“Three Ways to Outperform Your Online Competition” plus 3 more |  |
- Three Ways to Outperform Your Online Competition
- How Social Media Can Affect Your Search Engine Rankings
- How I Earned $15000 from The Problogger Job Board
- Content Isn’t King… Here’s What Is!
| Three Ways to Outperform Your Online Competition Posted: 23 Jul 2014 09:33 AM PDT This is a guest contribution from Emma Henry of True Target Marketing. There's no denying that plenty of us are trying to make a living on the internet. The good news is that it's still early days when it comes to building a successful online business. In reality, very few businesses know how to effectively execute strategic online marketing campaigns. Now is the perfect time for you to take advantage of this gap in the market and outperform your online competition. With some sound advice, a strategic approach, and a solid implementation plan, your online business performance can go from strength to strength. First Things FirstThe first thing is to prepare a custom strategy for your online business. To do this, you need to conduct a detailed review of your current online situation. What is currently working well? What are the main issues and the biggest frustrations with your website? What is the goal for your online business 12 months and beyond? Who are your current customers and are they your ideal, highest-value customers? How can you encourage repeat purchases to increase the life time value of your ideal customers? There are a number of useful analytics tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Keyword Research software that can help you to review your current online business and devise the best strategy for your business going forward. Consider engaging in the services of a website marketing expert to assist you with the process of analysing your online business. A professional will have the skills and knowledge to prepare a bespoke, tailored strategy that can reap you huge results. Then What?The second step is to implement the necessary changes to your website to help you achieve your online business goals. The aim is to attract more high value customer prospects to your website, encourage them to stay on your site (rather than go to a competitor site), and to persuade them to take some form of action on your site (i.e. make a purchase, call for an appointment, request a quote etc.). Some specific changes you might need to make to improve the performance of your website include:
And Finally…The third and final step to outperform your online competition is to secure your place as the absolute authority in your industry niche. To do this, you need to ensure the content on your website is high quality, unique, and relevant to your specific market, and is better than the content of your online competitors. Create regular, fresh new content around common queries in your industry. Go beyond an FAQ sheet and include a dedicated page with detailed information on typical customer queries. Doing this will ensure that when prospective customers search for those queries in Google, your website page will show up in the search results over and above your competitor pages because your site will be the one with the most informative and relevant information. In time, you will become the "go to" website authority for your industry niche as your customer prospects begin to know, like and trust your brand and your information. Not only will you be perceived as the expert in your field by providing your audience with valuable information, but you will be rewarded by Google as they boost your search engine rankings ahead of your competitors. In summary, take the time to review your current online operations, implement a strategy to attract more of your ideal customer prospects by improving and optimising your website structure and building up relevant content on your site. Consider engaging the services of a professional, online marketing expert to help you execute this proven and effective three-step strategy. The investment will be well worthwhile when you consider the value you will get from securing highly-targeted new business. Now is the time to start securing a greater share of customers in your marketplace by outperforming your competitors online. Emma Henry is an Online Marketing Specialist and the owner of True Target Marketing. Emma tailors bespoke online marketing strategies for her clients. She specialises in lead generation, customer conversions, increased website traffic and improved website responsiveness. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger     |
| How Social Media Can Affect Your Search Engine Rankings Posted: 22 Jul 2014 09:13 AM PDT
Now more than ever, marketing experts are improving their marketing strategy with fewer resources, and they are shifting marketing budgets from traditional to digital tactics like search engine optimization and social media. Companies, too often, omit their social media marketing strategy from their SEO strategy, which is a grave mistake. A study conducted by Ascend2 indicates that companies with the strongest SEO via social media strategies now produce the best results, and vice-versa. Companies that consider themselves “very successful” at search engine optimization are integrating social media into their strategy, whereas, companies that are “not successful” at search engine optimization are not integrating social media into their strategy. See the graph below: In the above graph, companies with successful SEO are in blue while those companies with an inferior SEO strategy are in amber. You can see 38% of those doing very well with search engine optimization were also extensively integrating social media. A full 50% of those doing poorly at search engine optimization were not integrating social media at all in their strategy. This graph signifies that companies that are succeeding in search engine optimization today are including social in their strategy. SEO is much more than just high ranking in Google. It is a multi-disciplinary, comprehensive approach to website optimization that ensures potential customers, who come to your website, will have an excellent experience, easily find what they are looking for, and have an easy time sharing your optimum-quality content. The combination of SEO and social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest can be overwhelming for big as well as small business marketers. Until recently, search engine optimization and social media marketing were thought of as two very different things, but actually these are two sides of the same coin. Consider the below mentioned social network growth statistics:
With these statistics, we can say that social media can be a primary engine for promoting new content and can take your website from zero visibility to a strong performing position almost overnight. For enhancing SEO through social media platform two factors plays a vital role, which are social signals and natural link building. I have explained these two factors in an elaborative manner: What’s Your Social Signal?Social Signals are signals to various search engines that your content or information is valuable. Every time someone likes, shares, tweets or +1′s content about your brand, especially a link, they are sending a social signal and the more social signals means you have better chances to rank high on search engine result pages. Many researchers have found that social shares are quite valuable when it comes to building your website authority. Here is the latest research from Searchmetrics, highlighting which social signals correlate to rankings on Google: Note that 7 out of the top 9 factors are social signals. Now, it’s clear that social signals can have a huge impact on your search rankings, especially social signals from Google+. If you do not have time to leverage all of the social networking sites, then make sure that Google+ is one of the few you do use because it will play the biggest part in increasing your rankings on search engines. Top social signals that Google is tracking on your website are mentioned below: Google+Google+ is a fledgling community when it is compared to social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter, but its social signals have the most impact on search ranking results. Some factors that you should look at are: Amount of +1s- You need to start distinguishing +1 to your website in general and +1 to each pieces of your content. You should increase +1s to your brand/your authorship profile. This also applies to +1s on Local+ pages. Authority of +1s- If your profile or brand gets more +1, then you will get to rank higher and easier for the future content you produce. Growth rate of +1s- You should strategize a plan that will increase your +1 steadily over an extended period of time. Amount of Adds and Shares- How many people are following and sharing your content tells about how authoritative you are. Authority of Adds and Shares- Who is following you is also important. A network with people with great profiles helps you to establish a voice. The king of social networking sites, Facebook has an active community of over 900 million. Millions of active users make it a perfect platform for generating social signals. Various researches have shown that Facebook influences more search rankings as compare to Google+ or Twitter. Some factors that you should look at are: Amount of Shares and Likes- You should remember that "shares" carry more weight than "likes". Amount of Comments- The collective amount of likes, shares and comments correlate the closest with search ranking. Twitter is second only to Facebook and boasts 500 million users that are constantly "tweeting", status updates and events in real time. Twitter users, known as "tweeps", puts more premium on a tweet's authority rather than sheer amount; though the overall social signals generated by it lags just a little behind Facebook. On twitter you should look at some factors like:
Other social websites like Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and FourSquareThe big three, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, play quite important role when it comes to social ranking factors, but you should not ignore the potential of other user-driven social websites like Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and FourSquare. On these social networking sites you should look at following factors:
Link Development through Social MediaThe traditional way of link building like en-masse link directories, spammy comments, forum-posts for the sake of links, and anchor text sculpting are over now. In the modern era, the powerful way to build link is effective content marketing strategy. People love informative and quality content, and they love sharing content. Social media sites are one of the best platforms for content marketing, in this way these are quite important for natural link development. How to build natural and quality links through Social Media PlatformsThere are two tactics that will help you immensely in earning quality and natural links through Social Medial Platforms are: Link-building through interaction and community engagementIf you’re link-building but never building relationships or never interacting with people, you’re not really link building: you are spamming. If you interact with people who might care about your brand, you can gain a cutting edge over other competitors. Meaningful interactions with audience in your niche prove your credibility and will lead to more authority links. You can also get links through interaction from a popular site or a popular brand, when they post to their Facebook page, make a Google+ post, launch a new blog post, or put up a new video on YouTube. In this case, I also recommend you to interact early and often. Early because a lot of times, being in the first five or ten comments, interactions, or engagements really helps you to be seen by the editors who are almost always watching. When you do such interaction, make sure you are adding value, by doing this you make yourself stand out in the comments. You can add value by doing a little bit of detailed research and by making the conversation more interesting. By posting great comments, you will create interest in target customers and they often click your profile that will latently earn you some links. In addition to this, you can also offer help to other people and you can help people without being asked. This is a great way to drive links back to your own site and you can do this, not just on blog posts, but on Google+ posts, Facebook pages, and YouTube comments. Link building through quality contentIn addition to gaining links from popular sites, you can also earn links by posting qualitative and linkable content on social media platforms. If you create content that people find valuable and informative, they are more likely to want to share it. What people find valuable can vary, but optimum quality blog posts and infographics that provide well-researched information, statistics, and new angles on a subject are all good starting points. A good and informative video that attracts viewers' attention is eminently shareable, which is one reason nearly 87% of agency and brand marketers now creating video for content marketing. When someone reads your quality and informative content on social media sites and finds it of valuable, it is more likely that they will want to link to it. In order to give your informative content the best chance of reaching a wide audience, you should identify the key influencers or target audience in your field. In this way, you will be able to target your efforts effectively. Facebook and Twitter are the two go-to social media platforms for most people but you should also seek out targets on other platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Tumblr. In addition to this, if you are marketing within specific regions, you might want to channel your efforts to the most popular websites in each market. For example, VK is the preferred social media website in Russia, while Orkut can help extend your reach within Brazil and India. You can also use various tools and services that can help you find the best targets. For example Followerwonk offers a Twitter analytics service and it can help you to compare and sort followers by looking at data such as social authority scores and the percentage with URLs. Furthermore, you can also gauge reactions to your own tweets by monitoring your activity alongside current follower numbers. Apart from this, Fresh Web Explorer is a handy tool, as it searches for mentions of your brand, company or other keyword and automatically matches this with 'feed authority'. In this way, you can sort key influencers from those with less perceived authority that will allow you to target your efforts more effectively. Now, it is clear that social media is an essential part of search engine optimization. Following diagram explains you a blueprint of how social media supports SEO: Quality Content gets published- One of the best ways to increase quality traffic to your website is to publish sharable, useful and relevant content on social media sites. Content gets Shares, Links, & Likes- As you start publishing your company's blog posts or research work on a regular basis and spreading it across the social networking sites, your content will start generating shares, links, and "likes". Sites Gain Subscriptions while Social Profiles get Fans & Followers- As a result, your site's blog will gain more subscribers and your social media channels will gain more followers, fans, and connections. Thriving Community Supporting the Website & Social Networks Grows- A thriving community of people who are interested in your user-focused content develops and starts to thrive. Reputation Reinforced through Social Media & SEO as Authoritative Brand for the Niche- Signals are sent to various search engines about your activity on social media platforms and your keyword-rich and informative content. Your website starts being viewed as reputable, relevant, and authoritative. Sites Gain Authority in Search Engines- As a result, your website and its informative and quality content starts appearing higher and more frequently in the top rankings and listings of search engines for your keyword phrases and targeted keywords. Sustainable Stream of Users Discover the Site organically- A consistently growing stream of users will begin discovering the website via the social media sites, search engines, and your email marketing efforts. I have explained how aligning SEO and social media efforts can really enhance your SEO performance. In order to execute this task effectively, you might even like to hire experienced SEO experts. You should make sure that your social media and SEO teams are working together in order to create a unified digital marketing strategy. Sandeep Sharma is a Project Manager with a prominent digital media marketing company TIS India and has been for the last 10 years. He loves to create aesthetically appealing websites & eye-popping user interfaces for international clients. You can follow him on Twitter and Google Plus.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger     |
| How I Earned $15000 from The Problogger Job Board Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:01 AM PDT This is a guest contribution from Andy Nathan, of Smart at the Start. I have a secret formula for using the Problogger job board that will enthrall many, and bring others to tears with their boredom. That is OK! I do not want everyone to use what I am about to explain below, because that just means more business for me. In fact, I struggled with whether I should even share this information to anyone, because…well… human greed being what it is. Over the past year, I have automated the process on the Problogger job board to the point where I spend roughly 5-10 minutes prospecting for every new client off the board. Pardon my laziness, but I don't want to work to get clients business. I want to work to keep their business by focusing on awesome content. This is why the Problogger Job Board is simply the best, as we will discuss below in my step-by-step tutorial. My Ideal ClientBefore we get into what I did to earn $15,000 from the job board here on Problogger, I want to step back and explain what I believe my ideal client should look like. This is important, because if I did not have a picture of what my ideal client would look like, then I would never know how to use the job board correctly. First, I do not want to spend time talking to clients if possible. It is not that I don't like people. I sometimes go to networking events as much for the socialization now as I do for the business referrals. The fact is, speaking with a client is time that I am not writing for other clients or playing Video Catnip and watching my cats go a bit crazy.
What I realized was that for a 10-20% drop in my close rate, I could do a few less coffees and accomplish a whole lot more for my clients. As of today, 50% of my clients are people I have never spoken to once in the entire relationship. All communication is through email and social media. What a difference it makes. Another 25% are people that I connect with over the phone as well as email. The remainder are my networking clients. Clients I met through various networking events over the years. Generally, those ones want to meet me face to face and make sure that I am a "real" writer. Second, if I have to explain the benefits of blogging this is probably not going to work. I have spent too much time in the past explaining to general contractors, attorneys, and other professionals why blogging is important. If you don't get it, I am sorry. I am not your blogging messiah. I write ridiculously awesome content for you (sometimes in your own voice) optimized for search traffic. However, you go ahead and keep cutting and pasting articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, (old time newspaper fill in the blank), etc. See how well that works! Third, I have written close to 3000 blog posts over the past five years. Not saying that to impress you. I am telling you this, because I want compensation for my experience. I personally like having money in my account. The wife is much happier (aka happy life), my bills are paid, and that creeping sense of dread fades away. Now for the ProBlogger Job Board info you crave…Now that we got this little rant about ideal clients out of the way, what did I do to earn money from the Problogger job board? Automation. First:I would recommend opening a new tab, so you can follow along while I discuss how I use the board. It is not that you have never seen a job board, but this is my unique twist. You might just want to set this up as you read this post. Second:Take in the board for a second. Notice that there are only about 3-5 listings per day. It is not an overwhelming horde of listings, but a constant stream of leads. This is important. When I used this process on Craigslist, the nonsense chatter on the site, even after using the filters, made it an extreme waste of time. Plus, no one likes worthless emails coming into your email box all day. Third:Notice in the bottom right corner, there is a subscribe button. This is crucial to my laziness. A RSS feed of all the job posts in one spot. Copy the RSS feed below: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProBloggerJobs Fourth:Open a new tab, and type in IFTTT.com. This is an automation site. You can use this for a variety of purposes online. If you don't have an account on IFTTT, you will need to set one up in about two minutes. Fear not, accounts on the site are free. In fact, for freelance writers this entire process is free. When you login, you will go to your dashboard. Below is what my dashboard looks like currently: Fifth:To automate processes you need to create a recipe. Recipes are easy to create. The site's real name is "If This, Then That." The entire automation system runs on one equation that you can use for a multitude of purposes. You create recipes that trigger one online platform to perform a task on another online platform. While this might sound confusing, the truth is this is simple to use. For our purposes, all you need is the Problogger Job Board URL that you copied and an email address. If you do not have an email address then you can use Gmail. Step 1: Select the Feed symbol. Step 2: Decide what type of feed you want to use. Personally, I use the new feed item, because I find the keyword too limiting for my needs. However, if you are looking for targeted terms, then use the "new feed item matches" as a trigger.
Step 3: paste the Problogger Job Board feed. Steps 4 and 5: choose email icon for your action. You will need to have your email address connected to IFTTT for this to work, so do not give them a spam account. They do not email people a lot, so do not worry about spam. Step 5: Click the "Send me an email" link.
Step 6: make sure you are receiving the best information for the post. Generally, they will include the information you need already. Just double check that the "EntryUrl" is in the email body. Step 7: The finished recipe will look like the one I created last September for Problogger. Confirm that you want to set up the recipe. Since last September, I have received 532 emails. While most of the listings are never answered, over the course of the past nine months I probably responded to somewhere between 50 to 100 posts. Out of these posts, I received about 5-10 new jobs that brought in around $15,000 in revenue. Now you have the recipe for an automated lead generation process; however, we still have to convert the leads into clients. For that, let me take you behind my conversion process. Conversion TimeNow that we have these leads coming in, let's look at how to convert them into clients. Below is the template I use for all leads. I save this as a draft with an attached resume (available on Google Drive for your convenience.) While each article is usually a little different, most follow a similar pattern.
Right now, this email has about a 1 out of 15-success rate. Therefore, I spend two minutes on each email then I will spend 30 minutes total for a new client. Considering some of the clients I brought in have produced thousands of dollars in revenue that is worth it in my opinion. Final note: I do not write free sample articles that will determine if I am paid in the future. If someone asks you to write a free article for him or her, run like the dickens! What are the downsides of the ProBlogger job board?Now, I hate when people give this story about too-good-to-be true stories about a tool, without letting you know about any pitfalls. Here are the three downsides that I have found using the Problogger job board:First, with only five or so leads coming in every day, you will have a number of days where you get no leads. In fact, sometimes I have seen up to a month stretch where I did not feel it was worthwhile to follow up on any of the leads. Second, this means do not quit your job and expect this to bring you a full time income right away. I still do other work for clients. The job board just made it easier for me to make money. Third, this is a tool to help you find prospects. It is up to you to make sure that they are the right fit for you, as well as a source of potential income. When I started in this industry, my first assignment was for $5 articles. I will never look at laser hair removal the same way again! More importantly, I will never write an article for $5 ever again. My time is more valuable than that. Determine what you believe a fair rate is ahead of time. This is where understanding your ideal client comes in. Additionally, if you do not have the experience, go out and get it. Do guest posts to build traffic, and use them in your portfolio. Start networking online and offline to find new clients. Be aggressive when you need to be, and then you can take the easy way out later when you have a healthy portfolio. This process works for me, because I put in the time and effort to master my craft. Do the same, and do not expect this to be a quick fix. Now go forth and be a lazy freelance writer!That is the process. You are now an expert, so get started with this process right away, so you can discover how easy it is to make money with the Problogger job board. Or if you want to make sure that I have more money in my pocket, you can just go back to your daily activities like nothing has happened. Either way, let me know in the comment section below what you found to be the most useful part of this tutorial? Andy Nathan is the founder of Smart at the Start, an internet marketing agency. He is also the author of the upcoming book, Start Up Gap. However, since he keeps getting distracted by writing guest posts, responding to Problogger job board inquiries, playing with cats, and other shiny objects, the book is not available until August. In the meantime, you can get a free copy of his eBook, 101 Online Tools: Tools you need to succeed.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger     |
| Content Isn’t King… Here’s What Is! Posted: 20 Jul 2014 09:49 AM PDT Over the years I’ve heard many debates in the blogosphere about what is ‘king’. ‘Blogging is King’ was something many argued almost 10 years ago as it began to rise in popularity. ‘Content is King’ was the catch cry for many years… then it became ‘Community is King’ for a while as community management became the big thing. ‘Twitter is King’ was something I heard a number of bloggers crying (as they gave up their blogs to get onto Twitter), ‘Facebook is King’ was the cry a few years later when setting up pages there was the cool thing to do. YouTube was king for a while, and more recently some have argued for Instagram, Pinterest and other social networks being King. Lately there’s a new ‘king’ every day. Infographics, podcasting, hangouts, webinars, apps… you name it! The arguments for all of these things being ‘king’ are good… but they all kind of miss the point in my opinion. You see I think something else is king…  Creating content is just one way of being useful. Building community is another. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and G+ are just ways of delivering usefulness. Infographics, videos, podcasts and even blogging… all just different mediums for being useful. Over the last decade that I’ve been doing business online a multitude of trends have come and many have gone but those who remain and have build valuable enterprises are those who understand that they’re in the business of being useful. I’m often asked if I’ll be blogging in 10 years time… if the medium will still exist? I don’t know the answer to that – blogging may well fall by the wayside at some point (although I don’t see it disappearing any time soon). What I do know is that usefulness will never die as a strategy for building a business (online or offline). How to be useful?So how should we be useful as bloggers and online entrepreneurs? Ultimately for me it comes down to understanding people’s needs and creating content, community and experiences based upon meeting those needs and solving their problems. There are many ways to do this. Here’s a slide from a recent talk I gave to business bloggers which begins to unpack a few ways blogs can be useful (and it scrapes the surface).  How Is Your Blog Useful?So my question today is – ‘is your blog being useful’? This is something I ask myself semi-regularly as I review what I do. If the answer is no – it’s time to refocus! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger     |
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