by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
Marketing strategies are ever-changing. Some lose their effectiveness; others evolve into more complex ideas and new strategies arise. With this ever-changing landscape of techniques, you might be wondering if blogging is still worth doing. Well, it depends.
The question shouldn’t be if blogging is still relevant in general, but whether or not it is still relevant to your business. Why? There are always new up and coming trends in blogging every other day and if you do not keep up, you will be outdated.
Blogs are a great way of engaging readers, giving them information, and it is a really great way to rank your website on search engines. With that in mind do you still feel like blogging will still be relevant? Here are some statistics that will help you determine how relevant blogging will be in 2020.
Statistics about blogging
More than half of the medium-size businesses in the North America have not provided a contact form on their website
As a new business or a business whose aim is to grow a contact form is important. How else are potential clients supposed to reach you? They may have questions that they need answering – a contact form is a great way to get feedback, suggestions, and views from your clients.
Over 65.5% of business to business marketers attract new clients and potential clients through blogging in comparison to those who do not use blogging as a marketing strategy
Marketers not only aim to inform and engage, but they want to get leads through their blogs. Blog posts are a powerful tool when it comes to marketing.
Through the use of SEO optimization, blogging will help your business to rank high in google search engines
SEO and the right keywords will help your business be more visible on the internet. You have to use keywords that are relevant and that users will probably use to find you. Your content has to be engaging enough to keep the audience on your page.
Over 80% of people using the internet consider information on blog posts reliable
That is a plus for bloggers. A lot of people surf the internet in search of information. Even if some posts are repetitive and give almost similar information, they still give the reader a variety of options to choose from and assure them about the question that they need to be answered. Every business should make sure to give value to their audience.
By the year 2021 bloggers in North America are speculated to attract 31.7M readers
Statista carried out a survey in the year 2015 which went on to show that at the minimum a blog was posted every day on the internet. The same survey went on to show that in 5 years (which is 2020 in this case) there will be a rise in people who read blogs due to how popular blogging has become.
With the above statistics do you still think blogging will be relevant in 2021? You be the judge.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
This is a useful checklist to ensure that you don’t miss any search engine optimization ideas for your web pages. Each page should be set up to have as many of these ideas implemented as possible. If you do this for every page on your website, you’ll generate a lot of organic traffic.
- Put Your Keyword in the URL – When you create your URL for any piece of content, it signifies an entire page name even if it’s a blog post. That name or URL is the full page name. The pages on your site should all have a different name, so give a lot of thought to the keywords you use to name each one.
- Use Your Keywords in the Title Tag – When you create the title of your page, you’ll want the title tag to be the primary keyword that you want to rank for on that page. It should be used one time and should be within the first three words in the title.
- Use the Keyword within the First 150 Words of Content – The same keyword that you use in your URL and the title tag needs to be used again within the first 150 words of content that you write.
- Use Keywords in Your Header Tags – Likewise, as you write the content and create headers and bullet points, ensure that you use header tags to differentiate the content from the body content, adding the keyword plus derivatives of the keyword in the headers.
- Use Keywords in Your Image File Names – When you add an image, don’t just leave the file name as something generic. Instead, assign the keyword to the image file in the first three words.
- Use Keywords in Your Image Alt Tags – When you add an image, aside from the file name you have an opportunity to enter information in the “alt” tag area of the image addition. The keyword that was used in the title tag should go in the alt tag, but you can be more creative in alt tags by telling the reader what the image is and what it signifies to you.
- Keep Keywords Density Low by Using Synonyms – Don’t keyword stuff. Instead, keep the main keyword that is in the URL to less than 2 to 3 percent of the words used, and use more synonyms to avoid repetition.
- Make Your Content Chunky – This might not seem like an SEO tip, but it is. If your pages look messy, your people won’t read it. Online people like to read chunky content with headers, bullet points, and plenty of white space.
- Practice Strategic Internal Linking – An effective way to increase search results is to make it easier for search engines to explore your website by using an excellent internal linking strategy. Link to like content at the end of blogs, link to more content within the other content, and keep your audience moving through the content.
- Link Out to Your Authoritative Sources – If you bring up stats in your content, always link back to sites that have authority such as educational sites or other sites your audience views as authoritative.
Don’t skip using on-page SEO tactics to get more visitors to your site. Using these ideas doesn’t just make your SEO better; it makes your entire website better. After all, the point of creating the content you do is for your audience. These tips will help you make the most of each page on your site so that you can maximize your results.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
When you build a website, you have work to do both on your site and off your website to improve search engine optimization and help you gain more site traffic. Off-page SEO depends on your on-page SEO being set up first. It’s imperative to ensure your site works well for anything you do off your website to produce for you.
- Optimize Your Website First – Take the time to learn all you can about on-page SEO first and implement those ideas. After all, if your site doesn’t load fast and doesn’t have the right content on it, it won’t matter how well your off-page SEO efforts work because people will bounce off your site anyway.
- Earn More Quality Backlinks – Almost everything you do regarding off-page SEO is about earning quality backlinks. A backlink is simply a link that goes to your website, either to your home page or directly to specific pages on your website. Don’t do old-fashioned things like article submissions, link trading, and link buying. Instead, use the other methods here to earn as many backlinks as you can organically.
- Promote Webpage Content on Social Media – When you publish content on your website, you need to promote that content on social media automatically. You can use software such as Hootsuite.com to automate it.
- Join Professional Networks and Create a Profile – While listing directories exist that are only for “SEO,” don’t use them. Instead, join professional networks that you want to be part of; serious networks like the Chamber of Commerce or the Small Business Majority. Create a profile and earn an authoritative link back to your site.
- Publish Content on LinkedIn and Other Social Networks – While sharing content is good, you want to also publish content directly on other sites when you can. Publish content on LinkedIn and other social networks that link back to your website through a particular landing page.
- Publish Guest Posts on Authoritative Websites – Guest posting still works for off-page SEO purposes; however, only guest post for sites that your audience uses for the information. Quality websites will offer “do follow” links so that you can offer a freebie to the readers there too.
- Create Lead Magnets and Promote Them – The more touchpoints you develop, the more chances your audience will find you. Create as many lead magnets as you can with their landing pages, and promote them.
- Send More Relevant Emails More Often to Your Audience – When you publish content, send an email blast to your autoresponder recipients. Set it up so that the autoresponder publishes the update to an individual page. You’ll earn a backlink that way too.
- Develop Strong Social Networking Activity – Using social networking and social platforms to network gives you many opportunities to publish information that leads people back to your content and website. Create optimized profiles with links to unique landing pages.
- Use Video on Various Platforms like YouTube – Turn your popular blog posts into video and publish them on YouTube or another video platform that you like and that you can find your audience using.
If you implement these ideas, you’re going to get a lot more targeted traffic to your website. You’re going to make more sales because you’re paying close attention to matching your website to what your audience wants. You’re also letting the search engines know through your search engine optimization that you’re there for the customer.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
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Content marketing is one of the best ways to earn organic traffic. One reason organized traffic happens is due to the keywords used in the content. Even if you aren’t actively trying to use keywords, the search engines think you are. The search engines use the titles, headers, and other information on your webpages to assign relevance to your site based on the search terms your audience uses to find you.
You can make this all work better by planning to use keywords and content strategically. You can only be strategic if you have a plan in place.
- Conduct Keyword Research – Don’t just go into creating content blindly. Instead, you want to craft a plan, and that plan starts with the keywords you want to rank for. The keywords that you want to help you get customers are based on your niche, your audience, and your products and services or the problems you solve.
- Create High-Quality Content – Don’t just publish any content. You need to have high-quality content that not only search engines will like, but your audience likes too. If it’s written or created halfway, your customers won’t be impressed enough to get their credit card out and buy from you.
- Pay Attention to On-Page SEO – When you put the content online, you need to pay close attention to on-page search engine optimization. That includes creating the right types of titles, headers, and including internal linking and source linking to ensure that your website looks authoritative.
- Promote Your Content – Just publishing content to your website isn’t going to get you the results that you want. Instead, you need also to promote your content. Promote across your social media networks and in email repeatedly to ensure it gets looks.
- Repurpose Your Content – Take your most popular content and create more of it by repurposing it into new forms. For example, a popular blog post can become a popular YouTube video. A popular webinar can become a popular white paper or case study.
- Ensure Your Content Is Readable – While search engines are fantastic and send you customers, the most critical person who reads your content is your customer. Ensure that the content is easily understandable and readable by them. Check your grammar, your punctuation, and white space to make sure it looks good and is easy to consume.
- Develop Topic Clusters – Keywords are awesome, but there are other ways to come up with content ideas that will still work for search engine optimization. All a topic cluster consists of is a central topic or focus, which is often called your pillar or epic content. You can use mind mapping to come up with content clusters by starting with a core topic and the developing subtopics and then finally links from there.
- Develop More Long-Form Content – Search engines like long-form content. The reason is that it looks authoritative. Start with pillar or epic content and then work your way through the topics to create content that is in-depth and full of research and proof.
Content marketing is the best way not only to find your audience but also to demonstrate your expertise to your audience. You can use content to build trust, create awareness, and develop a relationship with your audience without keywords, but you’re going to be more successful if you use these tips.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
If you want to be successful with search engine optimization, you must find a way to find more keywords. After all, each page on your site should rank for a different keyword. No two pages should be created trying to rank for the same word. That means you need a lot of keywords to keep creating and adding content throughout the life of your business.
- Google Search Predictive Ideas
When you go to regular Google search, you’ll notice that as you type a keyword, predictive ideas will populate in the search bar. These ideas are what people have searched for already, which is why they show up.
As you type, write down the suggestions and use those to inform the content you’ll create. Also, scroll down the page of search results and look at the bottom to find related searches to your search. Each of the ideas might be a good choice.
- Google Trends
Google Trends is a website that helps anyone find what is trending in their area or niche right now. When you go to the page, you’ll notice that you can search for a topic, or you can start with an example. When you type in a term, you’ll be able to find out what’s trending in your area – including your country or even worldwide.
You can narrow it down further by looking at subregions or states and cities. This is amazing because you can find out in a few clicks what’s trending regarding your niche right in your own location. You can also segment the search further via time and categories, plus the type of searches such as news, shopping, YouTube, and Image search.
- Install a Search Box on Your Website
A sneaky way to find keywords is to install a search box on your website. When you do that, you can see what the audience is searching for. You may need to differentiate between relevant searches and irrelevant searches. Even though it’s your audience searching, some people might not realize the search bar is only for searching your website. Most people type a question as a search when they do that; it gives you a perfect title for your next article.
- Your Competition’s Website
Spying on your competitors is a great way to find more keywords. You can do this by joining their lists, following them on social media, reading their blogs, and looking at their products. But you can also use software like iSpionage.com. Just enter the URL you want to check, and it will give you an enormous amount of information.
- Download Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
It’s hard to remember that Google Search is not the only game in town. It would be best if you optimized for Google before any other search engine. However, the tools that Microsoft Advertising offers are free and useful. Just click the link above to find and download the intelligence. It’s free.
Using these ideas to help generate more keywords starts with a single brainstorming session. Create your “seed” words by merely studying your own website, finding the most popular content and products you already have, and writing down every keyword you think of to get started. Use those seed words as a start for searching on these other platforms.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
When doing keyword research, you need information about each keyword or keyword phrase you want to use that will make it easier for you to determine whether the keyword is right for you or not. You need to know how many people are searching for the phrase or word, how it relates to your niche and audience, and whether it has high or low competition.
Let’s explore these three factors more deeply.
- Search Volume
Search volume refers to how many searches on average there are for any given keyword or keyword phrase. Knowing how many times a specific term is searched for lets you know whether it’s worth it to craft content around that term.
Checking the search volume of your brainstormed keywords will help you avoid wasting time on keywords that don’t have enough search volume. How much search volume you need depends on your niche and how many clients you need to be profitable and grow your business.
To find search volume, you’ll have to log into your Google Ads account and find the keyword planner. Once you enter the keywords or phrases that you want to check, you can learn about the search volume as well as the expected future search volume. This helps you make plans on the content you’ll create.
- Relevance
A keyword relevance score helps you determine which keywords you need to use to affect your pocketbook. You may need to use additional tools to determine relevance, but in general, relevant keywords are what your content is created about.
You’ll need to define your goals, brainstorm relevant topic ideas, and create a list of initial words called “seed keywords.” Then you can use tools like SEMRush.com, Moz.com or Google Keyword Planner to look further into relevance.
Long-tail keywords are usually more relevant as they’re more precise and specific. Your keywords help search engines determine if your website is about what they think it’s about. Google is very good at using the links, headers, and meta information of your site to ensure that it’s about what they think it is, so they send the right audience.
Don’t use keywords that don’t relate to your audience or your products and services to try to attract an audience. Google puts relevancy as one of its most important ranking factors. You can ensure your site is relevant in Google’s eyes by using the right keywords and matching it with the right content.
- Competition
Keyword competition is crucial because you cannot compete with big corporations and be successful. Specific keywords have too much competition. Therefore, for best results, you want your keywords to be low competition, but you want them to have high interest.
If a keyword is a “low competition” keyword, that means that while people are using the term, very few businesses are bidding on them. Fewer bids keep the ad price lower, but you don’t have to run ads to use competition as a metric for your keyword development. Look at it like this instead. If one big business uses a high competition keyword, it’s going to be hard for you to make headway with that keyword because you will not be able to create enough content using the keyword to build traction.
For example, let’s take the keyword “books.” When you search for books, where do you think you’re going to get sent? The number one result is going to be Amazon because they’re the number one bookseller, and no one else is going to be able to compete with that keyword – especially a small business owner. Therefore, if you sell your books, you’ll want to find a new keyword that is more relevant and has less competition.
These three factors are vital to understand if you want to be successful with content marketing. You don’t need to run ads to use this information to its full advantage.
by leah_st | Uncategorized
by leah_st | Uncategorized | 0 comments
A marketing funnel is just a way to make you think of your marketing in a visual way that helps you keep it organized in your mind. The funnel has the widest part at the top with the smallest part at the bottom, representing the stages of the buying journey from awareness to customer loyalty.
The funnel represents, in a clear way, the idea that you have to reach more people in the awareness stage (the widest part) in order to help them at the customer stage (the smallest part) of the funnel.
Here’s how the different stages work from a marketing point of view.
Awareness
When your customers are in the awareness stage of their buying journey, you need a lot more marketing material as it’s the widest part of the funnel.
You’re going to need to write blog posts, publish articles, create emails, and other content that you promote on social media and through ads in order to draw attention to your offers. You may want to use influencers, affiliate marketers, and others to help you get the word out in this stage.
Consideration
At this point, your audience has become a lead, but they may not yet be a prospect. Remember that a lead is someone who you’ve identified, but they’re not yet communicating with you. In many ways, a lead is just an idea of someone, while a prospect is someone who is identified as a potential customer.
You’ll need to use social media engagement, email marketing, targeted content, perhaps classes and newsletters to communicate with them in a way that encourages them to act and become a real prospect or a customer. You might do that with a lead magnet, a low-cost purchase, or a trial of your software.
Conversion
Once someone has converted, they may be classified as a prospect or a customer. If they downloaded a freebie, they’re a prospect; if they downloaded a product they bought and paid for, they’re a customer. Depending on which will define how you move forward with them.
Send more emails, education, and information to bring them to your solutions and to help them use what they bought. Segmenting is vital at this stage because you don’t want to send information they don’t need.
Loyalty and Advocacy
Now that they’ve purchased from you, it’s time to turn them into lifelong customers as well as brand advocates. Set up an autoresponder series to educate them about their purchase and bring attention to the next problem you want to solve. Plus, you can incentivize them by inviting them to your affiliate program, forums, and other platforms.
The marketing funnel gives you a path to follow to ensure that you provide the right information at the right time and place to your ideal customers.
