6 Blogging Myths Debunked
6 Blogging Myths Debunked
On the subject of blogging and making money from blogging, there are tons of opinions out there, and many of them are myths that are not only floating around, but persistently being told. Now they seem like truth which in the real sense they aren’t. I wanted to debunk the 6a common blogging myths that have consistently caught my attention.
If any of these myths have been holding you back, now you have the opportunity to know the truth and do the right thing.
Myth #1: If You Build it They Will Come
No, that is not true. Setting up a blog and posting content is only a small part of what you need to do to attract people to your blog. There are many more things you need to do such as sharing on social media, commenting on other people’s blogs, guest posting and adopting a solid marketing strategy. There are millions of blogs being written every day. So if you just post and sit back, no one is going to notice your blog.
Myth #2: You Can’t Make Money Blogging
Although the majority of blogs that are online are personal blogs where the bloggers have no intentions of monetizing them, many more are making money. You may think that it is not possible to make money through blogging, but that is not the case. You may even have started one with the sole purpose of monetizing it but reached a dead end when you realized that your AdSense is not making you a single cent. Instead of giving up, you should find out why your blog is not making money and improve it. AdSense and Ad Sales are the most common ways of making money through blogging. Others are affiliate programs, sponsored content and selling own products.
Myth #3: A Simple Blog with Plain Background is Boring
Many people think that your blog has to be designed with fancy colors with many plugins. Have you heard people say blogs with white backgrounds are boring? I have heard it many times and I think this is the greatest lie of them all.
If you look at a blog like SeoHour, you will be surprised at its immense simplicity, yet hundreds of thousands of people visit his blog. The first time I visited the blog I was very impressed. Unlike other blogs where you feel overwhelmed with plugins, colors, gadgets and ads, I felt relaxed and easy. Perhaps you need to rethink your design. If your blog is overwhelming its readers with colors, gadgets and ads, you are most probably experiencing high bounce rates. Remember, readers come to your blog for information, not to see how fantastic your designer was.
The first think your reader should notice shouldn’t be your background or gadgets, but your headline and the body. Your design should focus on functionality, not aesthetics.
Myth #4: You Have to be a Great Writer to Blog
This is one of the commonest misconceptions about blogging. People think that only good writers should be bloggers. Writing blog posts doesn’t require exceptional writing skills like those required for formal journals. Blogging is all about sharing information in a conversational manner. I have seen bloggers with average writing skills running very successful blogs. A Good Example is ShoutMeLoud. The blogger doesn’t write in perfect English, yet he has an almost fanatical following. Likewise, I have seen many bloggers with perfect writing skills who have failed as bloggers. Of course you have to strive to write blogs with perfect English, but if English is not your first language then you just have to begin with what you have as you learn. I don’t subscribe to those who say that blog posts must be written in perfect grammar. So long as you write very useful content and format your posts properly, you will become successful as a blogger. However, I am not saying that you should be careless with your grammar. All I am saying is that you should do your best, but you don’t have to be perfect.
Myth #5: Readers Have a Very Short Attention Span so Short Content is Key
Running a successful blog involves publishing useful, evergreen content. Most of the content is in the region of 700-5,000. Most blog posts that have done very well are long, evergreen posts.
Myth #6: Blogging is for passive income
If you were to make any money blogging, you should blog consistently. Most bloggers who make money blogging are full time bloggers. If you think that blogging is something you are going to do for 2 hours a week and expect to reap big, you are wrong. There is considerable amount of time and effort you need to invest before you even begin seeing results.
Increase your email Open Rates using these strategies
Increase your email Open Rates using these strategies
Millions of emails hit inboxes every day. Many of those emails are either ignored or deleted straightaway without even opening them. That is why having a compelling email subject line is critical.
There is no point of having thousands and even tens of thousands in your email list when only handful of them actually open your emails. It does no good to you or to your business to have a mammoth email list, but microscopic open rate.
Getting your email to be opened and read in a crowded inbox is a big challenge, but a powerful subject line can make all the difference between being ignored and converting your leads.
Oh, subject lines. So challenging to write, yet so vital to the success of your email campaigns.Poor open rates is an issue that is confronting many internet marketers. There is both a science and an art to composing persuasive email subject lines that not only acts as baits for users to open your emails but to also take action once they open them.
In 2012, Epsilon’s fourth quarter email analysis showed that the average open rates was 27.4% and the average click through rate was 4.5%.
In other words, almost ¾ of people that you send emails don’t open them and when they open, only less than 5 in every 100 will bother to click any of the links.
That is a big problem for most internet marketers. This article explores powerful email newsletter subject lines strategies to win the email marketing war and tremendously increase your email’s open rates by as much as 203%.
This article is going to show you how to write irresistible email subject lines that get prospects to open the emails.
In a nutshell, here is what you are going to learn today:
- Calculating the Open Rate for Your E-Mail Marketing Campaign
- Best Practices for Email subject lines
- Case Studies: Best email subject lines for icreasing open rates
- How to time your emails to increase open rates
Calculating the Open Rate for Your E-Mail Marketing Campaign
If a five-year old came to you and asked, “What is email open rate?” what would you tell that kid?
Don’t scratch your head. Here is a simple graphic by Echogravity to explain it
Thus, email open rates measures the number of specific interactions with an email server after the e-mail is sent and it is expressed as a percentage of non-bounce rates. Your email is only counted as open when the recipient clicks a link in the email and enables the images in your email to display.
So email open rates is calculated by taking the number of emails opened and dividing it by the total non-bounced emails.
The good news is that you don’t need to scratch your head over this. All email marketing providers like Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, Benchmark Email etc provide email open rates metrics.
6-Steps to Improve Email Open Rates
You can improve your email open rates by following these six steps
Step 1: Be ultra-specific and useful—make sure the subject line is useful and relevant to your customer needs.
Step 2: Identify yourself: let them know who is sending the message
Step 3: be visually different: your subject line should standout visually. Use things like square brackets and don’t overcrowd the subject line.
Step 4: send timely emails: the timing is important. We’ll look at this in more details at the end of this article.
Step 5: Include a Call to Action *CTA*: ask questions to make your readers take action.
Step 6:Test your subject lines: Use A/B testing to test your emails to see which subject lines work best.
Best Practices for Email subject lines?
Now that you know what your email open rate is, it is time to improve it. According to Hubspot, having an open rate of lower than 15% should be a cause for alarm. Acquiring those emails isn’t easy, so you shouldn’t take open rates for granted.
According to MailChimp’s exhaustive recent study, using clever subject lines can tremendously increase your open rates. And beyond just a fancy subject line, you must offer an in-depth content for your subscribers to open through the links and even take action.
So the first step towards improving your email marketing is to learn how to write attention-grabbing email subject lines. This video by April Bowles-Olin will teach you how to write compelling email subject lines.
One of my favourite pieces of advice from April is when April urges marketers to send themselves a test email to see how the email compares to other emails in their inboxes and see whether they would click on that email. The idea is to be brutally honest with yourself so that you can wear the shoes of your subscribers.
Let us look at some of the best practices for good email subject lines that sell.
According to Mailchimp researchers, the best subject lines are unusually short, evocative, and descriptive and give recipients good reasons to open their emails. When writing best email subject lines, it is important to keep the audience in mind and to test the keywords and phrases so as to maximize subscriber engagement.
Tips for writing irresistible email Subject Lines
Enticing your audience to engage with your email is a struggle for many marketers and small business owners. Here are 5 tips to writing irresistible subject lines.
1. Cleverness vs. Clarity
In most cases, branding and marketing is about standing out, coming up with something catchy and being memorable. However, the email subject line is not the right place to practice this.
Your recipients don’t want unwanted surprises. They want to have a clear understanding of what to expect when they click on your message. So the subject line should have a worthwhile messages.
Look at the below examples.
Email A is not clear. The subject line doesn’t provide clarity and the message is ambiguous at first glance. Email B on the hand is short, precise and very clear.
AWeber Communications conducted a research in 2011 and discovered that an email subject line that is clear gets 541% more clicks than one that is ambiguous or one that is trying to be clever.
In other words, when it comes to email marketing, remember this simple statement: Clarity is GOOD; Cleverness is BAD
Just ensure the recipients clearly understand the content of the email by the subject line. That alone can great increase the number of customers who click your CTA.
People don’t actually want to try to figure out what you are trying to tell them. They simply do not have that time.
Here are examples of clever and clear email subject lines
Clever Subject Lines
- ABC Associates’ Always Awesome Amber Adams
- It’s finally here
- Look no further than your favourite site
- The early bird catches the worm
- Great gifts to stir you up
Clear Subject Lines
- 10 awesome gifts for her this valentine
- Increase your conversion rates by 200% using these strategies
- 5 ideas to improve your kitchen
- Why I paid $10,000 for my web design and how it has paid off
2. Use actionable language
One way to trigger action is to use actionable language. You don’t necessarily have to use verbs—though it certainly helps.
I received this email from edX. This is one way to use actionable language effectively.
Use actionable verbs like “download”, “take”, “enrol”, “Book”, “reserve”, “buy” etc.
However, you don’t have to rely on verbs to use actionable language. This give you more room to play with words. For example, “Don’t Miss This Season’s Thanksgiving Coupons.”
3. Personalize when possible
Email segmentation is the best strategy for personalizing your message. The following data from eMarketer shows the importance of email segmentation
You notice that highly segmented email and targeted subject lines have 39% higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates. This in turn increases sales leads and greater customer retention.
Before sending that email, ask yourself the following questions:
· Who are the recipients?
· What are the likes and dislikes of the recipients?
· What excites my subscribers? What are their fears?
4. Embrace convention, be obvious
Emails need to be conventional. It may be boring but that is the only way to get people to open them. Every component of the email need to be clear to the recipient.
Ø Make your links obvious: creating, big, conspicuous and clickable (tappable) buttons is the way to go. Make them wide enough so that they can be tapped with a thumb for those on mobile devices. Ensure the texts are bold and links are in contrasting colors. Do not have too many links and let them be well spaced.
Ø Make the benefits of opening the email obvious: don’t bandy words. Go straight to the point. This brings us to the next point.
5. Align Your Subject Line Copy and Email Copy
It is crucial for your CTA and landing page to align. The same principle applies when crafting email subject lines and the message body. Readers should be able to read in the email message what the subject line promises. If there is a mismatch, you aren’t going to receive high click-through rates and at worst, most people will just unsubscribe.
6. Say less
Don’t write extra-long subject lines. Don’t write blocks of paragraphs. Be very specific and cut the extra wordings. Your email message and subject line should be scannable. Keep it short: 50 characters or less works best. In a study involving more than 200 emails, MailChimp found that email subject ines with 50 characters or less have higher clicks.
7. Don’t use urgency in every single email you send out
If every other email you send is urgent, then people eventually become used to your antics and you lose credibility. Say it is urgent only when it is truly urgent.
In any case, it is better to point out the importance of the message or offer rather than its urgency unless it is time-bound.
To wrap this section up, I found this interesting infographic by Unbounce and I think you should look at it.
Case studies: 10 Best Email Subject Lines that Increased Open Rates
Here are 101 best email subject lines that increase open rates by 203%. Study them and notice the patterns. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, they have all the elements we have discussed so far.
Timing is everything
The time you send your email also affects its open and click-though-rates. Know your audience and use A/B testing to find the right time to send email. The time aspect is the final piece in the 203% puzzle. If you get your time right, you can experience as much as 60% higher open rates.
When Nathan Williams sent emails within 24 hours to new signups, he experienced 60% open rates. Having said that, you can’t be absolutely sure what the best time to send emails should be.
So it is just a matter of experimentation and trial and error
Here are some resources to help you get started:
- KISSmetrics infographic on the best time to send emails
- According to Rick Stamberger, the best time to send emails is when your audience is most likely to be online. This depends on industry and geographical locations.
- According to Kevin Gao, founder of comm100, Mondays are not the best days to send emails, as well as weekends. So your best bet is Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Ultimately, you are going to have to test it.
3 Serious Online Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid
3 Serious Online Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid
Internet marketing can be a goldmine if done correctly. But it can also be your worst nightmare if you don’t apply proper tactics to utilize its opportunities; you might find yourself spending a fortune working on marketing strategies that never produce results. I have stumbled many webmasters who spend a fortune on SEO and online marketing yet with little results. These people end up dejected and discouraged and some even call it quits. By learning to avoid some of the terrible mistakes these webmasters and business owners make, you will be saving yourself a lot of precious time and money.
1. Not Familiarizing yourself with the latest SEO changes
SEO is not a fixed or rigid set of formulas. SEO is dynamic; in fact, SEO strategy and change are synonymous. Most times, failure when it comes to SEO and Online marketing comes not because you have done anything wrong but because you have failed to adapt to the new changes. For example, prior to Google’s Panda updates, one-page microsites dominated the search engine results simply because they had links pointing out to the irrespective of quality of the links.
The focus was thus on the links rather than the quality of their parent content. As a result of the changes, only sites with strong quality links can get ranked high on the search engine while those with bogus links pointing to them are downgraded or even banned.
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to get ranked if your site has poor quality content. How do you know maximize the chances of being ranked?
- Check that the quality of your inbound links is high (i.e the parent site has quality content). Also, the more the inbound links the better.
- Check that the quality of your content is not only accurate, but also grammatically correct.
- Check that you format your text responsibly (avoid excessive use of bold, italic, colors, e.t.c)
- Publish unique content that will also be useful to the clients. Offering advice based on personal experience is an added advantage.
2. Failure to define your audience
A lot of people don’t know that this is a grave mistake. It is difficult to succeed without a goal. Clearly, it is very hard to reach your audience if you don’t know who they are in the first place.
Who is the marketing intended to reach? The content-who is supposed to read it? are you targeting adults, children, sports fans, women, men? There are endless categories and niches that a business can choose to concentrate on. For instance, this article is targeting business owners, bloggers, SEO consultants, and those who want to make money from home writing irrespective of their gender or age or geographical place.
The problem with most business owners is that they always assume that wider and bigger is better than narrow and deeper. Even if that is the case, you’re better off knowing what your audience is than working on a blank slate. One mistake you definitely can’t afford to make is to try and appeal to everyone. In other words, it is better to try and be a favorite for only 5% of the population-instead of being just one among millions of their options for the whole populations.
If you don’t know what your target audience is, nothing will change no matter how much time and resources you spend on marketing.
3. Buying Backlinks may be the worst decision
This looks like a mistake-right? I don’t think so. If SEO strategies could be weighed, Backlinks would weigh more than any other SEO strategies, but this does not mean that other SEO strategies are useless. A lot of caution must be taken when hiring a SEO consultant to build links for you.
Links are like paths leading people to your site. The more you have them the better for your site. However, if the ‘paths’ seem unnatural or manipulated, irrespective of their quality of the parent site, it will do more harm than good for your site. Companies that are serious about their success should not view online marketing as a short time venture. Thus, buying backlinks can be counterproductive at times due to the volatile nature of the organic search algorithms.
Point is, your online investment should be like stock prices. That is, its returns should grow over time but if the contrary happens, it means that something is really wrong.
6 Traffic Generation Habits You Should Stop
6 Traffic Generation Habits You Should Stop
Traffic generation is the holy grail of online marketing. Website traffic has been cited as the most effective content marketing metric, which is why brands must understand how to drive traffic without compromising quality of content. Unfortunately, as traffic generation and SEO have changed over the years, many mistakes continue to be made. As a result, many seemingly well-established SEO practices can greatly damage your brand’s credibility and harm your website traffic.
Here are six traffic generation practices you should avoid at all costs:
1. Stuffing content with keywords
Stuffing your content with keywords can drastically hurt your website traffic. Whether it is adding high volume of keywords or irrelevant phrases and words, these are harmful SEO practices that can cause irreparable damage to your traffic generation efforts. Doing so will attract Google penalties like marking your site as spam or lower your page ranking. It will also hurt your brand image because customers will feel betrayed by your use of misleading information.
Rather than stuff your content with many or irrelevant keywords, writing high quality content should be your goal. Remember, people don’t just come to your site just for the sake of it; they are looking for valuable resources and answers to their problems. One way to find out what your readers are looking for is to think about the questions your readers type into Google search and use those questions to create powerful content that will provide the answers. You can also visit platforms like Reddit and Quora to find out what people are discussing. This will help you determine the right keywords to use. Whatever the case, concentrate on writing high quality content.
2. Building as many backlinks as possible
When it comes to backlinks, it’s all about quality over quantity. Many people think that having thousands of links pointing to their website is the smartest traffic generation tactic. However, this practice can actually be detrimental to your SEO. It is better to have a dozen of quality backlinks instead of having thousands of spam links. Use tools like Buzzsumo to determine which backlinks are top quality in your industry. For instance, if you own a blog about entrepreneurship, your best bet for backlinks should come from sites like Entrepreneur, Fortune, Bizify, Quora and Inc, among others. By all means, avoid buying backlinks if you don’t want to land in trouble with Google.
3. Focusing only on page rankings
Page ranking is an important factor when it comes to making it to the top of Google’s search results. However, one should not put all eggs in one basket. Many elements contribute to page ranking. According to a 2015 study by Moz, 88% of marketers believe mobile-friendliness will influence page rankings. 81% believe that the perceived value of the website by the visitors also plays a critical role. Other factors that influence page rankings are speed of website and the quality and quantity of instant answers provided in SERPs. Therefore, instead of worrying about whether your website is ranked at the top, you need to look at different strategies that can drive results for your brand. For instance, you can produce more mobile optimized landing pages and produce quality content that provide instant answers in the SERPs. By taking care of these individual strategies, you will be able to tweak your website so that it appears in top results.
4. Writing low-value content
Gone are the days when quantity of content was the determining factor in driving traffic. Today, marketers are more concerned about producing quality content that provide value to the users. In fact, Google introduced an algorithm that penalizes sites that produce low-quality content. In that regards, any content you produce should provide value to the readers. That is to say quality content should be your most valuable SEO tactic. There are a number of elements you need to take into consideration when implementing your content creation strategy. The first element is your audience. Understanding your audience is crucial. Are your visitors male or female? What is their geographical locations? What is their age group? Do your visitors come to amuse themselves or to learn serious stuff? Understanding your audience will help you to structure your content according to their needs.
5. Duplicating content on different websites
Writing content and then duplicating it to different sites as guest post is definitely going to hurt your ranking. Although Google can differentiate between the first publisher of content and republished content, content duplications brings more harm than good. It might succeed in increase in the number of back links but it can also become difficult to know monitor the changes to your content. Your brand’s image also suffers in the process. So the only solution is to write original content and share it is social media. If you want to publish guest posts or syndicate your content, please write fresh content for every website you want to publish your content.
6. Including complex coding on your website and installing too many widgets
Widgets, tools, analytic software, surveys, forms etc can be great tools for any website; however, too much of something is bad. Having too many widgets and tools coupled with complex coding can slow down your website yet people expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds. This is likely to be the reason you are performing poorly in traffic generation department. The average user has no patience for a page that takes ages to load. Slow speeds in websites results to high bounce rates, a factor used by Google to rank websites.
Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Using These 7 Steps
Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Using These 7 Steps
Your company’s website is arguably your most important marketing asset, and landing pages are the perfect gateways to your website. Unfortunately, most companies struggle to achieve decent conversion rates. According to Digital Doughnut, only 22% of marketers are satisfied with their landing page conversion rates.
If your landing page format isn’t right or your offerings and visuals aren’t offering visitors what they are looking for, then you might not be successful when it comes to lead generation.
In order to boost your landing page conversion rates, you will first need to know where you are and what you need to improve on your conversion rates. Here is a 7-step process to increase your landing page conversion rates.
1. What is your campaign goal?
If your landing page lack focus and a clear goal, it would be difficult to achieve your targets. Your landing page should only have one goal or objective in order to avoid confusing your users. For instance, do not offer multiple offers that will make your prospects lose sight of what to do next. If you focus on only one solution or offer, your users will net get confused. If your sole purpose is to capture email addresses, do not introduce other CTAs like “BUY NOW”.
2. Are your headlines simple and straightforward?
You only have a small window of opportunity to impress your users. Actually, you have less than 7 seconds to grab the attention of your visitor; so, having headlines that are not only simple, but also bold and straightforward helps a great deal. Actually, the first thing your visitor should see in your headline is the exact solution or offer you advertised. In other words, the keyword in your ad should appear in the headline. This serves two purposes: to reassure your visitors that they have come to the right place as well as to help your quality score.
3. Never trick your customers
The surest way to dramatically reduce your landing page conversions and ruin your reputation forever is to trick your prospects. When someone clicks on your ad, they expect to be taken directly to whatever they are looking for. Give them what they came for.
4. Use simple Call-to-action buttons
There is a difference between knowing what you want your visitors to do when they land on your page and those visitors actually knowing that. Use clear Call-to-Action buttons to reduce the amount of friction to the action you want your visitors to take. It is important to ensure that your CTAs are displayed prominently on your landing page. You will need to do many tests to determine the right shape, size, text and color to use on your landing page.
5. Is your text compelling enough?
Your landing page text (copy) should be compelling enough to lure your prospects to take action. You must have a clear flow of information to convince your customers to subscribe, open their wallets or download your offers. It also helps to have a FAQ section to address concerns that your users might have.
6. Use the right images
They say a picture speaks a thousand words. You need appropriate images to arouse the emotions of your prospects and drive your point home. Make sure that all the images on your landing page are in sync with the message of your content. The best content paired with the right image can result in higher conversion rates.
7. Optimize for mobile
You could lose many prospects if your landing page is not optimized for mobile viewing. According to a study by Smart Insights, 80% of internet users have and use their smartphones to access the internet. Formstack also found out that you sites that are not mobile optimized lose 57% of referral traffic. This is by no means insignificant. The best thing you can do is to optimize your landing page for mobile devices.
Landing page conversion optimization is not an easy task. It requires one to be patient, open-minded and observant. As there is no one-size-fits-all formula for increasing conversions, you should continuously test your landing page elements such as CTA buttons, text, images etc to find the right combination.
-MJRvisuals
Struggling in search? info from a media solutions company.
Struggling in search? Gone are the times when search results didn’t affect your business. If you’re still thinking this way, it’s time to redirect your focus. Search results have an impact on your bottom line.
Luckily, search engine optimization tactics are available to improve your presence in search results. Google even gives out a great starter guide for anyone wanting to learn.
There are two main areas you will want to start with when optimizing for search engines - your business listings and your website. These are the typically the areas with the most problems and also have a big impact on your search presence. Here are a few tips to help improve your search presence in these areas.
Check your business listings. Have you listed or claimed and verified your business on Google? Do you have a business listing on Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo! or YP? Do you have social media profiles? If you don’t have all of these, you have some work to do. Not only that, you need to make sure your business’ name, address, phone number and URL are all consistent. Fill out each listing to 100% complete, name your files with your business’ name, location and services, and make sure to select the right categories. Many of these sites are interconnected, so you are sending information to more than one business listing directory. Make sure it’s right.
Tip: Don’t spend any money with any business listings. You can find a plethora of business listing directories that don’t charge you anything. Excluding social media profiles, Bing and Google, I don’t recommend advertising with any of these business listing directories, either.
Next, check your website. Do you have any broken links? Do you have an XML Sitemap? Have you filled out and optimized the meta information on all of your site’s pages? Are you pages filled with content? Ask your web developer to check and fix any broken links on your website. If you use a Wordpress website, remember, when you change a URL on an already published page, you have to create a 301 redirect, or it will be a broken link, which search engines don’t like. Follow Google’s guidelines for creating an XML Sitemap and submit it in Webmaster Tools. Fill out and optimize your meta information on your website. Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to guide which keyword you should optimize for and include the location in which your business operates and services. Lastly, content on your site should be flowing at all times. Through a blog, updates, social feeds, etc. Get used to being a publisher, because the best brands are becoming so. Make sure your pages have lots of content, provide great direction for your visitors, and speak customer service.
Before sending users to your site, search engines want to know that your website will provide an optimal experience for the searcher. Tactics such as building an XML sitemap, filling out meta information, and having a presence on major business listing sites and social media, help by providing a trustworthy and consistent data and information for Google to store in its database to remember about your business the next time someone is searching for a business like yours.
Once you get the basics down, the next key is to get social, on social media, and always keep your website, social media profiles, business listings and everything else fresh and updated. If you are actively taking care of your search presence, your search results will improve and so will your profits. Investing time in your organic search presence will last longer and reap many rewards. The key is to stay patient.
To partner with MJR Visuals for your next video project, send us a message through our contact form.
Media Solution Company Company talks about Struggling in search
Media Solution Company Company talks about Struggling in search? Gone are the times when search results didn’t affect your business. If you’re still thinking this way, it’s time to redirect your focus. Search results have an impact on your bottom line.
Luckily, search engine optimization tactics are available to improve your presence in search results. Google even gives out a great starter guide for anyone wanting to learn.
There are two main areas you will want to start with when optimizing for search engines - your business listings and your website. These are the typically the areas with the most problems and also have a big impact on your search presence. Here are a few tips to help improve your search presence in these areas.
Check your business listings. Have you listed or claimed and verified your business on Google? Do you have a business listing on Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo! or YP? Do you have social media profiles? If you don’t have all of these, you have some work to do. Not only that, you need to make sure your business’ name, address, phone number and URL are all consistent. Fill out each listing to 100% complete, name your files with your business’ name, location and services, and make sure to select the right categories. Many of these sites are interconnected, so you are sending information to more than one business listing directory. Make sure it’s right.
Tip: Don’t spend any money with any business listings. You can find a plethora of business listing directories that don’t charge you anything. Excluding social media profiles, Bing and Google, I don’t recommend advertising with any of these business listing directories, either.
Next, check your website. Do you have any broken links? Do you have an XML Sitemap? Have you filled out and optimized the meta information on all of your site’s pages? Are you pages filled with content? Ask your web developer to check and fix any broken links on your website. If you use a Wordpress website, remember, when you change a URL on an already published page, you have to create a 301 redirect, or it will be a broken link, which search engines don’t like. Follow Google’s guidelines for creating an XML Sitemap and submit it in Webmaster Tools. Fill out and optimize your meta information on your website. Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to guide which keyword you should optimize for and include the location in which your business operates and services. Lastly, content on your site should be flowing at all times. Through a blog, updates, social feeds, etc. Get used to being a publisher, because the best brands are becoming so. Make sure your pages have lots of content, provide great direction for your visitors, and speak customer service.
Before sending users to your site, search engines want to know that your website will provide an optimal experience for the searcher. Tactics such as building an XML sitemap, filling out meta information, and having a presence on major business listing sites and social media, help by providing a trustworthy and consistent data and information for Google to store in its database to remember about your business the next time someone is searching for a business like yours.
Once you get the basics down, the next key is to get social, on social media, and always keep your website, social media profiles, business listings and everything else fresh and updated. If you are actively taking care of your search presence, your search results will improve and so will your profits. Investing time in your organic search presence will last longer and reap many rewards. The key is to stay patient.
To partner with MJRVisuals for your next video project, send us a message through our contact form.