And so are your competitors.

Has your listing effort yielded any positive outcome? If so, congratulations. And if not, you’re probably in a highly competitive niche.

So, how can you stand out from the crowd and get more visible to your target audience? Start a business blog.

Chris Silver Smith is the president of Argent Media, a search marketing agency, and this is what he has to say about business blogging:

“The cool thing is, a great many local businesses still are not blogging, so use of it as a search engine optimization tactic is still something of a secret weapon. Here’s how.

Many local businesses in highly competitive categories have already done the straightforward things for optimizing their businesses to rank for local. They may have optimized their sites, obtained local citations and links, optimized their business profiles, finessed their Google+ Local (a.k.a. Google Places) listings, encouraged customer reviews, and more.

Since all these businesses are doing essentially the same activities, they end up barely trumping the listings just below them in Google Local search results, and they may be frequently jostling, month after month, for the same slots.

But, if one of them begins blogging consistently, that business may rapidly become top dog, accruing advantages that the non-blogging businesses lose out on. It gives some distinct advantages, and can become a secret weapon that may allow the first company using it to develop a lead that the others might not quickly imitate.”

The good news is that, with a viable plan, business blogging shouldn’t be difficult to initiate.

Dominate your local search with a blog by following the tips below.

1. Discover What Your Potential Customers are Searching for

Keyword research is vital to creating content that meet the needs of your potential clients. It’s like getting into the minds of your target audience to discover their pressing problems.

According to Michael Brenner, Author of B2B Marketing Insider, “I often talk about the importance of putting our audience at the center of everything we do and creating customer-focused marketing plans. Keyword research is fundamental to that process because it allows marketers to get inside the minds of our buyers – not just in understanding what they’re looking for, but the actual words they’re using. Magic happens when businesses create content that maps directly to their needs and uses our buyers’ own language (keywords).”

Keyword research involves the use of specific tools to find out the search terms that people utilize for seeking information about their needs. Through keyword research, you’ll be able to discover what your potential clients are searching for, and the problems they’re yearning to solve.

This will enable you to create articles that are tailored to their wants. Instead of writing articles that you deem will be of interest to your potential customers, keyword research will empower your to create blog posts that resonate with their predicaments, and make them feel that you understand them perfectly.

Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool is a popular and widely used tool for conducting keyword research. And it’s free.

If you’re a dentist, for example, and you decide to conduct keyword research in order to discover what your target audience are searching for about your products or services.

Start by typing the name of your service, such as “teeth whitening” in the search box. Hit the search button. And wait for the result to load. Next, click on “Keyword ideas” below the search button.

The output will be a list of various search terms that people use to seek information about “teeth whitening”. Take a look at the screenshot below. There are about 800 keyword ideas, and the number of local monthly searches per keyword on the right column.

With these numerous search terms, the sky is the limit to the number of articles you can publish on your blog. Not only that. Embedding the keywords in the body of your articles – you’ll learn how to do that below – will help your blog rank appropriately, and increase your visibility on search results.

2. Develop an Editorial Calendar

One of the challenges of blogging is the regular creation of content. Ideally, a blog should be updated regularly – daily, weekly or monthly. Particularly, if you have lots of article topics that you intend to cover.

Once you’re able to gather a list of targeted search terms through keyword research, you may become overwhelmed by the number of potential article topics at your disposal. This is where an editorial calendar becomes crucial.

An editorial calendar will help you develop a clear schedule for your blogging tasks. You’ll be able to outline your activities either on a daily or weekly basis on the calendar.

For example, you may decide to publish an article on Monday, another one on Wednesday, or however you deem suitable to your schedules. The idea is to help you have a blogging plan that will allow you to update your blog with relevant content consistently.

The beautiful thing about having a calendar is that, once it’s developed, you’ll have substantial time to concentrate on other important areas of your business, while following your blogging plan on the calendar.

3. Create SEO-friendly Content

specific search terms that you want your website or web page to be known for. To help Google rank your articles appropriately, it’s essential that you add relevant keywords to your articles. This is where SEO content creation comes in.

SEO content writing is a way of embedding specific keywords in the body of an article. The number of keywords allowed is 2-5. Going beyond that can lead to penalization by Google.

Ideally, include a keyword in your article’s headline, one in the first paragraph, two to three in the body of the article, and one in the last paragraph. This will tell Google what your article is about, and help it rank your post properly.

If you want to write an article about plumbing in LA, for example, strive to add the keyword – plumbing in la – in your article using the above tips. Google will rank the article for that keyword. And when someone conducts a search using “plumbing in la”, your article has a higher chance of showing up on search results.

When you start updating your blog with helpful articles, and incorporate relevant search terms within the articles, it will increase your business’s visibility on search results. Additionally, if you use images a lot on your blog, ensure that you name the images with appropriate keywords.

4. Integrate Calls to Action in Your Content

Creating valuable content on your blog is one thing, encouraging readers to take action is imperative for your business.

A call to action is simply a few sentences that encourage readers to take specific actions – leave a comment, click a link to a certain page, share an article on social media sites, send an email for more information about a product or service, or call a certain number for inquiries about your offers. And any action that you deem vital for your business.

Blog readers will be inclined to take any action that you want them to take if you provide them with useful content that can help them solve their problem. Include a persuasive call to action at the end of every piece of content that you create on your blog.

Following are some examples of calls to action that you can add to your articles:

Call us now to claim your free plumbing report

Contact us today for a free consultation about your teeth

Get your teeth whitened today by scheduling an appointment with Dr. Joe.

Get your business listed on the top spot of local search results by calling us on

833 456 7758.

This is just to give you a glimpse into how to craft compelling calls to action at the end of your blog posts.

5. Convert Your Readers into Subscribers

When potential clients reach your website or blog via search engines, chances are they are interested in your products or services. They may not be ready to buy instantly, but might want to get more information that can help them make a prudent buying decision.

You can help them in this situation by converting them into subscribers. It will allow you to stay in touch with them, and send them valuable information regularly. And when they’re ready to buy, they may look nowhere else but to buy from you.

But how do you convert readers into subscribers?

First of all, you’ll need an email subscription form to capture the emails of your readers.

To get their contact information, offer a free gift – report or ebook, free subscription or consultation for your products or services – in exchange for their email addresses. Make the subscription process easy to increase conversion. Request for a few information such as the first name and email address, or the email address alone.

Once your readers become subscribers, you’ll be able to provide them with valuable content that can help improve their lives or businesses. And consequently, convert them into customers.

In addition to getting your business listed on various local search directories, business blogging is another powerful tool that can be used to increase your brand recognition. The above tips will help increase your local visibility, attract potential customers, improve the SEO of your website, and make you stand out from the competition.

If you have developed and implemented a social media marketing strategy but failed to yield any good result, chances are you’re doing something wrong.

The following are common social media marketing mistakes that most marketers make and how you can rectify them.

1. No Editorial Calendar

If you really want to achieve your content marketing goal, you should create an editorial calendar for your social medial marketing plan. An editorial calendar will allow you to schedule your marketing strategy. You’ll be able to come up with lots of marketing ideas that you can implement with the passage of time.

An easy way to create a social media marketing editorial calendar is by merging it with your blogging schedules. Your blog posts will serve as the topics to be discussed on your social networking outlets.

For example, if your products or services target new mothers, and you publish an article about the health benefit of breastfeeding, the article topic can serve as the theme for discussion on your social networking sites with a link pointing back to the article on your blog.

Furthermore, don’t base your editorial calendar on the content that you create. Include relevant and valuable content from other people that you deem your readers will find useful.  

2. No Update of Blog and Social Network Accounts

Your blog is an integral part of your social media marketing plan. The more you update your blog, the more you’ll have to discuss with your followers on your chosen social media sites.

Update your blog with relevant and valuable content regularly. Admittedly, creating the same content format can be daunting. For this reason, create and publish various content such as articles, videos, audio files, case studies, ebooks, white papers and podcasts. You’ll have more content to publish and share with your followers.

3. Pushing Products or Services to Followers

Ideally, social networking sites are meant for building relationship with customers and potential clients. This takes a lot of time and effort to achieve. One of the things that can discourage people from following you on social sites is when you push your products or services to them.

Your followers expect you to provide value for them by giving out helpful information that they can utilize to improve their lives or businesses. Quit pushing your offers and start providing value for your followers.

4. Not Listening to Followers

To find out what your customers and potential clients really want, it’s crucial that you listen to them. Besides sharing valuable information with your followers, listen to them, too. It will allow you to discover the problems they want to solve and help you create content that’s tailored to their needs.

Answer your followers’ questions as soon as possible. Delaying to provide answers to their questions or inquiries may demonstrate that you’re only interested in making money but not to help. This might make them stop following you.

5. Not Tracking Performance

Obviously, there are several social networking outlets on the Internet but not all of them are effective. Track the performance of your chosen networking sites to discover the most effective ones. Instead of wasting your precious time on all of them, you’ll be able to focus on the efficient ones and discard the ones that prove ineffectual.

Link your social networking sites accounts with your website analytic tool. It will help you track the performance of each social site. Ask your web master to help you with this.

Like any other business task, there are right and wrong ways of utilizing social media for marketing your business. If you’ve used several social media marketing tactics under your belts but failed to record any positive result, the above tips may help you reap good results for your efforts.

Image credit: libeltyseo.com

A lot has been written about ways to improve the rankings of websites on search results. The amount of information on this topic alone can be so overwhelming that you’d not know where to begin.

Ranking on search results should not be that difficult. Google has a set of criteria that it uses to determine the rankings of websites or web pages. Implement these standards on your website and you’ll see a dramatic improvement of your site’s rankings.

Following are five crucial factors Google wishes you knew about ranking on search results and how you can implement them on your website.

1. Create Valuable Content

The quality of content that you publish plays significant role in your site’s rankings. Google has ways to determine how valuable your content is. One of the ways is the amounts of time that your target audience spends on your website or web pages. In other words, it tracks the number of minutes that people spend on your site. The higher the time spent on your website the better. This reduces your site’s bounce rate and improves your rankings.

Besides that, Google craves content all the time and favors websites on which regular content are published. By creating and publishing valuable content that meet the needs of your target audience, your readers will not only consume your content but will go a step further to share it with their peers who might find it useful. As a result, your content may be linked to from different platforms.

2. Use Relevant Keywords

One of Google’s main goals is to provide searchers with relevant search results based on the keywords that they use for seeking information. Unfortunately, Google cannot rank a website or web page appropriately without the use of keywords.

This is where the usage of relevant keywords becomes crucial for better ranking. By adding your target keywords to your website or web pages, Google will be able to rank your site or web pages appropriately.

For every piece of content that you create, ensure to add relevant keywords that your target audience will likely use when seeking information about your products or services.

3. Build Quality Backlinks

One of the criteria that Google uses to rank websites or web pages is the number and quality of links pointing to your site or web page. Links to a site are like votes from various sources. The higher your site’s backlinks, the greater its chances of ranking better on search results.

There are many ways to build backlinks to a website but Google doesn’t consider all of them as legitimate. So strive to build quality backlinks that will help propel your site or web pages to the top spots of search results.

One of the ways to generate quality links is through guest blogging. The best thing about this link building strategy is that it’s extremely efficient and yields quick results.

The concept of guest blogging is simple. You contact website owners that are relevant to your niche, propose to contribute to their blog by writing valuable articles for them. In your guest articles, you’ll be allowed to add a few links – 2 or 3 – pointing back to your website or desired web pages.

To get the most from guest blogging, write as many guest articles as you can. It will increase your chances of ranking better on search results.

4. Vary Your Anchor Texts

Anchor texts are a vital part of link building strategy. The words or phrases that are clickable on web pages are called anchor texts. Another factor that Google considers for ranking websites or web pages is anchor text. Ideally, your anchor texts should tell what the page being linked to is about before the reader even gets to the page. It will allow Google to rank your site or web page for the right keywords. For this reason, utilize your target keywords as anchor texts when building links to your website.

Remember, vary your anchor texts to give your links maximum ranking power. For example, if your target keyword is dog breeding, vary the keyword as follows: dog breeding lessons, dog training, pet training, train your dog, dog training tips, dog rearing or dog breeding tips. You get the idea? It will help make your links look natural to Google.

5. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

The fact that you’re required to add relevant keywords to your site doesn’t mean you should overload it with keywords without creating helpful content. Google frowns at deceitful SEO practices. And keyword stuffing is one of them.

Keyword stuffing is simply a way of tricking Google’s algorithm to rank a website or web page for certain keywords. It might work initially but will definitely be detected later. When this happens, your site may be blacklisted and disappear on search results. Don’t let this happen to you. Add your target keywords to your website and content at reasonable amounts. This should be 3-5 keywords per a web page. More than that can spell disaster for your rankings.

Google aims at making life easy for its users by providing them with relevant search results that meet their needs. Help Google achieve its goal by implementing the above tips on your website, and you wouldn’t have to worry much about your site and web pages positions on search results. Even when Google decides to roll out its regular updates.

Image credit: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/start

If you’ve done all you can to get comments on every single article that you’ve written but no positive results, chances are you may be doing something wrong.

Why Should You Worry about Comments on Your Articles?

Comments on blog posts can help increase your audience. Comments make your readers want to come back to your blog to consume your content. Through comments, you’ll be able to connect profoundly with your target readers and build a strong relationship with them. Plus, comment sharing will help you generate lots of article ideas that you’d not have imagined. Can you now see the importance of comments?

Now, the following are the three possible reasons your readers don’t comment on your articles and how you can rectify that.

1. Lack of Engaging Content

One of the factors that will motivate your readers to leave comments on your articles is how relevant and engaging the content is. Relevant content is one that your target audience finds educative, useful, interesting and engaging.

You’ll increase the likelihood of readers leaving comments if your content is relevant and tailored to their interests. Starting from the headline, write compelling headlines that will pique the interest of your potential readers.

Ask intriguing questions in the introductory paragraph to hold the interest of your readers. The questions will stimulate their curiosity and encourage them to consume the rest of the article. Not only that, they might come up with an answer and still decide to read further to compare their answers with yours – the writer. Once they make it to the bottom of the article, they may want to share their outlook about the topic being discussed and consequently, leave comments.

2. No Calls to Action

When you readers finally make it to the bottom of your article, they are likely to share their views about what they’ve consumed. This is where a call to action becomes crucial. Encourage your readers to share their thoughts about the topic being addressed by adding compelling calls to action at the end of your articles. Make them know that other people might benefit from their insights. This will motivate them to leave comments before they exit your website.

3. No Response to Comments

Beyond the number of comments that your articles receive, replying to the comments may encourage new readers to consume your articles in their entirety in order to find out why the articles received lots of comments. They may want to be a part of the community of commenters by leaving intelligent comments with the aim of getting a reply from you.

If your readers us their names in their comments, mention it when you’re replying their comments. It might motivate them to become regular readers of your articles, and as a result, turn them to habitual commenters.

Comments on articles are a good indication of how engaging your blog is, and shows the type of people that frequent your website. Your readers have the potential to create a community of their own on your blog through comment sharing. For these reasons, strive to initiate comments by including compelling calls to action at the end of every piece of article that you create.

Image Credits: blog.ribbun.com

When you’re finally able to win your potential clients heart and convert them into customers, it will be appropriate to make them come back for your offers again and again to sustain your income and profits. That is the concept of this article. You’ll learn how to turn your buyers into repeat customers.

The following are the six ways you can retain your customers and keep them buying from you all the time. Happy retention!

1. Create Room for Feedback

Allow your customers to speak out their minds about their issues and their experience with using your products or services. Take note of frequently raised issues to identify the area of your offers that needs improvement in order to resolve the complaints. An improved product or service might lower discontent and increase customer satisfaction. Furthermore, you can turn a regular complain into an in-depth article. Should similar questions ensue in future, you’ll be able to refer customers to the article.

2. Address Your Customers by their Names

Customers like to be recognized by their names. It makes them feel valued by your company. Something as simple as mentioning their names in your communications will increase their likelihood of doing business with you again. To get their names, set aside in the sign up form a space for collecting first names of subscribers in addition to the email address. It will allow you to personalize your newsletters and communication messages.

3. Provide Good Customer Service

One of the factors that will keep your customers coming back to do business with you is the quality of your customer service. No matter how perfect your products or services are, some of your clients will still have a few questions to ask you. The promptness to answering their questions or resolving their issues will help boost your brand’s credibility and establish strong relationship with your clients. Once in a while, test your customer service by calling up the person in charge using a pseudo name. It will allow you to identify the efficiency of your customer service. Also, you’ll be able to discover areas that need to be improved.

4. Improve Your Offers

Based on the feedback that your customers give about using your products or services, try to modify your offers to meet their needs. Add new features to your products or services and improve their functions. And let your customers know that you’re doing it for them. It will help strengthen your relationship with them.

5. Involve Your Employees

If you’re the owner of a business with several employees, it may be difficult for you alone to deal with your clients. This is where employees become a key part of a customer retention plan. Offer your employees incentives for good customer relation. This could be gift cards, customized T-shirts or any substantial item that you deem they will appreciate. Additionally, let them know the value of every single customer to your business. This will motivate them to build good relationship with your clients.

6. Keep Your Customers Updated

Demonstrate your thought leadership to your customers by providing them with updates about the happenings in your industry, such as trends, innovations, and news. Share your outlook about the occurrences, how it might affect your customers, and what you think they can do about it.

Customer retention can help sustain your business income and profits. Like acquiring new clients, put customer retention in the top priority of your marketing plan. Strive to make your clients as happy as you possibly can and they will have no choice but to stick to your brand. A happy customer is more likely to come back to do business with you.

Image Credit: macewen.ca

Whatever the case may be, below are six effective methods of generating leads for your business with some brief tips and advice about each of them.

1. Lead Generation Companies

This is one of the fastest ways of building a database of buyer leads. Lead generation companies are set up exclusively to gather leads and sift them into different categories according to their industrial interests.

Allocating a portion of your marketing budget for generating leads through companies like this can be one of the wisest business decisions you’ll make.

The truth is, it’s really difficult to know which lead generation firm will be competent. But when you finally make up your mind to contract a company, emphasis on the following points before you sign any agreement, so that you can get value for every dime you spend.

• Find out more about your chosen company. Check their reputation and proven track records from their previous clients. You’ll find this on the testimonial page on their websites. Any testimonial without the contact address or website of the one giving it is not legitimate. A company should allow potential clients to contact their previous customers for inquiries about their products or services.

• Let your chosen company know much about your product or service to identify the information they will require to provide you with the perfect leads. Remember, there are two different types of leads, one is called B2C meaning business to consumer, and the other is known as B2B meaning business to business leads. Knowing the type of product or service will help the lead generation firm determine which category you fall into.

• Don’t spend so much time on one company alone. Get a list of 2-5 companies and compare their services, prices, customer relationship policies, performance tracking tools and any other relevant information that will help you track the efficiency and performance of their services.

• Be wary of companies that promise you quantity of leads over quality. These types of companies don’t focus on highly targeted leads. Quantity doesn’t guarantee more sales or profits. It is the quality of leads that matters most. If you have a few number of responsive and buyer leads, it’s better than hundreds of leads that hardly respond to any marketing offer that you send them.

• Ensure that companies use legal and ethical means for generating leads without violating the anti-spam law.

2. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

This revolves around keyword research, search engines and the search terms potential clients may use to find your products or services when seeking information about their needs. PPC ads drive targeted traffic to a website and have higher chances of converting them into buyers.

This is because it targets potential search terms that your prospective clients are likely going to use for searching for your products or services. It’s so effective that it increases your business visibility and brings it to the limelight of your target audience.

One of the factors that makes this method different from the rest is that you only pay per a click by a potential client, instead of making an upfront payment for a service and waiting for a while before seeing any result.

You can use a variety of keywords for a single website thereby increasing your chances of driving massive qualified traffic to your site. And it’s very easy to measure its performance using web analytic tools.

Like lead generation firms, some companies specialize in PPC and have excellent skills for managing advertising campaigns for clients.

To get started, set aside a percentage of your marketing budget for this type of lead generation. Target a handful of keywords that are relevant to your products or services. Track the performance of the targeted keywords, leverage on those that prove effective and discard those that perform poorly.

Check the useful resources below to educate yourself more about PPC Advertising –

1. http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-ca/support-center?S_INT=270

2. http://advertising.yahoo.com/search/

3. http://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en

3. Classified Ads

Classified advertising is another great way to generate buyer leads for your business. The keys to success in using this method are: Placing your ads on the right medium for the right products or services in the right category. And how compelling and persuasive the ads are.

The ads text must capture the interest of your potential clients immediately they set their eyes on it. The main aim is not to sell on the platform but to entice people to visit your website for more information about your offers.

People have their preferences when it comes to the type of content, websites, news papers and magazines they read. Leveraging this phenomenon to diversify your classified ads placement will help you reach many of your potential clients.

Below are some websites where you can place your ads for free. This is meant to help you grasp how things are done on these sites so that you can expand your reach on more competent ones.

• Webcosmo.com
• Ecki.com
• Backpage.com
• freeadlists.com
• Boconline.com
• Usfreeadscom
• classifiedads.com
• Trafficswarm.com
• Sellyourbargains.com
• Sell.com
• Jihoy.com
• Freeadvertisingforum.com
• Classifieds.yahoo.com
• Classifieds.excite.com

4. Advertising

This is the oldest method of marketing. It may be less effective these days as before but it may still drive substantial amount of traffic to your business, and convert them into buyer leads. A lot of buying decisions are motivated by powerful advertising messages on the Internet. Also, it can be used to build brand recognition.

Tips for a good advertising initiative: place your ads on highly targeted platforms such as blogs, social networking outlets and publications where your target audience frequents. Contact website owners with email subscribers that comprise your prospective customers for ads placement in their newsletters, with a few links pointing back to your website.

5. Referrals – Leverage Your Existing Customers

This is simply a recommendation of your products or services to new clients by your satisfied customers. It can be done freely, or with an incentive attached to it. Either way can be used to achieve the same goal.

If implemented effectively, this strategy can serve as a steady stream of customers. Referred clients are very easy to market and sell to. They are cost-efficient and loyal. Also, they have the tendency of buying in larger quantities, negotiate less and refer more potential customers to you.

Don’t be afraid to ask your present clients to refer your products or services to their associates. It doesn’t hurt to politely ask a customer for referrals.

If you decide to reward clients for any referral, the incentive can be anything from gift certificates, shopping vouchers, discounts on any or a number of products, free tickets to special events or programs.

Communicate about your referral program to create more awareness, and encourage your current customer base to participate.  Include this in the package of products or services you offer new customers to make it an ongoing marketing system instead of doing it occasionally.

Another powerful way to take full advantage of referrals is to identify and team up with a non-competitive business or company who are targeting the same audience as you, and encourage them to refer you to their customers. Offer them incentives for this if possible and you will be amazed at the rate of conversion.

6. Content Marketing

This is the creation of valuable content tailored to helping your potential clients solve their pressing problems or meet their needs, and subtly introduce your products or services without sounding too pushy. Content marketing does not only help generate leads but also helps to sustain clients through the quality of information that you produce on a regular basis.

The type of content mostly used in this strategy include blog posts (articles), videos, ebooks, white papers, inforgraphics, case studies, podcasts, webinars, newsletters or email marketing. The content can also be distributed on various platforms and directories, and consequently, increase your brand awareness.

If you optimize every piece of content that you create, it will rank appropriately on search results, drive organic traffic to your website and convert them into subscribers or followers depending on the quality of your information.

3 Short Tips to Keep in Mind When Setting Up a Lead Generation System

Any of your chosen method of generating buyer leads should meet the following criteria:

• Ability to capture names and email addresses of your target audience, so that you can send them helpful marketing offers occasionally. People who give out their information are simply giving you permission to market your products or services to them. So be professional about this. Don’t abuse their permissions by bombarding them with irrelevant messages.

• Trackable. This will help you determine which tactic works best so that you can leverage it and avoid wasting time on the inefficient ones.

• Must be easy to segment and put into categories – buyers, loyalty and responders – to help you design specific marketing campaigns for each category.

There you have it. Six methods of generating buyer leads to increase sales and income. Remember, don’t underestimate the power of any method above. Who knows? the one you think is irrelevant might be the source of your loyal and long term customers. Give them a try and stick to those that give provide good return on your investment.

Your Turn …

What methods have you used to generate leads for your business? Have you tried any of the above systems before? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. I’ll appreciate it a lot.

Image sources: shopping-sale-online.com

Every so-called SEO expert comes out with different tips and advice to dominate the search engines.

But one thing that’s certain is that Google doesn’t decide whose website or web page to rank. It has a set of standards it looks at before ranking websites and pages.

It’s the same criteria we’re going to exploit in order to win Google – rank high.

When you’re able to do that, you’ll then be in the right position to influence your target audience — drive organic traffic — without violating Google’s rules.

Mind you, I’m not advocating any black hat tricks to undermine Google. If you don’t want your site to be blacklisted, then avoid black hat tricks, okay!

Without further ado, below are the tips and advice to win Google and influence your potential clients.

How to Win Google and Get Found Easily

Read Your Targets Mind

Before you write any web content or build a website, the first and most important thing to do is keyword research. Ideally, your main aim of building a website or publishing an article is to solve a certain problem that your targets are dying to solve, right?

Even if you’re a non-profit organization, you should make it easy for your target audience to find you. So you need to embed keyword phrases in your website in order to make that achievable.

But if you’re blogging as a hobby or just for entertaining yourself, then you shouldn’t worry about keyword research. Go ahead and have fun with your hobby.

Whatever your objective for building a website or publishing articles online, you need to add keyword phrases  in order to make it easy for Google to rank your site appropriately and increase your visibility.

Takeaway: To rank better on search results, embed relevant keyword phrases that your potential customers may use to seek information about your products or services.

Befriend Google

After coming up with relevant keywords that you’re convinced your potential  customers may use to search for your offers, it’s now time to write valuable content that can help them improve their lives or businesses. This is the first and most important thing that should come into your mind when writing content online.

Your main aim is to help solve a certain problem or meet a particular need in every single web page that you write. Even if you publish over 100 blog posts on your website, every single one of them should be tailored to solving various problems.

Don’t try to solve more than one issue in your content. If you focus a lot on keyword phrases, you’ll end up writing irrelevant content and your target audience may not forgive you for that. Think long term when you’re creating your content.

Listen, don’t bombard your content with too much keywords. Doing so will alert Google quickly and your site may end up in the junk box. Fortunately, there is an ethical way to do this without being penalized by Google. Check this post out for more tips about SEO content writing. You’ll love it.

Takeaway: To befriend Google — rank better, create helpful SEO-friendly content for your target audience on a regular basis. And Google will love you for this. Trust me.

Solicit Votes from Various Sources

Another factor that Google considers to determine your ranking position on search result pages (SERPs) is the number of backlinks pointing to your website. The higher your website’s backlinks, the better it’s rankings will be.

For example, if you’re targeting the same keyword phrase with your competitor, and your web page’s backlinks are10, while your competitor’s own are 5, your web page will rank higher than you competitor’s. Why?

Because Google considers a website with lots of legitimate backlinks more important than those with less links. Every single link to your web page is like a vote from different sources.

But be careful, don’t rush out there and implement blackhat link building strategies. It won’t help you. It will only waste your precious time and energy. Also, make sure your backlinks are from different and legitimate sources.

Takeaway: To motivate Google to shower your website with its ranking power, slowly and steadily build backlinks to your website from various sources.

Vary Your Anchor Texts

Texts that are used to build links to a website can also be used to win Google’s love. How? By simply following what Google says about how to use it.

Anchor texts are words that Google uses to identify what a web page is about. They’re clickable texts within a link. When clicked, they take you to a different web page within a website or on another one.

Google uses anchor text variation as one of the standard for ranking websites or pages.

Ideally, your target keyword phrases should be used in this context but not too much. 80% of your anchor texts should be keyword relevant while the rest can be mixed with other phrases or terms.

Takeaway: When building links to your website or page, use relevant keyword phrases as your anchor texts – 80% of your keyword phrases and the rest should be a mixture of texts.

After following the above tips and tricks, it’s now time to leverage your rankings to influence your target audience — drive organic traffic. Are you ready?

Take Advantage of Your Rankings and Influence Your Target Audience

Now that you’ve won Google — ranking better — by following the above tips, it’s now time to take advantage of your position to influence your target audience. How?

Arouse the Interest of Your Target Readers

When your website or web page finally makes it to the top of search results, that’s where you possess the power to induce your targets into compliance. If you use this power intelligently, you may keep your competitors out of business.

When you perform a search on Google, the first URL links that appears on the result page are ten, right? Now, which of these ten URLs links would you be inclined to click based on your search term?

I guess it’s the one with a magnetic headline that hooks your interest. Why? Because the headline is compelling and resonates with your needs. That’s the first power you can use to influence your target audience – magnetic and persuasive headlines.

Resonate with their Needs

When Google finally gives you the chance to exploit its platform – SERPs —  to your advantage, the sky is the limit to what you can achieve with it.

There is this little spot where you’ve the second greatest power of influence besides the headline. That’s the meta tag description spot. That little but powerful “billboard” can make your ranking on the top spot of SERPs worthwhile or valueless.

Meta description is simply a few sentences that explain what your ranked web page is about. It informs potential readers about what is contained in your page. But your aim is not to just explain what you’ve written in your content but to compel them to click through to your website.

Why on earth would you waste this kind of opportunity given to you by Google? Take the time to write compelling and persuasive meta descriptions for your web pages. Even if your web page ranks lower on the SERPs, but has compelling description than the top ranked pages, may gain more click-throughs.

Take a look at the screen shots below to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about:

Of all the few listed search result in the screenshot, the second one has a compelling headline that can hook a searcher for the search term “basic fitness exercises.” And look at the way the owner of the site made the meta description so compelling and persuasive.

Go to Google right now and search for “basic fitness exercises.” And tell me which of the listed titles you would click. I guess it will be the second one. Take a look at another example below:

Look at the search term used in the screenshot. Now, carefully study the marked meta description and see how persuasive it is. Doing the same thing on your website and pages may increase your click-throughs tremendously. Trust me.

For your information, I own that fitness blog in the  screenshots and this tactics work like magic.

Give Your Readers a Reason to Come Back

Imagine how tedious it is for you drive traffic to your web page from search results in the first place. Wouldn’t it be wise to do all you can to retain the organic traffic?

This is where most bloggers make mistakes. And it’s where quality content become vital. Don’t write generic content that plague the Internet today. Stand out from the crowd by making your content informative and helpful. And your readers won’t have excuses not to visit your site again.

Write your content from different angles that few people think of. That way, you’ll not only get organic traffic from Google but will retain that traffic for a long-term.

The quality and relevance of your content will determine whether your target group will come back or not. But if your content help them solve their pressing problems, trust me, no one, not even Google will stop them from coming back for more. And that’s when you can command them to do what you want.

Command Them

It’s one thing to create unique content and it’s a whole different task to influence your readers to take action after consuming your content.

What exactly do you want people to do after absorbing your content? Is it to leave a comment, click a link to a sales page, fill a form or subscribe for your newsletters? Take the time to figure out what exactly you’d like your readers to do after consuming your content, and ask them take action. To increase response, make the action easy to follow.

Due to short attention span, exploit the little time that your readers have by asking them to sign up to your newsletters, purchase your product, click your affiliate link, fill a form, or leave comments.

Finally, if you follow the above tips, you’ll have nothing to worry about ranking better on search engine results. Even when Google comes out with another ugly update plan.

Takeaway……..

There is no magic trick in ranking a website on Google and other search engines. Simply follow the SEO basics – seo content, link building, and anchor text variations.

The basic things about SEO seem to work always than any so-called complex tactics that will only make Google penalize your website and leave you broke.

Your Turn………….

What timeless SEO tips have you followed till date, and that have worked for you all the time? Share your experience in the comment box below.

To get the best out of your content marketing program, strive to incorporate the following elements in every piece of information that you create, and you’ll be amazed at the rate of conversion.

Element #1. Compelling Headlines

Headlines are what your target audience will see first when they come across content. And are one of the factors that will influence them as whether to click-through to read the rest of the content or not. For these reasons, strive to make your headlines persuasive and compelling. Also consider the benefits that your readers will derive from consuming your content and mention it in the headlines.

For example, if you’re writing an article about how job seekers can prepare their CVs to land their dream jobs, mention the benefits that are associated with working at ones ideal company. This may be good pay, comfortable life and financial security. If you include any of the mentioned benefits in a headline, it will draw the attention of  job seekers, and may motivate them to consume the rest of the content. Let’s put the concept into action:

#1. How to Prepare your CV to Land Jobs

#2. Tips to Prepare Your CV for High Paying Jobs

If you were a job seeker and come across the above headlines, which of them would you click? I guess it’s #2. Why? Because we all crave high paying jobs to meet our financial needs. That’s the power of benefit driven headlines. Implement it in your content creation and you may increase conversion.

Element #2.  Relevant and Informative Content

Besides writing compelling headlines, the next thing that will keep visitors engaged to your content is the “meat” of the content. In other words, the quality of your content. Your content should be tailored to helping your target audience to improve their lives or businesses. If you’re a dentist, for example, your content should revolve around tips and advice that your target audience can implement in their lives. This may be: tips for keeping their teeth white and strong, how to prevent certain dental diseases, ways to treat specific teeth problems, and helpful products that you can recommend to them. You get the idea?

When potential customers are seeking information about dental issues and come across your content, they are likely going to visit your website several times and as a result, become your subscribers or clients.

Element #3.  Short and Concise Paragraphs

Due to short attention span of Internet users, people don’t waste their time on articles that are poorly organized. For this reason, it’s crucial that you break down your articles into short and concise paragraphs. It will motivate your readers to spend significant time consuming your content. In addition, articles with short and straight to the point paragraphs will encourage your readers to consume other relevant content on your blog. Consciously study the layout of this article and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Element #4.  No Technical Terms or Jargon

A piece of content that’s full of technical terms may drive your readers away and they might not come back again. On the internet, people don’t want to be educated. They want to be informed, entertained, and taught how to do certain things using specific tools or materials that are presented in easy-to-understand formats. If your articles are full of industrial jargon, readers may take note of that and might not want to read articles by you again.

Write your articles as if you’re talking to one of your buddies while sitting on the same table a on a couch. This will not only make article writing easy, but your readers will also feel comfortable reading them. Explain your ideas in such a way that will make a high school fellow understand what you’re trying to say. To accomplish this, utilize every day language that your readers can understand, and relate your concepts to daily life experiences.

Element #5.  Solve a Specific Problem

Your content should be designed with the aim of solving a specific problem or meeting a certain need. This way, you’ll be able to embed the right keyword phrase in the content without looking too corny to your readers. If you try to solve multiple problems, or meet lots of needs in a single piece of content, you’ll have a hard time producing useful information for your audience. If you’re writing an article about teeth whitening, don’t talk about diseases of the mouth in the same article. Instead, write a separate article about that.

Element #6. Relevant Keyword Phrases

In order to get found easily on search results by your potential clients, it’s essential that you add keyword phrases in every piece of content that your create. A keyword phrase is what a prospective customer will use to search for products or services on the Internet.

For example, if you sell accounting software, and you embed the keyword phrase “accounting software” in your content – article or blog post or video – your content will be indexed appropriately for that keyword phrase by Google and other search engines. And when someone goes to Google or their preferred search engine and types the keyword phrase “accounting software” in the search box, your content may show up on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS). That means you’re more visible online to your potential customers than your competitors who don’t include keyword phrases in their content.

Element #7. Links

Link your content together to allow readers to have access to other information on your website. People expect to see links in web content that they can click to go to other relevant pages. A link to your products or services page should be used in this context unless you’re not interested in selling online.

Element #8. Calls to Action

A call to action refers to what you would like your potential customer to do after consuming your content. Your content may be so engaging that a visitor might forget what to do next until he or she sees a call to action.

Make calls to action obvious at the end of your content.  For example, ask readers to take a definite action such as leaving a comment, sharing the content on their favorite social networking platforms, subscribing to your newsletter or RSS feed, calling your telephone number or clicking a link to a product or service, or clicking a link to a relevant resource pertaining to the content. This blog post shows exactly how to incorporate a call to action in any of your content.

In Summary…………..

To get the most out of your content marketing efforts, strive to write magnetic and compelling headlines. Produce useful and relevant content.  Break your content into short and concise paragraphs. Avoid technical terms or jargon in your content. Solve a specific problem or meet a certain need.  Insert relevant keyword phrases in your content. And add links to your products or services page. Remember to include calls to specific actions at the end of every piece of content that you create.

Today’s consumers want to be well informed about a product or service before spending their hard earned money. Business owners who have created blogs around their businesses are already reaping the rewards of this phenomenon. And you can, too!

How a Blog Can Benefit Your Business

A business blog serves as a platform through which you educate your customers and potential customers about your products or services, and subtly market to them. The type of education I’m talking about here is not the formal type, but a customer-oriented type of education in which you help potential clients with useful, helpful and content when they are on the verge of buying.

Why You Should Consider a Business Blog

Having a business blog will increase your visibility on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. This is because the more articles you publish on your blog, the higher your chances of ranking better on search results. What this means is that when you rank well on search engines, it’ll become easy for people to find your business – products or services – online.

In addition, if you write relevant and helpful articles that your customers and potential clients can use to improve their lives or businesses, they will perceive you as an expert in your industry and as a result, become your followers. This will help you establish relationships with them and consequently, convert them into customers.

Elements of a Business Blog

There are certain factors of business blogs that you should put into consideration if you decide to build one for your business. These elements will not only be beneficial to your business today but will be of great value in the future. In other words, they will help convert visitors of your website into prospects today and in the future.

The components are as follows: a nice looking professional blog theme, an email sign up form for capturing potential customers’ email addresses, and videos or pictures of your products or services. Your own picture or your staff’s photos should be included in order to make your blog engaging.

The Cost of Building a Business Blog

Unlike a traditional business, the cost of building a business blog can be as affordable as you can imagine. If you own a website already, then you’re well on your way to a successful business blog development. Talk to your webmaster about building a blog on that existing website and he or she  shouldn’t have a problem doing that.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a website for your business, you’ll need a domain name – yourbusinessname.com – and a hosting account for the domain. A domain name costs less than $15.00 per year, and a hosting account is not more than $10.00 per month. Finally, a professional looking blog theme ranges from $80-$100+. But a customized one can be more than that depending on how you want the design to look like. Can you now see how affordable the cost of building a business blog can be?

Factors to Consider Before Building a Business Blog

Before you start building a blog for your business, have a clear plan of what you want to talk about on the blog;

• how often will you publish articles on the blog?
• what type of information pertaining to your business will you communicate to your target audience?
• what domain name would you buy for the blog?
• how will it affect your brand?
• what would you like your business to be known for?
• what keywords will your clients use to find you online when they are seeking information about your products or services?
• how will you get article ideas for your blog posts?

The above are the most important factors you need to consider in before building a business blog. Your planning should not take you more than a day.

Alternatively, if you find this concept overwhelming to implement, just send me an email and I’ll see how best I can help you.

In Summary………..

A business blog is used for marketing your products or services by producing valuable and informative content – articles, videos, pictures, podcast or audio files, ebooks, white papers, case studies, infographics – that can help improve your customers’ lives or businesses. In addition, your blog may help position you as a thought leader in your industry, and establish relationships with your target audience. Also, a business blog can help increase your visibility online, and serve as a steady stream of customers.

photo credit: business2community.com

The quality of your content will help you attract new customers and  sustain your current clients. For this reason, strive to create helpful,  educative and practical content that your target audience can utilize to improve their lives or businesses.

How to Promote Your Business using Content Marketing

The first and most important step to initiating a content marketing plan is to build a blog. Your business blog will serve as a platform for housing your content. Once your blog is set up and running, you can start creating valuable content for your target audience. What type of content should you create? Keep reading to find out!

For example, if you’re a pet doctor who specializes in cats and dogs, create content that educates your target audience how to take good care of their animals. Write articles about: ways to deal with symptoms of a specific pet disease, how to treat or prevent certain diseases of pets, tips for keeping pets healthy, advice about the best food for pets, and product recommendation for your clients. There is no limit to the type of content you can write about your products or services as long as it pertains to your field of expertise.

Types of Content for Marketing

There are different types of content that can be used in a content marketing strategy. Below are some of them:

• Blogging
• Article writing
• Video
• Podcast
• Newsletter writing
• Case studies
• eBooks
• White papers
• Infographics
• Social media marketing

If used effectively, any of the above mentioned content format can be a powerful tool for marketing your products or services.

Distribution Channels for Spreading the Word about Your Brand

Besides your blog, there are other relevant platforms where you would want to showcase your thought leadership by submitting your content to them. These outlets are called content distribution channels.

Content distribution channels are platforms on which you submit your content after creation. For example, a blog is a channel throuhg which you publish articles, host videos, and other content. Besides your blog, there are other key places where you should submit some of your content in order to increase your visibility.

Video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo can be utilized for sharing videos that you create for your products or services. Create ebooks, white papers, infographics and submit them to their respective submission directories where your potential customers can go to consume them. One interesting factor about some of these distribution outlets is that some people frequent them regularly in search for valuable content. If you can submit helpful information on various distribution channels, you will be able to reach a lot of your target audience.

Additionally, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be used to inform your target audience about new developments on your blog as well as in your industry. Getting your content distributed on many distribution platforms will help you increase your brand awareness.

How Content Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

These days, consumers want to be well informed before spending their hard earned money on any product or service. If you’re able to provide them with valuable and helpful information that they can utilize in their decision making processes, they may perceive you as a thought leader in your niche. And as a result, they might end up buying from you. Also, the quality of your content can help you build strong relationships with your existing customers.

Furthermore, when you publish lots of content on your blog and other relevant platforms, there is likelihood that your target audience will find you on search results when they are seeking information about your products or services.

How to Get Ideas for Creating Content

Being a business owner or working in an industry for some time, you should be able to explain to an average person or a high school going lad what your products or services are about, including what they are used for, how to get the best out of them, what makes them exceptional in the market. These simple and basic topics can help you generate content ideas.

Alternatively, go to answers.yahoo.com and type the name of your business – products or services – in the search box provided. You’ll not only discover what people are asking about your offers but also find relevant answers that people have provided. Leverage this by creating content based on your findings. Plus, review the questions your existing customers have asked you previously, and create helpful content out of that.

Finally, use Google’s AdWords keyword research tool to find search terms and keywords that your target audience are likely going to use for seeking information about your products or services. And embed the keywords in your content.

How to Get the Best from Your Content Marketing Plan

One way to get the best from your content marketing effort is to include search terms or keywords in every piece of content that you create. It will make it easy for your target audience to find you on search results when they are seeking information about your products or services.

For example, if you sell “accounting software” and you’ve written an article about cheap and efficient accounting software, include the keyword “cheap accounting software” in your article. This way, Google and other search engines will rank your article appropriately for the keyword phrase“cheap accounting software.”

When potential customers are searching for “cheap accounting software” online, your article may show up on search engine result pages (SERPS). And it can help drive organic traffic to your blog.

In the cases of videos, pictures and podcast, use the same keywords “cheap accounting software” when distributing this content on their various distribution channels. Check out the Beginners Guide to SEO for more details about adding keywords in your content.

Besides embedding keywords in your content, spread the word about it on various platforms such as social bookmarking sites, and social networking outlets. Tell your friends about it, and ask them to spread the word among their friends and colleagues. Ask existing clients to do the same, too.

In Summary

Content marketing is the use of different content format – articles or blog posts, newsletters, videos, podcast or audios, ebooks, white papers, infographics – as tools for providing value for your target audience and consequently, convert them into customers. Content marketing can help increase your visibility, and enhance your brand awareness.

Image credit: sproutcontent.com