All posts by Jen Corre

7 Simple Must-Asked Questions to Have a Winning Content Strategy

Posted by on March 20, 2015

Strategically, with the help of any SEO consulting services, we can have higher traffic and ranking than the other sites and blogs. However, even when we seek SEO services,  it is still not a guarantee that we can achieve our desired rank when we have a poor and crappy content. We all know that content is the heart and soul of a site or blog.

 

manobyte.net

manobyte.net

Creating an engaging content for your website can be demanding at times. Implementing a content strategy itself needs our full attention. What more when it comes to creating appealing and engaging contents? Basically, the content must be precise and direct so the readers can easily and clearly understand what you want to tell them.

Writing a content means writing down your ideas. But sometimes, ideas won’t just flow more so when our minds are already tired and empty. A winning content observes and follows a good content strategy. Here are some of the must-asked questions if you want to have a winning content strategy.

  1. Who are your users/audience?

As a writer, you can’t write a content if you don’t know who your audiences are. To whom are you writing for? Who are these people that you want to impart your ideas to? And who are these people who would be interested and willing to read your articles or blog posts? These questions are essential for you to answer to identify your target audience.

You can’t determine the specific traffic on your site if you fail to determine your target audience. Also, you can’t identify what kind of people who usually visits your site or blog in terms of demographics. You may have a lot of target markets which can be difficult to write for, or you may have an ideal target market who you think will be interested in your contents.

Knowing your target market is a prerequisite of focusing more correctly on that particular market. such a process may boost the traffic to your site and let you obtain more qualified leads. Well, that is, aside from having better and higher page ranking on the search engines.

  1. Who are your competitors?

To know and identify your competitors mean that you are up for the challenge in a competitive world of online content consumption. Knowing who your competitors are is one way to being proactive and strategic enough especially when they want to take you off guard and copy your strategies.

If you are smart enough, however, you can get some of the ideas from your competitors. For instance, you may determine how they manage to have a successful content strategy particularly when it comes to letting the people stay and being engaged in the content they made. It is a matter of who gets the idea first and how you act on the idea. It could be you or your rival.

  1. What can you offer?

Since you already know your target audience and your direct (and even indirect) competitors, the next thing you must consider is what can you offer to your target audience that your competitors may not necessarily copy or imitate. That’s your unique value.

Some of the questions worth pondering are: What kind of content these particular groups of people need to know? What else can you teach them that they still don’t know? What kind of content will you give to them that they may be interested in?

Always remember that there are thousands of digital marketers who write and publish the same content as you do. The only way your content can stand out from the others is to make your contents unique, valuable, informative, relevant, interesting, useful and engaging.

  1. What does your target audience need and want to hear?

If you don’t have any ideas on what kind of content you should be writing for your audience, try being active online. It is necessary to socialize online so that you’d know what the trending topics are and for you to fit into the crowd and to your target audience. When you do, you know what kind of topics that they want to know.

You can get ideas by interacting with the other online writers also, perhaps through forums or any other social networking sites. Grab that idea and make an engaging content out of it for your target audience. The more engaging and interesting your topic will be, the more people will be reading, liking, commenting and sharing your content. In short, an engaging content is a magnet for worthy interactions!

  1. What is the purpose of your content?

Now yo know what to write about, the next thing you must consider is to know what is the purpose of the content. Is it purely for traffic and lead generation? Is your content intended for selling? Is it for entertainment? Will it be informative or educational? Is it intended for the kids or for adults?

It is important to know the purpose of your content so you may easily align the topic with the right audience. You may also identify which category your content belongs to and for you not to be confused.

  1. How often should you publish content?

When you start blogging, it is now your duty to give your target market an interesting content that they might not know yet. You must have a schedule on when to publish since you are tapping on your readers’ expectation. Eventually, your readers will look forward to reading your blog on that specific day. Will you publish one article per week or every other week? Or even every day?

Publishing a new content on a regular basis is also a daunting task. You have to think of a new and interesting ideas. There are instances when you cannot think of anything to write. Just always go back to the basics of why you are  writing in the first place.

  1. How will you distribute your content?

Publishing your content is not enough. You need to let the people know that your website or blog exists. Knowing where to distribute or post your content other than your website is a way to gain more viewers.

Be reminded that in publishing, you must be careful where you are going to post your contents. Not all publishing platforms are created equal. If you want to gain more viewers, you have to post your article on the sites wherein there will be lots of people that may notice and read it. The traffic of your blog also varies on how you should distribute it socially.

Sometimes, we complicate things when, in fact, having a good and winning content strategy is as easy as answering 7 must-asked questions. The secret is in the basics! And the basics that we are talking about are discussed above.

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SEO Guide: How to Do SEO on Your Own

Posted by on March 13, 2015

Can we? Really?

It is a must for every digital marketer to know how important a guaranteed SEO is and what it can do for our website. Without it, it is just impossible for any website to improve its ranking on search engines.

There are digital marketers who want to do SEO on their own, which raises also a lot of questions. Is it possible and legal to do SEO on our own? Is it doable? Are we still going to achieve the desired page ranking for our website if we do SEO ourselves?

Yes, you can!

heise-media-service.de

heise-media-service.de

Despite its inherent risks, doing SEO by yourself is completely doable and it has advantages, too. Well, if you have brilliant strategies on how you can make your website rank above any other websites, then why not?!

Point is, doing the basics of SEO is advantageous enough than not doing them at all. Here are some of the SEO basics that I am talking about.

Create blog posts

Start by creating blog posts, but publishing blog posts doesn’t just mean writing. You write for your readers with the goal of making them informed on the things that they need to know and understand about a certain topic or niche.

Creating a good and engaging blog post is important for your website to rank on the top of Google and other search engines. And when you create a captivating blog posts, you are grabbing the people’s attention. You caught their interest and hopefully, they will explore your website further than the homepage.

There are elements that make a blog post more successful. An interesting headline is one of these elements. Of course, the content itself must be informative. Always be attentive to the things that can grab the online user’s attention. Know the trendy topics and use them as your leverage for engaging people in your blog posts.

Another key to engagement is making your content as simple and comprehensible as possible to the extent that your reader would easily understand what your topic is all about. Remember KISS? Keep it simple and don’t leave your readers confused.

Build a social presence

As a digital marketer, there will always be the need for you to be active socially. You have to know what interest your target audience, so that you will have an idea on how to properly address their levels of engagement while they are on your site. Paying attention to the reader’s needs is always a plus on your side as a digital marketer or as a blogger if you are more comfortable calling yourself as such.

To engage socially, it means interactive by sharing about a new article on the sites wherein the majority of the target consumers can see and relate to it. Interacting also means liking and sharing other interesting articles that people want to read. Don’t hesitate to share other company’s content. After all, the engagement is directed to your site and not on your competitors’. The more interesting the contents you share, the more people will share them.

As much as possible, do not neglect your public’s suggestions or opinions. Try to engage in a conversation when needed. Say thank you to them when they give a good feedback about your brand, staff, product or service. Appreciation can further boost their interest in your company and it what it offers and does.

Attend to the needs of the people as your customers. Politely accepting their bad feedback and trying to improve the part wherein they are not satisfied is also one way of making the people interact more with your site. Create a rapport between you and them as your customers. That’s the bottom-line.

Look for guest blogging opportunities

It is a good opportunity when you try to guest post on different websites or blogs. Publishing your article on their website can escalate your own website’s viewership due to the viewership of that site you intend to submit a guest post or article. Of course, you have to be very careful in choosing the website to post your articles.

When shortlisting sites that allow guest posting, try to look for a website that has high-quality traffic. You also have to make sure that the website you are going to publish your article is related to your topic. There are thousands of related websites that allow article submission. Unfortunately, not all of these sites accumulate the appropriate traffic volume and ranking results.

Monitor your account

It is a must to monitor the viewership of your website or blog. By doing this, you can track the performance of your website traffic and ranking-wise.

There are actually two monitoring tools that you can use. These are Google Analytic and Authority Labs. These tools can help you. Without any of these, it will be difficult for you to know the status of your website.

Specifically, the tool helps in finding out how your visitors locate your website. Google Analytics, for instance, also identifies what keywords are most used by your visitors. As you dig deeper into the demographics of your visitors, you will be able to identify what kinds of people are mostly visiting your site and from where. In simpler terms, the tools will help you to evaluate your website’s traffic flow whether it is gaining more and more visitors or not.

With all the statistics that the tools made available to their users, you may conveniently take note of what needs to be changed or improved in your website or your strategy, in general.

Monitoring plays a big part in improving your website or blog’s ranking on the results pages. That is why you have to be very keen when it comes to the status of your website and the improvements that need to be done.

These are just the SEO basics that you can do on your own. By following the practical tips noted above, there is no reason why your SEO will not be successful. There will always be a caveat though. Doing SEO by yourself is risky. If you have the knowledge or capacity to do it then, you may hire an SEO consulting service. Just make sure that the SEO consultant that you are about to consult is credible enough to do the SEO successfully for you not to regret hiring it.

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Guaranteed SEO: How to Keep Constant High-Quality Traffic on Your Blogs

Posted by on March 5, 2015

Having a guaranteed SEO and making your blog rise to the top rank in the search engine would definitely not be the end of the process of making your blog be known to the people. Keeping and maintaining your blog traffic would also be your duty to gain more readers that would engage in your blog posts.

brainshakers-interactive.com

brainshakers-interactive.com

Leaving your blog without maintaining its traffic is very risky especially when your blog post is already on the top rank on the search engine. You also have to consider thousands of bloggers who would love to have your rank and replacing it with theirs. You definitely would not allow this, would you?

Keeping and maintaining your blog traffic and making sure that the viewership of your blog posts are increasing would be a challenge. It is challenging since you have to consider the other things that readers would engage and must be engaged in while reading your blog. Not just viewing, but staying and reading your blog posts and then, interacting with the posts and other people who have read and interacted with your posts.

As bloggers, by profession or hobby, there are some points to ponder when you want to keep and maintain high-quality traffic on your blogs. And, here are some things you can do to make sure that your blog ranking would surely stay on the top.

Determine other blog topics or posts that are generating traffic constantly

Be mindful that that there are a lot of bloggers who also generates good traffic on their blogs. As a blogger, you also have to be observant on how other bloggers successfully generate and maintain good traffic. When you feel like your blog still needs more improvement, you have to act accordingly. Change the content  angles, for instance, to make your blog more noticeable.

You do not just observe, but you also have to identify and determine other bloggers that are capable of bringing high-quality traffic to your blog. Involve and mention them on your blog post, too. In that way, you are building a relevant support page that target the same search term and internally link to it.

Including quality links on your blog post can help enhance the visibility of your blog. Improving and constantly updating your blog for the better is also one way of maintaining and increasing convert-ready traffic on your blog. With this said, you have to know which blogs can help increase your traffic and which blogs do not offer any help.

Make the most of your marketing’s momentum

With all the efforts that you have been putting on your blog, there will be a time when your blog traffic will suddenly rise. It is best that you have to immediately identify the major source that boosts such traffic so that, you can have the same and better amount of traffic in the future when you need them on your blog.

There is a big possibility that the previous blog posts that you have mentioned in more current posts, for marketing purposes will receive page visits for the second time and most likely be liked and shared again. Don’t feel tired in giving compliments to the other bloggers. Since they will also voluntarily link your blog posts on their blog posts  and vice versa. That is the beauty when you have created a good rapport with other bloggers which also gives you a lot of blogging and rank-increasing opportunities. More about this on the latte part.

Always stay on the reader’s satisfaction

Constantly updating and improving your blog is a key factor here. Informing and making the readers happy and satisfied is your duty as a blogger. People usually depend on the information that you give. When they feel that you, as a blogger can be trusted when it comes to the things that you have already imparted to them, they will come back for more. They will do so for future reference.

Put simply, the more interested people are in your site, the higher the page rank your page will be. That is why satisfying your readers should be your number one priority. It is true they say that you have to write for your readers and not the bots.

Link out to influential people through socially engaging content

There are a lot of influential people out there who are mostly active in blogging that can also help publicized your blog. How? By linking them to your contents, involving them on your topic can attract other bloggers who are also aware of the influence of the blogger or topic you mentioned in your post.

Since most influential people are active in blogging, there are most likely to share your blog on various social media platforms that they have a direct and indirect control of. There is also a big chance that your blog will be seen and shared by the other influential bloggers in their respective social sites. With that, it will help your blog’s visibility in the search engine and any other social channels.

How can you do this more specifically? There are actually a lot of ways on how you can link or mention them on your topic. Influential people often publishes words of wisdom that may fit your topic; you can also quote them as your reference while using their own words. Or, you can also mention them by linking their blog post which discussed something related to your topic.

Network with other blogs

Mentioning and linking influential people or bloggers is not enough, you also have to create and build a good rapport to other bloggers as well. Put simply, involve other bloggers in your posts. Always remember that showing a good attitude and gratitude to other bloggers reflects your personality as an individual blogger. Starting and building a good conversation and sharing insights to the other bloggers will be an advantage on your part.

The question now is how you can effectively network with other bloggers? You can build a good connection with commenting or leaving a good remark on the comment section or even in their personal emails. Giving those compliments on how they are keeping up the good work, on how informative the contents are and how they can let the readers engaged with their topic work well in the blogosphere.

These simple acts encourage other bloggers to make their own work better than the previous one. With that, they will have a good reason to visit and explore your blog and more likely to share your blog posts on their site or any other social sites.

To make sense of it all, guaranteed SEO in this context refers to gaining, keeping and increasing high-quality traffic on your blog. Traffic come and go, but convert-ready traffic is sure hard to come by. Above are some of the strategies that bloggers like you may implement to secure their post in the top of the results pages.

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6 Reasons Why We Need to Include SEO Consulting Services in Our Business Strategies

Posted by on February 26, 2015

Aside from making our business grow and gaining profit from it, making it known to the people is also one of our main goals. Firms have their own strategies, processes and strategies on how to build awareness for their products and services. However, other businesses seek SEO consulting services so that their business would be at the top of even the leading firms in their respective industries.

seoconsultingexpert.com

seoconsultingexpert.com

As a business owner and marketer, you may think of various strategies. There might be other people in your company who may have other ideas. However, implementing an SEO strategy will definitely help you with your goals especially if you are just planning to launch your website or integrate corporate blog to your current site.

When hiring an SEO provider, the earlier the better. These consultants will give and help in managing your website as well as making your site placed on the top rank in the search engine. Now, here are some of the core services that any consultant can offer.

SEO consultants review the content structure

Before launching your website, an SEO consultant will review and make sure that the planned contents of your site is engaging enough for the people to read and stay longer on the site and its pages. They will not let you launch your site when you are still not sure about what the content of the page will be about and more so, of the quality of the contents of each page.

SEO consultants will make sure that everything is written clearly and coherent enough for the people to grasp what the company wants to impart to them.

In terms of the content structure, the SEO consultants will make sure that the structure itself is reader-friendly. The contents should be easy to read from the standpoint of the visitors.

SEO consultants develop an engaging content

One of the duties of an SEO consultant is to create and develop engaging and informative contents for your website. They have to know and understand what your company is about for them to write contents that people will love to know about.

Creating highly-engaging contents for your business may be a difficult task for you. Even when you know your product offerings by heart and yet you don’t know the right words to say, you will still struggle. But when you consider hiring an SEO professional, he or she will make the work easier for you and your company.

SEO consultants know just how to grab the attention of the users with the right headlines, for instance, making the people read and dwell on the site. So, why don’t you just let the creative do their job of making great contents for your site?

SEO consultants manage online business development campaigns

SEO consultants don’t just engage your target users, they will also make sure that your website will be one of the top rank searches in the search engine. They will strategize to establish your brand online. For instance, they will put advertisements on other websites through the use of specific tools. Yes, these consultants are knowledgeable of the advanced SEO tools.

Without any online campaigns, for instance, it is categorically impossible to introduce your brand, products, services or even your website to the online consumers. Everyone seems to be connected to the Internet nowadays, and technologies make it easier for us – online marketers – to put our brand where the most number of people can see it.

SEO consultants ensure strong keyword research

Having a strong keyword structure is an advantage because people will easily find your website. The stronger and less competitive your keywords are, the more people will visit your site, clicking and reading the contents of your site. This is particularly true when the keyword fits on what exactly they are looking for.

Strong keywords can also help your website be rank higher, if not highest, on the results pages. That is, if you are using keywords that people usually use when searching with which SEO experts can also help you with. Again, they are using updated tools in finding business-relevant keywords.

SEO consultants specialize in specific markets and geographies

Have you heard of local SEO? Some of these consultants are also experts in specific markets or geographies. This is critical for companies that provide services to the locals such as dental offices, plumbing providers, carpet cleaning services, hair salons, etc. These are the companies that cater to the need of their immediate consumers.

These consumers are buying or engaging in your business. You have to know what specific target market you want to advertise or sell your products to. Of course, you need to know who among these people are into your products too to better provide them with the right products and better serve them.

When you know who and where you want to sell your products, it is easier for you to circulate and expand your businesses, right?

Finally, SEO consultants are trained and experienced

Not all SEO companies can be trusted. If you have issues trusting your company to just any consulting services, you are not alone. Perhaps, you are afraid of being scammed and your business and reputation might be at risk.

With this, you really need to find well-trained, highly-skilled and well-experienced SEO providers. Make sure that the consultant(s) that you are hiring have the skills that qualified as a professional SEO consultant. They will not be able to work as SEO consultants when they don’t have enough knowledge of how they can help businesses grow regardless of what the industry the business belongs to.

Find those consultants who are mindful when it comes to working with just any company. These people make sure that their performances are outstanding so as to achieve the SEO goals that they have helped creating in the first place.

There are many ways by which SEO consultants may help you in growing your business. If you will notice it, a consulting service can be an entire SEO team who will help you from the ground up. Nevertheless, your job is finding a service provider that is proficient and professional.

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4 Reasons Why SEO is the Best Partner in Business

Posted by on February 20, 2015

In the world of business, most, if not all, must be perfect. However, situations that can affect and hinder business improvements are inevitable. Without any good strategy to boost your sales, your business might fail. It is a breakthrough for a company to have a guaranteed SEO that helps improve business growth. Yet there are still a lot of businesses who have doubts about integrating search engine optimization (or simply SEO) in their business. Perhaps, they still don’t understand how SEO works when it comes to helping and boosting their sales.

You might ask, what SEO is really and in what way it can help my business? Well, for one reason, SEO promotes your business to the people. That is why, people who are into business needs it. Here are the reasons why every business people must have SEO on their side.

SEO builds brand awareness

You should always put in mind that not all businesses are known to the people. And your business might be one of those that are not that known to them. The lack of knowledge that your company exists is one of the reasons why your business might go down. Letting the people know what your company or business is all about is one way to promote or publicize your products. With that, it will boost your sales in the process.

SEO makes your business visible to the people. It lets the people know that your company exists. Yes. SEO tries to put your business on the top rank in the search engine. The higher the rank is, the more visible your company gets. People get to see it whenever they search something that is related to your business. Through it, more and more people will recognize and learn what your company is all about.

When people noticed that more people go to the page where your business is, the more intrigued they are and tries to go to your business page as well. With that, you may guarantee that your leads and conversions will go up since more and more people are now aware of your company’s products and services.

SEO improves business credibility

When one learns that many people recognizes and likes your company just by viewing and reading your company profile and what is it all about, he or she might like your company as well. The mob influence is there. And one way to influence other people to try your business or products is through their reviews. Reading and giving reviews or feedbacks and comments are one way to know whether your customers appreciate and are satisfied with your services or not.

A good review from a client adds an impact to the people who want and are still planning to try your offerings. Just like how visible your company is, the better and satisfying reviews you get from the customers, the more people would want to associate themselves with your company or brand.

Just be careful of the people who have a negative review since it also affects the credibility of your company. Make sure that you attend to them diligently. The tendency of having a negative comment is that people may have doubts in trying your services and that can really affect the sales of the company. If you don’t want that to happen, you can always choose to approve or disapprove their reviews before posting it to your page. In that way, you can minimize the negative reviews from the clients.

SEO encourages other entities to do business with you

There are investors who scout for people who are also into a business. Sometimes, they search for people through the web. Taking good care of your business page keeps you in the top rank of the search engine, making it easier for investors to find you and learn what your core business is. When your business page makes a good impression to the investors, they will definitely want to invest in your company.

Investors can be critical in choosing which company to have business with. They look into the popularity of your company or products. They also look at the reviews from your business page whether you have volumes of happy and satisfied customers. Investors also try to assess whether your company is worthy enough for their investments. That is why, making use of the SEO is important when you want to attract investors.

When you have a good strategy on how to attract more and more investors, and with the help and the use of SEO, your business will surely be on top than any other businesses. Just make sure that your rank on the search engine is sustainable despite the ongoing SEO efforts of other companies that are also looking for investors to invest in their companies.

SEO helps business growth

SEO plays a big part in the business growth. It gives a big impact to your company and to the people who are also interested to be part of your company. Finding you company in the web gives them an easier access and more transparent way of knowing your company.

When you make your customers satisfied with your products and services, they usually tend to share your business with their families and friends. This is word of mouth. When they do, these people will try your products as well, expecting to experience the same thing that a happy customer experienced. And the cycle goes on as other happy customers share the experience with others, increasing sales in the process.

There are actually a lot of ways on how to make your business be known to the people. If possible, you will try  every single way on how to make your business be on the top from other businesses, right? SEO is just one way of growing your business. Nonetheless, this can be the most important thing for your business and what your business might actually need. Staying on top of the search engine has its many benefits, business-wise. Indeed!

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4 Things Every Blogger Must Know

Posted by on February 13, 2015

The number one rule, when you are into blogging, is to know that the web is a battle place. A place where every blogger is in a competitive mode, competing on which blog wins the heart of the reader and which blog gain more shares and likes. Even SEO Cebu or Manila competes to gain more readers and make their blogs at the top rank of the search engine.

blogging-tips-300x225

A tough one, isn’t it?  It is daunting to compete with other bloggers who rank on the top. Perhaps not, when you just understand and know how successful bloggers did the work. It doesn’t need to be that complicated when you try and apply their techniques on how they attract readers and win their hearts.

Topics/headlines

Admit it! When you don’t like the topic, or you don’t like the title of the topic, you would skip it. You don’t want to read it. Who would want to read an article when the headline is not even that engaging? Headlines play a great role in your blog. It catches the reader’s attention. It grabs their interest. Because when they read an interesting headline and got hooked up, they will stay on your blog a little longer.

Don’t kill a good headline by having a long and wordy title because when you do, expect to have fewer readers. There are limitations in composing a good headline. The ideal length of the headlines is only 6 words. But, there are times when 6 words won’t be enough for the headline. You can have up to 65 characters as the maximum before the search engine truncates your blog post’s title.

Another way to attract the reader’s attention is to add numbers or a negative word to your title. With that, the reader will be intrigued by your article. The more intrigued they are, the more they want to stay and read your posts.

Remember, it is just only the headline.  There are still a lot of things to consider if you want your blog to gain more readers.

Contents

The content of your article is the meat of your blog posts. Without it, there is no point of having and making one. Of course, there will always be contents for the people to read. This is where the challenge takes place. You already got the reader’s attention through your headlines, the challenge for you is to make the readers stay and read the whole article.

You already have an engaging topic. And now, you have to make sure that your content will also be as interesting and engaging as your headlines. Writing the content for your blog is always critical. It needs attention so as not to make the readers feel dismayed.

Good blog content is when people can relate to what you are trying to impart through your article. Readers would want to feel the connection between you as an author or a blogger and them. Of course, one way to know what readers want to read is to know what topics that are now trending, the talk of the town (including the social media) or the ins and outs of daily living. And that what makes your blog more interesting when everybody wants to talk about it.

And, don’t ever forget the grammar, the punctuations and the spelling of your words. Having a bad grammar, misplaced punctuations and wrong spellings can turn your readers off. It doesn’t look good on your blog, and it is a must of every blogger to check each word to make sure it is properly used.

If you are not comfortable with self-editing, you can use online editing sites. There will be suggestions on how to make the sentence more understandable to the readers. With that, it will help minimize the grammar errors in your articles.

Share

Publishing your articles on your blog is not just enough. One way to make your blog post noticeable is to share. Because readers won’t make an effort to find and read your blog posts if you don’t share it with your friends or other social networking sites. Sharing is one way to make your blog post be seen and read. Don’t have Twitter accounts, Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, and other social networking sites? Now is the time you make one.

Sharing your blog posts on the social media sites would be a great help to increase the viewership of your blog. In that way, many people will be intrigued what your post is all about since many would like, share, and tweet your posts. Just be careful about which and what sites you will be posting your blog since there are sites that are not that as noticeable as the other leading sites.

The beauty of sharing your post on the social media is that when you share, there are people who love your post will also share it with their social media accounts. And through that, more and more people will take notice and read your blog.  That is one way to make your blog post rank on the top. The more views, likes, tweets, and shares you have, the more your blog will be placed in the top rank of the search engine.

How do you like it? Great isn’t it? That is why every blogger must share their post on social media to gain more readers.

Update

Constant update on your posts also plays a big role on your blog. Updating may give you more reviews from the bloggers or readers. When you update your posts, people would want to interact with you as the author. Most bloggers or other people who just read your articles may want to comment and share their thoughts regarding the topic. When you interact with them, more and more readers would also love to join the conversations that you have.

A constant update on your blog posts means you are an active blogger. And, that is one way to gain more readers to read your posts. When you do the updates, you might want to tag something from the other sites that can be related to your topic for better and wider information that you can give to your readers.

None of these things should be treated more important than the other, all of them are. In the world where the social media consume much of the time of the people, it is important to share and update. Nonetheless, this might not be possible without truly engaging and interesting article.

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How to Create Customer-Centric Contents, Really

Posted by on January 13, 2015

As digital marketers, we all know what content marketing is. You, as our readers, may not know that we are doing some sort of marketing through the contents you are reading from our website, blog, Facebook page, etc. That is, an SEO company may churn hundreds of relevant contents for the readers without the readers realizing it. With this, it would be great to know why we are publishing content consistently from both writer and reader’s perspectives and how we come up with contents to publish.

content-marketing-online-marketing

Why content marketing is important to us – digital marketers?

There is nothing absolutely new about content marketing. Remember infomercials? Well, they are not actually published, but we consume this type of contents nonetheless. Further, a study conducted by Content Marketing Institute revealed that about 93% of marketers are using some form of content marketing in their marketing portfolio.

How content marketing revolves along with the changes in the digital landscape is profound. However, there is no denying the immense benefits of doing content marketing. Compared to traditional marketing, content marketing is a very cost-effective strategy and it generates more and highly-qualified leads. Because it is inbound, it can generate up to 54% more leads. Aside from that, it breeds consumer satisfaction and loyalty. About 90% of online consumers find the contents very useful. They are more confident in buying from companies that publish content regularly.

You can say that we regard content marketing as a specialized strategy. Why not? It puts the consumers at the center of our overall marketing strategy. Content is more attractive to consumers than blatant, intrusive marketing. It keeps their interest and gives them the freedom whether to buy or not, that is, after consuming the content.

content-marketing-digital-landscape

 

Why content is important to you – readers?

Well, it is easy to discern why contents is and should be important to the readers – it is in-depth learning in a capsule, to say the least. Our goal is making your lives easier and more convenient while solving your problems on hand. That’s empowerment. So, the next time you are reading an article or watching a video, be reminded that you are being empowered in the process.

Knowing why consuming content is important to you is paramount to the success of our content marketing strategy. We call this customer-centric content, which is not an easy process. If we want to produce content that you will find informative and useful, we need to get to know you first. This is a common pitfall wherein getting to know your customers and really knowing them are two very different concepts. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge of who we are marketing to will reflect on the implemented strategies.

For us, it will take a lot of activities such as below:

1) Conducting a market research

More than knowing your demographics and behaviors, we will talk to current customers. We would like to know your needs, likes, and preferences. Admittedly, the market research can be lenient to our brand, products, and services, but the main goal is how we can keep you as patrons. We would also like to know the reasons you will no longer patronize our brand. We might get you involved through the media that you are most familiar with including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

customer-centric-content-marketing

We’d like to hear your voice, too. Including what you think about our contents and what will motivate you to share them. This is how value is spread, and this is only possible if we have valuable contents. One possible pitfall here that we, content writers, must avoid is thinking that the perception of usefulness is universal. Well, it is not. What we find useful may be useless to our readers. This is where the importance of knowing your audience comes in.

2) Define the target audience

After developing an in-depth understanding of our customers, we can now define who our contents must target. Through this, we will only create contents that solve your problems by answering your buying questions, for instance. Nevertheless, we will not just develop the contents on a whim. We still need to understand how you consume our contents. For example, we want to know if our customers are reading articles through their desktop or mobile devices.

Evidently, these are concerted efforts. Having a good grasp of the interests, preferences and pain points are serious since we can only start looking for the right topics and right formats after knowing all these. As such, the content that we should develop must resonate and appeal to our target audience. This leads us to the next logical step.

3) Produce dynamic content

When we say dynamic content, it means contents that are highly valuable and shareable. Another pitfall that content writers face is that no matter how well we acquaint ourselves with our audience, our readers will eventually get bored. That is, if we cannot produce contents that will keep their interest and energies high. We are always on the losing end if we think of content marketing as a mere process of churning out ‘fresh content.’ It is more than that.

Some examples of dynamic contents are how-to guides, e-books, podcasts, infographics, videos, and images. This can be either branded or non-branded. Notice the diversity in the types of contents that audiences from around the world are consuming – be it on World Wide Web or social media. That’s because the diversity of devices where contents are consumed. There should be a balance there. The mantra is making the right contents available for the right audience at the right time at the right place using the right device.

 

Our jobs don’t stop there. We still need to track whether our content strategies are successful or not. Basically, we need to determine which types and formats of contents drive the best results. We need to improve our efforts just so we can align more useful contents to you – our audience. So, you see, even if our strategies are geared toward profitability, our main aim is to provide our readers with a unique value. This is a more worthwhile pursuit.

 

Image credit: Practicology.com | Discuss.io | Spotfire.Tibco.com

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Venturing SEO: Reasons for Millennials to Become A Better Entrepreneur

Posted by on October 16, 2014

Every one of us wants to achieve that momentum in our lives where we can be as successful as we wanted to be. It may be in the field of technology, such as creating a start up link building services firm, or music such as building up a career in it. There are in fact lots of ways to do it, but some of us, especially the Millennials who needed more push and motivation to make this a real thing, should have clearer views on why you should chase the dream.

How do you define success?

As the saying from Tony Robbins goes, “Success is doing what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want as much as you want,” there is that itch that comes right out from your gut that makes you agree on it. After all, I guess we are on the same page, right?

To us (or many of us), to be successful is just how Mr. Robbins grabbed the whole idea into a one-sentence streak of epiphany. And by doing so, we should be getting closer to making that move and realizing that dream.

Below are some reasons why being a Millennial entrepreneur is a much more exciting feat than any other 9-5 hour pay job you should have:

You have the passion and the reason to do things.

Yes, all of us might have that. But for a Millennial who wants to pursue entrepreneurship at a whole new level, first and foremost, should know that passion is what should drive you. In addition to that, for the passion to be fuelled and to make it stronger than ever, you should believe in yourself that you have the correct reasons why you wanted to pursue this in the first place.

Success from doing what you want is one reason for you to go on, but that should not be the end goal. Knowingly, success becomes the fruit of doing what you love, out of passion. And by having that in place, you are so far doing it right. Just have the heart and mind to push for it.

You are an expert at something.

This means you have the knowledge to make things better. Being an expert should be something you want to be proud about, but you can be proud about it as much as you want as long as you have put that expertise to good use. People acknowledging your work, I guess, is something one can truly say that his or her existence is as better as not being able to let the world know.

Being expert at something is just the same as saying that you have a creative knowledge and idea to make things go further—better. With this, it aims to be more innovative and to push for others to also learn from you.

 It drives you crazy when you think you can do better.

It is not about being conceited but oftentimes, the righteous selves within us wants to be unleashed because we know something that others do not know— one key you can use in order to lead. As an entrepreneur, you should always find ways in order to be better and be able to help out in the society, in one way or another. By making this as a mantra, you will surely make way to that path of success.

You have the resources. 

Others may have, but not everyone will. If you think you are one of the ‘others’ who has the resources to pursue such endeavour—lucky you. Not everyone who wants to start right away (given with the ideas they have in mind) can’t immediately do so because there are hindrances that can’t be disregarded, but hey, this should not be a reason for you to slack off.

Having enough resources like funding, savings and other forms is a gem for an aspiring entrepreneur because money is a need for you to push through. However, despite not having enough funds, it is a sure ball that there are still other ways you can bargain with.

You want to earn (of course).

Simply put, you want to earn cash. And not just cash, but hard-earned cash! It would not make sense if you want to be an entrepreneur if you don’t have profit. Yet, this thought should not eat you up after reaching that certain kind of success everyone dreams of.

There are others who want to earn enough cash to pay the bills, have a decent meal everyday, a roof under the head and perhaps some wheels for your transfers in meeting clients. And some would want to go places, visit different countries, see the world and still make things happen.

You want to have your own flexible time.

Sure you want to own your time, do what you want, whenever you want to. Having a flexible work schedule is something one would be chasing to have. Aside from that, it also helps to adapt this kind of working lifestyle because it will also be healthy for you, at some point.

And mind you, this is the ultimate dream.

You want to change the course of the world.

Change is something everyone is and will always be dealing with on a daily basis. As an entrepreneur, it is safe to say that you have the world in your hands. You are presented by a lot of opportunities and possibilities and it is your goal how you could ace the game in the industry you are in.

Let us say for example, you wanted to put up an SEO company that normally does link building services among clients’ websites and rankings. It is a very usual feat to do for such nature of company. But in order for you to change the ‘course of the world’, you need to be innovative. You need to come up with more new ways and approaches that will serve what the world needs.

Goals are important, and as far as making ambitions, dreaming big is always welcome. As long as again, you strive hard to make it work and turn it into a realisation. In the end, the world will thank you for doing so.  This is to motivate that anyone with the dream can naturally pursue one as long as you have, again, the reason and passion to make things happen, one step at a time.

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Creating Social-Friendly Landing Pages

Posted by on September 15, 2014

Any discussion about SEO Philippines will never be complete without the mention of social media marketing. We can only implement a holistic SEO campaign with social media platform as an indispensable tool to obtain the goals of such campaign. The thing is we are able to pique the interest of our readers and entice them towards visiting the site, driving traffic to our branded sites. Unfortunately, all they do is browse.

So, how do we convert our browsing friends into buying customers?

We have yet to reconcile the disconnect between website design and development and social media communication. Most probably, the reason you are not winning over your browsing-but-not-buying friends is the page they land on when they visit the site.

And oh, please don’t forget that most of our readers are on mobile now. The way you craft a post on any social platform should also be the same way you are crafting your landing pages especially when a particular post leads to that landing page.

People expect. We all do. So, expect that the people expect almost the same thing that caught their attention in the first place when on the landing page.

The social media mindset

The social media audience has a very, very short attention span. Before other things distract them, make the call to action more obvious. The more obvious it is, the more likely a user will take action.

The simplicity must be evident particularly when moving from the social media post to the branded website. The number one rule is making the website as simple as possible, which means fewer options and processes, so the user will make a decision.

Distract him, and he will surely leave the site. Even endless browsing itself can distract the visitor thereby competing with the main purpose of the call to action.

If the goal of your website is having the visitors watch a video, download a free software or sign up to an email list, then tell exactly what they should do. Simple. That, my friends, is the job of a landing page.

The social landing page

Each social platform is unique – it has its own language and culture that only the users can understand. Well, for one, these platforms are highly subjective yet relatable. Perhaps, this is the reason Facebook has more than 1.3 billion active users per month. Facebook is very easy to use.

Ideally, create a social-friendly landing page that focus on a simple decision. Here’s a quick guideline.

1) Keep the voice of the landing page consistent with that of the social media channel.

2) Keep the visuals consistent with the social media aesthetics.

3) Ask for only one conversion that the website needs.

4) Put the social media widget on the confirmation page.

Along with these, you can vary the theme so you can create landing pages specifically for a community that you target. Consider the following.

  • The interfaces of the desktop versions of both Twitter and Facebook look and feel similar. You can use the same landing pages for your target Twitter and Facebook communities to boost conversion rates.
  • The landing page for Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube must be minimized and more visual. The same goes with putting visually enticing call to action buttons that resonate better for the communities on these platforms.

The mobile audience consideration

For most of us, social media consume our breaks, scrolling down our newsfeeds to update ourselves about what is happening around us. We update our statuses while at the queue at the grocery store or the train station. We stop for a moment to take a selfie on the coolest and most interesting places that we’ve been.

How should your social landing page fit the always-on-the-go lifestyle? How can it fit the needs and wants of the mobile engagers?

Primarily, take a cue from what you are ACTUALLY offering your market. Here’s an example. If you are offering a mobile app, there is no need to tap into the desktop-loving users. Your primary target should be the mobile-first users. Put simply, the best moments to convert a social connection is catching him or her at the right moment when he or she is on the right device.

Nonetheless, mobile-friendly landing pages is no longer about whether the landing page is viewable on the screen or not and if yes, how does it look. Consider these.

  • Mobile users can only provide the basic information such as name and email address.
  • Mobile users prefer signing up to a website through a social sign up button.
  • Radio buttons and check boxes work better for mobile forms than dropdown lists.
  • Buttons must be big enough so it can be easily tapped.
  • The landing page should only about 20KB so it will load quickly.
  • The content of the landing page must be brief enough.

Further, mobile-friendly landing pages are not enough. What is more important is the landing page contains all the readable information that the user needs. Put simply, the landing page should provide value to the users.

Not just the products and services that you offer themselves, but the landing page itself. It should save your visitors valuable time. For instance, if the landing page has every required details and loads quickly, then there is no need for the user to look for alternatives and substitutes.

Most of the brands tend to overlook this very important aspect. If the landing page fails to add value, conversion will never happen. That is, aside from the actual value of your product and service offerings, you might as well add value to the users through the landing page. We can call this the technical value of landing page optimization.

The social media present themselves as an opportunity for the brand owners to tap into the real and felt needs of their users that MUST be reflected in the landing page somehow for a conversion to happen. The bottom line is that the landing page must be able to provide real and felt value to the users before they convert. If there is one thing that we can learn from social media that is ‘snatched’ times are so valuable they are better spent on the right landing pages.

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Link Tactics Changed Over Time, But Links Still Matter Survey Says

Posted by on September 8, 2014

Attention: providers of link building services in the Philippines. Good news, link building is not dead. Well, at least not the link building we know two to three years ago. Based on the survey conducted by Skyrocket, link building continues to be a relevant optimization strategy. Below are the details. After the discussion of the results, key takeaways will be discussed.

 

Before that though, here is Matt Cutts view on quality links and quality link building.

 

Who are the survey participants?

The total number of participants is 315. There are just five groups of participants. These are:

  • Consultants/Practitioners (Agencies) – 37%
  • SEO Managers/Heads – 30%
  • Business Owners (Digital marketing, SEO firms) – 13%
  • Business Owners(Non-marketing firms) – 12%
  • Consultants/Practitioners (Freelancers) – 8%

 

How much is the monthly spending on link building?

  • $0 – $1,000 – 20%
  • $1,000 – $5,000 – 20%
  • $5,000 – $10,000 – 23%
  • $10,000 – $50,000 – 37%
  • Over $50,000 – 0%

There is an obvious slight decrease in spending because, in the 2013 survey, about 10% of the respondents said that they have spent more than $50,000 for their monthly link building strategies.

On the other hand, there are more companies spending between $10,000 and $50,000 monthly compared to last year. Last year’s percentage is only 11% compared to this year’s which is 37%, which is the highest bracket.

 

What percentage of the total SEO budget is distributed for link building?

  • 27% said 0 – 25%
  • 27% said 26 – 50%
  • 40% said 51 – 75%
  • 7% said 76 – 100%

The question was followed by this question: Have you increased or decreased the total link building spending over the past year? Exactly 81% said they have increased spending while 19% they have decreased spending. Perhaps, this explains the increased in the total percentage of those who spend from $10,000 to $50,000.

The participants were also asked the reason behind the increase or decrease. The responses are categorized as follows:

  • Moving link building budget to content marketing projects
  • Good links are significant as ever
  • Moving away from the old link building strategies
  • Increasing production or creativity

They were also asked whether they will increase or decrease the spending, and 73% said they would increase while 27% said they would not increase the budget. Again, the participants were asked why they will do so. The replies are categorized as follows:

  • Link building continue getting more expensive
  • Raising the bar on the firm’s existing efforts to beat competitors with more sophisticated content strategies
  • Unsure where to invest exactly as firms are unsure if linking is working or not

 

Which link building tactics do you utilize most?

The five best answers are:

  • Content plus outreach – 69 votes
  • Infographic promotion – 47 votes
  • Guest posts – 38 votes
  • Resource pages – 32 votes
  • Contests/giveaways – 28 votes
  • Business directories/Local citations – 28 votes also
  • Broken link building – 28 votes also

Which tactics do you perceive to be the most effective?

The answers are:

  • Content plus outreach – 91 votes
  • Infographic promotion – 54 votes
  • Broken link building – 47 votes
  • Business directories/Local citations – 32 votes
  • Resource pages – 25 votes

Interestingly, press release submission, guest post and blog network are tied with 6 votes each.

Which link building tactics do you perceive to be the least effective?

The five best answers are:

  • Article directories – 50 votes
  • Social bookmarks – 38 votes
  • Forum profile links – 35 votes
  • Web directories – 28 votes
  • Comments – 28 votes also
  • Link wheels – 22 votes
  • Rented links – 22 votes also
  • Press release submission – 22 votes also

When asked which tactics do they consider the most harmful to the site, the participants voted for:

  • Paid links – 44 votes
  • Article directories – 44 votes also
  • Web directories – 38 votes
  • Forum profile links – 38 votes also
  • Link wheels – 38 votes also
  • Rented links – 35 votes
  • Blog network – 35 votes also

 

Before we proceed, you might want to watch Matt Cutts view of contents and backlinks.

 

What are the biggest challenges to link building that you currently face?

The answers are grouped into:

  • Getting links to unworthy pages
  • Lacking of scalability
  • Avoiding Google penalties

In 2013, these were the same challenges that the firms face. The concern as to which links are actually helping or harming the performance of organic search remains. The same goes with contemplating which processes are relevant and which are not in the sense of achieving optimal results.

 

With all these stats, there are key takeaways. Some are over-the-year concerns that remind the SEO people that link building is no joke.

  1. There are no shortcuts to link building especially today that we have Google as our ever-present watchdog.
  2. Links still matter, but only the highest quality links are relevant.
  3. Link tactics are not universal, so don’t expect that the links working for other firms will also work for your business.
  4. Employ diverse link building tactics and focus on what works best for your firm.
  5. Link building is not a panacea; it should be considered along with other digital marketing activities.
  6. Building online presence requires a sizable amount of investment perhaps the maximum that the firm can afford.

Understanding why spammy, robot-centric link building strategies thrived before is easy. Google has no algorithmic sophistication to end these black hat practices. Then came Google Penguin that killed almost 99% of low-quality link farms most especially. Quantities of links are no longer a worthy investment more so for companies that desire to build an online presence for long-term.

Today, links must be earned and in a hard way. Link building strategies nowadays put human connections at the center. This requires the builders to form a value-added mindset, speaking convincingly of their brands value before their target audience. This means discerning between links that are worth pursuing and are not worth pursuing.

This also goes to show the importance of the role of link builders. Before, it is rather difficult to take pride in what you do as a link builder – building, irrelevant and low-quality links. As such, link builders, and link building itself, are not taken seriously and defending the industry is difficult.

 

Link building continues to be a critical component of SEO. High-quality link building strategies is what will separate you from unscrupulous brands. The survey highlights that it is a fact that link building can be a risk. However, it will only be a risk if it will not be considered today specifically when online visibility is your number goal. The same goes with if you are not going to diversify your link building tactics.

 

Source: MOZ | Search Engine Watch | Internet Search Engine Marketing

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