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Andrew Stickel

Bringing Readers To Your Blog And Keeping Them

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When the first blogs appeared on the internet, their marketing value wasn’t immediately evident. The first blogs were more like public personal journals or diaries, or else they functioned as forums for writers to express opinions on politics, sports, religion, and pop culture.

However, it quickly became apparent that the blog format was a perfect vehicle for businesses to stay in touch with their customers and keep them informed about new products, industry developments, and associated topics. But with so many blogs on the internet, how do you attract readers? Here are some tips for driving traffic to your blog.

  • Make your blog attractive and easy to navigate. Choose a visual theme that’s clean and easy on the eye. Avoid having too many colors, too much content jammed together on a page, and animated GIFs that aggravate and distract readers. Use a side column to organize content by date and by topic so that readers can quickly find what they’re seeking. Use keywords and phrases to boost your search engine traffic.
  • Carefully consider who your audience is and what they want to read. Meet their expectations. Don’t suddenly go off-topic. Take advantage of analytics to determine who your readers are.
  • Make sure everything’s working properly. Nothing’s more aggravating than a page of broken hyperlinks or a page that takes too much time to load. You may need to find a more reliable web host or a social media marketing company to keep everything in working order. If your page loads too slowly, you’ll find yourself dropping in the search engine rankings.
  • Advertise, market, and promote. Be sure that people can get to your blog from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest. If you opt to pay for advertising, be smart; buy ads on websites that cover similar or related topics. If you sell handcrafted jewelry, an ad on a NASCAR-related site is probably a waste of your money.
  • Boldly grab the attention of readers. Write irresistible headlines. Take an unconventional approach. Write in a unique, personal style. Don’t rely on Microsoft Word for spelling and grammar checks. If you aren’t confident as a writer, you may want to consider hiring a free-lancer or a social media marketing company that provides content. And don’t write “off the top of your head.” Make sure your facts are verifiable; don’t flinch from doing a little research. Your readers will appreciate consistent reliability, and if they can’t depend on you, you’ll lose them.
  • Finally, keep it fresh and up-to-date. If your last post was four months ago, no one will be interested. Some bloggers update daily, others weekly. Monthly just isn’t enough. You also keep your blog fresh by occasionally changing and updating your visual theme. The occasional re-design keeps readers attracted and wondering what’s coming next.<

Banned from Social Networks – What Not to Do

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Social networking is such a big part of online marketing today that businesses and professionals who are trying to maintain a strong online presence simply can’t afford to have an online social networking account blocked or restricted. Generally, accounts are blocked when the holder of the account violates a social network term of use. To make sure that businesses and professionals don’t risk losing a social networking account, the following list outlines some of the most common reasons why accounts are blocked:

Inappropriate Content

Posting inappropriate or offensive pictures, documents, videos, etc. can get many social networking accounts suspended. Since social networking accounts used for business are professional accounts, there should be no question about this. However, instances of individuals confusing personal and business accounts are all too common in our modern digital age, and having to apologize to page followers for inappropriate content posted to the page by a distracted account manager is nothing easy. Not only may the incident alienate customers and clients, but it will bring into question the business’ overall level of professionalism.

False Accounts

Most social networks clearly state in their terms of use that individual accounts must be held by the person who created the account. Creating accounts in false names, under the names of other people, or under the name of a business instead of an individual, is enough to get accounts on many social networks blocked. For example, creating a business account under a Facebook or LinkedIn profile intended for individuals may lead to an account suspension or block.

Facebook allows businesses to hold pages, but not profiles. Pages are for businesses, entities, community causes, etc., while profiles are for individuals who actually exist. LinkedIn does not offer anything like this – anyone who uses LinkedIn must be an individual. The individual can attach the name of the business to his or her profile, but the primary profile must be held by an individual.

Abuse of the System

Harassing other members of the social network will also get accounts locked. It can be easy to get roped into a virtual shouting match over a product or service, but businesses and professionals should never respond inappropriately or engage in negative or unallowed behavior on social networks. Even if responding to a legitimate complaint, it is generally better to let bygones be bygones and to use the situation as a learning experience. Not only will engaging in negative or unallowed behavior get an account suspended, but it will also distract from the actual business behind the profile.

Don’t Stress – Just Outsource

Instead of learning all of the rules for all of the social networks in order to stay online and visible within the social networking realm, businesses and professionals are encouraged to outsource the job of social network profile management to a small team of dedicated online marketing professionals. This will help keep overhead expenses down, will keep employees focused on their primary duties instead of online marketing, and will result in high quality results without the hassles of dealing with a large, out of touch marketing firm.

Ways to Optimize Websites

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Internet businesses get started every day. The web is flooded with new ideas on a constant basis. With so much activity and new content posted online every day, you may be wondering how you will ever get your web page to the top of search engine result pages. It’s easy for a large, well-known company to rank high online, but that’s because these companies have been heard of, have loyal brand followers, and name recognition – but it isn’t as easy for everybody else. The days of being able to take a “set it and forget it” approach to online marketing are over. Now, if you don’t take the time to build and grow your online presence, your website will eventually fall so low on search engine result pages that it may as well not exist.

Employing the services of a professional search engine optimization and online marketing agency is a great way to give your business the virtual boost you’ve been looking for. Experienced agencies have the ability to market your business in many different ways, giving you the exposure you need in order to start building the client base you want.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of marketing your business by focussing on the business’s website and its search engine page rank. Websites can be optimized by creating and posting informative and keyword rich content on the site’s pages in the form of articles and blog posts. The keywords you use will need to be carefully researched and worded to make sure your website has the best chance possible of being boosted up in rank by the various search engines out there.

Banner Advertisements

Almost every web page is carrying some kind of third party banner advertisement. This is one of the ways that websites offset the cost of operations. Even e-mail services are running banner ads alongside email messages. These banner ads are great places to promote a product or service, especially when the ad can be targeted to specific web users based on their web viewing habits.

E-mail Advertisements

This is one of the riskier advertisement strategies because it has been abused so much. Most people do not like to get unsolicited email, but if your marketing email provides them with a special offer or some interesting information, they will be more likely to check out the business behind the email instead of instantly forwarding the message to their junk mail folder.

Social Media Marketing

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus are probably one of the best ways to get information out about your budding business website. Millions of potential clients log in to their accounts every day from these platforms – if you can get even a portion of social network users to share something from your own account, you will help spread news of your site to more people than you might think.

Blog Marketing

A good blog can do many wonderful things for a website. A blog that is regularly updated keeps websites fresh, which search engine like, and gives visitors a reason to keep coming back to the site in the future.

SEO – It Works for You

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You’ve started a business, you’ve got a website, and now all you need is for the orders to start rolling in. Unfortunately, running a real business, no matter where it might be located, is never as easy. As anyone who has ever tried to start their own business will tell you, the days of being competitive online with the help of just a website are over.

These days, if you want to remain competitive, you have to do more than throw up a website and come up with a catchy but easy to remember domain name. In fact, these days, the name of your domain is nowhere near as important as the information that is actually contained on your website.

A New Era of Marketing

Search engine marketing is, no doubt, the new era of marketing. Gone are the days when TV commercials and magazine pages were considered the best places to put advertisements – these days, every good business person knows the value of marketing for an online audience because, after all, the internet attracts more eyeballs than any TV station, radio station, magazine, or phone book could ever hope to attract.

With sites like Google funneling millions upon millions of internet users everyday to the most relevant websites to address their issues and questions, businesses and professionals who are looking for publicity should look no further than the search engines.

How Search Engines Work

When you type a search query into a search engine, the search engine will return with a list of results which it believes to be the most relevant to the query topic. To determine which results are most relevant, search engines use a complex series of formulas and algorithms that take into account the amount of times that keywords are mentioned on websites, the number of visitors that the sites get each day, the types of tags which are integrated into the site, and the number of backlinks that exist on the web that point back to a site, among a few other factors.

Because the factors which decide where a site will rank can change (the amount of times keywords will appear, the amount of backlinks pointing back to a website, etc.), a website’s position on rankings is fluid, and always capable of changing. This means that even after a top search engine ranking has been earned, some very real effort must be put into maintaining the top spot so that the site does not lose the spot to a competitor’s site.

How Sites Gain Rank

The factors that were mentioned above which help search engines determine where to rank sites can also be used to guide a search engine marketing strategy. Perhaps one of the best things that you can do for a website is to create content on the site that people actually want to read. Articles, blog posts, and interesting tidbits of information will all help websites rank high in search engines and keep visitors on site pages.

For information on launching a search engine marketing plan of your own, contact a dedicated team of SEO and online marketing professionals today.

How to Avoid Keyword Overkill

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In terms of optimizing a website to gain favor with search engines, a process known as search engine optimization (SEO), targeting the appropriate keywords in site content can be an excellent way to boost a site’s pagerank. It is possible, however, to reach a point of overkill in terms of keyword saturation.

Keyword Stuffing

The search engines have been on to keyword stuffing since the 1990s. They know how to recognize it and they will generally suppress websites found to be utilizing the black-hat tactic. For those that don’t know, keyword stuffing is the overuse of keywords to the point where they detract from the message or substance of a page. This can be anything from the obvious overuse of keywords in the paragraphs of site content to the camouflaging of keyword lists at the bottoms of web pages so the words appear as part of a page’s background, hidden from the reader’s view.

Even if they don’t intentionally stuff keywords on web pages, the inadvertent overuse of keywords can still cause sites to become suppressed.

While the best way to ensure that keywords aren’t overused is to write for people first and search engines second, a good rule of thumb is to keep the saturation of keywords low. SEO consultants will typically advise a keyword saturation of around 3 to 7%, but the ultimate point is to try to make the occurrence of keywords as natural as possible. When written for the web, content should be conversational, using patterns and words as they would appear in conversation. If a person wouldn’t use the same word over and over again in conversation, then there is no reason to use the same word over and over again in web content.

The Human Response

Even if unsavory tactics are successful at increasing a page’s rank on the web, the results are almost never permanent. Just because a site is able to reach the top of search engines, it doesn’t mean that it will stay there. Other factors used to rank websites besides keyword saturation are the number of visitors to the site, the number of repeat visitors, and the amount of time spent on site pages.

When search engine users click on a high ranked site only to find that it is jammed with less than useful content and content that is difficult to read, they will probably leave the site in a hurry and try to remember to never return to it. When enough people realize that the high ranking website is useless and spammy, the site will eventually fall from high search engine ranks to a more appropriate rank somewhere on those search result pages that nobody ever checks; which is usually any page after page three.

Even though keyword targeted content is crucial to the success of a site on the web, coming up with content to carry those keywords on a regular basis can be difficult. Instead of taking up their own time, or the time of an employee, to create strong, keyword targeted content, businesses and professionals are encouraged to outsource the job of SEO content creation to a team of dedicated SEO professionals.

Streaming Webcams Can Increase Traffic And Business

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For many kinds of businesses, high-definition streaming webcams can be an effective and fun way to attract new website traffic. Combined with customized HD videos, live streaming HD web cameras can be part of a potent marketing strategy for restaurants, hotels, museums, banks, real estate and insurance agents, sports teams, and community attractions. Local news and/or weather headlines can be included as part of the streaming webcam content. A streaming webcam set at a community landmark can be combined with a recorded video recounting the landmark’s importance. Business owners can create their own videos featuring local communities, area attractions, even interviews about current community and business conditions.

Scenic views can be located in every city and community. A business or entertainment district, a park that’s full of activity, even a busy subway station can offer the ideal setting for a live streaming webcam. A coastal community or a luxury hotel or nightclub set on a beach can offer dramatic sunrises or sunsets. Streaming, live web cameras make a distinctive statement about a business and its role in the community. With strategically-located live web cameras, your website’s visitors can sometimes even watch relatives and friends wave back at them. A set of webcams offers a matchless perspective on any city or neighborhood.

Some of your website visitors may like your webcam pages so much, they’ll link them back to their own Facebook and LinkedIn pages for their friends to view. Customers remember these websites. Live views of scenic local attractions or landmarks increase traffic, keep visitors engaged, and set any business apart from the competition. When properly used, live streaming web cameras can eventually lead to higher search engine rankings for a website. Include local weather information with live webcams and custom video, and your visitors will return time and time for a unique and delightful online experience.