The Keys to the SEO Kingdom

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SEO

There are many factors that matter when boosting SEO on your site, but as always, some are more important than others.

 

Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short is a term that encapsulates everything you need to do to improve your web site’s ranking position in the various search engines. This includes configuration settings you have to apply on the website (that’s on page SEO) and techniques you can use outside the boundaries of the website (that’s off page SEO).

Is on-page SEO more important than off-page SEO?

To achieve maximum exposure in the search engines and keep your users happy you need both off-page SEO and on-page SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is more important and I will explain below why.

1) ‘Speak’ the search engines language: It makes more sense to start with on-page SEO and get it right rather than trying to convince search engines to give you better ranking with off page SEO. Search engines are computer programs (software) and they understand a particular language. With SEO and especially on page SEO you ‘speak’ their language and your goal is to help them understand what you website is about. In other words the more signals you can give them, the more are your chances of achieving better rankings.

2) On Page SEO is about the user as well: Never forget that your primary target is to keep your users happy. Off Page SEO may bring traffic to the website but if it is not setup correctly, if it is not user friendly the results will be disappointing.

3) Many websites get it wrong: It’s amazing but it is true that the majority of websites today are not optimized for search engines. Despite the plethora of information about SEO many website owners believe that it does not worth to even do SEO and they quit before starting. For those cases on-page SEO has a lot to offer both in terms of usability but in terms of traffic as well.

4) On Page SEO is sometimes all you need: If you are running a website for a small business and you need to get local customers searching for various terms on Google then on page SEO is all you need to do.

5) Off page SEO comes after on page SEO: In order to start thinking on how you can promote your website you need to be sure that the website is optimized and in good condition. So the first step is to work with on-site SEO first and then go off-site.

5 on page SEO techniques for better rankings

Now that the theory about SEO and importance of on-page SEO is justified, let’s move on to the practical part.

There are many on page SEO techniques and not only 5, but for the purpose of this post I will explain below what I think are the absolute settings you have to apply on your website today.  I strongly suggest that you also read (links will open in a new window):

1. Content comes first

A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO, a website with bad content will not survive with or without SEO, a website with good content can become even better with SEO!

So, what is considered good content?

Original Content (articles, text, images, videos, presentations, infographics, comments etc.) – No copies or re-writes of existing articles

Content published on your website first – Even if it’s your own content, if you have already published it on another website then it’s not good for your site.

Content that includes text as well – Try to have text to accompany your non-text content. For example if you post videos on your website try to add a text description as well. If you add images try to describe in words what the image is all about.

Content that is useful – Don’t publish content for the sake of publishing. Before hitting the publish button make sure that what goes live adds value to your website.

Content that is well researched – Users don’t want to read quickly prepared posts and neither does search engines. If you are writing about a certain topic or answering a question make sure that what you write is justified and covers both sites of a story. Long articles are proven to rank better than short articles.

Posting frequency – 2 things are important when it comes to posting frequency. First is to have fresh content on your website and second to establish a publishing strategyand stick to it.

2. Page titles, description and formatting

This is SEO 101 but very important as well. When search engines are reading your pages among the things they check includes the page title, the description of the page, the major headings and images. They do so because they need to understand what the page is all about and then based on other factors as well (off page SEO, domain authority, competition etc.), they will place your page in a position in their index.

Page titles – Each page must have a unique title that will help both search engines and users understand what the page is about. A page with title “On Page SEO Tips” is better than a page with title “index.html”.

Descriptions – The page description is what the searcher will see in the search engine results page. So it has to be descriptive, up to 150 characters and unique for each page. It’s your opportunity to advertise your page and convince the searcher to click your link and visit your website rather than selecting one of the other links.

Formatting – A page needs to be properly formatted. Think of it like a report which needs to have a heading (h1) and sub headings (h2). Important parts of the report are highlighted with bold, underline or italics.

Do not just throw text on the page but make sure that it is readable as well. Besides the formatting practices explained above you also need to use a good size font (at least 12px) and split the text into small paragraphs (max 4-5 lines).

Images – Images are important but these should not increase the loading time of the website. Best practices for using images:

1) Use original images. If you need to use an existing image from the web you need to reference the source.

2) Optimise the size of the images – the smaller the size (in bytes) of the image the better. Use yahoo smush it to reduce the size of an image without sacrificing the quality.

3) Use ALT tag to describe the image – This helps search engines understand what the image is about.

4) Use descriptive filenames – Don’t just name your image ‘image1.jpg’ but try to use descriptive filenames, for example ‘Man doing push-ups’.

5) Use a Content Delivery Network – If you have a lot of images in a single page you can use a CDN service (from Amazon or Google) that will make your page load faster. In simple terms your images will be hosted and served by a number of servers and this speeds up the loading process.

You can also read my seo tips for beginners article for more examples of optimized titles and descriptions and for best practices about the use of images.

3. URL Structure

The URL structure is an important part of on-page SEO. Whenever I talk about URL structure, I prefer to split it into 4 major parts:

1) Permanent links – Permanent links are the URL’s of each page. Good URLs should be less than 255 characters and use hyphens to ‘-‘separate the different parts.

2) Categories – Group your pages into categories to help users and search engines find what they want faster. It’s like having a warehouse with lots of uncategorised items versus a warehouse with all the items assigned to a dedicated category. You can have sub-categories as well but my advice is not to go over one level. For example a good category structure is:

Reliablesoft > Social Media > Facebook and not Reliablesoft > Social Media > Facebook > Tips

3) Breadcrumb – A breadcrumb is also important for all your pages because it allows users to navigate your website in a structured way since they always know where they are and how deep below the home page.

4) User Sitemap – One of your options in the main menu should be the User Sitemap. This is an html file that represents the structure of your website.

4. Internal linking

Linking to pages within your website is very important for SEO because:

1) It’s like building your own web: If you watch the nice tutorial by Google on how search works, you will see that the first step a search engine spider will do is follow the links they find. So when they arrive at your page, if you don’t have any other links within the text they will read your page and go but if you have links pointing to other pages within your website they will take those into account as well.

2) It’s a way to let search engines know about your other pages: As explained above when search engines find a page with links, they will go and read those pages as well so you can use this technique to tell search engines about pages of your website they have not yet discovered.

3) It’s a way to tell search engines which are your most important pages: Every website has some pages that are more important than others. Internal linking is one of the ways to pin-point the most important pages by sending them more internal links.

4) It’s a way to increase time on site – A user that is reading your post is more likely to click on a link to read more about a certain subject and thus increase both the time spend on your website and the number of pages per visit.

Best practices for internal linking:

1) Don’t use keywords only for your internal links

2) Add internal links when they are useful for your reader

3) No more than 7-8 internal links per page (this is my opinion and not based on any research or studies)

4) If applicable you can also use ‘related posts’ at the end of each post for internal linking

5. Speed and authorship

Last but not least, 2 SEO techniques that are becoming more and more important especially after the release of penguin 2.0 (or 4.0 as some people like to say it): Speed and authorship.

Speed: Google is investing a huge amount of money to make the web faster. In every Google I/O someone will talk about the importance of speed and their desire to include the fastest websites in their index. In order to ‘force’ web site owners to take speed into account they have officially added speed as one of the ranking factors.

So, we know for sure that web site speed does matter when it comes to SEO and ranking. As a webmaster your job is to make sure that your website loads as fast as possible by taking into account Google’s recommendations.

Google authorship: Google is preparing for the next generation of Search and their effort is to rank higher webpages written by people who have authority on the particular subject. One of the ways to establish authority is by correlating the content you publish on the web with your Google+ profile. Then depending on how many followers you have and who follows you, your ranking may change.

Google authorship is still at its early stages but it’s gaining ground fast so you have to create a Google+ profile and bind the profile with your content.

The Beginners Guide to Email Marketing

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1. Determine your goals -Before you can do anything with email marketing it’s important to distinguish why you’re doing it. Are you trying to increase sales? Build awareness? Nurture leads? Perhaps all three of these? . Figuring out the why before hand will help you tailor a custom strategy that will work towards your specific needs. For example, building a campaign with the objective of increasing sales will most likely involve a lifecycle campaign whereas building awareness and nurturing leads would lend it self more to weekly newsletters or updates about your business.

2. Realize that email marketing is MORE than just newsletters. Perhaps you determined that your goal is simply to keep in touch with already existing customers. That’s fine and well, but even so, email newsletters are just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a great start, so start there and move forward.

3. Start simple. Use an email template and a known newsletter provider. There are a multitude of email service providers and CRMs to choose from when you’re getting started with email marketing and most are very intuitive and simple to use. An added bonus of most of the top email newsletter tools is that have ready to use templates that you can simply plug your information into to get started. As you become more experienced with email marketing, you may get to the point where you’d like to start designing your own customized templates from scratch. This is all well and good but it’s important to realize that building in email HTML is much different from standard HTML because some email clients have limited CSS features. Besides these limiting factors, designing a template from scratch is time consuming so to begin with, just choose one of the many  email templates available and customize the heck out of it.

4. Determine the content your audience wants to hear about. Spend about 20 min – 1 hour spitting out all the ideas you can on what your audience wants to hear about. If you have trouble coming up with a decent number of ideas, don’t be afraid to ask your audience what they’d like to hear about via social media channels. Feedback is going to be key going forward as you pinpoint your email objective. Refine your list, put it on a content calendar, and get ready to send emails about it.

5. Choose a frequency. How often do you plan on contacting your subscribers? Daily, weekly, monthly, or only based on activity? While it’s always good to maintain contact, it can also be detrimental to your business if you contact your audience too often, often times becoming annoying and a bit of an nuisance. So, choose a lower frequency at first, maybe weekly, and then test using the data collected on open rates by your chosen email service provider, and optimize over time .

5. Collect email addresses using a tool from the following list. This could be a form on your site, a link to a landing page, pop-up plugin, survey tool, Facebook etc. Here’s a list of tools that will help you collect email addresses: List of Email Marketing Tools

6. Send and Optimize. This is where the real work begins. Where you’ll discover what works for you and what doesn’t. Thing of this stage as the AB testing phase. Try out different subject lines with the same content to see which gets more opens and responses. Try out different email timings throughout the day. Try sending emails with images or no images, etc. This is the step where your subscribers will tell you want they want in their inbox every week, month, etc. There are numerous other articles out there that will help you optimize your emails.

7. Continue to build your list – Not everyone is going to want to give you their email address right off the bat and that’s fine. List building is a huge part of the job in email marketing. There are tons of different ways to build a list and as you gain more experience you’ll figure out which methods work best for you. You’re going to be in the website traffic and email marketing list building stage for a while, so use that time to focus on what is and isn’t working. Blog posting and networking through social channels etc. will build the traffic that will build the list. You don’t need a large list to be super effective at email marketing so don’t get discouraged if you struggle to build a list at first.

8. Go out and do it. Now that we’ve covered the basics of email marketing the best way to get better is to go out there and do it and learn through immersion. Good luck!

10 Lessons in Startup Marketing

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marketing

 

So you started a business and you’ve got a product, but don’t know how to go about marketing it to your community? Let us help.

 

1. Marketing is about making people want you before they need you. The truth is, less than 1% of the population is in the market for what you probably sell right now. With the exception of paid search, reaching people who want what you sell right now is like playing the lottery. You’re just trying to get lucky. The right way to go about marketing is to start influencing people’s decisions long before they need to make them.

2. The best way to tell a great story is to be a great story. Creating a bar that revolves around being  a dog park is a more effective way to make people believe you’re a fun and dog-loving bar than merely telling people you allow dogs. Actions will always speak louder than words. When you make this actionable, you’ll appreciate just how much marketing influence you actually posses.

3. You’re probably talking people out of doing business with you. The main goal of any marketing endeavor is to get new customers through the proverbial door. But we can assume everyone, including already existing customers, that calls you, emails you or walks in your door is looking for a reason to do business with you. Keep old customers in mind when developing marketing strategies by generating incentive for them to return such as rewards programs while also looking ahead. Also, ask yourself the following questions: What is your closing rate? How can you improve it? This opportunity is neglected far too often.

4. Win the heart and the mind will follow. Decisions aren’t made in the left brain. With every decision you take, every judgement you make, there is a battle between intuition, logic, and emotional response.According to Simon Sinek, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. You have to establish an emotional connection. Today, it’s all about Engagement Marketing. When people are shopping, who do they shop for? Themselves. Not for you, not for me. So you need to become their friend, and as a friend, you look out for their best interest. That  in and of itself is the basis of winning over the heart of a customer.

5. Get customer input. The endgame of any business endeavor is to to generate a profit and the only way to do this is to be a company that people want to give their hard earned cash to. So, what better way to become that company that to keep your ear to the ground and listen to what people are saying when they talk about your business? Granted, it won’t always be positive, and it might make you upset, but you should treat criticism as an opportunity for growth and fine tuning.

6. Don’t stop marketing once you’ve reach your sales goals. After someone makes a decision (either to buy from you or not) your agenda with them, technically, is stripped. What you do in these moments speaks significantly louder to people than what you do while trying to get a piece of their wallet. How about going above and beyond after the fact and creating an experience they can’t help but tell people about? “Hey, you’ll never believe what happened when __________.” This is easily accomplished through generating incentive through rewards programs, discounts, great customer service, and going above and beyond expectations.

7. Blog Blog Blog! It’s one of the easiest ways to be seen as an expert in your field and lets people know that there are real people behind your business who care about them, making it easier for people to relate and reciprocate. Creating your own content, no matter the medium allows you to control the conversation and free up new marketing channels.

8. Help people without asking for anything in return. This goes along with tip number 6. Going above and beyond and being altruistic is a quality that can never be overrated. Most people need to see you as a resource – someone who has something valuable to them before they choose to buy anything. You need to be the one who starts the conversation.

9. Fine tune where you need to be present. There are more types of marketing media out there than ever before and the field is only going to get more and more crowded. Jay Walker-Smith, President of advertising firm, Yankelovich, says, “we’ve gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day back in the 1970’s to as many as 5,000 a day,” today. Just because a marketing tool or opportunity exists doesn’t mean you need it. It’s better to have one quality marketing campaign that to have 30 average ones. Do research on your target market and fine tune your efforts and opportunities to reach those people instead of wasting resources trying to be everywhere at once.

10. If you’re taking shortcuts, you’re bound to fail. Becoming successful only comes with hard work unless you’re born with a golden spoon in your mouth. There are no shortcuts in marketing. The less effort you put into your outreach, the less likely it is to be innovative, the more likely it will come across as artificial, and the more likely it is to be ignored. Creating things that gain and hold attention is difficult. That’s why it requires so much work to get right.

10 ways to promote word of mouth marketing

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word of mouth

Building a brand from the ground up is no simple task no matter the business. Besides the incredible amount of work that you have to put in from the start, there is a lot that is out of your control. Word of mouth marketing is still king so it’s important to build a brand that people will be passionate about. Whether they are talking about you to their friends in person or writing a Yelp! review, what they say will largely be what the general consensus is about your business. Knowing this, there are a number or things that are within your control to ensure that your brand is one worth talking about.

Here are 10 energizers which inspire people to spread the word about you.

  1. People will share your message, if it makes them look clever. This is why social networks are packed with Einstein quotes.
  2. People will share your message, if it makes them appear generous to their friends or community
  3. People will share your message, if they think it will make them look informed, ahead of the curve or cutting-edge.
  4. People will share your message, if it’s remarkable. Extremely satisfied customers tell their friends when they receive an amazing service.
  5. People will share your message, if they are paid to. Such as bloggers who write sponsored posts, affiliate marketers and advertising providers.
  6. People will share your message, if they are part of your community and want others to join in.
  7. People will share your message, if they believe it will help you and they care about you.
  8. People will share your message, if it’s baked into your product or service. When you see someone using an Apple MacBook in public, there’s an illuminated apple on the rear of their screen.
  9. People will share your message, if it says something they aren’t brave enough to say for themselves.
  10. People will share your message, if they believe it’s of great value and that their friends need to know.

Crowdfunding Done Right: 10 Tips for a Successful Campaign

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crowdfunding

Since Kickstarter brought crowdfunding into the public spotlight in 2009, it has become one of the simplest ways for aspiring businesses to raise the necessary funds to pursue their endeavors. So what is crowdfunding exactly? At its simplest, crowdfunding is a method of raising small amounts of money from a large numbers of people online. The fundraising method had drastically changed the landscape of the startup scene in recent years, now requiring a set of skills that wasn’t needed in the past and making it something to keep an eye on going forward. If you’re considering undergoing a crowdfunding campaign it would benefit you to take these 10 tips under consideration to give yourself the best chance of success.

1. Set a realistic goal

Undertaking a business endeavor isn’t cheap. It costs a lot of money and man hours, but before you begin to ask for money its important to take an objective look at your business plan and compare it to similar business that have taken the crowdfunding route before you. If you’re asking too much, your potential investors might not view your idea as a realistic enterprise.

2. Maximize visibility by using a popular platform

Making your potential investors comfortable goes a long way when you’re trying to raise money. The easiest way to do this is to use a reputable platform such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, or Indiegogo that has been in the public spotlight for some time.

3. Optimize your pitch

A clear, concise message is important when pitching your vision. If your goals aren’t easily explained or your funding needs not clearly defined it’s likely that you won’t be able to get your project to take off. Take the time to evaluate whether your pitch is the best that it can be so that it resonates with your audience. Make them want to contribute to a great idea.

4. Know your s**t

You’re not going to be able to raise the amount of money that you need without people asking questions. Make sure you’re able to answer any questions that potential backers might have and that you can delineate how their money is going to be spent. Being able to answer investors’ questions quickly and thoroughly shows a maturity and level of professionalism that will make people take you and your vision seriously.

5. Take advantage of your established connections

Some crowdfunding campaigns spawn from a desire to expand an already existing business. If this is the case then your best bet to raise money early on is to reach out to already existing customers. Whether you maintain contact with them via a newsletter or word of mouth, make sure that you let them know what you’re trying to do.

6. Share your success

It’s easy to understand why most people might be hesitant to jump aboard with your idea. It’s a risk that either will or won’t pan out. Showing the numbers is a great way to help build confidence in your potential investors. By this I mean to say that you should show the number of people who have contributed to your crowdfunding campaign as well as how close you are to your funding goal. It’s also a great idea to share updates on the progress of your vision.

7. Social media is your friend

Social media is one of the most powerful tools you can use to drive traffic to your campaign and is one of the biggest changes to the way that people have raised money with crowdfunding. Posting regular status update and engaging with your audience provides exposure and lets people know you’re not just in it for the money. Be a real person, not a corporation. It creates a relatable experience that people will want to engage in.

8. Offer rewards to your investors.

As is the case with any business, providing incentive can do a lot to build an audience and motivate investors. While you may have the occasional person who altruistically invests in your vision, it doesn’t hurt to offer something in exchange for someones support. Most crowdfunding platforms are great at helping you implement a tier system wherein you can assign different levels of rewards based on how much a person invests. If you’re idea is worth people investing in, those people are worth thanking in some way.

9. Any press is good press (mostly)

Assuming you’re not just out to con people out of their money, taking your idea to the press can do nothing but bring good exposure to your campaign. The press is always looking for a fresh story and people have a natural affinity for the underdog. Send out press releases to local publications and TV stations to get your product/idea out there.

10. Give Thanks

At the end of the day, if your campaign sees itself succeeding it’s important to thank the people who helped get you there. Not only is it common courtesy, but it’s also a reflection of the kind of business yours will become, and creating a positive image for yourself can only help to gain more followers and potential customers.

 

 

The Major ? s to Marketing Success as Learned from DJ Khaled

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dj khaled

If anyone had asked me just a couple months ago what I thought about DJ Khaled I most likely would have responded, “who? That annoying dude that screams his own name and ‘WE THA BEST’ over every annoying club anthem ever and does nothing else? He’s a joke.” Today, my answer to that question is very very different. Today, if you asked me what I think about DJ Khaled I’ll say, “he’s smart. He’s loyal. He’s the best. He’s arguably the most supportive person in my life. He’s a social media sensation, a marketer, and dare I say it, a revolutionary.” So what happened to sway my opinion you ask? Pure and simple, I followed him on Snapchat.

At some point in the last few months DJ Khaled took to snapchat, thought it a great idea to make his username publicly available, and starting broadcasting his lifestyle to millions of would be fans like myself, making it the fulcrum of his resounding social success the way that Instagram has been for Kim Kardashian. His infectious Khaledisms such as “Major ? alert,” “Cloth talk,” and “They don’t want you to win” have steadily worked their way across other social media platforms and even snuck into daily conversation amongst millennials. Whether people are saying  these things ironically or jokingly is irrelevant. The point is that they have caught on and generated an insane demand for more everything from DJ Khaled (ANOTHA ONE!), that most other public figures and major companies would salivate over. So are there lessons to be learned from DJ Khaled that you can follow? You bet your ass there are.

Major ? #1

Capturing emotion and creating personal moments is what marketing is all about. Is your company taking customers behind the scenes? Are you taking them through your routine, sharing breakfast, or living it up at a nightclub? DJ Khaled makes it a point to share the intimate moments of his life whether it be hanging out with Diddy and Rick Ross or checking to see what Chef Dee made for breakfast. He makes you feel like you’re a part of his day and then he proves that you are in a major way: Fan Luv. Beyond letting viewers see his life, he invites them into it, often posting the address of where he’s going to be and inviting any of his fans to come see him, creating minutes long stories of his own and allowing said fans to record their own 10 second max snap of the fleeting time they got to be a part of the DJ Khaled microcosm. He’s establishing a genuine emotional connection and relating to his fans and not just boasting about how many he has. And lastly, he doesn’t just go home and call it a day when it’s all said and done. He reminds us all to be grateful and count our blessings, something that all companies know, but very few express.

Major ? #2

You should care about your brand than anybody else and you should let everyone know it. There is no doubt in my mind hat DJ Khaled would bet it all on his brand being “THE BEST.” His brand, from the music he produces to the clothing he sells, is the accumulation of his life’s work and the grind he’s had to put in over the last two decades to get to where he is now. Khaled knows this and takes it upon himself to impenitently tell the rest of us over snapchat, often wearing clothes and flip flops from his We The Best line or listening to his own music during his “elliptical talk” work outs. Repetition of these not-so-outlandish statements is vital to his success. He knows in his heart that he’s the best and he won’t let the rest of us forget it. It’s as if he took a page out of the public speaking book. Tell them what you’re going to show them, show them, then tell them what you showed them. DJ Khaled is the master of this kind of repetition, and it works. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be wearing a pair of his flip flops right now. For those who have the gall to call him out or disagree, DJ Khaled would like you to not “play yourself”, “bow down”, and “just know,” because.

Major ? #3

This key follows directly from the previous one. Marketing means nothing without a decent product. While the quality of his clothing line cannot be derived from simply watching DJ Khaled’s snapchat (which is why I bought a pair of his sandals. They’re super comfortable.), what cannot be argued is the vitality and success of his music. You can’t say you’re the best at something without having the proof to back it up and Khaled can do that. Over the last decade DJ Khaled has had anthem after anthem go platinum. These were all before he was on snapchat too. He is the living embodiment of what it means to have a top quality product before you can even start thinking of pitching it to the masses.