Posts

Search Engine Optimization - Magnifying GlassWhen it comes to achieving online marketing success, getting found is probably one of the biggest determining factors. Unless your site shows up on Google and other popular search engines, you’ll definitely have a hard time improving your web traffic, getting your content out and reaching out to people who might be interested in the products and services you offer.

In this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to improve your search engine ranking. Read on and get your website well ranked in search engines.

Tweak your title tags

Your title tags are a supremely important way of providing search engines with relevant information about your website’s purpose and content. So don’t make the mistake of leaving the default “Home Page” title in the title tags. Otherwise, your site will only show up in search results when someone keys in the word “Home Page”.

Have high quality content

The best way to encourage people to visit your site is by consistently providing them with unique interesting and relevant contents.

Write articles about your industry, products or services and current market information that will be of interest to your target audience. Also, make sure that your texts are original. Or else, you might get punished for stealing others contents.

Optimize the right keywords

Find the most relevant and widely used keywords that relate to your business and incorporate them into your texts. Make sure to insert these keywords as seamlessly as possible.

Before deciding on a set of keywords, it would be a good idea to use Google Adwords to check how competitive your keywords are. Using broader keywords is also a good option.

Get help

If you’re managing a big site, we suggest hiring someone who really knows what they’re doing. A little knowledge may be helpful, but you may end up getting your site penalized or banned from search engines. Leave your site’s ranking in the hands of the experts.

Hastags are everywhere these days. We see them on Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and
Facebook. But do you know how to use them strategically?

Hashtags can improve you SEO, get your content found, target your market, amplify your brand and
expand your content reach. That being said, it is important that you know how to implement them
properly in order to fully enjoy all these benefits.

In this article, we’ll give you some of the most important hashtag strategies that you should take note
of. Read on to know more about it.

Create your own hashtags

Brand and campaign hashtags are the ones you make for your own business. Create a brand hashtag
that is unique to your business and make sure that it defines your business. Use it as your signature tag
and use it on all of your social media accounts. Encourage others to use it as well.

You’ll want people to remember your tag. So, keep it short and make sure it’s easy to spell.

Include a relevant yet specific hashtag

By using the right hashtag, people will come across your content even if they are not following you.

When we say relevant, it means that you should either use a hashtag that has already been searched for
frequently or something that was already been designated for a certain event. However, be sure to
make them as specific as possible so your message won’t get buried.

Trending hashtags

You have probably heard some of your friends talking about what’s trending now. They’re referring to a
hashtag topic that has become very popular and or the most talked about topic as of the moment.

If you come across a trend that relates to your business, take advantage of it by using the tag in your
content update. In a way, you can think of this hashtag strategy as a way of getting your “15 seconds of
fame.” This is beneficial as it will help you get your message to a massive audience.

Be careful not to spam trending hashtags, though, especially if they are not related to your business.

After learning the tricks to social media marketing tricks, it is time to put these concepts to work. If you are in need of business to business networking, then LinkedIn is the best place to start.

Of all the social networking platforms, LinkedIn is considered to be the most professional. Used by more than 135 million business professionals worldwide, this should be a part of your social media marketing strategy.

If you are like most people, you might be using LinkedIn as an online resume. Take advantage of this platform and use it as a marketing tool. Read on and incorporate these recommendations into your marketing campaign.

Status updates

This is one of the best ways in keeping your connections informed about what is happening to your business. Post status updates on a regular basis in order to appear active to the LinkedIn community. You can also use links and drive them to your site. Sharing contents that is related to your business may also be a good idea.

Blog posts

Every time you post a blog on your website, important details like the title, abstract and the link to your post will automatically be posted to your LinkedIn profile.

Events

If you are organizing an event or are speaking at an event, you are free to create a LinkedIn event in order to help you promote this event and generate interest.

Presentations

If you have posted a Powerpoint presentation in Google docs or SlideShare, you can also attach this presentation in your LinkedIn profile.

Twitter

If you are an active tweeter, you can always integrate your status updates with your tweets in order to keep your followers and connections informed.

Creative portfolio

Users with a creative portfolio are given the chance to post it to the Behance Network. Once you’re done, you can showcase your work in your LinkedIn profile.

Recommendations

You can easily request recommendations from your LinkedIn connections. A collection of recommendations that highlight your experience and expertise would significantly enhance your profile.

 

 

What’s Next for Content Marketing and SEO?

Increased focus on content will provide new challenges as more businesses invest in the area. Competition for those lucrative top spots in organic search results, is likely to increase further as more and more businesses adopt a content focused strategy. More competition in paid search too, means that budgets will need to increase in order to support the higher bids necessary to maintain visibility.

As social media reaches full maturity, so the techniques being used to
build and grow communities will need to be revised and sharpened in
order to rise above the hubbub

When it comes to social media, in order to rise above the high level of noise generated by increased adoption, boosting visibility will become even more crucial. Paid advertising, for example promoted posts and Facebook ads, will become increasingly necessary in order to reach customers. This means that companies who choose not to invest in this area and SMEs who simply don’t have the resources, will gradually loose out to competitors with deeper pockets.

Branding will become ever more important as businesses need to stand out from the competition. Smaller businesses whose activities are not currently strategically driven, will need to up their game in terms of both understanding and conveying their USPs and they will also need to get smart about how they measure their success and how they devise actionable insights.

If small businesses can remain both creative and agile, they will be able to grow their communities and more importantly, they’ll be able to leverage the power of those communities to their advantage. I’m pretty certain then that in 2014 we will see more investment into not just content marketing and relationship building, but into branding too.

Whilst opportunities will continue exist for those of us not lucky enough to have an internationally recognizable brand or large budgets, It’s not going to be easy. As 2014 progresses, small businesses will learn that investing in content marketing and developing their brand isn’t optional, it’s something they have to do in order to maintain their online visibility.

Marketing Insights for 2014

  1. Greater competition as the volume of content being published and promoted online continues to increase, making paid search more necessary
  2. Increased need to differentiate, making branding all important
  3. Increasingly necessary to pay for social media advertising alongside existing organic activities
  4. Social media continues to be an important communications with Increased adoption of Pinterest, particularly for online retailers and increased business adoption of  YouTube
  5. Responsive design will become even more widespread as the use of mobile devices for browsing the internet continues to increase
  6. Greater use of location based marketing, primarily Google Places/Google+ local
  7. Smarter metrics necessary in order to obtain clearer insights and more accurately measure ROI
  8. Strategically driven activities will become ever more widespread as social media reaches maturity
  9. Creativity, agility and innovation will become more important in helping marketers to grab and hold the attention of their audiences
small group coaching


Human-to-human contact is original social marketing. When it comes to marketing, this is one of the most important connections to make. However, human-to-human contact through social media is not a one step process. Making connections with your consumers can take time and money.

Luckily, social media, email marketing and PR are great resources to use for businesses trying to humanize their company and connect personally with their consumers to increase engagement.

Here are six digital marketing tools to start using today to make real, valuable connections with customers.

1. Blogging
Blogging is not a one-way communication tool. Blog posts should create new conversations and debates which will assist in discovering the next “hot lead” to tackle. In addition to being a great resource for social media and email marketing, blogs are the perfect SEO tool. Blogs can also be used to increase social media engagement and drive email by adding subscription forms, as well as social media buttons to every page.

2. Live Events
While events can be a very expensive way to market to current and potential consumers, there is no doubt that the live environment of an exciting event creates lots of buzz around a brand. Some ways to lower the cost of hosting an event could be to run it at a local library, college or university. These types of venues offer facilities that are similar in resemblance to traditional venues, such as hotels, which are much more pricey.

3. Webinars
Webinars can be a great solution when trying to reach a large amount of prospects without even having to leave the office. Webinars are an opportunity for potential consumers to listen in and learn from others’ questions. Push your attendees to discuss your business’s insight in the webinar by promoting a Twitter #hashtag throughout slides in the presentation. Afterwards, encourage guests to reach out if they would like further information.

4. Social Sharing
By including social media sharing buttons within email marketing campaigns, subscribers will have much more of an incentive to share information. These buttons couldn’t make it any easier to spread quality content with others. This is an extremely simple way to see an increase in consumer engagement.

5. Different Levels of Email Subscription
While marketers strive to increase leads into a business, sales managers often want fewer leads with a better insight into the quality of potential consumers. The solution to these different goals is to provide multiple levels of subscription. Offer subscription forms for newsletters that are short and sweet; just a name and email address. Then use these addresses to re-market more detailed campaigns and promote events, webinars, white papers, and more. By offering highly perceived value, you can then get more details, like company names, positions and turnovers. By using sites like LinkedIn, it is not hard to reach potential consumers.

6. SEO With PR
Try using services like PRWeb to compose a strong press release and get the message out to thousands, and maybe millions, of viewers. This will also increase social media engagement and conversions. Additionally, it’s an efficient way to promote new product launches, upcoming events, webinars or announcements to prospects who may not be well aware of your company.

 

 

 

 

Human-to-human contact is original social marketing. When it comes to marketing, this is one of the most important connections to make. However, human-to-human contact through social media is not a one step process. Making connections with your consumers can take time and money.

Luckily, social media, email marketing and PR are great resources to use for businesses trying to humanize their company and connect personally with their consumers to increase engagement.

Here are six digital marketing tools to start using today to make real, valuable connections with customers.

1. Blogging

Blogging is not a one-way communication tool. Blog posts should create new conversations and debates which will assist in discovering the next “hot lead” to tackle. In addition to being a great resource for social media and email marketing, blogs are the perfect SEO tool. Blogs can also be used to increase social media engagement and drive email by adding subscription forms, as well as social media buttons to every page.

2. Live Events

While events can be a very expensive way to market to current and potential consumers, there is no doubt that the live environment of an exciting event creates lots of buzz around a brand. Some ways to lower the cost of hosting an event could be to run it at a local library, college or university. These types of venues offer facilities that are similar in resemblance to traditional venues, such as hotels, which are much more pricey.

3. Webinars

Webinars can be a great solution when trying to reach a large amount of prospects without even having to leave the office. Webinars are an opportunity for potential consumers to listen in and learn from others’ questions. Push your attendees to discuss your business’s insight in the webinar by promoting a Twitter #hashtag throughout slides in the presentation. Afterwards, encourage guests to reach out if they would like further information.

4. Social Sharing

By including social media sharing buttons within email marketing campaigns, subscribers will have much more of an incentive to share information. These buttons couldn’t make it any easier to spread quality content with others. This is an extremely simple way to see an increase in consumer engagement.

5. Different Levels of Email Subscription

While marketers strive to increase leads into a business, sales managers often want fewer leads with a better insight into the quality of potential consumers. The solution to these different goals is to provide multiple levels of subscription. Offer subscription forms for newsletters that are short and sweet; just a name and email address. Then use these addresses to re-market more detailed campaigns and promote events, webinars, white papers, and more. By offering highly perceived value, you can then get more details, like company names, positions and turnovers. By using sites like LinkedIn, it is not hard to reach potential consumers.

6. SEO With PR

Try using services like PRWeb to compose a strong press release and get the message out to thousands, and maybe millions, of viewers. This will also increase social media engagement and conversions. Additionally, it’s an efficient way to promote new product launches, upcoming events, webinars or announcements to prospects who may not be well aware of your company.

 

 

In the year ahead, there seem to be some major social media tactics you can expect to see affecting businesses. Some of these trends have already been carried out by companies, but in 2012, expect to see a mass adoption of these plans carried out by all types of businesses.

1. Google+ Explosion

Google+ will continually come out with new features, and Google+ pages will continue to become more business-friendly. The integration with other Google properties, like in paid search ads, its search engine results page, Google Reader and YouTube will be the greatest advantage for Google.

Google had a strong focus on social media last year by basing its employee bonus and salary structure off of its success through social media. This has resulted in everyone involved the Google world constantly considering social media. This internal focus will lead to an external force where consumers will make Google+ a main social media platform in 2012.

2. Creating Engaged Communities

Businesses will be sure to pay attention to their current community members in 2012, as marketers become more advanced in planning and measuring their campaigns. There will be a stronger emphasis on creating an engaged community as opposed to mere numbers of followers. So, community managers need to energize community members and engage with them in multiple areas, like market research, product development and product discounts, for example.

Managing and building communities is about the consumers, the information and staying consistent. This strategy will be seen heavily in 2012 and will become a key part of community management.

3. Stronger Marketing Intelligence

Last year there was a lot of new technology platforms that changed social media monitoring and provided advanced data to help drive marketing campaigns.

This year, businesses will move beyond just looking at company mentions and influencer scores, and move more toward combining different social data in order to create a marketing intelligence that will drive future marketing campaigns. Many tools do this already, but there is sure to be more this year.

4. Social Media Driving SEO

The usual on-page SEO factors will still remain constant, as it makes your content search friendly, but in 2012, strong sharing activities through social media will drive SEO results.

SEO conversions will be higher and simpler to measure on organic search. And as a result, more companies will carry out a closer collaboration between their social teams and searches.

5. Real, Quality Content

Everyone appreciates content that is relevant, engaging and unique to the consumer. In the past few years, companies have worked hard to come up with content with the sole purpose of creating content for SEO.

In 2012, there will be a more structured way for businesses to form content with a focus on giving unique value to consumers that will lead to higher engagement levels with community members.

5. The Power of Facebook

In the past, companies worked to get a somewhat superficial quantity of Facebook fans without considering the quality of those fans. This year, expect to see companies focus on finding greater profitability with a sharp ROI emphasis in the form of Facebook ads, contests and promotions.

Companies will find that there’s more to Facebook than measuring a linear conversion path from a fan to a consumer. Marketers will measure the non-linear path of ROI more by making Facebook-exclusive promotions to drive foot traffic to the retail stores.

Facebook Ads campaigns will be measured based on the profitability that leads to revenues or supports.

7. SoLoMo (Social, Local, Mobile)

More integrated campaigns that combine social media with local offers involving mobile devices will be seen in 2012. Socially promoted mobile content can build brand loyalty, and ultimately increase sales.

Sites like LivingSocial and Groupon are good examples of using deals to drive local sales. Foursquare is another example of the SoLoMo strategy.

It’s clear that the quickly changing social media environment can be overwhelming. However, by staying on-top of the latest social media tactics, your company can stay strong in the social media world.

Experts suggest marketers integrate their SEO campaigns and their social media accounts into one strategy.

When SEO and social media are divided into separate entities, firms often end up choosing one over the other. This could end up being costly in the long run.

A more efficient strategy is to utilize a joint social media and SEO campaign in order for your business to get the most out of both tools.

Online marketing blogger for columbiatribune.com, Rob Stretch, explains, “One channel can be leveraged to improve another benefit to a whole campaign; such is the case with social media and search engine optimization.”

Stretch also explains how social media can be used to establish and expand brand relationships. These relationships can then be used by SEO to create links between the interested parties.

Additionally, Twitter can be added to generate content and spread banner messages to put businesses in contact with influential people in their distinct industries. This will then boost brand awareness and build further connections.

These social media connections should then be promoted. Place tabs on each web page to allow users to “Like,” “Tweet” or “+1” it, to help further promote the website and its content to the target audience while giving it greater authority in search engines as well.

On yourdailyupdateblog.com, Stretch concluded that, “Despite multiple differences, both channels are the same in that they can be leverages as traffic sources to your website.”

In your company’s social media efforts, it’s clearly a wise choice to consider integrating social media and your SEO campaigns to a single strategy to see the greatest benefit!

 

People who are not familiar with how internet marketing works might think that social media marketing is the new Search Engine Optimization. No, it’s not! Social media marketing is an effective supplement to any standard SEO endeavor that you do, but it can’t be used as a replacement. Implementing this strategy is like employing a PR firm once you’ve released your SEO-optimized website. On-page SEO is obviously not as captivating as social media marketing, but it is still the most significant effort you can implement to your website.

As for your social networking efforts, you should visit your existing social accounts, and focus on how you can bring more visitors to your website. However you have first to determine who your target visitors are, what keywords they use in searching for information in the search engines, and in what way your website can help them. Be sure not to miss any of these as you go through your optimization process. All of the social networking sites and traffic won’t result in anything if your target visitors are not part of your online connection or network.

If you didn’t earn the ROI, don’t fret. Most often, it is based on whom your target visitors are, where they can be find, the kinds of services or products you provide, and if your website genuinely supplies your visitors with what they’re searching for.

Applying basic SEO such as building a crawler-friendly website that is made up of relevant keywords that people often typed in the search engines to find the things you offer, shouldn’t be underestimated. These SEO factors can be considered the foundation of your SEO efforts to achieve results.

SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide is written for companies that don’t have the luxury of a big marketing budget, and don’t have the time or staff to devote to a full-time online marketing project. Get it today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5573060