How Typography Affects Conversions

<P>When you think about conversion optimization, what comes to mind? Testing colors, call-to-action buttons, headlines, and other elements including text, right?</EM></P><P>Although those elements do affect conversions, what about other design aspects such as typography?</P><P>I know what you are thinking. How the heck does <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-typography-affects-conversions/">typography affect conversions</A>?</EM> Well, certain font types will affect people’s decisions in different ways. For example, if you are trying to get your users to agree with a passage, they are more likely to do so if you use the font type Baskerville.</P><P>If you are worried about readability, you may not know that data shows Tahoma is the most legible at size 10, Courier at 12, and Arial at 14.</P><P>To show you how you can use typography to increase your conversion rate, I’ve decided to create an infographic:</P><P>Click on the image below to see a larger view:</EM></P><P><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/14/how-typography-affects-conversions/?display=wide"><img alt="How Typography Affects Conversions" src="/howtypographyaffectsconversions.jpg" title="How Typography Affects Conversions" width="480"></A></P><P><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/14/how-typography-affects-conversions/?display=wide">Click here to view an enlarged version of this infographic</A>.</P><P>Don’t overlook the little details when it comes to conversion optimization. Sometimes it is the simplest things that have the biggest impact.</P><P>For example, having the cursor blink in the search box of Quick Sprout increased conversions by roughly 16%.</P><P><img alt="search box" src="/searchbox.png" title="search box"></P><P>When you are testing how typography affects your conversion rates, don’t take the data above as the be-all and end-all. You can use it as a starting point, but you should still <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/01/14/11-obvious-ab-tests-you-should-try/">run A/B tests</A> to make sure you are seeing a lift in conversions.</P><P><STRONG>Embed This Image On Your Site</STRONG> (copy code below):<BR><div style="clear:both"><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/14/how-typography-affects-conversions/"><img alt="How Typography Affects Conversions" border="0" src="/howtypographyaffectsconversions.jpg" title="How Typography Affects Conversions" /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/14/how-typography-affects-conversions/">Quick Sprout</a></div></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/SOEJfssvnM0/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How Typography Affects Conversions

When you think about conversion optimization, what comes to mind? Testing colors, call-to-action buttons, headlines, and other elements inc...

Baca selengkapnya »

How to Use Google Suggest to Grow Your Long Tail Traffic

<P><img alt="traffic" src="/trafficlongtail.png" title="traffic"></P><P>If you are not targeting long tail keywords, you are missing out on a lot of traffic. Out of the 262,169 visitors that came to Quick Sprout from search engines in the last 30 days, 238,195 came from long tail terms.</P><P>That’s crazy. Just think about it: 91% of my search traffic comes from long tail phrases.</P><P>Just a year ago, I was only getting 88,833 visitors a month from search engines. In a 14-month period, I was able to increase my search engine traffic, mainly from long tail SEO, by 173,336 visitors a month</EM>.</P><P>How was I able to do that? I optimized my blog for long tail SEO. Here’s how I did it, and here’s how you can too:</P><P>I know that Google Analytics shows “not provided” for most of your keywords, but it still shows you a good portion of the keywords that are driving your traffic. At the very least, you can see all of your keywords through Google Webmaster Tools.</P><P>All you have to do is log into your Google Analytics account, click on “Acquisition,” then “Keywords,” and then “Organic”. You should end up seeing a list of keywords that drive you visitors.</P><P>From there, you can focus on some of the keywords that bring you larger volumes of traffic that are relevant to your business.</P><P><img alt="business quotes traffic" src="/businessquotes.png" title="business quotes traffic"></P><P>For example, if you look at the image above, you’ll see that I get traffic from the keyword phrase “business quotes.” I want more of such traffic as entrepreneurs are one of my biggest segments of readers.</P><P>I took that keyword phrase and typed it into Google to see what other keywords or phrases it might suggest.</P><P><img alt="business quotes suggests" src="/suggests.png" title="business quotes suggests"></P><P>As you can see, Google suggests that “inspirational business quotes” is another popular phrase to go after. So, I did. I optimized that blog post on business quotes for the term “inspirational” by placing similar words within the text of that page.</P><P>I found what words Google sees relevant to “inspirational” by running a search query with the “~” symbol in front of the word.</P><P><img alt="business quotes similar words" src="/similarwords.png" title="business quotes similar words"></P><P>If you look at the image above, you’ll notice that Google bolds phrases that are relevant to “inspirational.” After digging through a few pages, I found that Google sees the words “inspire” or “motivational” to be relevant to the word “inspirational.”</P><P>Now, I rank on page one of Google for terms like “inspirational business quotes” and “motivational business quotes,” which helps drive more long tail traffic.</P><P>The big mistake I see marketers making with this tactic is that they are getting too greedy. You don’t want to modify your text so much that it makes your content unreadable.</P><P>For example, I didn’t stuff keywords within that business quotes page as it would ruin the post and cause people to bounce off, which would hurt my rankings in the long run.</P><P>So, how many times should you add in keywords?</EM> Well, that’s the wrong way to think about it. You should only add in keywords that you are pulling from “Google suggest” if you feel it helps readers.</P><P>For example, I added the word “motivational” more frequently than the word “inspirational” on that business quotes blog post because the feedback I got from a Qualaroo survey was that you felt the quotes were really motivational.</P><P>Nonetheless, if you want a ratio, there really isn’t a hard number to follow. But as a rule of thumb, make sure your keyword density is below 3% for any particular keyword.</P><P><img alt="keyword density" src="/keywords.png" title="keyword density"></P><P>You can find out your ratios by just putting in your URL on the homepage of Quick Sprout.</P><P>Now that you got this tactic down, you need to realize that this is a long term strategy. Making these keyword tweaks to your content won’t provide big lifts in the short run. For example, when I made the changes to the business quotes page, it took four months before I saw a 37% increase in search traffic to that page.</P><P>Another reason why I didn’t see big increases in my search traffic in the short run is because I had to go through hundreds of old blog posts and make similar tweaks. Making tweaks to one page typically won’t provide you the lifts you are looking for.</P><P>My recommendation to you is that if you want to increase your long tail traffic, consider doing this with a page on your website each day. After six months to a year you should start seeing nice lifts in traffic.</P><P>SEO doesn’t have to be hard. I could have shoved dozens of keyword tools down your throat and given you complex ways to try to squeeze more traffic out of your current website.</P><P>But I didn’t! Why?</EM> Because simple tactics like the ones above are very effective, assuming you are willing to put in the time and energy to implement them.</P><P>The only caveat I would give is that you shouldn’t abuse it. Don’t stuff irrelevant keywords on your pages or create a poor user experience. Only make the above changes if it helps both you and your readers.</P><P>So, how else can you increase your long tail traffic?</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/ny-LlWJidiA/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How to Use Google Suggest to Grow Your Long Tail Traffic

If you are not targeting long tail keywords, you are missing out on a lot of traffic. Out of the 262,169 visitors that came to Quick Sprout...

Baca selengkapnya »

13 SEO changes for better results

<P>The 13 SEO changes suggested in this post will help you achieve better and bigger results in Google and other major search engines.</P><P>SEO is about change, either changes you have to do because Google changed their algorithms or changes you need to do in order to improve your search engine rankings. What is certain is that if you want to succeed online, by either establishing your presence as a blogger or as an online business, you need to be willing to change the way you do SEO.</P><P>SEO is not something static; it is continuously evolving affecting and getting affected by a number of factors that comprise a well-designed digital marketing strategy. Anything you do on SEO will affect your campaign and vice versa i.e. your overall digital marketing efforts affects your SEO.</P><P><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/google-seo-best-practices-how-to-keep-google-happy/"><B>Google SEO</B></A> specifically is far from static and in order to take a small share of the billions of visitors that use Google to search the web you need to be creative, ready to make changes, willing to make tests (and wait to see the results) and be prepared to invest time and money for reaching your ultimate goals.</P><P>In my 12 year SEO career I have made many changes to my SEO campaigns and some worked better than others. What I will explain below is what I think are the most important SEO changes you can do now for faster and better results.</P><P>Finally and before getting into the changes, do not forget that SEO is about a lot of small things that need to work together in order to produce good results. In other words making only one or few of the changes may not generate the same results as making all the changes together.</P><P>There is absolutely no excuse for any website (small or big) not to offer a mobile friendly version. 2014 is not only the year of the mobile but we are actually living the era of mobile. Everything is mobile, everyone is using a mobile and mobile friendly websites are a must.</P><P>Google recommends <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/advantages-of-responsive-design-for-online-businesses/"><B>responsive design</B></A> as the best way to offer your users a mobile version and by adopting a responsive design you have a number of advantages like:</P>Better ranking positions for mobile driven searches which translates to more organic trafficMore conversions – <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-increase-adsense-earnings-almost-instantly-case-studies/"><B>increase in AdSense earnings</B></A> (if you are running AdSense) or increase in sales if you are selling products or servicesA more usable website – designing for mobile in mind will make your desktop website more functional as well.<P>See below monthly statistics from one of our websites which shows exactly the importance of having a responsive website.</P><P><B>How do you go mobile?</B> Unfortunately it’s not as easy as following a list of steps because you need to have technical skills and knowledge of CSS and javascript but the good news is that almost any website can become responsive at a relatively low cost.</P><P>We have started an initiative to help webmasters <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/responsive-website-design/"><B>make their websites responsive</B></A> at a low cost so get in touch today for more details.</P><P>Search engines love content and you want to increase the number of your indexed pages and the only way to do that is to add more content that meets the criteria below:</P>Highly quality – you want to publish content that is interesting for the reader and written by expertsUnique  – no duplicates or copies from other websitesIn depth – Google loves <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3280182?hl=en" target="_blank"><B>in-depth articles</B></A><P>A blog is a great way (<a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/why-every-business-needs-a-blog/"><B>even for businesses</B></A>) to add to more relevant content to a website and it can work if you learn <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/what-should-i-write-in-my-blog-and-how-to-choose-post-titles/"><B>how to choose your blog post titles</B></A> carefully.</P><P>Let me give you a couple of examples on how to increase your content:</P>If you are running an ecommerce website you can create new pages comparing different products from your store.If you are running a services web site (like this one), you can blog about your services or create guides helping people on subjects you are an expertIf you are running a corporate website you can blog about the latest developments in your industry.<P>Don’t forget that there are also ways to get users generate the content for you by setting up a forum or encouraging user commenting.</P><P><img alt="search-queries" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2223" height="315" src="/search-queries.png" width="215">This is one of the oldest <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-tips-for-beginners-15-ways-to-google-boost-your-web-site/"><B>SEO tips</B></A> but one that not many people use. The Click Through Rate is the percentage of people who click on your web site listing from the search results. If you go to <B>Search Queries</B> in webmaster tools, you will notice that for each keyword your website appeared in search, google gives you the CTR.</P><P>How is this useful? You can spot which keywords have a low CTR, then find out which pages rank for the particular keywords and optimize their titles and descriptions to make them more attractive to searches.</P><P>Once you do the changes it may take a couple of days (or more) for Google to them into account and you can then compare the results before and after the changes.</P><P>You can use the reports in Google webmaster tools (search queries) and Google Analytics (Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries) to find out which keywords bring you traffic and the ranking position of you website for the different keywords. Look at these reports and try to identify which keywords bring you some traffic but they are not on page 1 of Google. These are definite ‘winners’ and the keywords you should concentrate on since an increase in their ranking position will also increase your organic traffic.</P><P>How can you improve the position of a keyword? There is no magic solution but some actions towards the right direction are:</P>Write a couple of blogs posts and link to that page using variations of the keyword you want to improveReview the content of that page and make it betterOptimize the titles and descriptions of the pagePromote that page in Social Media (this will increase the likelihood of other webmasters linking to that page)<P><img alt="Google authorship in results" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2216" height="395" src="/google-authorsthip-in-results.png" width="600"></P><P>This is directly related with point 3 above as there are many studies that show that the presence of the author image in the search results increases CTR.</P><P>Of course this is not the only reason you should implement Google authorship and publisher but you should also do it because it’s a nice way to:</P>Connect the content you publish online with your profilePosition yourself (or company) as experts about a topicGive Google more information about youHelp users find out content you have written (next to your image there is a link “By….”) and this links your content together<P>As a clarification, google authorship is for individuals and google publisher is for companies or websites.</P><P>To find out more about google authorship <B><a href="https://plus.google.com/authorship">click here</A></B></P><P>To find out more about google publisher <B><a href="https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1713826?hl=en">click here</A></B></P><P>Besides improving CTR and Google trust, there are many more reasons to become an active user on Google+.</P><P>For starters and although Google officially does not accept it, there are many studies that show <a href="http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations" target="_blank"><B>correlations between google +1s and higher search rankings</B></A>.</P><P>In addition, Google+ is a great social network which in some cases can generate traffic and sales as well.</P><P>If you are on Google+ you can follow me here:</P><P>A faster website means more visits, more sales and more conversions. Web site load speed is a ranking factor and makes a website friendlier for the user.</P><P>The first step for tackling the speed issue is to run a couple of tests to find out how many seconds it takes to load your website from different locations and also get suggestions on how to improve the page load time. You can use the following free tools:</P><P><B><a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/" target="_blank">Page speed insights</A></B> – This is a tool from Google which gives you recommendations on what to improve on a website to make it load faster. It works for both desktop and mobile websites. For each version you will get a rating (out of 100) and a list of recommendations. While every website is different you should aim for a score above 90% for the desktop.</P><P><B><a href="http://www.webpagetest.org/" target="_blank">Webpage test.org</A></B> – With web page test you can test how long it takes for your website to load from various locations. This is very useful especially in the cases that you do not live in the same country as your users.  Besides the time it takes for your website to load for the first time and repeating time, you also get a view with details about each and every component on your page which makes it very easy to identify what is slowing down the site and how to improve it.</P><P>Unfortunately improving the page speed is a technical issue and if you don’t have the skills it will be difficult to tackle with success. In such cases the best solution is to get help from experts (<a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/contact/"><B>contact us</B></A> for more information).</P><P>This is perhaps the number 1 <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-seo-mistakes-that-weaken-your-rankings/"><B>SEO mistake</B></A> most people do i.e. forget about internal link building and I would say that it’s one of most important as well. By linking your pages together it’s like creating your own small web and this has a number of advantages like:</P>It helps search engines discover, index and rank more pages from your websiteIt helps you build authority about a topicIt helps users find more information about a topicIt’s a great way to help search engines understand what the linking page is all about (by using keywords in the anchor text).<P>You can read my previous post on <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/internal-linking-best-practices-for-seo/"><B>internal linking best practices</B></A> for examples on how Google and Wikipedia are using internal links to build authority but as a general rule of thumb use the following guidelines:</P>Vary your anchor text when linking to other pages on your website but don’t be afraid to use keyword anchor text when neededMake sure that the links are useful for users and not only search enginesLink to related pages and not to pages that have nothing to do with the existing page<P>When was the last time that you did a health check on your website? If the answer is ‘never’, don’t worry you are not alone. Nevertheless that does not mean that you should not do it.</P><P>If a website has problems, most probably this will also affect both rankings but also the user experience with the site which is equally important for long term success.</P><P>On a typical website health check you can perform the following tests:</P>Check DNS health using the <B><a href="http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/" target="_blank">dnscheck tool</A></B> from pingdom – If there are any errors or warnings then you need to inform your hosting company since it is probably something wrong from their part.Check for crawl errors (crawl > Crawl errors) and security issues in Google Webmaster toolsCheck for robots fetch errors in Webmaster toolsCheck for broken links using <B><a href="http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html" target="_blank">Xenu</A></B>Check for malware or any other ‘virus’ related errors using <B><a href="http://sitecheck3.sucuri.net/">sucuri sitecheck</A></B> <B></B><P>Besides doing the health check explained above, it is also highly recommended to perform an <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-perform-a-seo-audit-of-your-web-site-checklist-included/"><B>SEO Audit</B></A> of your website at least once per year. The audit report will help you identify areas that need to be fixed and areas that can be improved to generate more traffic and visits to your website.</P><P>A good SEO Audit will touch on social media, <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/5-on-page-seo-techniques-thatll-boost-your-rankings-checklist-included/"><B>on page SEO</B></A>, <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-off-page-seo/"><B>off page SEO</B></A> and generally all aspects of digital marketing.</P><P>Local SEO is particularly important for small businesses that need to find customers in their local area. As explained in a <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/local-seo-checklist-for-small-business/"><B>previous post</B></A>, local SEO is different from ‘global’ SEO and for the majority of businesses this is all they have to do in terms of SEO.</P><P>Run your website against the local seo checklist and make all the changes needed to optimize your website for local searches.</P><P>Everybody understands the importance of SEO for online success but when it comes to budgeting some businesses still consider SEO as an expense and not an investment. This is not the correct approach and if you are still not convinced, go ahead and read about the <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/benefits-of-seo-for-small-businesses/"><B>benefits of SEO for small businesses</B></A>.</P><P>A typical SEO budget will be in the range of 500 – 3000 (USD) per month depending on the size and type of a business. This money if spend correctly can generate a constant amount of website traffic that can help a business fulfil its goals in both the short and long term.</P><P>This is not an SEO change but rather an attribute change. SEO takes time and those that are patient enough always win at the end.</P><P>When you make any of the changes mentioned above you need to be patient and monitor your rankings for a number of weeks to see if what you did works or not. If you lose your patience and choose to follow any of the magic packages you find on the web then chances are that you will get a penalty by Google and lose your money without archiving anything online.</P><P>Many factors affect the <a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank-in-google/"><B>time needed to rank in Google</B></A> but in general you need at least 5-6 months in order to access if your SEO efforts are working or not.</P><P>Do not forget that you are not alone in this game so it is sometimes necessary to know what your competitors are doing. If you are targeting the global internet market then most probably you have to compete with thousands of websites across the whole world.</P><P>There are many things to do to spy your competitors and different tools to use but it is not in the scope of this article to go into details. What you can easily do without a lot of effort is the following:</P>Search google for the keywords you want to rank and see which websites/pages are currently ranking for those termsTake note of their titles/descriptions, content length and mentions of the particular keywords (and variations) in the text and compare them with your results.Check how many pages they have indexedHow often do they publish new content and what type of contentWhat type of functionality/tools they offer their readersWhat type of titles they use for their new posts<P>Your goal from doing the competitor analysis is to learn from them and identify things that you can do better to outrank them.</P><P>SEO is dynamic because there is a lot of competition on every niche and because Google is working continuously trying to make their algorithms better and their search results more accurate. If you want to stay in the game, you have to follow the SEO changes and stay in synch with the latest developments.</P><P>While the basic SEO principles stayed the same the last 10 years, new things come to the surface (think responsive design, social media, google authorship) that are forcing you to reconsider your SEO strategy.</P><P>As a final word, SEO is not something imaginary or theoretical but it is a practical science you can put into action and generate real results that can change the way you do businesses on the Internet.</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reliablesoftnet/~3/SLZJhRAsaOw/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

13 SEO changes for better results

The 13 SEO changes suggested in this post will help you achieve better and bigger results in Google and other major search engines. SEO is ...

Baca selengkapnya »

7 Ways to Increase Your Rankings without Leveraging Content Marketing

<P><img alt="seo" src="/seomistakes.jpg" title="seo"></P><P>Hands down, my favorite approach to boosting search traffic is to leverage content marketing. Why?</EM> <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/10/22/why-content-marketing-is-the-new-seo/">Because the data shows that it works!</A></P><P>I know, however, that not every business can leverage it. Whether it’s because you can’t write high quality content or you don’t have a blog set up or your legal team won’t approve the content, you might be one of those businesses that is not able to implement this strategy. In truth, it’s just not possible for everyone to leverage this particular marketing tactic</EM>.</P><P>So, if that’s your case, don’t worry. Content marketing isn’t the only tactic you can use to increase your rankings and search traffic. Here are 7 other strategies you can follow:</P><P>Did you know that there are 100 ideal links you should obtain if you want to rank for a specific keyword? Google actually shows you the URLs of these top 100 links.</P><P>How do you find them? All you have to do is google the keyword you are trying to rank for. For example, let’s say you are trying to rank for “Las Vegas Hotels.”</P><P><img alt="las vegas hotels" src="/lasvegashotels.png" title="las vegas hotels"></P><P>The first 100 web pages are what Google considers to be the most relevant for the term “Las Vegas Hotels.” If you happened to get a link from one of these web pages, you’d notice that your rankings skyrocketed.</P><P>Granted, a lot of those web pages will be competing sites, but you’ll find that many of them are not, once you start going to page 4, 5 or even 6 in the search results.</P><P>Once you’ve made a list of all of the web pages you want to gain a link from, you’ll want to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/07/the-link-builders-guide-to-email-outreach/">send them an email</A> that goes something like this:</P><BLOCKQUOTE readability="25"><P><STRONG>Subject:</EM></STRONG> don’t you hate it when people pitch you their websites, [insert their first name]?</P><P>Well, I too have a pitch for you, but before you hit the spam button and move onto the next email, just give me 37 seconds or else you’ll regret this for the rest of your life!</P><P>So, here it goes:</EM></P><P>I noticed that you linked to [insert competitor #1] and [insert competitor #2] on this page: [insert the URL of the page that ranks for the term you are going after]. I have this website [insert your website URL], and I wanted to see if you wanted to include it. Here are 2 reasons why your readers would love it:</P>Insert benefit #1Insert benefit #2<P>I could keep going with the reasons why you should include us, but I won’t bore you with the details. If you’re interested, let me know. And if you have questions, we can set up a time to chat when you’re free.</P><P>Cheers,<BR>[insert your name]</P></BLOCKQUOTE><P>You won’t get every site you email to link back to you, but you can expect a 10% link ratio. In other words, for every 100 emails you send out, 10 of those sites will link back. And after you’ve gone through the first 100 results, you should go through the top 1,000 results.</P><P>Using this tactic, I’ve been able to rank on page one for terms like “forex trading” and even “online poker.”</P><P><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/10/how-load-time-affects-google-rankings/">Google takes load time into account when ranking websites</A>. Why?</EM> Because Google found that when it ranks slow sites, it creates a poor user experience, and people tend to use Google less.</P><P>For this reason, sites with fast load times tend to get more search traffic.</P><P>How can you improve your load time? The simplest way is to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/">put in your URL here</A>. You’ll get a report that details what changes you need to make in order to increase your load time.</P><P><img alt="speed test" src="/speedtest.png" title="speed test"></P><P>Once you implement the changes, give it a few weeks, and you should see a nice lift in your crawl rate, indexed pages, and overall search traffic.</P><P>A simple way to increase your rankings is to cross-link your pages, right?</EM> But chances are you are doing it wrong. Most people cross-link their pages like this:</P><P><img alt="internal links" src="/internallinks.jpg" title="internal links"></P><P>As you can see from the image above, the page at the tops links to a handful of other pages, and then those pages link to more pages. Typically, that page at the top is your homepage, and the pages below are internal pages.</P><P>There are a few things wrong with this model:</P>The internal pages aren’t linking to each other.The links are within navigation bars instead of within content.Link juice isn’t flowing evenly throughout the whole site.<P>You can solve this by cross-linking your pages using a model that looks like this:</P><P><img alt="good internal links" src="/betterlinks.jpg" title="good internal links"></P><P>As you can see:</P>Many of the pages are linked to each other, which helps with indexing.You can link the pages together by using in-content links.You are focusing your link efforts to build authority to internal pages, which makes it possible to rank for more <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/01/21/the-state-of-seo-whats-working-now/">long tail terms</A>.<P>Whether you believe <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/31/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/">social media affects search rankings or not</A>, it is still a good source of traffic. And the more traffic you get, the higher the chance that someone will link back to your site, which will help increase your rankings.</P><P>So, how do you get the most out of your social profiles? Here are some quick tips for each major social network:</P>If you are going to post on Facebook, <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/10/how-to-increase-your-facebook-engagement-by-275/">consider posting on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays</A> as those are the peak days.The most shareable words in a status update are: Facebook, why, most, world, how, health, bill, big, says, and best. So, consider using those words within your updates.35% of Facebook users said they would “like” a page if there was a contest to participate in. So, start running them.<P>When I started out in the SEO world, I would manually build links, and it would take me months, if not years, to see good increases in rankings because my sites lacked links from authority sites.</P><P>But one day, I launched a site in the podcast space, and <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2005/11/03/insert-ads-into-podcasts-with-fruitcast/">it got covered by sites like TechCrunch</A>. Within weeks of the coverage, the site started to rank on page 1 for competitive terms in the podcast space.</P><P>It was then that I realized the power of press. From then on, I always got press for each of my companies, which helped them rank higher and faster.</P><P>So, how do you get press? A simple way is to pay a PR agency like <a href="http://www.prserve.com/">PR Serve</A>, who has a performance-based pay model, allowing you to pay it only when it gets you press.</P><P>A cheaper way to get press is to build relationships with reporters. By continually helping them out with their stories and giving them feedback, you will increase your chances of them eventually being interested in covering your company.</P><P>Or, if you want to go for the cold approach, which is harder but still works, you can always <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/07/the-link-builders-guide-to-email-outreach/">follow this PR email pitch template</A>.</P><P>I’ve found that the easiest way to generate links is through interviews. Every time someone interviews you, chances are they will link to your website. The links will be fairly relevant too as the linking web page will typically talk about your story or what your company does.</P><P>I know what you are thinking though…it’s easy for me to get interviewed because I have a well-established brand</EM>. And although you are right, it wasn’t easy when I first started out.</P><P>During the early days of my entrepreneurial career, I would continually email two to four bloggers a day who interviewed other people in my space to ask them if they wanted to interview me.</P><P>Most of them ignored my email or said no, but then I quickly learned that if I emailed them with feedback on their other interviews, they were more likely to agree to interview me.</P><P>For example, if Mixergy did an interview with your competitor, you could email them with your feedback on the interview. You could tell them that the interview was great but also highlight the points with which you disagreed. You would then end the email by asking if they want you to come on the show for an interview.</P><P>By using this tactic, you should be able to get one to two interviews a week.</P><P>Google tracks the number of people clicking through to your website from search listings. It also estimates whether the click-through percentage is high or low compared to your rank. The reason it does this is to determine how relevant your website is to that specific search query.</P><P>In addition to tracking the click-through rate, it also looks at whether people are hitting the back button a lot. If people land on your site from Google and then hit the back button, it means they didn’t find what they were looking for. And if this happens a lot, it’s a good indicator your website isn’t relevant to that specific search query.</P><P>So, how do you maximize your click-through rate while decreasing the number of people clicking the back button?</P><P>To increase your click-through rate, you just have to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/12/30/how-3-simple-google-analytics-reports-will-increase-your-search-engine-traffic/">follow the steps in this blog post</A>. And to decrease the number of people clicking the back button, first survey your visitors through <a href="http://www.qualaroo.com/">Qualaroo</A>.</P><P><img alt="qualaroo" src="/qualaroo.png" title="qualaroo"></P><P>By asking your visitors “What else would you like to see on this page?”, you can learn what you are missing and then add it. This will help you <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/">decrease your bounce rate</A> so that Google feels your website is more relevant.</P><P>Although content marketing is my favorite way to increase any search engine traffic, it isn’t the only way</EM>. From link building to optimizing your load time, there are many things you can do to boost your rankings.</P><P>This is important for you to realize because you won’t be able to leverage every strategy. You’ll end up running into roadblocks, and some strategies may not work well for your industry. So, instead of trying to do everything, focus on what’s working.</P><P>In what other ways, besides content marking, can you increase your rankings?</EM></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/kkAyBT9KRWg/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

7 Ways to Increase Your Rankings without Leveraging Content Marketing

Hands down, my favorite approach to boosting search traffic is to leverage content marketing. Why? Because the data shows that it works! I...

Baca selengkapnya »

How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience

<P>The one thing I’ve learned about blogging over the years is that more traffic doesn’t necessarily equate more revenue. Unless you have a loyal blog audience, it’s rare that you will be able to generate a lot of income because it is hard to convert cold traffic into customers.</P><P>So, how do you create a loyal blog audience? Well, it comes down to a few variables. For example, responding to comments will help you build a connection with your readers, who will be more likely to come back more often.</P><P>Other elements, such as story telling and having opinions, help as well. Eighty-two percent of people prefer following bloggers that have opinions.</P><P>To teach you how to create a loyal blog audience, I decided to create an infographic that will show you the steps you need to take.</P><P>Click on the image below to see a larger view:</EM></P><P><img alt="How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience" src="/howtocreatealoyalblogaudience.jpg" title="How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience" width="480"></P><P>Click here to view an enlarged version of this infographic.</P><P>Out of the three blogs I currently have, Quick Sprout has the most loyal blog audience. The main reason for the loyalty is because I selflessly help everyone, and I even try to respond to every comment.</P><P>I know it is time consuming, but it is worth it. If you have time to do only one thing, I recommend that you respond to every single comment you get on your blog. In my opinion, there is no better way to build a connection with your readers than to create a conversation through comments.</P><P>So, how else can you create a loyal blog audience?</P><P><STRONG>Embed This Image On Your Site</STRONG> (copy code below):<BR><div style="clear:both"><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/07/how-to-create-a-loyal-blog-audience/"><img alt="How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience" border="0" src="/howtocreatealoyalblogaudience.jpg" title="How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience" /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/07/how-to-create-a-loyal-blog-audience/">Quick Sprout</a></div></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/jEAXBXc_0po/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How to Create a Loyal Blog Audience

The one thing I’ve learned about blogging over the years is that more traffic doesn’t necessarily equate more revenue. Unless you have a lo...

Baca selengkapnya »

What Type of Content Gets Shared the Most on Twitter?

<P><img alt="twitter" src="/twitter.png" title="twitter"></P><P>Have you ever wondered what type of content you should be creating for Twitter? Whether it is blog posts, quotes, memes, there has to be a content type that helps your traffic and branding more than other types of content, right?</EM></P><P>I actually had the same question, which is why I decided to analyze 1,000 Twitter users and 398,582 tweets to see if I could figure out what type of content gets shared the most.</P><P>What I learned is that all content types are not created equal. Some get shared more than others…</P><P>Here’s how each content type stacks up against the rest.</P><P>Users on Twitter tweet images 361% more than they tweet videos.</P><P>Even more interesting is to look at the number of favorites and retweets. Images tend to get 128% more retweets than videos, but videos get favorited 49% more than images.</P><P><img alt="video vs image twitter" class="aligncenter" src="/videovsimage.png" title="video vs image twitter"></P><P>From a branding standpoint, it’s easier and quicker to make images, so I recommend that you focus your time on image creation over videos.</P><P>The other thing that I learned when analyzing images is that 62% were humor-based, while 38% were other types.</P><P><img alt="image type twitter" class="aligncenter" src="/imagetype.png" title="image type twitter"></P><P>If you want to maximize your branding efforts, you’ll have to come up with creative ways to infuse your corporate brand with humor. For example, this would be a great image to share potentially on Twitter if your company was KitKat:</P><P><img alt="kitkat" src="/kitkat.png" title="kitkat"></P><P>On the flip side, if KitKat just shared an image of someone eating its candy bar, that tweet wouldn’t do well.</P><P>Who would have thought that text performed better than images? Ninety-three percent of all the tweets we analyzed were text-based. In other words, they didn’t contain any images or videos.</P><P><img alt="image video text twitter" class="aligncenter" src="/textimagevideos.png" title="image video text twitter"></P><P>What was even more interesting is that 65% of those text-based tweets contained a link. The link part is important because not only does that mean you can drive traffic back to your site, but it also means that tweets with links get <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/12/06/how-to-increase-your-twitter-engagement-by-324/">retweeted 86% more often</A>. Plus, if you can keep the tweet under 100 characters, you’ll also get 17% more engagement.</P><P>Although this may seem obvious, the best way to drive traffic to your website is to tweet with a link.</P><P>When we were diving into the text-based tweets, we found something interesting.</P><P>We assumed that people loved reading personal tweets such as how someone’s day was going or what that person was eating for dinner. Interestingly enough, those tweets had the least number of favorites or retweets.</P><P>But what did extremely well from a retweet perspective were tweets that linked to how-to or list-based articles. On average, they received 3 times more retweets than any other type of text-based content.</P><P><img alt="how to text twitter" class="aligncenter" src="/howtolists.png" title="how to text twitter"></P><P>If you want to tweet about something personal, tweet about luxury lifestyle because those tweets did the best. In other words, if you were to tweet about a fancy car, watch, home, or a yacht, you would get more favorites than if you were to tweet about what you ate for dinner. You still won’t get a ton of retweets compared to tweeting a how-to article, but you will get a lot of favorites.</P><P>When analyzing the tweets, we found that quotes tended to get 847% more retweets than questions. And although that percentage may seem big, it’s not that surprising.</P><P>What was surprising was that users who tweeted quotes had 43% more followers.</EM></P><P>On the flip side, questions contained more replies than quotes. In general, questions had 1,050% more replies. So, if you want to create a conversation with your followers, consider asking them a question.</P><P>If you want to brand yourself through the use of quotes, you can always create image-based ones like the one below.</P><P><img alt="quotes" src="/quoteimage.jpg" title="quotes"></P><P>Through image-based quotes, not only will you get the retweets, but you will also increase the number of people who start seeing your corporate logo.</P><P>Compared to Facebook, there aren’t as many memes that get passed around on Twitter. And they make up the smallest percentage of tweets.</P><P><img alt="memes" src="/meme.jpg" title="memes"></P><P>If you want to generate traffic or increase your branding, you should consider staying away from memes. As a business, it doesn’t make sense for you to focus your marketing efforts on memes because even if the meme does well, the quality of traffic it produces is so poor that you won’t see many conversions.</P><P>If you are trying to get the most traffic from Twitter, consider creating how-to or list-based content on your site. Then push it out on Twitter, and have your friends, co-workers, and family members do the same.</P><P>If you want to maximize your branding, the simplest thing you can do is create image-based quotes with your corporate logo, and then push them out on Twitter.</P><P>So, in what other ways can you generate traffic from Twitter?</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/QXfsWKqT578/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

What Type of Content Gets Shared the Most on Twitter?

Have you ever wondered what type of content you should be creating for Twitter? Whether it is blog posts, quotes, memes, there has to be a ...

Baca selengkapnya »

9 Ways to Make Your First Online Sale From Your Corporate Blog

<P><img alt="sales" src="/sales.jpg" title="sales"></P><P>Just because you pop up a corporate blog and generate traffic doesn’t mean you will actually generate any sales.</P><P>I learned this the hard way with KISSmetrics. When we first started our blog, we were quickly able to get it to over 100,000 visitors a month, but we weren’t generating any extra sales from that traffic. In fact, we weren’t generating any sales at all.</P><P>Because of blogging costs, I had no choice but to figure out how to make it a profitable channel. I did the same for a handful of other corporate blogs and learned a few tricks that can help any blog convert visitors into customers.</P><P>Here are 9 ways you can get your first online sale from your corporate blog:</P><P>Assuming you are blogging on topics related to your business, it shouldn’t be very hard for you to convert your readers into customers. The quickest way to drive sales is to send traffic from your blog to either a landing page or your homepage.</P><P>Through Hellobar, which is free, you can direct blog traffic to your corporate site.</P><P><img alt="hellobar" src="/hellobar.png" title="hellobar"></P><P>Hellobar is a bar that allows you to show a welcome message to your blog readers. It stays on the screen as your readers scroll. You can adjust the color of the bar, and you can also control the message and call to action within the bar.</P><P><img alt="hellobar stats" src="/hellobarstats.png" title="hellobar stats"></P><P>If you look at the image above, you’ll see that I’ve driven over 14,000 visitors to a landing page on Quick Sprout through Hellobar. And it lead to conversions as well – 441 to be exact.</P><P>Chances are you have a sidebar on your blog. And there is probably a lot of empty space within it.</P><P>A simple way to drive more traffic to a landing page or your homepage is to throw up an ad. The only issue is very few people will click on your banner ad, no matter how attractive the design or messaging may be</EM>.</P><P>So, one trick you should try is a scrolling ad, similar to my ad of Michael Arrington that scrolls with you as you continue to read Quick Sprout.</P><P><img alt="michael arrington" class="aligncenter" src="/michaelarrington.png" title="michael arrington"></P><P>By making the ad scroll, I was able to increase the click-throughs by 385%.</P><P>The number one way I drive sales from my corporate blogs is through in-content ads.</P><P>If you look at the blog homepage on Quick Sprout, you’ll notice ad text between the first blog post and the second one that encourages people to click through.</P><P><img alt="michael arrington offer" src="/contentoffer.png" title="michael arrington offer"></P><P>You can also insert an offer between the end of your blog post and the beginning of your comment section.</P><P><img alt="email offer" src="/emailoffer.png" title="email offer"></P><P>The offer above accounts for 6% of all of my sales, which may not seem like a lot, but every bit adds up.</P><P>From my sidebar opt-in to my offer before each comment section, I have a handful of ways in which I collect emails on Quick Sprout. Once I collect an email, I then add you to an email drip sequence that pitches you my products and services.</P><P>This method is so effective, we do the same thing on the KISSmetrics’ blog. Through marketing automation, we then entice you to buy products from us.</P><P>If you are looking to drive sales through this approach, there are a few things you need to know:</P>It’s typically hard to collect emails unless you offer something for free such as an ebook or a course. That’s why I offer free ebooks and courses in exchange for your email.Pop-ups collect more emails than anything else other than tactic. Your readers may hate it, so you’ll have to test how often to show the pop-ups to them, or else they may leave in frustration.You’ll want to create an email drip sequence in order to convert email subscribers into buyers. If you aren’t sure how to do this, read this article.You’ll need to use an email service provider to send out your emails. I use Get Response as it has some marketing automation built into its platform, and it’s affordable. If you are working with a small budget, Mailchimp has a free plan.<P>You can thank New York Times for making sliders popular on blogs…</P><P><img alt="slider offer" src="/slider.png" title="slider offer"></P><P>If you have a WordPress blog, you can download the upPrev plugin, which creates the slider effect that New York Times has. As someone continues to read your content, a message of your choice will slide up from the bottom right corner of the page.</P><P>If you know some basic PHP, you can modify the slider to have a custom message. The message could be a pitch for the product or service that will drive your visitors to a specific landing page, designed to seal the deal.</P><P>If you are in the lead generation business or if you have a sales team that closes leads for you, you can quickly double or triple the number of leads you are collecting if you leverage your blog traffic.</P><P>Through services like Bounce Exchange, you can capture leads as they exit your page like I do on NeilPatel.com. Bounce Exchange accounts for roughly 60% to 67% of the leads I collect on NeilPatel.com.</P><P><img alt="bounce offer" src="/bounceexchange.png" title="bounce offer"></P><P>You can also create landing pages to which you can drive traffic, similarly to how I Will Teach You to Be Rich does it.</P><P><img alt="brain trust offer" src="/braintrust.png" title="brain trust offer"></P><P>If you use this approach, make sure your landing pages are simple, without any navigational elements. Your goal is to get as many people to convert as possible, so the fewer options you offer them, the better off you are.</P><P>Typically, 20% to 30% of the people that land on your landing page will convert into leads, assuming you have good copy.</P><P>Or if you want to get a bit more aggressive, you can take a page out of Hubspot’s book and block your premium content.</P><P><img alt="hubspot offer" src="/hubspotguide.png" title="hubspot offer"></P><P>We recently tested this strategy on KISSmetrics and found it to work well. If you are writing detailed guides and ebooks, people won’t have any issue giving you their information in exchange for an ebook. On the other hand, if you try to block your blog posts from being read, you will get a lot of complaints.</P><P>Once you collect a few leads, your sales reps can then call them to close the sale.</P><P>This tactic requires a bit more effort, but it works extremely well. If you create a sales letter that breaks down your product or service and you let people buy directly on your blog, you can convert anywhere from 1% to 5% of the traffic that hits the sales page.</P><P>I do this on Quick Sprout with the Traffic U, and I sell people video subscriptions.</P><P><img alt="traffic u" src="/trafficu.png" title="traffic u"></P><P>I don’t generate as many sales as I used to due to the fact that my sales copy isn’t as aggressive as it used to be, but during my peak, I was generating around $65,000 in new monthly income. Not too bad for one sales letter.</P><P>If you are wondering how to create a sales letter, this article should give you a quick rundown. Or if you have a bit more time, check out the Copy Hackers blog.</P><P>Most companies do this totally wrong. They either blog about their business too much, or they don’t blog about it at all</EM>. You need to find a balance. That means you should be blogging about your company and your offerings, but not too often.</P><P>Generally, if you are blogging about your business more than 5% of the time, you are being too self-promotional. If you don’t blog about your offerings at all, you need to start doing it.</P><P>I don’t recommend you write a blog post saying “check out my company and buy from me” as it won’t be very effective. But with some creativity, you can encourage your readers to buy.</P><P>One tactic worth leveraging is using infographics. Through an infographic, you can explain your business in a fun way and encourage new sales.</P><P><img alt="kissmetrics infographic" src="/kissmetrics.jpg" title="kissmetrics infographic"></P><P>We did this on our KISSmetrics blog, and it worked extremely well.</P><P>You’ve been seeing us do a ton more webinars on KISSmetrics lately because they do well. Not only do they help drive sales, but they drive a ton of traffic to our corporate site.</P><P>Typically, if you are looking to do a webinar, it has to be on a topic that benefits your readers. You can’t expect them to attend a webinar that’s just a sales pitch without any benefit to them. Instead, you have to educate them on a topic related to your product or service</EM>.</P><P>Within the webinar, you can mention your product or give them an exclusive offer if they buy within the next 24 hours.</P><P>If you want to learn the exact steps we take to generate $30,000 to $100,000 from every webinar, just read this blog post as we lay out exactly what we do.</P><P>Driving your first sale from your blog shouldn’t be hard. If you don’t have the time to leverage all of the tactics above, you can start with the simple ones such as installing Hellobar on your blog.</P><P>You’ll notice that the methods above won’t just drive you one-off type of sales. They’ll continually bring you sales, which is why it is worth your time to use each of the tactics above</EM>.</P><P>If you don’t think it is worth it, consider this: KISSmetrics is able to generate thousands of leads every month due to our blog</EM>.</P><P>So, how else can you generate sales from your blog?</EM></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/R7R7X59iOZo/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

9 Ways to Make Your First Online Sale From Your Corporate Blog

Just because you pop up a corporate blog and generate traffic doesn’t mean you will actually generate any sales. I learned this the hard wa...

Baca selengkapnya »