Tag: SEO

Quick Digital Marketing Campaign Basics

Planning. Who is your target market? Which ways are you going to promote it? Be social-Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn? Pinterest? Google? Etc.Possible uses of QR codes? SMS mobile promotion?

Keywords.You will need the list for # hashtags, long tail keywords, etc.

Competitors. List top competitors. List their # hashtags, social media accounts, blogs.

Website. Get your website ready. SEO. Conversion paths. Landing pages. Evaluate your website vs competitors. Make notes on keywords, hotspots (clicks) on your website and competitors, check and build your back links according to your
new campaign.

Measure. Measure. Measure. Measure results! Measure “mentions” and social media engagement. measure conversions. Retweets. Likes. Comments. Good tools include Radian6, PostRank, Trackur, Social Mention, TwentyFeet, Google Analytics, Google Trends.

Increase Your Blog Traffic!

With Google + getting more relevant in Google’s search traffic ranking, its crucial that you share your posts via Google+ (in addition to Twitter and Facebook). Don’t miss this easy opportunity to leverage additional traffic or just increase brand awareness. LinkedIn also has this feature (status updates) that you can easily link your blog posts. These content sharing platforms also increase your chances of going viral as well as interacting with your own community. Don’t forget to exploit in your status updates! Consistently using this strategy every time you post to your blog will increase your followers and drive traffic back to your site.

Get on G+ Now or Lose Your Search Ranking

Whether you like it or hate it or …………have no time for yet ANOTHER Social Platform, you now must get on G+ social network.

Google is starting to rank social “signals” from its G+ content. That means your service, business or corporation must establish a G+ strategy to even keep your Google rankings or to increase it. G+ has now become a priority for SEO’s and Social Media marketers. Period.

Flash = Game Over

HTML5 on mobile sites. Open source. SEO friendly. HTML5 will explicitly indicate to search engines which of your content is more or less relevant. 

Time to refocus on HTML5 technology when it comes to multimedia in browsers. Will Silverlight be the next victim? HTML5 is light and snappy. It doesn’t need additional plugins installed for your browser.

Which Social Media Helps SEO?

Its all about search engines and their use of “social signals” that help better rank your business. Google, and Bing are using “social signals” to help them rank. Google, of course, uses plus ones (Google+). Bing uses stuff people share on Facebook. Adding a social media presence to your SEO / traffic strategy is key now. Make sure your business has a Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn page, and of course Google+. Be consitstent with all of them. Use the same annoucements, content, pictures, branding, description, etc. Rock-on!

Easy Website Traffic Tip

Submit your website or blog to quality general directories. One such quality director is DMOZ:

http://www.dmoz.org

This “Open Directory Project” is syndicated by many other sites. Including your website or blog in DMOZ will provide you with inbound links. Other directories to include:

Yahoo Search Directory
http://dir.yahoo.com

Business.com Directory
http://www.business.com

There are many more you can include. Listing in directories is always an ongoing effort. New directories pop up everyday. Spend an hour a week listing your business or service in online directories. The payoff can be increased traffic but MAKE SURE the directories you are submitting to are not defined as “spam” or junk directories. If your a local business, its crucial to submit your listing to a local directory as well. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have local search listings.

Using Del.icio.us. Social Bookmarking Platform as an Effective Collaborative Reference Tool

What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is one kind of a system in which several websites are being organized and require you to visit again and again. However, rather than bookmarking those websites on your computer, you choose to bookmark those sites on a particular social bookmarking website such as “Delicious.” In order to search for your favorite website on a social bookmark platform, you have to use a “keyword” or “tag” which represents that website you need to refer. Delicious can even make all your entries either private or public. When you choose to make your entries public, they are always visible to other visitors using the platform. A public display will illustrate who has created that bookmark and how/when those keywords and tags are useful or popular.

How does a social bookmarking website help you?
Social bookmarking is useful in many ways. By creating a list of popular public websites, you have the capacity of sharing the information with as many other people that are interesting in the content. It also enhances communication between individuals within a team (or clients). These people can easily find an entire list of websites which display the subject they are looking for. Searching is normally done by using some kind of relevant keyword or tag. This is a great method of helping people find useful details or even sharing resources as a collaborative group. For instance, if group of people need certain information on home office tools, they would log into Delicious.com and type the keyword “home office tools”. After few minutes, a complete list of bookmarked websites tagged with the keyword phrase “home office tools” is generated.

With this reference tool, you can also find out how popular that bookmarked website is and who has bookmarked it. You can even contact a person that is interested in the same topic. This way you can also extend your community to a large extent. Besides these benefits, this type of social bookmarking website can also help you to generate traffic to your business. If you have a blog or a website you can link it into your favorite tagged websites and enable all your visitors to simply bookmark your blog or website. This will increase search engine ranking and potentially it can increase your visitors.

Delicious.com is one of the best bookmarking websites that allows you to share information (bookmarks) with contacts such as coworkers and clients in one place or repository. By using other people’s shared bookmarks, the collaborative aspect can be exploited.

SEO Visual Guide to Success

SEO Visual Guide

I found this great SEO visual guide layout for anyone planning a campaign for the first time. Its also a handy guide to keep on hand at all times. You can drill down the tree limbs and get more detailed and plan out milestones, etc. The guide came from Dave Chaffey at e-consultancy.

Before you begin any SEO campaign (organic or paid) its imperative to know how search engines operate and how people interact with them. There are many guides out there where you can learn the “basics” of search engine friendly design and development (or you can hire a consultant). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably THE most cost-effective digital marketing technique, but also the most challenging to get right. It can get overwhelming with keyword research, link building, usability, and tweaking content. In the end, always keep measuring and tracking the data (success) and build off of whats working, and whats not working. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search – people who want what you have visiting your site. Always keep in mind not to go too overboard with content optimization or you will get labeled a “spammer” or a “content farmer” which will designate you as a low-quality website/publisher.

More Reasons Why Search Engines Are The New Yellow Pages

Search Engines like Google and Bing are the new yellow pages. The convenience of powerful smart phones, search engines are an easy way to find anything (local to national to worldwide).

3.5 billion Google searches are made every day. (Internet Live Stats)

35% of product searches start on Google. (eMarketer)

34% of “near me” searches done via desktop and tablets result in store visits. (HubSpot)

Organic Google results with 3-4 words in the title drive higher CTRs than organic results with 1-2 words in the title. (Smart Insights)