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...

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Should you hire an SEO Consultant or a Digital Marketing Manager?

<P>What is the difference between an SEO consultant and a digital marketing expert? When it comes to outsourcing your website to an agency which is the best choice?</P><P>When you decide that it’s time to enhance your online presence and gain from the many benefits the Internet has to offer, then the next question you should answer is whether you should hire an SEO consultant or a digital marketing expert.</P><P>For many people the difference is unknown but in order to help you take better decisions, let me explain a couple of basic things.</P><P>The first thing to understand is that it does not necessarily mean that there is a difference between an SEO and a digital marketing expert. In many cases both will perform the same functions and have the same skills but they may use different titles mainly for marketing purposes. Before getting into why they may do that, let’s see what the theory says.</P><P><B>SEO Consultant</B></P><P>An SEO consultant is someone that has the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to optimize your website for search engines and improve your position in the search results. To do that he/she will use <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-tips-for-beginners-15-ways-to-google-boost-your-web-site/">search engine optimization techniques</A></B> and practices. The ultimate goal of an SEO consultant is to <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-increase-web-site-traffic/">increase the web site traffic</A></B>.</P><P><B>Digital Marketing Manager</B></P><P>If you take a look at the diagram below you will notice that SEO is a subset of digital marketing and that a true digital marketing manager will have to manage many other areas besides SEO, for example <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-content-marketing-tips-for-beginners/">content marketing</A></B>, <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-social-media-marketing-tips-for-beginners/">social media marketing</A></B>, <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/25-email-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/">email marketing</A></B>, mobile marketing, banner advertising etc.</P><P><img alt="Digital marketing Services" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-848" height="353" src="/digital-marketinggif.png" width="600"></P><P>So by <B>definition</B> the difference between the two is that the SEO guy only cares about getting more organic visits and the digital marketing guy looks at the complete online presence of a company which goes beyond SEO.</P><P><B>Theory VS Practice</B></P><P>In the real World the theory is different from what is actually happening and this is exactly the case with SEO’s and Digital marketing experts. In the majority of cases a good SEO consultant will also take care of all the components of digital marketing. They may use the title SEO consultant because for the majority of people this is more understandable than the more sophisticated term of a digital marketing consultant.</P><P>Take for example our case, while we offer a range of digital marketing services we still name our services page <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-packages/">SEO Packages</A></B> because this is what our customers use to find us in Google. They may use this term but what they want in reality is not just seo but a number of other services and this is what we offer them.</P><P>If we forget about the different titles for a minute and concentrate on the actual functions, it is clear that in order to succeed online you need to do much more than plain SEO. In the past SEO was enough but with the growing use of social media and mobile phones, if you want to have a proper online presence and get to your customers before your competitors then you need to have a solid <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/digital-marketing-vs-internet-marketing-what-is-the-latest-trend/">digital marketing strategy</A></B>.</P><P><B>Is SEO dead?</B> By all means NO, SEO is not dead and it will never be. The only difference is that now you need to take care more things and not only SEO. When I refer to SEO I am not talking about buying/building/exchanging links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings; this is not SEO but spam techniques made by spammers.</P><P>SEO is about building <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-a-high-quality-web-site-in-the-eyes-of-google/">high quality websites</A></B> that are user friendly but also understood by search engines.</P><P>You need to hire someone that is capable of promoting your business online by taking advantage of all available tools the digital World has to offer. It doesn’t matter if that someone is called an SEO consultant, Internet marketing expert or digital marketing manager; what it matters most are the skills and experience they have and of course the results they can produce.</P><P>When it’s time to make the decision for hiring a consultant or agency to promote your business online there are a few questions you should ask your prospective business partners.</P><B>What is their working experience with SEO and Digital Marketing?</B> – Ask for live examples, case studies or testimonials about their work.  In addition you can ask for how long they have been working online and details about their academic background, qualifications etc.<B>Ask for the techniques they will use to promote your web properties -</B> What SEO techniques they will use, how are they going to utilize all digital marketing components (content marketing, social media, email marketing, mobile marketing) and how will this benefit your company.<B>Ask about pricing</B> – How much you will have to pay for their services? Will they charge you a fixed cost per month or is it an hourly charge. Do they provide detail monthly progress reports so that you know where your money is spend? For more details you can also  read: <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-services-pricing-how-much-do-you-have-to-pay-for-seo/">SEO Services Pricing</A></B><B>Ask them if they can guarantee you first position on Google</B> – That’s a tricky question to ask but a good consultant will never guarantee that. For example what we guarantee and offer money back is increase in your overall website traffic but we never guarantee you first positions even if at the end we manage to do that.<B>Test the work before going full scale </B>– What we do in order to give a prospective client the opportunity to test our quality of work, communication and overall service is offer them to start our co-operation with our <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-packages/">SEO Audit Service</A></B>. This is basically a service that has a low one-time fee and the end result is a report describing the problems a website has, what needs to change and it is the first step for designing the overall digital marketing strategy customized for the needs of the particular company<B> </B><P>If they don’t offer such a service you can agree with them to do something that will not cost a lot of money (maybe ask them to do a competitor analysis report) but will give you an idea of how committed they are with deadlines and the quality of their work.</P><P>If you are living in a perfect World where everybody is knowledgeable about the latest trends in digital marketing then you should hire a Digital Marketing Manager. According to the theory that person or company should be in position to manage and take advantage of all digital marketing opportunities.</P><P>In the real World though not everyone is up-to-date about what is happening in the online World so they still use the term SEO to find consultants but what they actually need is a consultant that will do more than SEO i.e. a digital marketing manager.</P><P>For the purpose of speaking the language of the users some agencies (like our agency) still use the terms SEO for their digital marketing services.</P><P>Regardless of the terminology and titles what is more important at the end of the day is the result and benefit for your company from whoever consultant this is coming.</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reliablesoftnet/~3/HlWERsrarG4/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

Should you hire an SEO Consultant or a Digital Marketing Manager?

What is the difference between an SEO consultant and a digital marketing expert? When it comes to outsourcing your website to an agency whi...

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Make $3000 Per Month with Mobile Marketing

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.<br /><p><a href="http://legitbucksonline.blogspot.com/feeds/4492788661805650918/comments/default" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

Make $3000 Per Month with Mobile Marketing

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page. View the original article here

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5 Factors that Affect Your Social Media Marketing Success

<img alt="5 Factors that Affect Your Social Media Marketing Success" class="size-full wp-image-2987" height="263" src="/5-Factors-that-Affect-Your-Social-Media-Marketing-Success.jpeg" title="5 Factors that Affect Your Social Media Marketing Success" width="350"> Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50826105@N00/367200879/</P><P>Pew Research conducted a 2013 poll of Internet users and found that <a href="http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-detail.aspx" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://pewinternet.org']);" target="_blank" title="72% of all Internet users spend time on social media">72% of all Internet users spend time on social media</A>. Social media is on fire and it is no longer a question of whether your business should have a social media marketing campaign, but how to make that campaign as successful as possible. In fact, if you’re just getting started, you may already be behind the game. Lucky for you, the social media terrain is an ever-changing landscape. Although some of the older marketing tactics may still work, many others will not. If you’re just starting, you won’t have to unlearn bad habits. Instead, you can embrace these 5 factors and base your campaign around what works today.</P><P>You’ve probably noticed that nearly every business out there has a Twitter, Facebook and Google+ presence. But, simply having a presence isn’t enough. You must pay attention to how you are utilizing your social network if you want to see a difference over the long term.</P><P>You’ve probably heard it said that “timing is everything”. That statement is also true when it comes to utilizing social media to get the word out to your clients and potential clients. In <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-1/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://blog.kissmetrics.com']);" target="_blank" title="The Science of Social Timing,">The Science of Social Timing</A>, programmer and social media scientist Dan Zarella says:</P><P>“It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure.”</P><P>Within the detailed infographic that Zarella shares, markets see that around 80% of Twitter users are either in eastern or central time zones. What does this mean for tweeting? No matter what time zone you live in, you should base your campaigns on EST/CST.</P><P>In addition, what day you post news can have an impact. For example, Saturday is the busiest day for Facebook users. Each type of social media has a different rush hour. You can use tools like <a href="http://simplymeasured.com/free-social-media-tools" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://simplymeasured.com']);" target="_blank" title="Simply Measured">Simply Measured</A> and <a href="https://followerwonk.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://followerwonk.com']);" target="_blank" title="Follower Wonk">Follower Wonk</A> to gather analysis and discover who is using which social networks and when is the best time to share out your content.</P><P>Some things to keep in mind when deciding the best times to post to social networks:</P>Who is your target audience?What is their age range and how does that impact what time of day they are on the social media site?Is your post timely? If you are having a sale on Saturday, you probably don’t want to post about it on Wednesday, because in the fast-paced online world, it will be long forgotten by then.<P>If you’re in a rush and don’t have time to research right away, you can use Social Caffeine’s infographic for some rule of thumb times that are best to post to different social media sites.</P><B>Facebook</B> – 1 to 4 p.m.<B>Twitter</B> – 1 to 3 p.m.<B>LinkedIn</B> – 7 to 9 a.m. or 5 to 6 p.m.<B>Google+</B> – 9 to 11 a.m.<B>Pinterest</B> – 2 to 4 p.m. or 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.<P>Twitter limits users to 140 characters at a time and Facebook posts of 80 characters or less get <a href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-power-of-twitters-new-expanded-images-and-how-to-make-the-most-of-it" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://blog.bufferapp.com']);" target="_blank" title="66% more interaction">66% more interaction</A>. However, it can be difficult to get your marketing message across with so few words. This is where images come in handy, because after all, one is worth a thousand words, right? You can get the point across with a picture and the reader will remember it better and be more engrossed.</P><P><B>Images Increase Engagement</B></P><P>Images are proven to increase CTR and user engagement. In her article “7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page”, co-founder of Hello Code Belle Beth Cooper writes, “According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. And as we’ve mentioned before, self-explanatory photos seem to perform best.”</P><P>In addition, across different social media sites, images have a higher click-through rate, are shared more often and create a visual balance that draws the eye of those visiting your wall. An example is Google+, where images take up a large space and create a nice point of reference between the text posts.</P><P>You have several options for images. You can create your own images, use an image someone else has created or use infographics (most are open to be shared, because the creator has added a credit at the bottom and a link to his website). Some resources that might help:</P><a title="PicMonkey onclick=">PicMonkey</A> – If you have a photo that would work perfect as a background, you can edit it by using PicMonkey’s free resources.<a title="CompFight onclick=">CompFight</A> – CompFight offers the ability to search Flickr for creative commons licensed, high quality photos that are available to use as long as you credit the original photographer. Flickr Storm and Photo Pin also allow you to search for Flickr photos that are available for use.<a title="MorgueFile onclick=">MorgueFile</A> – Free amateur and professional photos you can use to create memes or advertising campaigns.<a href="http://www.coolinfographics.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.coolinfographics.com']);" target="_blank" title="Cool InfoGraphics">Cool InfoGraphics</A> – If you’d like to share an infographic on your social media wall, try this site for high quality, well researched infographics that can offer information that might entire someone to buy your product or contact you for additional information.<P>It is true that the “big three” in social media are Twitter, Facebook and Google+. However, this type of demographic can and does change on a dime. Remember when MSN communities were all the rage? How about MySpace? When was the last time you even checked your page over there? While it is smart to focus on the current social media sites getting the most traffic, add in up and coming and smaller networks as well. Think of your social media marketing plan like a pyramid. At the base are Twitter, Facebook and Google+. These are where you’ll spend the biggest block of your time. Just above those are:</P>LinkedIn – geared toward business professionals, this is not only a good place to get out news but to network with like-minded business people.Pinterest – a powerhouse of information for housewives and crafters. If your target audience involves women, you’ll want a presence on here.SlideShare – geared toward business people, but offers information in easily digested PowerPoint style format. This is one that is growing, so you’ll want to keep an eye on this and get started so you already have a foothold to take advantage of future growth. WHSR took a look at how to <a href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/using-slideshare-to-reach-new-customers/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net']);" target="_blank" title="use SlideShare to reach new customers">use SlideShare to reach new customers</A> and get new business (Mauro’s note: <a href="http://slidewealth.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://slidewealth.com']);" target="_blank" title="here's the ultimate resource to leverage SlideShare for your online business">here’s the ultimate resource to leverage SlideShare for your online business</A>).</EM><P>Nearly every social networking site started small, even Facebook and Twitter. It seems that something new comes along and web users are off and running, the word spreads and it is suddenly the next big thing. Instagram would be one example of a site that young people are using more than in the past. So, it is smart to stay up-to-date on what is new. Some ways to stay up-to-date:</P>Ask teens you know what the hot new sites are.Set up a <a href="http://www.google.com/alerts" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.google.com']);" target="_blank" title="Google alert">Google alert</A> to notify you when an article is posted about social networking or new social networking. You may not catch all of them, but the info will help you see trends.Understand that mobile use is growing, so new social media trends that incorporate a heavy mobile use are going to grow more quickly than those that do not.<P>How can you know if your campaigns are successful or not? The only way to know if your social media marketing is having an impact is to track it, study the results and make adjustments. Those who are committed to a social media presence need to understand that social media marketing does not equal instant gratification. It is about building relationships with users over a long period of time, showing them you can be trusted and gaining new customers because they trust you enough to retweet or share your posts.</P><P>What should you track and measure?</P><B>Engagement Metrics</B> – How many people like your posts? Are they being shared? Are you tweets retweeted? You can use sites like <a href="http://www.socialbakers.com/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.socialbakers.com']);" target="_blank" title="Social Bakers">Social Bakers</A> or <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.google.com']);" target="_blank" title="Google Analytics">Google Analytics</A> (Social Metrics).<B>Conversion Rate</B> – Are the posts doing what you want? If your goal is to get the social media follower to visit your website, how many are clicking through? Use your site’s traffic metrics, usually found in the Control Panel. Where is your traffic coming from? Use specific landing pages, so you know when a specific image was clicked on or a specific ad campaign had success.<B>Branding Success</B> – How successful you are at branding your business can have an impact on your conversion rates. Try to get your users tweeting a hashtag for your company, perhaps by offering a contest for those who use the hashtag. Use your company name in each thing you put out there. Reach out to customers. Ask for retweets and shares. Have a specific purpose in mind and a specific tag line and put it out there. If you find it isn’t successful, adjust it and track again. Repeat until you find a branding strategy that is successful and represents the core of your business.<P>Keeping up with a social media marketing campaign for just the big three can be an overwhelming task for most busy business owners. If you own a small business, you may not have a PR team to help with posts, contests and graphic creation, which means all that extra work falls on your shoulders. Analyzing how successful the posts are and adding smaller networking sites might seem impossible.</P><P>Consider getting some help with your social media marketing.</P><B>Hire an older child</B>. This offers tax breaks, gives the child his own spending money and teaches him valuable skills to use in a job or running his own company one day.<B>Enlist the help of a college student</B>. College students need internships to build their resume or portfolio before graduation. Consider enlisting the help of a graphic design student, someone studying marketing and PR or a journalism student.<B>Hire a social media specialist</B>. If you have a bit more money in your advertising budget, consider hiring a social media specialist to do some of the legwork in building your social media reach. In addition to freeing up your time, the specialist should be well-versed in new venues to market your product as well as the best times and methods to use.<P>The five factors above will affect your success rate with social media marketing, but probably the biggest factor to succeeding is being open to new ideas and new platforms.</P><P>If it is one thing, the Internet is fluid.</P><P><a name="_GoBack"></A>What works today might not work tomorrow. And what works after that might be an entirely new game. Talk to others in your niche market, <a href="http://www.blog-growth.com/how-to-increase-profit-with-smart-trick/" target="_blank" title="read marketing tips">read marketing tips</A> and be open to fresh advertising ideas.</P><P><img alt="Jerry Low" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2985" height="150" src="/Jerry-Low.jpeg" width="150">Jerry Low is a geek dad who is passionate about tech and Internet marketing. His website <a href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net']);" target="_blank" title="Web Hosting Secret Revealed (WHSR)">Web Hosting Secret Revealed (WHSR)</A> offers helpful web hosting tips plus tons of blog marketing guides. You can also get more from him on <a title="Google+ onclick=">Google+</A>.</EM></P><br /><p><a href="http://www.blog-growth.com/5-factors-affect-social-media-marketing-success/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-factors-affect-social-media-marketing-success" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

5 Factors that Affect Your Social Media Marketing Success

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50826105@N00/367200879/ Pew Research conducted a 2013 poll of Internet users and found that 72%...

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How to Get The Most Out of Your Marketing Dollars

<P><img alt="money" src="/money.jpg" title="money"></P><P>When I started out as a marketer 11 years ago, <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/">online marketing was easier</A> to leverage and more affordable. Over the years, the cost has drastically risen. From your pay-per-click ads to your expenses for organic marketing, costs continually rise.</P><P>For example, if you wanted to increase your search engine rankings five years ago, you would <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-link-building-chapter-7/">manually email sites begging for backlinks</A>, which was an affordable SEO tactic. Now, you have to spend your SEO dollars on content marketing, which is effective but more costly</EM>.</P><P>So, how do you get the most out of your marketing dollars? Well, you can’t cut your marketing spend because that will decrease the number of sign-ups you get.</EM></P><P>The real solution is to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/double-your-conversions-in-30-days/">increase your conversion rate</A>. Here are some things I’ve tested and learned from over the years.</P><P>As a business owner, you want someone to buy from you as soon as possible, right?</EM> Who wouldn’t?</P><P>Sadly, the web doesn’t work that way. People want to make sure that you are a reputable brand, that you are offering a good product or service and that you have a good price.</P><P>One way to increase your conversion rate is to get your visitors to engage with your product or service offering first.</P><P>For example, <a href="http://www.optimizely.com/">Optimizely</A> does a great job of this on its homepage: over 20% of its visitors put in a URL.</P><P><img alt="optimizely" src="/optimizely.png" title="optimizely"></P><P>Once you put in a URL, it takes you to a WYSIWYG editor where you can modify your website and run an A/B test.</P><P><img alt="optimizely editor" src="/optimizelyeditor.png" title="optimizely editor"></P><P>But before you can start your test, you have to pay. And because you have already invested the time into modifying your site through Optimizely’s editor, you are more likely to pay.</P><P>It works so well that roughly 12% of the people who use the editor end up signing up.</P><P>It’s not easy to come up with a solution that engages your visitors before they buy, like Optimizely did, but if you think outside the box, the possibilities are endless.</P><P>Did you know that you are more likely to get people to buy from you if you customize your offering to your customer? No one likes buying generic solutions. We all want products or services that are tailored to us.</P><P>A simple way for you to do this is to ask your visitors questions, like <a href="https://www.athleticgreens.com/">Athletic Greens</A> did.</P><P><img alt="athletic greens" src="/athleticgreens.png" title="athletic greens"></P><P>By asking your visitors questions and by sending them a solution that is tailored to them, you are more likely to get them to convert as customers.</P><P>I’ve seen similar results on Quick Sprout. I know many of you hate pop-ups, and I am working on fixing when they show up, but they are effective.</P><P>My old pop-ups collected around 150 emails a day, which wasn’t that great. But through <a href="http://www.bounceexchange.com/">Bounce Exchange</A>, I was able to ask you a question before asking for your email address.</P><P><img alt="bounce exchange" src="/bounceexchange.png" title="bounce exchange"></P><P>The difference was huge. My email collection rate has gone up to 500 emails a day.</P><P>Who says homepages have to be filled with tons of pictures and text? I’ve found that simple homepages tend to convert better, assuming you can come up with the right headline to describe your product or service</EM>.</P><P><img alt="quicksprout homepage" src="/quicksprouthomepage.png" title="quicksprout homepage"></P><P>The <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/">Quick Sprout homepage</A> converts at 32.6%. That means 32.6% of all visitors put in a URL… that’s not too bad</EM>.</P><P>We also simplified the <a href="http://www.hellobar.com/">Hellobar homepage</A> and achieved similar results. We took the old homepage, which looked something like this:</P><P><img alt="hellobar homepage" src="/hellobar.jpg" title="hellobar homepage"></P><P>And we tested a simpler variation that looked like this:</P><P><img alt="new hellobar homepage" src="/newhellobar.png" title="new hellobar homepage"></P><P>The result was a lift of over 40% in sign-ups.</EM></P><P>By creating a bigger top of the funnel, you will be able to run A/B tests faster and come up with more unique ways to convert your visitors into customers. Keep in mind that just creating a larger top of the funnel through a simpler homepage won’t necessarily increase the number of paid customers you are getting unless you optimize the rest of your funnel.</P><P>If you take a kid to a candy store, what happens? The kid doesn’t know what to get, and in many cases he or she becomes overwhelmed and confused as there are too many options.</P><P><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html?_r=0">A Columbia University professor did a study</A> in which she tested if more options lead to great sales.</P><BLOCKQUOTE readability="14"><P>In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.</P><P>Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.</P></BLOCKQUOTE><P>This study shows that offering more options isn’t necessarily the smartest thing out there. By reducing the number of options you are giving your visitors and by only offering them your best options, you are more likely to get them to convert into paid customers.</P><P>We did a test recently at <a href="http://www.kissmetrics.com/">KISSmetrics</A> in which we let users authenticate their accounts through Google. In other words, if you have a Google account, you can just click a button, and you will automatically be signed up for a KISSmetrics trial.</P><P><img alt="new kissmetrics homepage" src="/kissmetrics.png" title="new kissmetrics homepage"></P><P>What do you think happened to our conversion rate after that one simple change? Our conversion rate went up by 59.4%.</P><P>If you want to test using a 3rd party authentication, you can try using Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other popular service out there.</P><P>For example, <a href="http://bufferapp.com/">Buffer</A> lets you sign up to their service through Twitter or Facebook.</P><P><img alt="new buffer homepage" src="/buffer.png" title="new buffer homepage"></P><P>They also give you a LinkedIn and email option, but they don’t place much emphasis on them. This makes me assume that those options don’t convert as well.</P><P>Chances are most of your visitors have accounts on Twitter, Facebook or even Google. So, you might as well give them the option of signing up using their existing logins instead of creating a new one on your website.</P><P><a href="http://www.godaddy.com/">Godaddy</A> is notorious for this. But they have no choice as the domain business has low margins. Through <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/07/01/how-to-upsell-your-customers/">upsells</A>, however, they are able to increase their average order value.</P><P><img alt="godaddy upsell" src="/websiteseal.png" title="godaddy upsell"></P><P>If you notice, they tend to do this on checkout because customers are more likely to buy more from you right after they make their first purchase. If you drag out pushing your upsells, you’ll notice a drastic decrease in take rate.</P><P>For example, with <a href="http://www.crazyegg.com/">Crazy Egg</A>, a user is more likely to purchase an upsell (or upgrade) within the first 15 days of using the product. If we wait to show them an upsell offer till 15 to 30 days of them using the product, they are 813% less likely to take it.</P><P>If you are going to offer upsells and downsells, make sure you do it upon checkout. If you can’t do that, offer the upsells and downsells within the first 15 days of people being your customers.</P><P>Did you know that you have shopping cart and checkout abandonment? Everyone does.</EM></P><P>If 100 people visit your checkout page, it doesn’t mean you’ll have 100 new customers. There is a good chance that at least 50 of them, if not more, will end up dropping off.</P><P>So, what should you do?</EM> Capture partial sign-ups.</P><P><img alt="rejoiner homepage" src="/rejoiner.png" title="rejoiner homepage"></P><P>Through programs like <a href="http://rejoiner.com/">Rejoiner</A>, you can capture the names and email addresses of people who don’t fully complete the order. In other words, if they just enter in their names and emails but not their credit card details, Rejoiner can capture that for you.</P><P>By using programs like Rejoiner or by changing your checkout process to a 2-step, where the first step just asks for your customer’s email address, you can typically boost your conversion rate by at least 10%.</P><P>Once you have a list of all people who partially signed up, you would want to create an email drip sequence that convinces them to come back and complete the sign-up. You would also want to test remarketing to those users through <a href="http://www.adroll.com/">AdRoll</A>.</P><P>By focusing on conversion optimization, you can get more out of your marketing dollars. You just have to think outside the box and <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/05/02/7-ab-testing-blunders-that-even-experts-make/">start testing elements that aren’t as basic as button colors and text</A>.</P><P>The basics can get you a nice lift, but it’s the creative tests, like the ones above, that will really make a huge difference.</P><P>So, in what other ways can you get more out of your marketing dollars?</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/CvOKQ5-UkKE/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How to Get The Most Out of Your Marketing Dollars

When I started out as a marketer 11 years ago, online marketing was easier to leverage and more affordable. Over the years, the cost has d...

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When Concise Marketing Copy Converts Better

<P><img alt="marketing message" src="/marketingmessage.jpg" title="marketing message"></P><P>Have you ever seen one of those long sales pages that never end? I know I am guilty of <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/pro/">using them</A> because they convert well.</P><P>So, does that mean you should create long pages with tons of marketing materials? No!</EM></P><P>Why?</EM></P><P>Because concise marketing tends to convert better as long as you do it right. I found this out the hard way. <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/10/08/what-spending-252000-on-conversion-rate-optimization-taught-me/">After spending over $252,000 on consultants</A> to help me improve my long marketing message, I quickly learned through one A/B test that concise marketing copy can convert better.</P><P>When we first hired <a href="http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/crazy-egg-case-study/">Conversion Rate Experts</A>, one of the first things they did was to take our concise homepage and turn it into a long form sales letter.</P><P><img alt="crazy egg long homepage" src="/Crazy-Eggs-challenger-homepage.png" title="crazy egg long homepage"></P><P>The end result was a 30% increase in conversion rates. That’s not bad at all. When I first saw those results, and for years after, I assumed that you had to create long marketing copy to boost your conversion rate.</P><P>Why?</EM></P><P>With long marketing copy, you can answer any concerns or objections your visitors have, assuming you can retain their attention to read all of your messaging. For example:</P>We showed how <a href="http://www.crazyegg.com/">Crazy Egg</A> stacked up against Google Analytics and Clicktale because our visitors would continually ask us about that.We provided testimonials and a list of companies who used Crazy Egg because visitors wanted to feel we are a company they can trust.We provided results of a college study on our homepage to show the value of the product we were selling because our visitors wanted to know why they should buy our product.<P>We answered all of the objections and concerns above in our long marketing copy variation, which is why we saw the 30% increase. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make your marketing message concise and still boost your conversions.</P><P>We decided to run a test in which we would remove the fluff and make our marketing copy more concise. We didn’t try to tell any stories; instead, we got to the point explaining what Crazy Egg is and why you should sign up for it.</P><P><img alt="crazy egg homepage" src="/crazyeggnewhomepage.png" title="crazy egg homepage"></P><P>The new homepage was roughly 60% shorter in length, and it still answered the major concerns and objections visitors had. The end result was a 13% increase in conversion rate.</P><P>Last week, I tested out a similar strategy with <a href="http://www.kimberlysnyder.net/">Kimberly Snyder</A>. I took her long marketing message and shortened it. For the visitors who wanted more information on her product, we created a video that explained what she has to offer.</P><P><img alt="optimizely kimberly snyder" src="/kimberlysnyder.png" title="optimizely kimberly snyder"></P><P>This way if you are too lazy to read, you can get the information you need by watching and listening.</P><P>So far, the test results are looking good: her conversion rate is up by just over 40%.</P><P><img alt="optimizely results" src="/optimizely.png" title="optimizely results"></P><P>Video tends to work well, and we saw similar results with Crazy Egg. The important point is to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/08/13/how-to-create-an-explainer-video-that-converts/">focus on writing a good video script</A>. By including the 6 elements below, you can ensure that your video script converts well:</P>Start your video by stating what your company does.Explain the problem you are solving.Show off the features of your product or service or explain why it is so great.Tell people to sign up or buy.Answer any major objections potential customers may have.Use proof elements to seal the deal such as testimonials.<P>I’ve tested long and short marketing copy with 38 different companies and brands, and I have noticed one thing that seems to be a common trend. When a brand is well-known, it doesn’t need as much marketing copy as a new brand does.</P><P>For example, you already know what an iPad is. You are either going to buy it or you won’t. Hence, Apple can create short marketing messages like the one below and still make billions of dollars.</P><P><img alt="ipad homepage" src="/ipad.png" title="ipad homepage"></P><P>And what I found to be even more interesting is that brands with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter">high net promoter scores</A> (a high score means people love your product or service) can get away with even more concise marketing.</P><P>Just look at <a href="http://www.wordpress.com/">WordPress</A>. People already know all about the company, and they love the product. For this reason, it can have concise marketing copy and still have a high conversion rate.</P><P><img alt="wordpress homepage" src="/wordpress.png" title="wordpress homepage"></P><P>But when people don’t know much about your brand, you’ll have to create marketing copy that is longer. The reason for that is that when people aren’t familiar with your brand, they tend to have more questions and concerns. Through longer marketing copy, you can answer these objections.</P><P>As a general rule of thumb, if your brand is less than 3 years old, you’ll find that you’ll need longer marketing copy. You can find out what objections to answer within your copy by using <a href="http://www.qualaroo.com/">Qualaroo</A> on your site. And as time goes on, you can continually make your marketing message more concise.</P><P>The caveat to this rule is that if you are offering something for free, concise marketing typically converts better, no matter how new or old your brand is. And if you are selling something that is very expensive and considered an infrequent purchase, you’ll typically need longer marketing copy whether your brand is new or old.</P><P>People are tired of reading salesy marketing copy that is full of fluff. Try using a concise marketing message as it typically will save your visitors time and will boost your conversion rate.</P><P>There are a few tactics you can use to reduce your marketing copy:</P>List the use cases of your product or service. This way people will know right away if what you are offering is for them.Consider testing video as not everyone enjoys reading. If you <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/08/13/how-to-create-an-explainer-video-that-converts/">follow the steps in this blog post</A>, you’ll end up creating a high converting video.Get to the point by showing people what you are offering, how it works, and how it will solve their problems.Avoid using technical jargon. The more you can relate to your visitors, the better off you are.<P>So, what do you think about concise marketing messages? Aren’t you tired of reading those long sales pages? I know I am</EM>.</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/78ha30mkjoI/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

When Concise Marketing Copy Converts Better

Have you ever seen one of those long sales pages that never end? I know I am guilty of using them because they convert well. So, does that...

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25 Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

<P>Email is not dead, actually it is still one of the best ways to find new customers, make more sales or create a tribe of loyal followers. Small businesses either operating online or offline have a lot to gain form email marketing but yet many of them ignore it losing many opportunities.</P><P>Whether you are running an online shop, blog or services website, email is a great way to stay in touch with your current customers and one of the most efficient ways to convert potential customers to customers.</P><P>Many people believe that the growing use of social media altered the role of email as a powerful marketing tool but this is far from truth. Recent <B><a href="http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/07/email-marketing-stats.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">email marketing statistics</A></B> (July 2013) indicate that:</P><P>44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email.</P><P>7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week.</P><P>56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013</P><P>For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. </P><P>The core of every email marketing campaign is the email list and having a quality email list can make the difference when it comes to conversions and return from your campaign. Growing your email list takes time and effort and the following tips will help you do it correctly.</P><P><B>1. Give them different options – Make it easy to register</B></P><P>This is the first and perhaps one of the most important steps. You need to make it easy for people to register to your list. No need to ask for too much information (a name and email is enough) or to have long and cluttered registration forms.</P><P>Try to make it ‘single click’ i.e. people enter their name and email in the registration box and they click ‘Register’. Once they confirm their email, they are on your list.</P><P>If you want to take it a step further you can also allow people to register to your email list using their social media accounts. It’s easier for them and you also get to connect with them on social media as well.</P><P><B>2. Offer incentives – Why should someone register on your list?</B></P><P>Why should someone give you their email address, what is the benefit for them? Make sure that the benefit is shown clearly in the registration form/box. Are you going to help them with something, do they get free ebooks, discounts for their next purchase, coupons etc?</P><P><B>3. Position of the registration box does matter</B></P><P>Where you place the email registration box affects the number of people that will register on your list. Best practices include having the registration box:</P><P>Above the fold (i.e. in the part of the page that is visible without scrolling)</P><P>Top right sidebar – if are using sidebars then the top right is ideal for the email registration box</P><P>At the bottom of your articles – if someone reads your articles till the end then most probably they like what they are reading and are more likely to want to read more from you.</P><P>Footer – Another high converting place for email sign-ups is the footer. This is especially true for online shops and websites that have pages and not posts</P><P>Homepage top – Many popular websites and marketers use this method to get more email subscribers. Having the sign up form on the top of your homepage will generate more signups.</P><P><B>4. Give them info about what to expect and when</B></P><P>Tell your subscribers what kind of information to expect from you (new posts, infographics, coupons, offers, etc) and when (every day, every week, whenever you have a new post etc.). Be honest and try not to promise something you cannot deliver otherwise your email marketing efforts will fail.</P><P><B>5. Make it personal – Customize your messages</B></P><P>When you use a software or vendor to send out the emails spend some time and customize the messages that go out with each email. Try to make the registration process easy and inform the users what is happening at each stage. For example once they enter their name and email the first time, let them know that they need to confirm their email address in order to finalize the registration.</P><P><B>6. Make the text easy to read and scan and use alt tags for images</B></P><P>Don’t expect that people will read your email every time or that they are willing to spend too much time on it. The best practice is to assume that you have a couple of seconds to grab their attention (from the time they see the email) so work on your titles and the formatting of your email to make it easy to read but also scan.</P><P>Use headings and small paragraphs and if you decide to use images make sure that you also set the ALT tag since most email clients do not show images by default.</P><P><B>7. Use social media as the medium to get more email subscribers</B></P><P>Your website is not the only medium to increase your email subscribers. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and any other social network you are using to get more emails. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers to register on your list but don’t forget to also explain the benefits from doing so.</P><P><B>8. Don’t overdo it and don’t break your promises</B></P><P>Sending our more emails than promised will not necessarily generate better results. If you promised to send one email per week then do not start sending more but create a weekly digest instead. You can give them options to change their subscription preferences and get more emails from you but don’t break your initial promises.</P><P><B>9. Send them the info they need to read in the email</B></P><P>Yes emails are a great way to get more visitors to your website but when running an email marketing campaign to increase sales, you primary target is to achieve more conversions and not more visits.</P><P>For example let’s assume that you are selling online courses and you run an email marketing campaign using the targeted list from your blog. In the email you send out make sure that the subscriber can read everything they need about the course within the email and they only need to go to the website to make a purchase or read more reviews or further details.</P><P><B>10. Most emails are read on mobile </B></P><P>It’s no surprise that:</P><P>43% of emails are read over mobile devices and this is expected to rise to more than 50% by the end of 2013!</P><P>39% of marketers have no strategy for mobile email</P><P>The above statistics show two important things, first is that your emails should be mobile friendly and second that you need to have a mobile strategy. So, before finalizing your next email campaign make sure that it is tested against all major mobile devices (you can use mobile emulators to see how the email looks on different devices).</P><P><B>11. Monitor results and take corrective actions</B></P><P>Whether you are running an <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-build-a-successful-seo-campaign/">SEO campaign</A></B>, social media marketing or email marketing campaign it is important not to ‘set it and forget it’ but to run it, monitor the results (email open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, conversion rate etc.), take corrective actions and run it again.</P><P>This is a continuous process until you get the desired results. As you get more experienced you can also do market segmentations and pre-pilot and pilot phases but in the majority of the cases what is important is to perform some basic monitoring and control.</P><P><B>12. Keep an eye on your competitors</B></P><P>Register on your competitors email list and see what techniques they are using, what kind of emails they send out, how often, what kind of products they promote etc. Your intention is not to copy or mimic your competitor’s practices but to make sure that you are ahead of them.</P><P><B>13. Make it easy to unsubscribe</B></P><P>Don’t try to hide the unsubscribe button believing that this will keep someone on your list. It’s better to have them unsubscribed rather than have you on their spam list.</P><P><B>14. Create a content marketing strategy for your email marketing campaigns</B></P><P>You should clear out some basic concepts about marketing strategies. <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/difference-between-social-media-marketing-and-content-marketing/">Content marketing is not the same as social media marketing</A></B> and certainly not the same as an email marketing. On the contrary your email marketing campaign needs to have a content marketing strategy i.e. what type of content to deliver by email and when to deliver it.</P><P>In simple words make a plan on what type content you will send out in the next few months and ensure that it has a purpose and meaning, you can also use some of the <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-content-marketing-tips-for-beginners/">content marketing tips</A></B> to make your content more interesting for your subscribers.</P><P><B>15. Use email to make cross selling and up selling</B></P><P>If you haven’t already registered with Amazon.com, make sure that you do so and watch what they are doing with their email marketing strategies. When you view a product on amazon you will receive an email in a few days with similar suggestions and when you buy a product you will receive an email with more products to buy.</P><P>Maybe you don’t have the means to do this kind of analysis but if you get to know your list better, you will also understand your customers and niche.</P><P><B>16. Include your social media profiles in the email as well</B></P><P>I already mentioned that you should use social media to grow your email list, but you should also use your newsletters as a way to grow your social media profiles as well. The simplest and most effective way is to add the social media buttons in your newsletter so that your subscribers can share the content but also connect with you in the various social networks.</P><P>Besides that above tips that will help you increase your subscriber count, you can also learn from the mistakes of others and get better results by avoiding these common mistakes made by small business owners.</P><P><B>17. Not having an email list in the first place</B></P><P>This is silly to even say it but the first email marketing mistake is not having a list in the first place! There is absolutely no excuse for not maintaining an email list for your online business or website.</P><P>If you are reading this and have no email subscriber list yet, you now know the first thing you should do after you read this article.</P><P><B>18. Having a list but not sending out newsletters</B></P><P>Second mistake, it to keep a list and gather customer emails but never send them a newsletter or email. This is perhaps the most common mistake I’ve seen all these years and the excuse is always the same: “We were planning to send out a newsletter but never made it”.</P><P>There are no excuses, you have many benefits to gain from communicating with your customers or readers and if you can’t do it hire someone to do it for you.</P><P><B>19. Not offering incentives for signups</B></P><P>If you have a content driven website the incentive to signup is the content itself but if you are selling goods or services then you may need to give some incentives (i.e. discounts, special deals) for someone to sign-up.</P><P>Not taking the time to think about incentives and others ways to increase your email list is a major reason for not getting a good return from your investment.</P><P><B>20. Buying emails from other sources</B></P><P>Shortcuts do not bring results – this is true for almost all online activities. If you think that you can have success by purchasing emails from some site on the Internet then you are wrong. Try to grow your email list naturally and using white hat techniques and don’t get into troubles by buying email lists or false hopes.</P><P><B>21. Not asking for email verification</B></P><P>It’s an extra step but what is important for email marketing success is the quality of your email list and not the quantity. Better ask for email verification and get less subscribers rather than not using verification and be loaded with inactive email accounts.</P><P><B>22. Not following best practices for sending out the emails</B></P><P>When you want to send bulk emails you need to follow best standards and practices otherwise you will be considered a spammer.</P><P>For example you need to have your address in the email together with an unsubscribe button, you need to remind subscribers where you got their email address and you need to send both an HTML and text only version. These are just some examples, your email vendor should be able to guide you through the process.</P><P><B>23. Don’t use a vendor for sending bulk emails</B></P><P>It’s a mistake to try and send emails without using a vendor. Many people think that they can use outlook or Gmail to send bulk emails but this is far from recommended. As explained above there are many risks involved and it’s better to use a pro service that will protect you from making mistakes. Most email marketing companies have free packages for small businesses so cost is not an issue.</P><P><B>24. Not doing A/B testing</B></P><P>An email marketing campaign is far from static. Besides monitoring the performance you should also make several tests and find out which of them produce better results. A few examples of tests you can perform:</P><P>Time to send emails – What time/date converts better</P><P>Position of the signup box – What position of the sign-up box brings in more subscribers</P><P>Type of emails – Do plain emails perform better than emails with more text, headings, images etc.</P><P>Subject titles – Which titles have the bigger open rates (long titles vs short titles etc)</P><P>Use of images – When you use images in the email does it produce more clicks?</P><P><B>25. Not asking users to add you to their contact list</B></P><P>Last but not least, it is not bad to ask from your subscribers to add you to their contact list. This will ensure that your emails will not be considered as spam and you increase the number of people that receive your emails.</P><P>According to a statistic there are over 3.6 billion email accounts in 2013. Almost everyone online has an email address and it is still one of the most effective ways to contact and engage with your customers. Small businesses MUST have an email marketing strategy and take advantage of the many benefits a successful campaign has to offer.</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reliablesoftnet/~3/7-I1_M2S83w/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

25 Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Email is not dead, actually it is still one of the best ways to find new customers, make more sales or create a tribe of loyal followers. S...

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How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings

<P>We are constantly trying to solve the ongoing mystery of the future of search. Some people say <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/22/guest-blogging-and-seo-still-a-match-made-in-heaven/">guest blogging</A> is coming to an end, while others believe social media has now the bigger chunk of the pie.</P><P>Sadly, there is no single solution that will get you the results you are wishing for, which is why SEO has evolved to more than just link building and on-page optimization.</P><P>However, there is one strategy that will help boost your search engine rankings and online presence more than others. It’s called content marketing</EM>.</P><P>To help explain the importance of content marketing, I’ve put together an infographic to show you how content marketing impacts search engine rankings and how you can use it to help grow your business.</P><P>Click on the image below to see a larger view:</EM></P><P><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/06/how-content-marketing-affects-search-engine-rankings/?display=wide"><img alt="How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings" src="/howcontentmarketingaffectssearchenginerankings.jpg" title="How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings" width="480"></A></P><P><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/06/how-content-marketing-affects-search-engine-rankings/?display=wide">Click here to view an enlarged version of this infographic</A>.</P><P>If you don’t have the time to follow all of the advice in the infographic, there are two stats that are worth looking at:</P>Web pages that rank on page one of Google typically have 2,032 to 2,494 words. By making sure your web pages are filled with detailed content that users find useful, you are more likely to rank higher.Companies with blogs typically receive 97% more leads than companies without blogs. The reason for that is that content rich sites tend to get more back links and social traffic, which helps them generate more traffic overall.<P>So, what do you think about content marketing? As you already know from reading Quick Sprout, I’m a big believer in it.</P><P><STRONG>Embed This Image On Your Site</STRONG> (copy code below):<BR><div style="clear:both"><a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/06/how-content-marketing-affects-search-engine-rankings/"><img alt="How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings" border="0" src="/howcontentmarketingaffectssearchenginerankings.jpg" title="How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings" /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/06/how-content-marketing-affects-search-engine-rankings/">Quick Sprout</a></div></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/pO-fXO9aMDY/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings

We are constantly trying to solve the ongoing mystery of the future of search. Some people say  guest blogging  is coming to an end, while ...

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5 online marketing strategies for small business that work

<P>Online marketing strategies are no different than traditional marketing strategies when it comes to goals and purpose. Both types aim to increase brand awareness and find more customers for the particular company.</P><P>Online marketing or digital marketing as it is more widely known, has a number of components that cover every aspect of online promotion from content creation to delivery and sales. These components can be combined together and form 5 basic strategies that can be used by any type of online business to get more traffic and customers online.</P><P>Search engine marketing (SEM) is the first online marketing strategy you can use and it has two major components. First is SEO (<B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-search-engine-optimization-and-why-is-it-important/">Search engine optimization</A></B>) and second is PSA (Paid Search Advertising). In simple words SEO will help you get more organic visits from search engines for free while PSA can get you visits from search traffic but you will have to pay for them.</P><P><B>What is your goal with SEM?</B> Your goal with SEM is clear: get more visits from search engines either from organic search or through carefully designed and targeted PPC campaigns.</P><P><B>How:</B> To get more visits from search engines you need to make sure that your website is optimized for search. Things like your page titles, descriptions, web page speed, Google authorship, design and structure, incoming links, content freshness, ALT text for images and many more are important.</P><P><B>Tools:</B> There are many SEO guidelines you can follow and although each rule is important on its own, if you apply a number of rules together, that would produce better results.  You can use these 2 articles (<B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/5-on-page-seo-techniques-thatll-boost-your-rankings-checklist-included/">5 on page SEO techniques</A></B> and <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-tips-for-beginners-15-ways-to-google-boost-your-web-site/">SEO tips for beginners</A></B>) to guide you through the process and once you are done, you can <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-perform-a-seo-audit-of-your-web-site-checklist-included">perform an SEO Audit</A></B> of your website to ensure that it is in good shape before continuing with the rest of the online marketing strategies.</P><P><B>Tip: </B>When you make changes to your website to improve SEO, these changes will not be immediately taken into account by Google or other search engines. You have to be patient and monitor your pages for improvements in their ranking through <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-use-google-and-bing-webmaster-tools-for-beginners/">google webmaster tools</A> </B>(search queries report).</P><P>Normally after search engine marketing you can expect to find social media marketing or content marketing as the next online marketing strategy for small businesses but the increase in the number of mobile searches raises the importance of mobile marketing. As stated by Google, mobile marketing isn’t an option but it’s an imperative for every business. Some recent statistics about mobile usage re-enforce this statement:</P><P><img alt="mobile-statistics" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1458" height="346" src="/mobile-statistics.gif" width="600"></P><P><B>What is your goal with mobile marketing?</B> To provide your users with the best possible experience when browsing your website using their mobile devices.</P><P><B>How:</B> How can you achieve the ‘best possible experience’? First you need to make sure that your website looks good and usable when viewed through a mobile browser i.e. you need to have a mobile friendly version of your website. Second, you can also offer your users native apps to download (from the itunes store, Google play, amazon store, windows store) and install on their devices.</P><P><B>Tools:</B> If you are using wordpress you can easily create a mobile friendly version by either changing to a responsive theme or by using a plugin. I am using wp-touch pro on this website and I am very happy with the results.</P><P>If you are not using wordpress you can use services like dudamobile or conduit to create mobile friendly versions of your website.</P><P>Make sure that you understand the difference between a mobile friendly version of your website and a native app. A <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/mobile-web-site-vs-native-app/">native app is different than a mobile website</A></B> and you need to hire a mobile developer to build an application for the specific platform.  For example if you want to create an application for your website and have this application published on the Apple Store then you need to hire an apple developer to code the application and prepare it for submission to itunes.</P><P><B>Hint:</B> We also offer mobile development services at very competitive prices so <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/contact/">contact us</A></B> to discuss your next mobile project together.</P><P><B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-content-marketing-tips-for-beginners/">Content marketing</A></B> is the heart of every digital marketing campaign. Once you have a good foundation (that’s search engine marketing) and a good delivery platform that can cover all your user needs (that’s mobile marketing) then the next step is to take all actions needed to create content that rocks!</P><P>Content is what will create loyal visitors, comments, social media shares and most important of all sales.</P><P><B>What is your goal with content marketing?</B> To put it simply, your goal is to create high quality content that your readers want to read and try to convince readers to become customers or execute a call-to-action process (register to a newsletter, follow on social media, vote for a poll etc.).</P><P><B>How:</B> Before even creating content, whether it is an article, a video, a table or image, try to think how that particular content will benefit your readers or customers. Don’t just create and publish content for the sake of keeping a publishing schedule or to satisfy your desire to have something to publish.</P><P>In the past this technique of publishing mass amounts of content to trick search engines used to work but not anymore. It is more important to have less published pages but with good content rather than lots of published pages with low quality content.</P><P>Social media marketing is naturally the next marketing strategy for your business. You managed to have in your hands great content (from the previous strategy) so now it’s time to spread the word out and the best way to do that is through a well-designed social media marketing strategy.</P><P><B>What is your goal with social media marketing?</B>  Your social media campaigns should serve two purposes. First is to gain as many targeted followers so that your content and brand gets as much attention possible and second to get visits from social networks that will eventually convert into customers.</P><P><B>How: </B>You need to establish a good presence in all major social networks (Facebook, google+, twitter, Pinterest) by sharing useful related content on a regular basis and by engaging with people interested in your website, products or brand. Have a look at these 3 articles to get started: <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/10-social-media-marketing-tips-for-beginners/">10 social media marketing tips for beginners</A></B>, <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/15-social-media-mistakes-to-avoid-mainly-for-beginners/">social media mistakes to avoid</A></B>, <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-get-your-first-10000-fans-on-facebook-case-study/">how to get more followers on facebook</A></B>.</P><P>I know that it’s not an easy process to follow and it is rather time consuming to run campaigns on many networks at the same time but this is how online marketing works for small businesses these days and you have to do it too.</P><P>The good news is that social media traffic does convert (despite the initial believes a few years back that visitors from social media don’t become customers) and if you don’t have the time or knowledge to manage your social media presence, there are professionals (see <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-packages/">our seo packages for small business</A></B> for more details) that can do it for you.</P><P>Since we are talking about small businesses, I thought that it is more appropriate to have local SEO listed as a separate strategy because it is very important for them. <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/local-seo-checklist-for-small-business/">Local SEO</A></B> is a must for every company that has a physical address. Whether you are a doctor or florist, a mechanic or retailer, local seo can help you find more customers online.</P><P><B>What is your goal from local seo? </B>The goal from local seo is more than clear: to get high rankings for searches related to your area. When people search for <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/long-tail-seo-benefits-for-website-owners/">long tail keywords</A></B> with the addition of location in the query (for example: “divorce lawyers in las vegas”) you want your website to be listed in the top positions.</P><P><B>How:</B> There is no straightforward answer for that, as with any other SEO related question. What you can do is follow <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/google-seo-best-practices-how-to-keep-google-happy/">Google seo best practices</A></B> to ensure that Google will not penalize you for trying to cheat on their algorithm and <B><a href="http://www.reliablesoft.net/local-seo-checklist-for-small-business/">optimize your website for local SEO</A></B>.</P><P>While the 5 online marketing strategies explained above are great and can generate fantastic results, you need to also think outside of the box for even better results. For example besides search engines, mobiles and social media what are some other ways to increase traffic coming to your small business website? To be more precise here are some ideas that worked for some of my clients:</P><P><B>Chrome web store</B>: Registering your website as a web app in the chrome store can generate an additional flow of quality traffic coming to your site. I have used this method many times and the results are very good.</P><P><B>Slideshare.net:</B> For some niches slideshare is a great way to get traffic or even leads.</P><P><B>Direct Advertising on other websites:</B> Besides running PPC campaigns on Adwords and Facebook you can also try to ‘rent’ advertising space per month or other related websites. You can easily find related websites in your niche that offer advertising and contact the webmasters directly and ask for their rates. It will cost you less than PPC and with proper tracking you can evaluate the results and ROI.</P><P><B>Guest posting on high traffic websites:</B> Guest posting for traffic (and not for links) is a good way to increase your online reputation but also gain traffic from other websites. If the website you are guest posting on has a good social media presence then the benefits are even more.</P><P>Small businesses can succeed online if they follow proven techniques and practices. When you build your website the first thing that you should look at is search engine optimization. Once you get this right then you need to enhance your delivery channels by going mobile. After that you need to revisit your content strategy and ensure that you have content that matters and makes sense. Next in line is social media marketing that will help you to push your content to the world.</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reliablesoftnet/~3/V6wC_wiFvCc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

5 online marketing strategies for small business that work

Online marketing strategies are no different than traditional marketing strategies when it comes to goals and purpose. Both types aim to in...

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How to Find and Test New Marketing Channels

<P><img alt="testing marketing" src="/testing.jpg" title="testing marketing"></P><P>Do you remember when Google released AdWords? It was like the gold rush because companies were making millions of dollars from those ads.</P><P>If you fast-forward to today, <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-use-the-google-adwords-search-and-display-network/">AdWords</A> is still a great marketing channel, but it is more expensive due to its saturated marketplace. You won’t make as much profit from it now as you could in the past because all marketers know about it.</P><P>The same thing is happening with Facebook ads. It’s still a great channel, but it was much easier to make money from it a year ago than today.</P><P>This situation doesn’t just apply to paid channels either. There weren’t as many SEOs 5 years ago as there are now, which made it easier to rank high. Google eventually caught on and updated its algorithm to combat SEOs.</P><P>No matter how good of a marketer you are, it’s never easy to scale marketing efforts. Why?</EM> Because every good channel becomes used, and eventually abused, by marketers.</P><P>So, what are you supposed to do?</EM></P><P>All you can do is continually find and test new marketing channels. Sure, some channels will work better than others, but as you continually expand, you’ll see good growth.</P><P>Here is how to find and test new marketing channels:</P><P>Do you remember how fun it was to try new things as a kid? Experimenting with your marketing efforts is just as fun!</EM></P><P>What is marketing experimentation? It’s all about trying and testing new channels. You’ll never grow your marketing if you don’t constantly test new channels, whether they are paid, organic or partnership-based.</P><P>How can you find these channels?</P><P>The simplest way to do it is to spy on your competitors. From <a href="http://www.spyfu.com/">Spyfu</A> to <a href="http://www.semrush.com/">SEMrush</A> to <a href="https://www.whatrunswhere.com/">What Runs Where</A>, the possibilities are endless. All of those tools will show you what your competitors are up to.</P><P><img alt="hubspot analysis" src="/hubspot.png" title="hubspot analysis"></P><P>In addition to using the tools above, you should continually be monitoring what your competitors are doing. A simple way to do this is to enter your competitor’s URL through the <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/">Quick Sprout Analyzer</A> to see the breakdown of what they are doing from an organic and social media perspectives. You can even compare how you stack up against your competition. This analysis will give you a good idea of what you should be focusing on.</P><P><img alt="competitive analysis" src="/competitiveoverview.png" title="competitive analysis"></P><P>Lastly, a simple way to continually learn about new marketing channels is to read the following blogs:</P><a href="http://www.searchengineland.com/">Search Engine Land</A> – this blog covers all the news and trends of search engine related marketing.<a href="http://www.marketingland.com/">Marketing Land</A> – this blog covers the news and trends of the marketing industry.<a href="http://www.moz.com/blog">Moz</A> – you’ll learn about new strategies and tactics from this blog.<a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/blog/">Quick Sprout</A> – I tend to cover tactics as well.<P>When launching experiments, you should focus on speed. When it comes to money, ideally you don’t want to spend much. I typically try not to spend more than $500 per experiment. If your business has a lot of cash on hand, you can spend up to a few thousand dollars per experiment.</P><P>Experiments don’t always work out, which is why they are called “experiments.” A few of the marketing channels you test out will be instantly profitable, and the majority will be losing you money.</P><P>Out of the ones that will be losing you money, some will only be losing a small amount of cash because they would still drive a few paid customers, and some will be losing you a lot of money as they would bring no new customers.</P><P>The ones that don’t drive you any new customers can be cut off unless you feel that the channel is a viable strategy in the long run.</P><P>The growth strategy I use for paid channels is:</P>Increase the spend for profitable channels until they break even.Grow the channels that are losing a bit of money, but make sure you aren’t losing any more from a percentage standpoint. You typically don’t want to be in the red more than 5 or 10%.<P>As for organic channels, keep doubling down and don’t worry about ROI for at least 6 months. If you can’t do this, then come back to organic channels at some point in the future. Getting a ROI in a short period of time rarely works out.</P><P>Don’t put too much emphasis on learning each marketing channel. Your overall goal from a growth perspective is only to increase volume.</P><P>Now that you are getting a lot of traffic and sales from these new marketing channels, it’s time to optimize</EM>. Your goal is to keep the number of sales the same, while cutting the dead weight.</P><P>The way you would do this is by learning how to leverage each channel. You can find videos on <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/">Quick Sprout University</A> that will teach you everything from <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/category/paid-advertising-videos/">paid ads</A>, <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/category/seo-videos/">SEO</A>, <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/category/content-marketing-videos/">content marketing</A>, and even <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/category/social-media-videos/">social media marketing</A>.</P><P>For example, when I was helping Tim Sykes get more applicants to his <a href="http://www.timothysykes.com/millionaire-challenge/">millionaire challenge</A>, I created Facebook ad campaigns that drove signups.</P><P><img alt="tim sykes" src="/timsykes.png" title="tim sykes"></P><P>The overall goal of the advertising campaign was to generate fans of the page and then convince them to apply to the millionaire challenge through wall postings.</P><P>Although the campaign was losing around $5,000 a month, I quickly learned that over 90% of Tim’s students were males while I was spending 37% of his ad budget towards females.</P><P>I changed the targeting of the ads toward males only. This did decrease the number of new fans Tim received each day, but the number of millionaire challenge applicants stayed the same.</P><P>I also learned that most of his students were based in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. But a lot of his fans were coming from Asia. So, I adjusted the targeting to target fans only in the countries that drove applications. This again decreased the cost per new applicant.</P><P>From all of those changes, Tim’s Facebook campaign went from losing $5,000 a month to making him well into five figures in profit each month.</P><P>The way you optimize each channel is going to vary. You will have to keep playing around until you’re happy with the results.</P><P>As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, all good marketing channels become saturated…it’s just a question of “when.”</EM></P><P>To keep up, you have to continually tweak and maintain your campaigns. With paid advertising, costs will naturally go up over time, so you will have to remove keywords that aren’t profitable. Because people tend to have banner blindness, you will have to keep changing up your ad copy and images on a regular basis.</P><P>As for organic campaigns, you’ll find that they become more cost effective as time goes on. But the moment you let your foot off the gas pedal is the moment your traffic will start declining. So, you will have to <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/12/04/11-seo-changes-that-will-give-you-big-results/">continually think outside the box</A> and come up with techniques people haven’t used before.</P><P>The biggest mistake you can make is to leave your marketing campaigns on autopilot. You have to adjust them on an ongoing basis since marketing changes over time.</P><P>The reason a lot of companies stall in growth is because they aren’t continually finding and testing new marketing channels. If you dedicate at least 10 hours a week to growing your marketing campaigns, you will see your revenue and profit growing month after month.</P><P>Before you get started with this whole process, make sure you:</P>Test at least one new channel each week.Do not spend more than a few days to get an experiment up.Cut the channels that are losing you a lot of money.Spend roughly a month growing each channel before you move onto optimization.Spend roughly a month optimizing each channel before you move to the tweak and maintain step.Never stop tweaking and maintaining.<P>So, how do you find and test new marketing channels?</P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/AFF3UelrsK4/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

How to Find and Test New Marketing Channels

Do you remember when Google released AdWords? It was like the gold rush because companies were making millions of dollars from those ads. I...

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Make Money Online with GPT, Paid Surveys & Affiliate Marketing

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.<br /><p><a href="http://legitbucksonline.blogspot.com/feeds/5126232556740373848/comments/default" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

Make Money Online with GPT, Paid Surveys & Affiliate Marketing

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page. View the original article here

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7 Smart Ways to Combine Content Marketing with SEO for More Qualified Search Traffic

<P><img alt="peanut butter jelly" src="/peanutbutterjelly.jpg" title="peanut butter jelly"></P><P>Content marketing and SEO are like peanut butter and jelly. You can eat them on their own, and they are delicious…</P><P>But what happens when you combine them?</EM> They complement each other, right?</EM> That’s why peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are so common…the flavors just go so well together</EM>.</P><P>The sandwich is so popular that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_butter_and_jelly_sandwich">you are likely to eat 2,500 of them by the time you are 18</A>.</P><P>If you are trying to grow your qualified search traffic, you have to combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts. Running them as separate campaigns isn’t going to provide you with as big of a traffic increase as combining them into one campaign will.</P><P>And for you, large companies, this means you may have to restructure your organization so that content marketing and SEO are in one department.</P><P>Here are 7 smart ways to combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts:</P><P>One of the best sources of relevant traffic is Wikipedia. It ranks for almost every search term on Google, and it’s one of the most popular sites on the web.</P><P>I didn’t realize the power of Wikipedia until I listened in on a marketing presentation by <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/">Comedy Central</A>. They were discussing how they grew their traffic, mentioning that Wikipedia is a key part of their traffic acquisition.</P><P>How much traffic are they generating from Wikipedia? Over 100,000 visitors a month!</EM> That’s insane!</P><P>What’s even more interesting is that they noticed that the pages with links from Wikipedia tend to generate more backlinks from other sites as well.</P><P>So, how can you get more links from Wikipedia? Well, the easiest way to do it is through Wikipedia broken-link building.</P><P><a href="http://backlinko.com/seo-techniques">Wikipedia actually notes when links are dead</A> as this gives editors a chance to find a replacement.</P><P>This is what you have to do to find these links in Google:</P><BLOCKQUOTE readability="5"><P>site:wikipedia.org insert keyword</EM> “dead link”</P></BLOCKQUOTE><P><img alt="wikipedia dead link search" src="/deadlinksearch.png" title="wikipedia dead link search"></P><P>Next, click on a search result and find the phrase “dead link” on the page.</P><P><img alt="wikipedia dead link" src="/wikipediadeadlink.png" title="wikipedia dead link"></P><P>You can then take that URL, put it into <a href="http://archive.org/">Archive.org</A> and create a similar page on your site, assuming it is related to your business and your visitors would find value in the content.</P><P>Once you have created a similar page, you can go back to the Wikipedia entry and click the “edit” button on the top right.</P><P><img alt="edit wikipedia dead link" src="/editwikipedia.png" title="edit wikipedia dead link"></P><P>When editing, make sure you create a user account and edit other articles first. Wikipedia doesn’t want its users to just add links to their own sites. It wants its users to edit other entries as well and continue to provide value to the community.</P><P>If you want to get really advanced, take the URL of the broken link and place that URL into <a href="http://www.ahrefs.com/">Ahrefs</A> to get a full list of sites that are linking to the dead page. You can then hit each of them up, asking them to replace the dead link with the link to your site.</P><P><img alt="broken dead link building" src="/brokenlinkcheck.png" title="broken dead link building"></P><P>If you want to get the most out of this strategy, focus on creating pages that are highly relevant from a keyword and visitor perspective. It’s easy to get greedy with broken-link building, but the last thing you want to do is put up a hundred irrelevant pages just to get extra links.</P><P>You shouldn’t be blogging for the sake of it. You should be blogging based on what your visitors want to read as well as what keywords you want to target.</P><P>It doesn’t matter that most of your search data is “not provided”. You can actually figure out what keywords are driving you traffic by using data from these <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/12/30/how-3-simple-google-analytics-reports-will-increase-your-search-engine-traffic/">3 Google Analytics reports</A>.</P><P><img alt="3 google analytics report" src="/queries.png" title="3 google analytics report"></P><P>Once you have a list of keywords you are targeting, you can write content around them, assuming the topics also benefit your visitors.</P><P>I’ve used this strategy myself on Quick Sprout. Analytics showed that Instagram-related keywords produced sticky users, so I decided to write a blog post that discussed <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/11/19/the-science-of-instagram-how-to-get-more-followers-and-likes/">Instagram marketing</A>.</P><P>Within 30 days of releasing the blog post, I started to rank for Instagram-related keywords, and my overall traffic went up by 120,000 visitors a month.</P><P><img alt="instagram traffic" src="/instagramtraffic.png" title="instagram traffic"></P><P>The key to obtaining large volumes of traffic successfully with this model is to cross-reference the keywords you are writing content on with <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/">Google Trends</A>. For example, I will only write on topics that are trending up and to the right. If you write on topics that are dying down, you will see that those pages will continually get less and less traffic.</P><P><img alt="instagram traffic trend" src="/instagramtrend.png" title="instagram traffic trend"></P><P>You won’t get these kind of results all the time, but if you use this tactic enough, you will see big wins.</P><P>Just make sure you don’t keyword-stuff when using this tactic as it will hurt your rankings.</P><P>When Google was in its infancy, you could throw up any kind of content and get thousands of visitors to your site. Eventually, they got smart, and their algorithm was able to figure out how to rank high quality content and not show low quality content.</P><P>For this reason, you should focus on <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/">writing high quality content that is in-depth.</A> Why?</EM> Because an average content length for a web page that ranks on page 1 of Google is at least 2,000 words.</P><P><img alt="word count" src="/wordcountcontent.jpg" title="word count"></P><P><a href="http://moz.com/blog/what-kind-of-content-gets-links-in-2012">Moz also did an analysis to see if word count has a correlation with backlinks</A> as the more backlinks a page has, the higher it typically ranks.</P><P>Here is a breakdown of the number of blog posts they have written based on word count:</P><P><img alt="word count moz" src="/wordcountseomoz.jpg" title="word count moz"></P><P>And here is a breakdown of how many links those posts received:</P><P><img alt="link count moz" src="/linkseomoz.jpg" title="link count moz"></P><P>As you can see, there is a direct correlation between word count and the number of backlinks. For this reason, you should consider writing more in-depth articles as it will help increase your search engine rankings.</P><P>Plus, through Google’s In-depth Articles, you can increase your traffic by writing content that is more thorough. We were able to increase our <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/11/14/how-i-increased-my-search-engine-traffic-by-13-15-in-just-30-days-through-googles-in-depth-articles/">search engine traffic by 13.15% by leveraging the in-depth articles update</A>.</P><P>What we found is the increase came to pages that had an average word count of 2,183 words. Blog posts that were under 1,000 words didn’t see an increase in search traffic.</P><P>Once you are able to write detailed articles that are high in quality, you can then shift your focus to increasing the quantity. Till then, you should focus on writing more detailed content.</P><P>By using <a href="http://www.qualaroo.com/">Qualaroo</A> or <a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/">Survey Monkey</A> you can figure out why your visitors aren’t converting into customers. All you have to do is ask them questions like:</P>What else would you like to see on this page?Is there is a reason why you didn’t convert into a paying customer?What concerns do you have about the product or service?<P>By asking these and other questions, you can find all of the objections that are causing people to not convert. You can even ask your support team or dig through your support emails to figure out other objections your visitors have.</P><P>Once you have a list of concerns or questions your visitors have, consider creating an FAQ section that answers them. Doing this will help you start ranking for long-tail terms related to your product.</P><P>This won’t drive you a ton of traffic, but the traffic you do get will be highly relevant search traffic that converts. We use this exact strategy with our <a href="http://support.crazyegg.com/">Crazy Egg support section</A>, and we are able to drive an extra 4,108 visitors a month to our site. Roughly 82 of those visitors tend to convert into paying customers.</P><P>The more links you have, the higher your rankings will be. By having your content marketing team target industry-related blogs, you will build relevant links that drive relevant traffic.</P><P>I’ve guest-posted 61 times on 49 different marketing blogs. In those guest posts, I’ve linked back to internal pages of Quick Sprout when relevant, and I never used rich anchor text. By doing this, I not only increased my referral traffic, but I also saw an uptick in search traffic.</P><P>Within 3 months of doing this, I saw an increase in search traffic by 22.7% for the articles I linked to.</P><P>If you want to increase your relevant traffic, you should consider the following:</P>Guest-post on relevant sites only.Don’t try to manipulate search engines by linking to your site. Only link to your site when it benefits the readers.Avoid using rich anchor text.<P>In addition to following those rules, you should first watch this video as it will teach you <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-guest-post-within-the-google-webmaster-guidelines/">how to guest-post while staying within Google’s guidelines</A>. Once you watch that video, you should <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-pitch-elite-bloggers-with-your-guest-post/">watch this video on pitching bloggers</A> as it will help you get guest posts.</P><P>If you only focus your SEO efforts on driving traffic from keywords that convert, you’ll find yourself capping out on how much traffic you can get. By focusing on helping your ideal customers with their problems through your blog, you’ll get traffic from random search terms that are related to your industry, but don’t convert right away.</P><P>For example, at <a href="http://www.kissmetrics.com/">KISSmetrics</A>, our ideal customer is an Internet marketer who has a business that does 10 million dollars or more in yearly revenue. Although we are only selling an analytics product, our customers are also spending their time and money on other marketing initiatives like SEO and social media marketing. So, on the <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/">KISSmetrics blog</A>, we educate our visitors on topics like “<a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/steal-your-competitions-followers/">how to steal your competitor’s social media followers</A>”.</P><P>By doing this, we get additional 349,335 visitors from Google to our blog each month.</P><P><img alt="kissmetrics blog traffic" src="/kissblogtraffic.png" title="kissmetrics blog traffic"></P><P>A lot of those visitors are marketers, and they typically don’t convert right away. Usually, after the 3rd visit, these blog readers decide to try out our KISSmetrics product because they like our content. This has allowed our blog to drive anywhere from 49% to 72% of our leads in any given month.</P><P>We aren’t the only ones experiencing this either. <a href="http://www.moz.com/">Moz</A> also receives a large portion of its traffic from its blog content, which causes indirect conversions to its product.</P><P>Adding content to your site isn’t enough. You have to cross-link your content. When I did consulting for blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, and Gawker Media, I was able to increase their search traffic because I fixed their on-page issues.</P><P>The biggest one tended to be that pages weren’t cross-linked. When you have thousands of pages, and you eventually will</EM>, it’s impossible to create a site architecture that ensures all of your pages are indexed. This is why you have to cross-link your pages.</P><P>That’s exactly what we did for Mashable: we cross-linked its internal pages. Still to this date, Mashable uses that tactic, and it is the main reason why it ranks on page 1 of Google for terms like “Twitter”.</P><P><img alt="twitter rank" src="/twittermashable.png" title="twitter rank"></P><P>You too can get similar results as long as you cross-link your pages. Just be careful because if you make the links excessively rich in anchor text, it will hurt you. If Mashable internally linked to that Twitter page by only using the anchor text “Twitter” instead of using different texts for the link such as “click here”, it wouldn’t rank as high as it does now.</P><P>Although a good content marketer has a different skill set than a good SEO does, it doesn’t mean they should be working separately. By combining your content marketing efforts with your SEO efforts, you’ll find that you are able to increase your qualified search traffic at a faster pace.</P><P>Out of all the techniques mentioned above, my favorite one to leverage is the FAQ section. It’s not hard to do, and it can be used by all businesses. You don’t have to be a programmer either. You can easily create one through this <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-faq-manager/">WordPress FAQ plugin</A>.</P><P>So, in what other ways can you combine content marketing with SEO?</EM></P><br /><p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/KleX08B22Fk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">View the original article here</a></p>

7 Smart Ways to Combine Content Marketing with SEO for More Qualified Search Traffic

Content marketing and SEO are like peanut butter and jelly. You can eat them on their own, and they are delicious… But what happens when yo...

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