Digital Marketing Consultant

Standing out in the sea of Internet competitors is becoming more difficult as more businesses are using Internet marketing to promote their products and services.  The value of Internet marketing that gets your business noticed continues to increase as new company profiles continue to emerge on the Internet. 

Learning how to get your marketing voice heard over that of your competition is necessary for your business to get the attention of your market.

To get your marketing voice heard that are some things required in the Internet world today. 

• Blogging
• Social Media marketing
• PR and press releases
• Fresh content

Blogging is an effective way to keep your market informed as to what is happening.  In addition to your target market the engines index your blogs which will enhance your marketing efforts.   The key to blogs is to keep it current and constant.  Many business fail in their blogging efforts by simply not keeping it going over time, but give up after just a short period of time.  Daily blogging will produce the best results.

Social Media is accessed by most everyone today.  The search engines also access the various social media platforms which can prove beneficial if you have links back to your website along with information on your products and services.  Making your site seen and accessible for contact can be very valuable to your business.  It will do no harm and just may do a whole lot of good.

Press Releases and Articles are another great way to get fresh information out to the market and to the search engines.  They also provide a channel for links back to your website for both your market and the search engines.

Fresh Content should be planned periodically for your website.  Once again both your market and the search engines will be interested and reward you for keeping fresh content that is up-to-date on your website.

Remember you are not the only business online trying to get the attention of the market and the search engines.  This knowledge should fuel your energy to stay above the completion in the specific area for your business success.  You can get a good idea of how this can work for you if you study our free Wisdom Book.

Integrating content Into your business website product pages is an art and a science.  Up front, I am telling that, if you would like a free "perfect page" template, contact me.

It may take a little extra effort to load your product pages correctly with content, but it will be worthwhile for both the search engine rankings and the real visitors to your online business. 

It all starts with the title.   You want to do the research needed to make sure you have captured a title that is exactly like what your visitors will be searching for.   You should keep the title as close to what people are searching for as you possibly can.

Images need tags which describe them, both for the search engines and for those who don't allow graphics to show.

You will need to develop text and description content that is both compelling and fun to read to retain the attention of the reader.   The most engaging content is when the content exhibits the personality of the website and your business.

Connecting products according to which products are frequently bought together is a great way to get the attention of your visitor.  Provide trending information about visitors who have purchased a particular product and what other products they may be interested in purchasing.  This process should, in fact, be automated.

Provide content regarding product comparison.  This often provides answers to the questions your visitor may have regarding a product.

Include content that is user generated.   It could consist of product ratings  by customers.  Adding content generated by the end user is a great way to obtain unique content for your site.

Rich content on your product pages will make the page pop out to your customers, doing it right will make the search engines find your page...but there is much more than what I have dared to mention above.

It is exciting to develop and build a new website and waiting for visitors to come.   But if the content on your site fails to convert into sales, you will have to reconsider your strategy.

Most people think of content on a website being that of text.  The trend that has been growing is much more visual and interactive than just text.  Audio presentations, surveys, quizzes and video continue to become more popular in website content.   A video that can actually provide a demonstration of how a product works will prove to be a much more effective selling tool as compared to just a text written description about the product. It is a fact that video sells.   The video engages the visitor and keep them at your website for a longer period of time.

Your visitors will absorb the content on your website in a variety of ways.  Some people enjoy reading and some may prefer to see a video and others may prefer listening to an audio.  This is why it is important to diversify .

Creating content presents a challenge for a lot of website owners.   It is as if they get  writer’s block .  Now what should you do?   You could hire a copywriter to interview you and get the information to provide excellent content.   

Great contact can be obtained by following the plan below.
•    Compose a 1000 word article.
•    Turn the article into a podcast.
•    Create a Powerpoint presentation to upload to DocStoc, Scribd , or SlideShare.
•    Put the article into a PDF format and upload it to a variety of networks.
•    Create a video by simplifying information and uploading to Revver.com or to Youtube.

If you would like to see how well your website works, get a full report http://bit.ly/Order_Your_Audit.  If you just want to know how to best market your website, see our Wisdom Book.

Content strategy is required for all types of media to communicate your message to your target market.   A unified content strategy gains importance when your campaign has a lot of diversity.

Blogging, social media, video postings, website, article marketing, press release, email and traditional media should all be considered in your marketing campaign.  Each of these campaigns connects with different types of people and niches by using various modes of communication.

Your content strategy should focus on two different audiences; the search engines and your visitors.   The search engines will get the attention of your readers which is the best way of gaining website traffic.   However, once you attract a visitor, you need to provide rich content that will keep them engaged leading the way to your goal.

What should be included in a strategy for content marketing?

A Message with Purpose

The message is more than just mere words for communication and broadcasting.  The message is your voice, your tone, your values, your validation and even legalities.   What about your branding?  How do you communicate?   What are your conversion goals?

Demographics

Splitting your target market into specific needs groups will help you to target your communication much more effectively with each group.  Take a look from where your visitors are coming from and what their needs might be in order to decide upon topics on which to provide information.   Find out what the problems are that your visitor may be having and provide a solution to their problem.  Making these determinations will identify the content that you need to provide.

Distribution

Identify the types of content distribution that will be most effective in reaching to your potential visitors.   There should be a mix of distribution types to reach various niches in your market.

Blogging and use of various types of social media are intended to provide information and brandings.   Promotion and sales are best provided by websites.

Search Engine Optimization

Links and keywords should always be established to highlight and promote your blog or website.  Visualization provided by images and video integration should be a part of your plan.  Organic rankings can be powerfully driven with social media links.   Optimization should be applied in each of your media channels for the most effective SEO.

I welcome any comments which you may have regarding your strategy for content marketing.

And finally, if you would simply like to read some excellent material on the subject, go to http://bit.ly/WSIwisdomBook starting at page 93.

Common mistakes that can result in low search engine rankings

Customers these days don’t just browse or surf the Web anymore – they search.  Search engines allow consumers to search for a desired product or service online by typing in keywords and relying on the search engine to find relevant matches.  As a business owner, you want your website to be found easily by potential customers… so what if it isn’t even being indexed?  

In this three part series of articles, you will learn ten common mistakes that may be standing in the way of your website and the top positions in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.

Hosting Issues – Your server is too slow
There are a lot of websites out there for search engine crawler programs to try to index.  Some experts estimate that there are as many as 4 billion sites live, so search engines don’t have much time to spend trying to index them.  If the host server of your website has a slow Internet connection, the search engine will attempt to index your text, but will often time out which may result in your site not being indexed at all.  You can help avoid being passed over by the search engines by limiting the size of your home page to less than 60k, or simply by switching hosting companies to someone more reliable.  

Hosting Issues - You’re using a free Web space provider
If you’ve decided to host your business’ website with a free hosting provider, you might want to reconsider.  Some search engines will only list a certain number of pages from a single domain, so if you’re sharing that domain with thousands of other people, you can’t rely on your site being indexed at all.  In fact, some search engines leave off free hosted pages altogether, due to the amount of spam sites they receive from these domains.  

Truly though, as a business owner, your website URL should be one that instills confidence and trust in your potential customers that is easy to remember and to type – and free domains simply aren’t that.  Www.genericsites_forbusinesses.com/~canada/heathersflowers/home.htm simply doesn’t look professional, regardless of whether it was indexed on the search engines. It’s worth it to pay for hosting to get a URL that reflects your business AND is seen by search engines.

You have special characters in your URL
Choose your URL carefully.  Most search engines have difficulty indexing pages with special characters in the URL, such as &, $, =, %, and ?.  Many search engines ignore pages with these characters in the URL entirely, so it’s best to avoid them altogether, just in case.  If the search engines skip right past your URL, they will never get a chance to index the keyword-rich, relevant content of your site.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have text hidden in the background colour
In the past, some people have tried to trick search engines by hiding keyword rich text on a page by making the font colour the same as the background colour.  The text would then be hidden from viewers, but would theoretically still be ‘seen’ by search engine spiders, resulting in a high page ranking thanks to the keyword density.  

Unfortunately for those who have used this trick, most search engines have learned to catch it and will penalize your site for trying to “spam the search engine”.  They can even recognize if you’ve made the text a slightly different colour from the background.  

To ensure that your site isn’t blacklisted or penalized with low index rankings, simply don’t try to trick the search engines.  Make sure your website is keyword rich, and do it the right way.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have overused your keywords
It’s important to realize that overusing keywords on your website can be just as detrimental to your search engine rankings as not using keywords at all.  Many search engines avoid being spammed by carefully filtering out sites that overuse the same keywords or phrases repeatedly, either in their meta tags or in the body of the text.  While there is no magic number to determine what is ‘keyword rich’ and what is ‘keyword spam’, a general way to judge is simply to read the text aloud and objectively determine if the text sounds fake or natural.  If it sounds like you’re forcing the keywords into the text, it’s a good idea to cut some out.

Ineffective Optimizing - You’re using the wrong keywords
Sometimes the problem with your keywords is not how often you’ve used them or how you’ve formatted them, it’s specifically which keywords you’re using in your meta tags and in the body of your text.  When optimizing your site, you must be sure you’re using the words that your customers would likely search for – not necessarily the words you would use to describe your company.  When choosing your keywords, try to think like your potential customers and what they would likely type in to find your website.  

If your business is called “Heather’s Blooms” and specializes in bouquets and flower arrangements for weddings, you won’t want to only optimize for your company’s name or terms specific to your corporate identity (for example, tag lines or slogans like “creative floral creations”).  While some potential customers will search for you by name, the majority will be searching with more general keywords, such as: florist, flower arrangements, wedding flowers, wedding bouquets, bridal bouquets, etc.   Also, optimizing with geographic terms is a great idea, since most searchers will look for a business specifically in their area.  

Your site has poor link popularity
Is your site ‘popular’? One of the factors the major search engines look at when determining the quality of a website is its ‘link popularity’ – how many sites link back to yours.  If other credible sites link to yours, it boosts your site’s credibility and testifies to the quality of your site, which then boosts your rankings in search engine listings.

However, having unrelated links on your site and to your site won’t help your ranking.  Links must be related to your business and the content on your site – for example, if you run a flower shop, a link from a gardening center would be a good one, but a link to a drycleaner would not.  There are many reciprocal link programs that you can get your website involved in, which will help your link popularity – just make sure that the websites you’re trading links with are appropriate ones.

Problems with Content – You’re using frames, so search engines can’t see the text on your site
Using frames to design your website can result in low search engine rankings, because many search engines have problems reading the text within frames.  If your site is designed solely with frames, the only text the search engines can read are the title and meta tags – and that’s just not enough text to ensure your site gets indexed.

The best solution is simply to avoid using frames altogether by designing your site using layers instead.  However, if you site is already built using tables, a good idea is to add a detailed description of your site in the <noframes> section of the HTML that the search engines can read.  This won’t guarantee that your site gets indexed, but it will help.

Problems with Content – You don’t have enough text on your site
Search engine spiders read the text content of the site – they can’t actually “see” what your site looks like or how relevant the graphics on it are.  So, if your site relies too heavily on Flash or images, the search engines won’t have enough text to read to index your site appropriately. While flash and images are aesthetically appealing, they can seriously hurt your rankings if you use them in place of actual text content.  If you still decide to use a lot of images on your website, make sure that first, you write descriptions of the images in the <alt> tags, and second, you have other pages on your site that are text-rich so the search engines have something to read.

Time – Sometimes you just have to wait
If you avoided or fixed all of these problems and your site still isn’t found in a search, don’t panic.  Most search engines take up to six months to index a website.  Due to the rapid growth of the Internet, the number of websites launched every day is staggering.  Search engines simply can’t keep up.  So, sometimes, you just have to wait for the search engines to find you.  While you’re waiting, remember to refresh your content, since new, relevant content will appeal to both search engines and visitors alike.

Do any of these mistakes sound familiar to you?  You’re not alone.  The ‘rules’ of search engine indexing are constantly changing, so what may have been acceptable a year ago could get your site blacklisted from the indexes now.  

The best way to ensure that you aren’t doing more harm than good for your site is to enlist the assistance of a professional – someone who is aware of the most current best practices and can help your site be found by your customers.  Contact John Danenbarger today at John@SEOforSite.com. And for a different sort of on-line presentation that you can also have, check out http://www.seoforsite.com/Digital_Marketing.aspx