How to Write Content Your Customers Want to Read

Generating fresh content in blog posts and articles is a key component of successful online marketing. Most business owners and marketers understand this reality. Yet, the hurdle for many is consistently writing content that actually gets read. Yes, it isn't always easy to figure out what customers want to read. But, there are some proven ways that can encourage their readership.
For starters, online content must be both interesting and engaging – much more than simply reiterating the selling points of your product or service. Let's face it, blogs and articles that are loaded with traditional marketing copy are boring!
Instead, successful content that actually gets read, builds an online community, and leads to measurable ROI requires a blend of information, promotion, and style delivered in a strategic fashion. Here are the basics of what you should be incorporating into your writing.

Expertise

When you consider that people go to blogs or read online articles because they are looking for useful information, offering unique or new content about your industry, products, or services can offer great value to your readers. Examples can include explanations of a new law or industry change that affects your customers or a rundown of trade shows within your industry. The Internet is very much a reference tool.
So, by using your knowledge to write content that provides relevant information, you'll gain readership from those who look to you as an expert.

Insight

Readers also want to gain inside information about your business that spans beyond what they can find on your website. This is where a blog can come in particularly handy.
Share milestones and achievements, post images of your team, offer your opinions, and even consider opening the forum up occasionally to customers who can serve as guest bloggers.
The key is to provide an insiders' glimpse of your company that keeps readers coming back for more.

Reassurance

By posting honest, consistent, heart-felt articles, you can instil both trust and respect that ultimately converts readers into customers.
Encourage comments and generate interaction to promote engagement. Through these efforts, you'll build a positive image that delivers reassurance to those thinking about buying from you.

Promotion

Of course, you should be promoting your product, service, or business in your content, but this is not the place for self-promoting statements. Instead of using traditional selling language, a more effective approach is to infuse promotional information within copy to demonstrate your leadership.
For example, if you sell running shoes, writing about new techniques being used in training for marathons with an explanation of why your shoes are particularly popular with marathoners can be far more effective than simply telling readers to buy your shoes.
Most blog experts recommend that at least 80% of your content should be informational to 20% promotional.

Humour

There is a tremendous amount of dry, boring content on the Internet. In fact, the vast majority of it has little or no humour at all.
Readers crave content that makes them chuckle or at least smile.
No, you don't have to write one liners on your blog. But, weaving an interesting or funny personal story into the information that you're trying to deliver can sometimes work wonders in encouraging readers to share your content.

Consistency

There is a certain amount of responsibility that goes hand-in-hand with generating content and building a community. A blog that is out of date doesn't send a good message to your readers and can negatively impact the positive image of your business. Ideally, it's a smart idea to post content at least once a week to keep content fresh and encourage readers to check back often.
But, the main goal is keep the flow of content somewhat consistent. To do this, keep an editorial calendar or list of planned topics, and build time into your schedule to get the content written.

Quality

Because content is a touch point with customers, there simply is no excuse for poorly written text with typos, errors, or inaccuracies.
Blog content and articles are company literature and deserve a watchful eye to check for spelling and grammar errors before they get published for the world to see. When well-written, this content can be a significant driver of business while providing insightful, entertaining information to readers.
By setting high quality standards for your content, you can maximize your ability to make the most of these marketing tools.

So…

Stay away from sales speak. Inform, share your knowledge, and weave a genuinely interesting story line throughout your content.
In one word? Engage.

5 Ways To Market Your Personal Brand With Your Facebook Business Page

Your Facebook business page is an opportunity for your audience to learn more about your brand. Here are the top five areas of your page that you must focus on to engage your Facebook fan and strategically market your brand.

1. Utilize your profile picture

Your Facebook profile picture is initial opportunity to demonstrate your brand to your followers.
Choose a high-quality image of yourself and work with your graphic designer to design a custom designed banner that is consistent with your brand. You have 180 X 540 pixels  of space to work with; so, take this opportunity to express your core message: who you are, what you do, and for whom you do it for.

2. Create a Facebook landing page

Facebook landing pages are your prime opportunity to welcome your fans and tell your brand story. Gary Vaynerchuk’s landing page literally tells his story and is a great example of using this medium to promote yourself to your audience in a fun way.
There are a number of services and applications available that will customize your Facebook landing page that fits with your brand and your budget. Many of the do-it-yourself applications offer a free trial, so be sure to play around and investigate before you decide on one to use. For more information, check out Orli Yakuel's comparisons in her blog post "The 12 Best Ways to Customize Your Facebook Pages" for Tech Crunch.
A key element to creating a fan page that converts visitors to fans is the “like-gate” feature. This basically requires page visitors to “like” your page in order to view the content. By nature, most people are curious and want to feel that they are a part of something exclusive. A few strategies you can use to play this up are to offer your fans:

• Exclusive discounts and coupons
• First look at product announcements
• Video reveals
• Giveaways and contests
• Free resources including tips, white papers, articles, etc.

3. Get creative with photos

Pictures are a visually appealing and fun way to engage your audience. Pam Lawhorne, The Social Maven, does an excellent job of staying on brand by incorporating her pictures with her colors and tying them into themes  with her “entrepreneur of the day”, “question of the day”, and “30 days of gratitude” campaigns.
Another creative tactic is to make use of your Facebook photo strip. The photo strip consists of the five default photos at the top of your page. Companies are using this to highlight their products, introduce team members, and to further tell their brand story. Check out this Social Fresh’s blog post for ideas to incorporate this into your business page.

4. Effectively use your “info” tab.

The “info” portion of your business page is another opportunity to connect your followers across all of your social media platforms.  Do not assume that your fans know that you are available on other social media outlets and include links to your blog, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

5. Keep your content fresh and relevant.

A golden rule of personal branding is to keep yourself in front of your audience at all times.  Having pretty pictures and landing pages are great, but without a constant, clear message that relates to your followers, it is a waste of time.
To develop fresh content, ask yourself:

• What keeps your audience up at night?
• How do you solve their problem?
• What are related topics of interest that you can link to?

Here are a few strategies to keep a constant presence:

• Schedule your status updates in advance with a service such as MediaFeedia.com. A word of caution… while this will help keep your posts consistent and constant, you still must log on and interact with your audience – answer comments, reach out to your audience, and build relationships.
• Create a Google alert on the related topics that you identified so that you can easily link to relevant articles and blog posts that are of interest to your audience.
• Create a weekly or daily theme to help focus your message or questions. For instance, I am known for incorporating pop culture and lyrical references in the delivery of my messages on personal branding so I created a pop culture question of the day, you can find an example on my Kimberly Bordonaro Personal Branding page.

So, what did I miss? How are you using your Facebook business page to market your personal brand and engage your audience?

Neighbourhood Watch: 5 Ways to Stay on Top of Local Search

Local is the new global: any business, no matter how large, planning their search strategies needs to think very carefully about local search coverage too.

 

One of the reasons for this is the importance of Google Maps. Google Maps aren't just maps and images; Google Maps also contain a massive selection of local business information around which many other applications and services operate.

 

Consequently local and mobile search, influenced by the location of the person doing the searching, is of vital importance to Google: over 20% of Google's search queries has a localised purpose.

 

It is not just about Google of course, though it sometimes feels that way; Bing and Yahoo are worth thinking about too and they've been investing in maps and local search in a big way.

 

Bing is on the record as saying local search is now one of their main strategies going forward. So how do you make sure you're visible in your own neighbourhood? For starters, make sure you stick to these five rules:

1. Fill Out and Maintain Your Google Place Page

Google have their own free service (Google Places) that allows you to verify your business, your business location, the address and contract information of that business and your website details (as well as lots of other bits and bobs).

 

Keeping this updated is crucial to your local search success.

 

If your business is lucky enough to have more than one outlet you can also upload multiple locations in one go.

2. Fill Out and Maintain Your Business Profile on Other Important Local Search Sites

Google wont just check your details on its own Google Places Service it will also check every other site that has your business details too, to make sure there are no discrepancies. Thanks to all you sneaky SEO marketers out there, Google is suspicious of anyone trying to game their local search, so make sure you've got the same details logged into Bing, Yahoo, Qype, Foursquare, Yelp or any other Local Search sites you can think of.

3. Make Sure You Have Crawl-Ready Contact Information

Most webmasters and site owners are aware of the importance of having the business address and phone number in a prominent position on the site, but this information might be displayed within a flash file or image which the search engine spiders cant recognise.

 

Ensure all business contact details are set out clearly in good old fashioned HTML.

4. Create A KML File

A KML file is a Keyhole Markup Language file and it is what Google Earth runs on.

 

In the same way you would normally submit XML sitemaps to Google listing all of your websites pages, you can also submit a KML file that holds all of the physical locations of your business. For the technically un-savvy there is a site, GeoSiteMapGenerator.com, which will handle all of that for you.

5. Maintain Your Offline Business Records

Sneaky old Google is rumoured to also be looking offline (you know, in the real world) to check tax records, licensing applications and other forms for verification.

 

If you want to be certain of getting the most out of local search, the lesson is to make sure you use the same details in every single form, online and offline, that you fill out on behalf of your business.

Google Analytics – Is that really you?

Google Analytics has launched a security system that is set to make life just a little more difficult for analytics specialists and consultants to help companies out.
We at SEP frequently helps businesses and organizations understand their analytics, and develop business information and strategies based on their Google Analytics data. Frequently, there isn't an analytics specialist on staff, or their expertise is focused on one or more of the other analytics platforms. Not a problem – that's when we get called in to figure out what the data is saying, and what needs to be done to address whatever the issue is. When an organization gets to this point, the issues are usually backlogged and the work is a high priority.
My team took on a client this week, to help answer some key business questions that will help guide the online strategy of the organization going forward. There are some serious questions need answered, and they need answered fairly quickly. We got the Google Analytics information from the client, booked in the time to complete the work, and set a deliverable date.
But this message from Google Analytics put a speed bump in the analysis:

Hey {email}, is that really you?
It looks like you’re signing in to your account from a new location. Just so we know this is you — and not someone trying to hijack your account — please complete this quick verification. Learn more about this additional security measure.

Google explains this message on it's Unusual sign-in location detected help page as being designed to help secure your account & data:

The additional step at sign in is designed to prevent an unauthorized person who does not know you from accessing your account, even if they've obtained your username and password. While this won't necessarily stop people who know you from accessing your account (for that, try 2-step verification), it's an important measure to keep hijackers who have a long list of passwords from doing malicious things with your account, such as creating spam or accessing and deleting valuable data

Google Analytics can already be a difficult beast to tame for many organizations, especially when the person using GA leaves the company. It's not uncommon for a business to lose literally years of information simply because the Google Analytics login information is incorrect, and the email address is disabled after the person leaves. I've seen it happen, more than a few times.
This new system is going to make these situations even more difficult – if a company's IP address changes and they don't have access to the email address, for example, this security system could stand between a company and their data.

Action Item:

If you are going to be consulting for a company in their Google Analytics account, you should proactively take one of these two steps before beginning the work:
1. Instead of using the client's email address to log into the account, get the client to set up your GA login email with access to their GA data. This should bypass this security measure.
2. Get the answer to one or two (to be safe) of the security questions before beginning the work. This will save your project time!
Everyone appreciates the fact that security is a key concern, especially where business data is involved – you want to keep that private. I believe this system is a good one, and is useful. Just be aware of this potential speed bump when you take on a new client!

How to Prepare for a Web Design Project

The world of web design and development can be confusing, and at first glance it often appears to be extremely overwhelming. It can be difficult to determine where to start, and how to go about developing a plan of attack for your business' website. If you prepare yourself before hand then it will make the task a lot easier. Believe it or not, you might actually have fun and learn a few things along the way. As a web developer myself, I have put together a summary of the process that I hope will help you out with your new online venture.

Do Your Research

As with any business venture, you should always do your research. browse the
web
see what
sites youlikeSome of the best research you can do is to simply browse the web and see what websites you like.

What do you like about these sites? What don't you like about these sites? Pay attention to all the different features the websites have as well. Do they have an online store? Do they have a News or Blog section? Think about all of the different pieces that you could possibly use on your own website.

Determine Your Needs

In order to make the web design process as smooth as possible, determine and outline exactly what you need. There are countless types of websites, and having set goals in mind will help you and your web designer create a website that accomplishes these goals.

Websites can be simple, with just a few pages, including what your business does and how to contact you. On the other hand, some websites are extremely in-depth and can feature online stores (eCommerce), forums, blogs and news among other things.

If you work with a tighter budget, you might want to opt for a simpler site. However, if you are more flexible with your budget then there are plenty of additional options you can incorporate. If you want to sell physical goods then talk to your web design company about creating an eCommerce site. If you want to update your site with News, ask about including a blog section on your site.

Gather Your Content

Now that you have determined just what you need to include on your website, you should start gathering and organizing all of your content. Break it down page by page.

For example, do you want to include an intro paragraph on your homepage? Start writing it out now.

Do you want to include a section about your company history somewhere? Start writing that down as well, and also don't forget to gather pictures and images that you might want to include too.

More Research – Web Design Companies

Now that you have some goals laid out, you need to do more research (I know, how exciting, right?). There are thousands of web design companies out there, and for every good one, there are probably several that might not be your best choice. Things to consider when looking for a good company include the following:

1. Reviews – Does the company have a lot of positive reviews? Try typing their name into Google and see what you can find. If they seem to have a lot of good testimonials from existing clients, then that is a great sign. If they have mixed or mostly poor reviews, you should probably consider a different company.
2. The Company's Website – Does the company's own website look and function well? Does it appear to be up to date? If so, then that is a good sign. If the website seems out of date or their are parts that don't seem to work correctly, then this is definitely a bad sign. If they can't even keep up with their own website, how do you expect them to manage yours?
3. Their Portfolio – Take a look at their Web Design portfolio. Do they provide links to the sites they have built? If so, take a look at the other sites they built and see if they are quality sites. If they don't provide links to the sites in their portfolio, you can contact them and ask for some live examples before choosing them.
4. Pricing - Some companies offer upfront pricing, however a lot of them require you to contact them to receive a custom quote. Never be afraid to ask for a quote. Also, beware of companies that promise to build you a custom website for extremely low prices. If you see a price that seems to be too good to be true, it probably is. Don't get stuck with a $99 website that doesn't fulfill your needs.

Now is the time you should review all the information you have researched about the various web design companies. Contact as many as you would like, and talk with them about your needs. Never be afraid to ask a question and always provide them with as much information as you can. Good communication between the client and the web designer is essential to creating a successful website.

Moving Forward with a Company

Once you are satisfied that you have done enough research and have found the company to work with, there are still a few considerations. Do you need to register a domain name? A domain name is the actual address of your website, your-site.com. Registrations for Domains should be around $10/year. You also need somewhere to store your website so everyone can access it. This is called hosting. Hosting prices can vary quite a bit. If your web design company doesn't supply you with hosting, then you should shop around and compare prices. And as always, read the reviews!

Okay okay, enough with the technicalities… Well, almost. The first step to actually working with a company should be: sign a contract. The web design company should provide you with a contract that includes a cost estimate and breakdown, the deliverables, and information regarding revisions, changes, etc. Read the contract very carefully, and make sure everything that you need and agreed upon is included in writing.

Now the fun part finally begins! After talking with your web designer, they should have a clear understanding of your wants and needs, in both design and functionality. The hard part for you is over, and the work now rests in the web designer's hands. Although every company handles the design phase a little differently, there are a few things they should provide you with. They should be in contact with you in regards to the design, and supply you with proofs. These proofs will be non-functioning designs for your website. You can then review these and give feedback, until you are satisfied with the overall design. Once the design is approved, the web developers will start putting it all together and making everything work.

The company should keep you updated throughout the process and let you know the current status of your project. Upon completion, your website will be live!

SEO, HTML5, Social Media… What is all of this stuff??

The web is an ever changing place with constant new and improved technologies. Along your journey you'll probably encounter a lot of terms, phrases and acronyms that leave you scratching your head. I will cover some that you are likely to encounter.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

We all use Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc) to find things we are looking for on the internet. When you create your own website, you want people to be able to find it in the search results so that way people will visit your site. SEO is the practice of helping your website appear higher in the search results for your desired keywords and phrases. Many web design companies will also offer SEO plans or packages to get you started. If not, they can usually refer you to a reputable company. A good website should be built so that it is already "search engine friendly." Ask your web designer if they build their websites with SEO in mind.

As with web designers, there are also both good and bad companies to deal with. SEO is a term that a lot of people use loosely. If you do decide that you want someone to help you with your SEO efforts, again, do your research! Find as many reviews as you can about the company before going with them, also check to see if they have any case studies. Make them prove to you that they will actually help your website do better in the search results!

Social Media

I'm sure you have heard the buzz about Twitter, and you probably already have a Facebook account to keep up with your friends and family. These two services are the tip of the Social Media iceberg.

By utilizing Social Media, websites like Facebook and Twitter for example, you can help communicate with your clients and customers and receive valuable feedback. You can also help build and strengthen your business' brand online.

One important thing to watch out for is people trying to upsell you on these types of services. Not every site necessarily needs a Twitter account. If you have someone helping you with Social Media, be sure to ask them why you need what they're telling you and exactly how it is going to help your business.

HTML5

HTML5 and CSS3 are all the rage right now in the world of web design and development. HTML and CSS are the basic building blocks for a website. They determine the actual appearance and layout of a website. HTML5 and CSS3 are the newest versions. Unfortunately, not all web browsers can display all the goodness that HTML5 and CSS3 can provide. If your web design company uses these two technologies then that is a good sign that they are keeping up with the times, but also be sure to ask if your website will still appear and function correctly in older browsers. Testing a website in all of the current browsers is referred to as Cross Browser Compatibility, and it is a necessity when building a website.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that has been around for a couple years now and although you don't hear it as much, you still might from time to time. The funny thing is, there is no such thing as "Web 2.0" or "Web 2.0 compatibility". It is a term that was first used to describe how the web had changed and grown over time. Old websites used to be static, with limited to no user interaction. The web of today allows users to not only interact, but also supply their own content, leave feedback and really be a part of this entire network of information known as the internet. You may hear designers throw around terms like "Web 2.0 Style" or "Web 2.0 Design," but to be honest, there is no such thing. So if you hear someone using this phrase over and over, it might be a warning flag that they are trying to pull one over on you.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, way back in the intro, the world of web design can be a very intimidating one. However, if you arm yourself with knowledge then you should have nothing to fear. There are a lot of wonderful website design companies that would love to help you with your website. So take a deep breath, do your research, and start working on your very own web presence today!

Do you still have any questions? Did I forget to cover something here? Use the comment section below!

Read more: http://greatsol-seo-bingbeatsyahoo.blogspot.com/

Googles’ New PANDA Algorithm Buries Top Ranked Websites

When Google changes a parameter of its algorithm, the SEO world stops for a few seconds. That’s what happened last month when Google released THE Panda… Learn more about how you helped change Google!

The goal of Google Panda is to clean the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) by pushing the poor quality websites down in the rankings (where they belong). Sites such as directories and advertising sites, link farms or auto generated content farms took a big hit, which is good news for most of us.

But what exactly is the Google Panda update? How does it affect your website?

Google Panda is HUMAN!

What Google has been trying to do for many years is to emulate human behaviour in order to reflect what users would have chosen on the first SERPs as if humans were compiling the results themselves. This is very difficult to do as people`s behaviours may vary a lot and you need to get billions of queries in order to get results that reflect what users actually want to see.

To make this happen, Google tracks everything via the free tools it provides and that we are using everyday, such as Google Search. Have you ever wondered how they can track everything and what they do with all this information.

The answer is simple: cookies! (Think of Google as “The Cookie Monster!) Each time you are on Google and do a search, the world’s most famous search engine installs cookies on your machine and starts tracking and analyzing what you do. For example: Did you land on a website and then press the back button right away? How long did you stay on the website before “bouncing back” to Google for a similar search? By gathering information from Google Analytics as well, Google builds a surprisingly accurate picture of the relevance of the information you found online.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot – a cautionary tale.

When you run a business and invest thousands of dollars in Search Engine Optimization, appearing in the top 10 results is what you want, and the closer to the top of the results, the better! Every once in a while, you even type in your most important keywords into the search engines and check to see where your website is listed.

“YES! I am on the first page! (Phew!)” The feeling is great, isn’t it? But what will Google think if you leave the page without clicking any of the top 10 listings? Google will take away from that behaviour that the first 10 results were not relevant enough.

What if you click your listing to make sure your link is working, look at your website a few seconds and press the back button to go back to Google to see who else is showing up? Google may think the information on your website wasn’t relevant enough and may reconsider displaying your listing on the first page…

These situations are examples illustrating how you can kill your rankings yourself without knowing it.

The lesson: Don’t spend too much time on Google looking where your website is appearing on search results. Do spend more time on your website. You can, and should analyze the results of your work by using different tools.

What do I do to prevent my site from taking a hit?

There is lots of different advice we could give you, but it wouldn’t be effective without analyzing your website first. We can give you a few SEO tips which are good for any website:

The first and most important tip would be to focus on creating relevant and “sticky” content on your site that makes people want to spend more time on it.

Here are a few additional points to consider:

- Even if the design of a website is not important for the search engines, try to have a clear attractive website to have people stay longer on it and browse through several pages.

- Be sure that your pages and images load fast! otherwise, you may lose your visitors and rankings at the same time. Have a good hosting firm to host your site on a fast, stable server.

- Avoid pages with too many links on it. Some relevant links with good anchors assist good navigation and are relevant for the search engines in general.

- Don’t duplicate content from other websites without adding any value to it. You will be banned from the rankings at some point and your entire domain may suffer from this.

- Ensure people that it is safe to browse through your site by inserting confidence builder logos (especially if you are selling products or services on your website). It is also important to have all the legal pages, such as your privacy policy, that are required on a professional site easily accessible.

Conclusion: if you want to tame the PANDA, be honest with your SEO practice: you will be rewarded by having better rankings.

And keep on reading our blog and newsletters for more tips, news and relevant information about Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing.

Contact us : Support@greatsol-seo.com or Call us at 1-877-643-6199