account. What makes a good pin description? Check out these tips: 

  • Recipes: Describe the main ingredients of the dish and how to cook it
  • Fashion: Include what kind of clothing, the designer or season to wear it
  • Travel: Tell people the local on and the kinds of things you can do there
  • DIY: Describe what it is, how you make it and what materials people need
  • Photography: Name the photographer, year, subject or publication 
  • Design: Mention the designer, medium, publication, etc

Last tip: Once you are on Pinterest, add the Pinterest follow button to your social media pages and even your printed materials. This is a good way to jump start your Pinterest presence.

Website Landing Page Strategy

Concentrate on the upper 300 pixels of the page. Half of your visitors will not scroll “below the fold.” Put your most critical landing page elements on that upper half. Keep it simple. Make sure your page loads quickly. Lead the eye and provide conversion exits! Call to Action copy matters.

Mobile Marketing Tip. Sitemaps!

Generate a mobile sitemap of your website. Once completed, submit to Google Webmaster Tools. Simple. For WordPress blogs, you may not need a separate mobile sitemap IF your incorporating a “Responsive Web Design” where the same page is served to both desktop and mobile screens.

What are sitemaps? sitemaps are a way to tell Google, Bing and other search engines about web pages, images and video content on your site that they may otherwise not discover.

How do you create a mobile sitemap? There are numerous Sitemap XML generators on the web. Most are free. Just google “sitemap generator” and it will bring up a list. WordPress has mobile sitemap plugins to help you as well if your using that platform.

Pinterest Your Company

Pinterest has seen a huge growth of users as well as helping certain brands increase their referral traffic from the visually rich content which gets published on the site. WIth the launch of Pinterest for Business Pages, brands must take advantage of this new feature. Pinterest for Business Pages is essentially its version of Facebook Pages for business.

The good news is that Pinterest is offering the option to either create a new business profile, or convert your existing personal one. This is done through the Pinterest Business Center, where you simply create a new account or click to convert your existing one.

Pinning strategies include “Repinning”, which is a great way of building up new followers, but to be truly influential, you need to pin your own content regularly and before everyone else. Pinterest is a very visual site, but there’s nothing to say that you can’t pin videos on your boards. It’s good to mix up your content a little and provide these links, just to see how exactly your followers react to it.

While your descriptions can go up to 500 characters, the chances of people reading the entire description (unless it’s a competition) is slim. This is especially true when you consider that only a small portion of that description will be visible when you’re browsing boards. It’s best to keep descriptions short and sweet so that both the image and text is easily visible.

Why is Pinterest getting so popular amongst brands and SEO?

According to new data released by Shareaholic, Pinterest has beaten out Yahoo organic traffic, making Pinterest the fourth largest traffic driver worldwide. In addition, the company found that Google, Yahoo, and Bing organic traffic decreased by 15.63% on average since January, which the firm speculates may indicate more people are discovering content through social sites like Pinterest.
 
Finally, and very important! Make sure to verify your website with Pinterest which enables you to become visible in search results (SERPs). To do this, simply add a Meta tag from Pinterest to the header of your website. Simple.