Archive for General Marketing 101
Consumer Reviews Can Be Dangerous
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Consumer reviews can be a very dangerous thing for a business. Their customers rely on them more than one might think. One survey found that 82 percent of online consumers considered user generated reviews to be extremely valuable. That same survey showed that 71 percent of consumers agree that consumer reviews make them feel more comfortable that they are buying the right product. Consumer reviews seem to be even more important than expert or critic opinions. In the same survey mentioned above 86.9 percent of respondents said that they trust a friend’s recommendation over that of a critic and 83.8 percent said that they trust the user review written by a complete stranger over a critic review. Because of the obvious influence of consumer reviews it is no surprise that 90 percent of unhappy clients said that they will not do business with the company that displeased them again. These survey statistics should encourage companies to devote more attention to the kind of consumer reviews that are being written by their customers.
The world of online marketing, media and communication is changing every day. New information is updated and uploaded each minute and so much information is available online that sometimes one feels lost. When one makes a page, blog post or writes an article online, it becomes important to ensure that when a user is trying to find the relevant information, your work shows up in the search and is able to reach the user. When you sit down to work, make sure your follow the simple tips given below for WordPress SEO and you can and should be able to link the articles in the best way.
- Choose the right keywords for tagging: As one of the most important features of SEO, one should prudently choose the right keywords or phrases rather. Users will go online and search using a phrase. Ensure that you visualize as an end user and do your research on the most commonly used phrases or keywords. This keyword, one should ensure, is part of the article heading, page title, content and also be there in meta tag description. This will make it more effective as an effective SEO technique. Also, have a meta tag description which makes it more visible on social media.
- Use proper META tags and description: It becomes important to ensure that one uses the correct META tags in the article one writes and has a description that is concise and adds to the SEO at the same time while retaining proper character length and intent.
- Use category and tags: One has to select the proper category to post the article and ensure all tags are in place when you post the article online. This will ensure proper research and an organized approach to your article’s URL. The more diverse your category and tags are, the better are the chances of your articles appearing in the top searches of the search engine. A definite sign of a good SEO.
- Use of social plug-ins: Use a social plug-in to attract more readers by interlinking the relevant articles. If you are interlinked well, the users might become subscribers, share your pages and posts, helping the user increase followers, and have more visitors and website traffic.
Given the changing times and number of articles published each day, it becomes important to ensure that you hire the services of professionals if you really want to make it big. It takes a lot of analytics, research, human effort, technical knowledge, skill and expertise to make sure you make it to top of SEO rankings. While many articles guide one to do-it-yourself pages, it is crucial to understand that this will help have only a limited visibility.
Technical efficiency and knowledge will help one contribute more to your articles and WordPress SEO needs. For a start, one can use the do-it-yourself techniques and once you have a number of followers, you should switch to the services of professionals to unlock a world of potential readers and more for your needs.
Images By: Erik (HASH) Hersman – CC BY 2.0
How To Add More Strings To Your Bow As A Modern-Day Web Designer
Posted by: | CommentsIt is becomingly increasingly more difficult for web designers to make a decent living on purely design projects alone. In recent years there has been a boom in the web design industry which has paved way for a wealth of potential business for the modern-day designer. That of course has also allowed an increase in the field’s competition, meaning that it really is boiling down to survival of the fittest out there (in business terms that is!).
So if you’re a web designer that is struggling to gain business, what can you do to increase opportunities and boost your own professional potential? The good news for any 21st century web designer is that there are a couple of things that you can do to kick-start your career again.
Be Versatile
The first key to success in virtually any industry is to be versatile. Instead of solely undertaking web design projects, a good web designer will be able to adapt and work across a variety of mediums, optimising their scope for business. This can be in the form of undertaking graphic design work such as logo and brand designing, creating business cards and letterheads as well as designing and producing business brochures and flyers. 
If you own a web design company consisting of several web designers then this should be an easy transformation. The benefit of having a team of staff is that each of them has their skills and strengths so you should identify what these are and then you can assign them the relevant projects as and when they come through.
Make Sure You’re Mobile
In today’s digitally-saturated society, every web designer must have mobile web design skills in their arsenal. There is a huge demand for mobile optimisation of websites currently, so if you or your design team can’t produce mobile web designs then you will certainly be missing out on a healthy chunk of business. Get trained!
Get Educated
Today there are many ways of learning new skills or programs by taking courses or modules to develop your knowledge of the web and everything it has to offer. By investing some time and effort into learning a new design tool, for example, you have the chance to apply fresh ideas and applications to virtually any project you undertake in the future. Local courses can usually be attended in the evening or at weekends (ie outside of your usual working hours), plus there are plenty of online qualifications you can sift through in the comfort of your own home. There’s no excuse not to add another string to your bow by spending some time expanding your horizons.
Don’t Just Sit There
Another great way to ensure that you keep up with the competition is to attend web design seminars and conferences. Rifled with leading experts, brand new technology and business innovators, these corporate events are a great opportunity to identify the current and forthcoming trends in your field and how you can incorporate them into your business model, allowing for maximum business growth in the coming months and years.
4 Strategies to Get More from Your Website Advertising
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Your website is actually one of the biggest assets for your business. Nonetheless, it is evident that not all businesses are able to deliver sufficient results or generate enough leads and sales for their businesses. Do you wish to enhance the performance of your website and generate the desired results? This hub will look at 4 strategies to get more from your website advertising.
Simple ways to make your website deliver desired results:
Make It Informative
One of the most successful ways to get more from your website advertising is to offer quality content to your target audience. Most individuals think that this is only crucial for blogs but is necessary for business websites as well. This ensures that you generate sufficient traffic to your website, which enables you to promote your products and services. Besides, it enhances your chances of converting visitors into leads or even sale.
There are various ways you can use to make your website informative. For instance, you can start a blog, offer articles, offer guides and tutorials relevant to your niche or even add a news section to share with your audience the current news in the industry.
Make Your Website Engaging and Interactive
Your website is much more than just a source of information about your business and products. It is evident that there has been a significant change in customer expectations over time. Today, customers expect your website to be engaging and interactive. Therefore, you must meet these expectations to make your advertising campaigns successful.
There are several interactive features, which you can add to your website to enhance interaction with your audience. These include surveys and polls, reviews and ratings for products, leave comment section and Google custom search. Indeed, they will allow you build lasting relationships with your online audience.
Incorporate Social Media
Social media is one of the most effective ways to build your brand or promote your business online. It is particularly crucial for small businesses because it is cheap. Besides, it enables small businesses to compete effectively with well-established businesses. You can actually target a wider customer base by incorporating social media in your website.
You should note that your website is one of the best platforms to build and grow social presence for your business. Some of the social media tips that you can use include use of the right plugins, targeting multiple social networks, use of social login and making it easy for visitors to share your content.
Start a Newsletter
One of the most cost effective ways to promote your brand is use of email marketing. Ensure you have an email list of your prospective customers. However, it is a daunting task to build an email list of your customers and this is why you need a newsletter. In this case, buying traffic is a great idea. It takes time to build an email list, it will eventually enhance your website advertising.
Closing Remarks
You should always work on your strategies to get more from your website advertising. This will enable you grow the number of visitors to your site, which translates to more leads or sale.
4 Natural Link Building Techniques
Posted by: | CommentsLink building can be a difficult task in this day and age. There are many different techniques and strategies being utilized to acquire links however not all of them are safe and some can be harmful to your site. In this article we will discuss 4 tried and proven natural link building techniques.
Guest Blogging
An excellent strategy to generate natural links to your site is by guest blog posting or “guest blogging”. This natural method of acquiring links will almost immediately gain traction for your site in the search engine rankings. The process of guest blogging requires well-written, unique and engaging content or articles. Then posting these articles in an open forum where webmasters all over the World bid to acquire your content. Utilizing guest blogging not only saves you money but also generates high quality natural links which in return will help bolster your search engine rankings and drive focused traffic to your site as well.
Social Media
Social media is another free and very efficient technique to obtain natural links to a given website. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the most popular social media outlets today. It is vital for companies to use these sites to create an all around online presence. To correctly utilize social media for link building, simply create a page for your company’s website on all the outlets and start generating original, unique and useful content such as articles, videos, etc… Stay active and engage with your followers, your content will do the rest. Social media can be a great boost to your sites traffic an rankings if used properly.
Web Directories
Web directory submissions are one of the oldest link building techniques still used today. There are different types of directories out there, some are free and some charge a fee but either way they serve as a great tool for acquiring natural links. A web directory is basically a listing of websites organized by different categories. These directories are used by end users to find services, products, etc… Once a site is submitted to a directory it will not only receive a link but also it may generate focused traffic to your website.
Press Releases
Press releases are another great way to build natural links. A press release can be about anything you want to promote. For instance a certain product, a sale or an upcoming event. It needs to be unique and engaging content that catches the end user’s attention. If your PR is written well enough webmasters will naturally link to you and share your content. Just like the directories this will not only earn your site links but also drive traffic and ready to spend customers to your site.
How Big Is The Internet?
Posted by: | CommentsWe all know the Internet is big and continues to grow every day. Today, 2.2 billion people (almost 1 out of every 3 people) all over the world use the Internet. The current estimate is that there are approximately one trillion pages out on the Web. That translates to one trillion sheets of standard 8.5×11 printer paper. All that paper would cover 649,000,000,000 square feet of land.
Looked at another way, all the printed webpages would cover 23,279 square miles of land. Since New Jersey is a mere 8,722 square miles, all the world’s printed webpages would cover the Garden State nearly 2.7 times. In New York, all the pages would easily fill the massive 2.85 million rentable square feet of the Empire State building 200,000 times. On an international scale, all these pages from the Internet would spread out to be larger than the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, and Kuwait combined.
How Large is The Internet?
Top 5 Tips To Optimize Your PPC Landing Page
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PPC campaigns are one of the best ways to make money these days. It is a simple and easy way to generate sales and interest in people and to try their products. However, it is not easy to say whether your investment in PPC campaigns is actually effective.
Sometimes PPC campaigns require extensive study to see if your ads are actually just attracting people or generating sales as well. Hence there is a term in PPC known as Conversion rates. These are when a user clicks on an ad on a PPC network, he is usually directed to further details sales pitch or extended advertisement. The rate at which this ad has actually resulted in desired action is conversion rate and it is how the success of PPC is tested. However you need to properly optimize your landing page before you focus on conversion pages.
Pre-Accepting Conditions:
Many web pages have sales contracts attached to the landing page. Such contracts usually require you to populate the check box or type in your contact details. An effective way to increase conversion rates is to use only populated cursors and also have them pre-populated. It is logical since the customer cannot proceed without populating the box and they are accepting it by trying to proceed, you don’t separately need them to populate the box on their own.
Eye Contact
Allowing the users to focus on the subject of the picture can help you quickly generate sales. What the concept is that the more time people focus on reading or understanding an ad, the more people are likely to question. However if you graphically enhance the subject of the image or ad, then people are likely to focus on that and proceed. With such high eye contact focusing only on one facet rather than the details of the deal, your conversion rates are likely to rise.
Comments and Testimonials
Comments and testimonials are excellent optimizers. The idea is that people will not buy your product confidently unless people already using it, comment about the product. Many testimonials will be bad but some may be good or event promoting. Such confidence will allow the customer not to second guess the service or product being provided.
Point of Assurance
Many people may think testimonials are simply there by the brand to manipulate clients. However, the presence of a trusted icon can help people focus on ads and proceed further on landing pages and convert. Icons such as FDA approved, hygienic or recycle are symbols that help the user feel more confident about the product they are about to purchase.
Quality
Many PPC campaigns can be cheap if you maintain the quality of your ad, page and web site. This means that you can use apps such as Google Adwords quality tool to analyze the fallbacks of the site and fix them to get better quality scores.
Moreover, it leads to getting better or faster loading speeds, downloading speeds and more. When you have a good quality score the cost of PPC campaigns goes down.
Infographics: The Newest Hot Marketing Tool
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There is a reason that magazines are more popular than newspapers and books: readers prefer colorful layouts and information arranged in easily digestible snippets. Reading blocks of text all with the same formatting is boring, especially when people are looking for quick information on a subject. Inforgraphics present data in easy-to-understand graphs accompanied by carefully placed text that lets the user know which information is most important.
Last year, infographics received far more shares, likes and retweets than other type of posts on popular social media websites. “Inforgraphic” is topping many search engine search results, creating a unique opportunity for web developers to use them as a marketing tool.
Infographics can be created for any subject, if they do not already exist. Some of 2012’s most viewed infographics offer consumer advice, such as the visual critique of fast food services entitled “Advertising vs. Reality”. Others, like “Formal Dining Setting”, give practical advice on impressing house guests.
Why Just Blogging Will Do Nothing For You
Posted by: | CommentsBlogging 2013
To be successful online today not only to the search engines require great fresh and unique content but so do the searchers, that’s you and me. It’s become ever more crucial that companies whether small or large make sure they have an effective content marketing strategy in place. Having a blog is no longer just about adding a simple post each week that mentions your chosen keyword a few times. You need to provide great engaging content on a regular basis.
How to blog in the year 2013
Ok so we have established that writing a blog for the sake of it just to update your blog is worthless, so what should you do? You should pick a topic to write about instead of a solitary keyword, this way not only will your posts be far more interesting a cover a topic in depth you won’t run the risk of keyword stuffing your posts.This also allows you to think of far more things to write about. For instance let’s say you run a cooking accessories site and let’s say you want to increase the sales of mixing bowls. Writing a blog on mixing bowls will literally bore your readers to death, however if we write about how to make cupcakes or whoopee pies we can discuss within this post the importance of a good mixing bowl. This post now gives the reader some free info (how to make cupcakes) and also advises the importance of a good mixing bowl, you now don’t just have a post all about “please buy my mixing bowls”, nobody likes that guy.
Blogging in 2013 will also include your post being shared via social media. So this again feeds back to having a good quality article written that’s engaging, shares knowledge and develops your or your company as a thought leader within your market. Social and search will continue to merge in 2013 and there will come a point that they will be one and the same thing. This is only a good thing and will clear the serps of the spammy I bought 2000 links look at me sites and introduce more independent quality sites. This is actually mimicking the high street in a sense, you will notice far more boutique fashion retailers appearing as the corporate “we sell everything” shops begin to disappear.
Go deep not wide
Within your market pick an area that you can specialise in. For instance if you are a insurance broker and sell house, life and car insurance pick one, say life insurance and begin writting blogs on getting the right life insurance for the over 50`s or the best insurance deals for couples. This will allow you to write copious amounts of valuable content.
