Dominate Your Competitors

Starting a business is no easy task. You have to find capital, research your key audience and if you are a one man show you are wearing multiple hats. Once you get your business off the ground, you have more time to look into what your competitors are doing currently. You probably did research when you first started, but the landscape in your industry could have changed since the last time you did a good in-depth look.

Audit their Sites
When you decide to dive deep into competitor analysis, you have to start somewhere. Pick your top three or four competitors and see what they are doing. Audit their site and see what keywords they are using, how their site is laid out and what sites are linking back to theirs. Chances are you will see comparisons. Are they on similar sites? Are they using similar keywords and key phrases? How do their sites look similar and differ? What do you like about each?

How Can You Do It Better?
Once you have the information you need, the ball is in your court. How can you do it better than them? What are your strengths? Do you have a rock star SEO team that can blow them out of the water? Plan out a great strategy that will benefit your website and company. Remember Google can be fickle, and what works for one website might not work for another.

Revisit your strategy monthly. There are too many moving parts to online marketing not to. Stay up-to-date on industry trends and news. You never know when Google might pull out another major change to their algorithm. Make sure you stay ahead of the curve, it can help your site and blast your competitors out of the water.

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Know the Difference Between Good vs. Bad Content

Content is king. We hear that constantly. Google likes content creators—that is just a fact. However, there is a difference between good and bad content. Content is only king if it is useful to the reader. Do you know the difference?

General Content
Have you ever searched for something and clicked on a link excited to read what it had to say only to find out it was a general piece of content? I know I have. General content isn’t useful and in the end will make your visitors leave your site to find better quality content. Dive a little deeper in your content and you will see the results.

Address Key Concerns
Is there a burning topic in your industry? If so, address it and let your clients know how your company is addressing that issue. You can set yourself up as an expert in your field doing this type of content. Wouldn’t it be nice if people when to your blog first when they want to know what is going on in your industry?

Do you Find the Information Useful?
When in doubt ask yourself this question. Do you find the information you are giving to your audience useful? If not chances are they won’t either. If you take a step back and ask yourself this question after writing a blog post or email chances are you can tweak anything if need be.

In the end the difference between good and bad content is usefulness. What value does your content give your readers? If you can’t answer these questions, chances are your content could be rewritten. Once you set your company as an expert in your industry with great content, you will start to see the influx of visitors to your site—and hopefully (and most importantly) an influx in revenue.

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Visibility Counts

Having a great product or service is a must in today’s turbulent economy. The second component to creating a great business is being visible. If no one knows you exist, how can they benefit from your product? There is no magic formula for visibility. If there was every business would do it and that would make things even more interesting wouldn’t it?

Know Your Audience
We spoke last month about the importance of knowing your key audience. This is pivotal if you want to reach them. Where do they consume their information? How do they like to be reached? Once you can answer these two questions you can start the process of reaching them in an effective way.

Get Social
Social media is popular for a reason—it allows companies to reach their audience in real-time and with little to no cost. Long gone are the days where your only option was direct mail. Now you can talk to your customers directly. Make sure you know where your customers are and start talking. Zappos is a great case study on how they leveraged Twitter as a customer service tool.

Leverage Email
Smartphones hold about 40% of the cell phone market. That means most people have the ability to check their email anywhere and everywhere. Take advantage of this and send email updates to your clients. This could be a quick email to outline a special you are offering, or it could be some tips on how to paint your home (if you are a home improvement company).

The more you talk to your customers, the more likely they will come back for more. Take advantage of online techniques and how you can reach thousands of people with a click of your mouse. Have you found ways to make your company more visible? If so, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Know Target Customer

Customer service is the most important thing in business. It doesn’t matter if you are B2B or B2C customers are customers. That said, do you know who they are? Their age? What type of education they have? What about their average income? Knowing your target audience is a must in business.

Do Your Homework
Think about your product or service. Who do you envision is buying it? Now you have a good idea of who your customer is, so now you have to think like them. Where do they find their information? What makes them get excited? What is the price point they are looking for in your type of product?

What are their Online Habits?

People consume information in different ways. Some might like information sent to them via email, others like social networks like Twitter or Facebook.  Social media is a great way to reach your audience and learn what they like and don’t like. Before you can do that, you need to know where they are engaging. Once that is established, the rest can follow.

What’s the Tone of Your Messaging?
With more and more people engaging in social media and reading blogs a conversational tone has become more popular. In many cases people want to feel like they are talking with their friend, not a stark corporation.  If your industry allows, try using a conversational tone in your messaging and see if it works for your company.

People Change
Remember that people change. This isn’t to say your entire demographic will suddenly wake up and change everything about themselves. But as technology evolves so does habits. Make sure you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and how your audience decides to welcome them.

In the end it comes down to how you monitor your audience. Keeping an open mind and realize they might change their habits over the years will set you up for success.

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Research Money Phrases

Everyone wants to know the special words that turn someone from interested to a buying customer. Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew the magic words? The fact is there isn’t one key phrase for everyone. There are however key phrases that attract the right type of people.

Know Your Demographic
Before you can research any key phrases, you need to know what your customers are searching. This is where your website analytics is so important. Using an analytics tools like Google Analytics will show you how people found your site—and more importantly what they typed in the search engines to find your site.

Look to Competitors for Ideas
Seeing what keywords and phrases your competitors find relevant will give you even more incite. How can you see behind the magic curtain? Go to a competitors website, right click and select view page source (make sure you aren’t on an image) and voila! You get to see the basic code for the entire page—including keywords and meta description tags.

Test, Test and Test
When it comes to anything related to online marketing (or marketing in general for that matter) make sure you test and track everything you do. If you don’t, you won’t know what key phrases are working and what aren’t. Key phrases aren’t going to stay the same year after year.

Still don’t know how to find your key phrases? Put yourself in the mind of your customer. What would you type in a search engine to find your product? Start there. You’ll be surprised how easy it is once you start digging a little. Using tools like analytics, researching your competitors and testing is going to give you that edge you need to start producing great results.

Have you been through this process already? Give us your tips in the comments below.

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Dominate Competitors

Starting a business is no easy task. You have to find capital, research your key audience and if you are a one man show you are wearing multiple hats. Once you get your business off the ground, you have more time to look into what your competitors are doing currently. You probably did research when you first started, but the landscape in your industry could have changed since the last time you did a good in-depth look.

Audit their Sites
When you decide to dive deep into competitor analysis, you have to start somewhere. Pick your top three or four competitors and see what they are doing. Audit their site and see what keywords they are using, how their site is laid out and what sites are linking back to theirs. Chances are you will see comparisons. Are they on similar sites? Are they using similar keywords and key phrases? How do their sites look similar and differ? What do you like about each?

How Can You Do It Better?
Once you have the information you need, the ball is in your court. How can you do it better than them? What are your strengths? Do you have a rock star SEO team that can blow them out of the water? Plan out a great strategy that will benefit your website and company. Remember Google can be fickle, and what works for one website might not work for another.

Revisit your strategy monthly. There are too many moving parts to online marketing not to. Stay up-to-date on industry trends and news. You never know when Google might pull out another major change to their algorithm. Make sure you stay ahead of the curve, it can help your site and blast your competitors out of the water.

 

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Build a Site with SEO in Mind

There are a million different details that go into building a website. You need to know what the look of your brand is, how it will translate across the site and how user friendly your website is laid out. Another aspect to a website overhaul is how it will perform in the search engines. If your current website isn’t optimized correctly, this is your chance to start your SEO plan right.

Research Keywords
Take the time to research keywords for your main website pages. This can become a tedious task, but it will pay off in the end. What are the words that represent what your company does? Are people searching for those words? Keyword research is a balance between what you find relevant, and what people are actually typing into Google.

Internal Linking
Internal linking is a great way to boost your rankings and also give users what they want. Besides filling out your keyword tags on your website, make sure you are linking internally. On that same note, you don’t want to over optimize your site. Google rolled out last month a new update, cutely named Penguin. This update is to help combat web spam. Specifically over optimizing and linking on spammy looking blog networks. Be smart in your linking strategy and you’ll be fine.

When implementing a new SEO strategy, make sure it is one that is fluid. Meaning, it is always evolving and can be improved upon. Static SEO strategies won’t improve your rankings, and could potentially harm you. Staying up-to-date on new trends and updates is going to yield the best results.

Research, testing and standing back and looking at the big picture is going to help you in the long run. If you can keep this in mind while building your website, you will be one step ahead of the game.

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Structuring Effective Campaigns

Whether you are starting your first online campaign or your one hundredth, there are always ways to improve on your delivery. Making sure you are organized and have a good foundation to execute is a must when creating marketing campaigns.

Work Backwards
What is the goal of your campaign? Once you have that figured out work backwards until you have come up with a plan. How are you going to be able to reach that goal? What steps do you need to take to get it done? Working backwards is a great way to figure out many of these details.

Research
Once the plan is in place start researching. Know your plan and how to execute it inside and out. Have exact reasons and if need be case studies to back up your point. This is very important when you are trying something new. Upper management may need some solid proof this could work, so hit the books if necessary.

Set Mini-deadlines
After you have gotten a plan in place and researched it’s time to set deadlines for all deliverables. Make sure you have mini-deadlines set to keep you and your team on the right track throughout the campaign. This will give you smaller victories to celebrate along the way and keep you on track.

Set Measurable Goals
Besides setting mini-deadlines make sure your tactics are measurable. This will help prove to upper management the campaign actually worked, and will also tell you what didn’t. Knowing is half the battle in online marketing, and knowing what doesn’t work is just as valuable as knowing what doesn’t.

One last tip to remember is to breath. Sometimes getting too caught up in an important campaign can get in the way of our judgment. Clearing your head and taking a deep breath before getting to aggravated can go a long way.

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Evaluating Money Keywords

Keywords. They are what make the online marketing world go around. Picking the right group of keywords can mean more exposure to your business as well as hopefully getting the attention of the search engines. That said, how do you know which are beneficial to your website?

Test, Test, Test

Like with any marketing tactic you won’t know what works until you try it. What works for one company, might not work for another. That said, you need to evaluate your keywords on a monthly basis. Take a step back and see what works for your website.

Dive Into your Analytics

Although Google now has encrypted their search queries, you can still see many of the keywords visitors have used to find your site. If you are investing in PPC, you know which keywords convert the best for you. Take the time to evaluate your analytics and decide which keywords yield the best results for your website.

Look at Your Competitors Keywords

Knowing what keywords other people in your industry are using is a must. It can help you come up with ideas, as well ad see what others find relevant in your industry.

Be Open to Change

Since the search engines are constantly changing, so does your outlook on keywords. What was a great performing keyword may not be so lucrative down the road. Make sure you have an open mind when evaluating your keywords and be open to trying new tactics.

To summarize, make sure you are constantly monitoring your keywords and be open to new ideas. You never know when you’ll hit “gold” with a keyword so keep your eyes open and keep trying new tactics.

Do you have a good tip for the online marketing novice? Give us your tips in the comments below.

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Choosing Money Keywords

Keyword research can be a slow and tedious process. That said, choosing the right keywords can help bring in much needed revenue. If you are new to the SEO game, check out these quick tips below to jumpstart your keyword research.

Check Out Your Competitors
Knowing what keywords your competitors use is a great start. How can you find this out? Simply go to their home page and right click and select “view page source”. This will open the back end of the website and you will see a bunch of code. Hit CTRL + F and type keywords. This will take you to the keyword tags and show you what they have deemed their keywords.

Google Keyword Tool
You might think a keyword is relevant, but if no one is searching for that word then you need to go back to the drawing board. This is where Google’s Keyword tool is a great help. Not only does it tell you how many searches a term or phrase gets a month, it also populates a list to help you generate even more keywords.

Test, Test, Test
SEO is a game of testing. What works for your competitors might not work for you. Keep detailed reports each month of your rankings for each important keyword. If you don’t see much movement, ask your team why this might be and what you can do to move the needle. Also, take note if you saw a spike in traffic from a number 5 placement on the first page compared to number 1. If you didn’t you know you have a little wiggle room in the SERPs with that key phrase.

Have you found interesting ways to find your money keywords? Let us know in the comments below.

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