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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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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Increasing the Right Traffic

As a website owner you always want more traffic. More traffic means more revenue—always a good thing. However, you can get right and wrong traffic. Marketing 101 states you should know your customer. Who they are, what they like and now where they are online. If you sell women’s clothing but get a ton of old men coming to your site, you probably won’t be getting the conversions you hoped for. So how do you increase the right traffic? Check out these quick tips below.

Where are Your Customers?
In an age where Facebook and Twitter are constantly bringing traffic to websites, ask yourself, “are my customers engaging socially?” If the answer is yes, make sure you are sending them the right information. Social media is a great way to set your company up as an industry expert. Tweet or share helpful information to your client base. Going back to the women’s clothing example, you could tweet to a blog post you wrote on summer’s hottest looks. This will increase traffic as well as getting the right group of people to your site.

Guest Blogging
Link building is an important part of SEO. Getting links back to your site from high authority sites is the best way to tell Google you are important in your niche. Find bloggers who are industry experts in your niche and reach out to them. Most bloggers are more than happy to get fresh content and link back to your site as “payment” for the content. This can open up a whole new line of traffic sources and bring in the right traffic at the same time.

Optimize the Right Keywords
Knowing what keywords to target for your SEO strategy is extremely important. Knowing how your visitors search for your site and optimizing it correctly is going to help immensely. The more you come up in the SERPs (search engine results page), the more visitors you’ll attain.

Finding the right traffic isn’t always easy, but with time you can master what works for your key audience. Don’t be afraid to try something new, you never know what could happen.

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Don’t Underestimate The Power of 404 — Minneapolis, MN

When someone visits your site and takes a wrong turn, where do they end up? — On a page with indecipherable HTML mumbo jumbo? Instead of frustrating visitors with an Error 404 Page that makes them feel lost within your site, give them a clear path to get back to where the action is.

By designing your own 404 page, you can include the essential links to get visitors redirected to where you intended them to go. You can also avoid the inconsistent design that you would get without a custom page, making the user feel as though they are still within your site, even though they have wandered off the beaten path.

The same goes for search engines. If a person can get lost within your site, so can the search engine bots that scour your site for keywords to improve site visibility. Listing key navigation links on this page will help the user and/or bot get out of nowhere land and back to the pages that count.

Although it is a seemingly simple thing, a custom 404 Error Page has a big impact. It is often overlooked, because in essence its purpose is not to be viewed, but it can help you in more ways than one. It eliminates confusion, helps to maintain brand standards, and is a good SEO practice. Graybow.Olson’s new site implements a great example of an effective and creative 404 page — click here to take a look.

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Uncovering the Content Gold Mine

One question that stalks the mind of every online entrepreneur is ‘How does one create web content that sells?’ — In order for your website to generate profit, it is very important that you first optimize your web content. This will allow you to gain more traffic through search engines, which will lead to a higher conversion rate. Beyond merely optimizing the text on your web pages, you must make it appealing to the consumer. It is true that today we are bombarded with more online advertisements than ever before. Never has advertising been more annoying and more mass-produced. How do you increase brand visibility and overall profit without oversaturating the consumer? — Here’s how:

A.)    Proper Design & Functionality:

• 1.)   General Design: Make the site visually pleasing, but not too complicated. Sites with too many things going on make it much harder for a prospective client to focus on how to take action. A general rule of thumb is to make the site organized and very easy to navigate.






• 2.)   Loading Time: It is important that all web pages within a site are able to load quickly. If it takes the customer too longer than 30 seconds view your page, chances are they will bounce before ever reading the content.






• 3.)   Message Saturation: Make sure that your online campaign stays away from overloading spam messages and constant pop-ups. If the customer is bombarded with marketing messages, they will feel overwhelmed, overexposed, and uninterested.



 

B.)    Maintaining Relevance: In order to increase search visibility online, you must first appear relevant to the search algorithms. Web content optimization allows your company to be more visible on the web by leveraging keywords, content, and links that correlate to the products that your company is selling.

C.)    Developing Trust: One of the best ways to hook potential clients is by providing compelling case studies and testimonials. Positive outcomes and demonstrated knowledge of the product or service you are offering will help you to gain the trust of the prospect. Blogs are also important as they build a pattern of communication with the client while also providing food for the search engines.

D.)    Encouraging Action: It is also essential to make it easy for the customer to contact you and/or buy your product. This can be done by incorporating calls to action strategically throughout your website. The whole goal of the site is to gain leads, so the simpler it is for the customer to make contact/sign up/buy your product, the more chances there are of turning that prospect into a client.

Better content equals higher profits. By applying the information above, your company will have a much greater chance at increasing traffic, and converting that traffic into revenue.

 



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• Tags: brand visibility, client, conversion rate, page chances, pop ups, profit, rule of thumb, site, web, website
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Bounce Back from Bounce Rates

Written by Online Marketing Minnesota

When operating an online business it is pivotal for every company to lower their homepage’s bounce-rates. “A Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.” Without question, one of the most important steps your company must take is to reduce the percentage that people “bounce” from your site. It takes a colossal effort in order to implement an advertising campaign, but it is equally important to convert search results into cash. In order to boost sales, your company needs to attract and capture your clients. Here are the 3 most important aspects to consider when attempting to decrease your homepage’s bounce-rates.

 

1)    Be Relevant:

1. Purpose: the purpose of your web site must align with the intent of the client. If you do not target an interested audience, most visitors to your site will be unlikely to purchase.
2. Keywords and Links: when implementing an advertising campaign make sure that you are utilizing keywords that are related to your product, and positioning links in places likely to be clicked on by “interested” clients.
3. Make sure that your home page and landing page are not redundant yet still reflect similar information. This helps to solidify the purpose of your website to your client.

 

2)    Increase the Action:

1. Call to Action: Your landing page/home-page must include multiple ways for your costumers to contact and interact with you. There are too many websites that make it difficult for the consumer to make further inquiries.
2. Dialogue: maintain an open dialogue with your clients. This can be achieved through chat rooms, blogs and forums. The more client-generated content you have, the more reliable you will seem to potential customers.
3. All call to action methods should be easily visible within seconds of entering your site.

 

3)    Improve Usability:

1. Loading time: a simple but often overlooked fact is that if your page takes too long to load, you better believe they are clicking somewhere else.
2. Design: make your website more appealing by not including annoying videos or in-your-face flash banners. Perhaps try multiple designs and ask your customers to rate them on your website.
3. User Friendliness: make it easy to navigate your site, do not clutter your home page with too many tabs or too much text.

 

Increasing conversion is not an overnight process. There are multiple steps that one must follow in order to turn search results into profit. Once you have tackled the task of directing people to your website, you must provoke further action. Through intelligent marketing, you too may heavily decrease your bounce rates.

Looking to improve your companies bounce rates? Need marked improvement in online lead generation?  Visit our Let’s Talk Page, or give us a call – 651-329-3259.



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• Tags: advertising, costumers, homepage, interested audience, interested clients, loading time, open dialogue, percentage, site, website
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Catapulting Profits with Facebook

Written by Online Marketing Minnesota



In the past few years there has been a technological and innovative explosion. Social media platforms such as Facebook have come to dominate the globe, and affect the decisions and lives of countless people. The question that should be on the mind of every entrepreneur is whether or not this social media platform can drive revenue for his or her business. Although the answer to this question can be yes, it depends entirely on how your company goes about invading this new territory.

Social media platforms allow your company to engage the consumer in ways not always possible through ordinary marketing. Your company will increase revenue as a result of:

1. 1. Gaining street-credit: your company can utilize Facebook to garner street-credibility with consumers by offering special promotions, and tailoring your services to specific and local audiences.
2. 2. Utilizing a large consumer base and cost cutting measure: by creating pages on Facebook and providing links to your off-network site, businesses are able to tap into a massive network of people (750 million and growing) without having to pay for any outside research.
3. 3. Customer engagement: Facebook allows your business to communicate with the consumer like never before. They can be your fan, like your page, and even write reviews about your products. Also, by increasing the amount of customer-generated content, you will have reliable and consistent information for prospective clients.
4. 4. Integrates off-network site with Facebook: you can create links on your Facebook page that take potential customers to your off-network website(s). The more people that view your page and clink on the link, the more possibilities you have for conversion.
5. 5. Creates social incentives: when your customer becomes a fan or likes one of your pages, their friends on Facebook become able to see this. In turn, this may influence your customer’s friends buying patterns (this is especially important they are looking to buy products for holidays such as a birthday).

 

One of the most important steps in order to implement an effective Facebook campaign is to integrate your company’s off-network site with your F.B. page. You should make it very easy to connect your F.B. page with your website and vise versa. “That means like buttons above the fold on each product. That means allowing people to connect with Facebook to post reviews—which they can then push out to their friends (Gobry).” This diverts traffic from Facebook to your website, creating greater chances for conversion.

It is important that you begin infiltrating this media platform right away. “Every 20 minutes on Facebook (Huckabee)”:

1)     7.6 million pages were liked

2)     1.5 million wall posts were made

3)     1.9 million friend requests accepted

4)     1 million links were shared

5)     10.2 million comments made

 

To learn more about how your company can benefit from social media platforms such as facebook, visit our Let’s Talk page, or call 651.329.3259.




Bibliography

“Facebook–Money.” Facebook Money on Flickr. Web. 11 Jul 2011. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/famousin24hrs/5359670846/#/photos/famousin24hrs/5359670846/lightbox/>.

Gobry, Pascal-Emmanuel. “Here’s How To Make More E-Commerce Money With Facebook.” Business Insider 3 February 2011: 1. Web. 11 Jul 2011.

Huckabee, Huck. “Facebook Statistics.” Business and Facebook. Businessinternetmarketing.com, 06 January 2011. Web. 11 Jul 2011.

 



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• Tags: Customer, facebook, massive network, media platforms, Money, platform, site, special promotions, street credibility, website
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