Category Archives: content marketing

Keyword Vs Brand Inbound Links

Blogging, content marketing, guest blogging, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Viral marketing, , , , ,

internet marketing strategyWith Penguin 2.0 upon us you should be adjusting your inbound link campaign accordingly. Matt Cutts (Head of Google Spam) has given us plenty of warning about Penguin 2.0 and how you should tacking your link building.

You Will Not Get Ranked With Links Alone

Internet Marketing is not just about link building anymore; you need to focus on various other factors as well if you want to perform well on search results. If you take a look at the below graph, inbound marketing does play a large part in search engine rankings, but you cannot just focus on link building.

If your website has poor onsite SEO, no regular blog posts, no social signals and no brand signals, you will never rank. Every section in the above graph is as important as the other. Do not think of Internet marketing as ranking high on Google, instead think of it as earning high traffic volume as your goal.

In this article I will be only discussing about inbound links, Brand vs Keyword. I thought I would add this note and graph so website owners wouldn’t think creating backlinks alone would earn them more traffic!

How Your Links Should Be Created

For those of you that are not 100% keyed up with inbound marketing, I will quickly go over it. Do not do any of the below:

  • Pay for backlinks.
  • Waste your time adding links in headers, footers or sidebars.
  • Join any link scheme or automated service.
  • Include your link in spammy content.
  • Have your link on irrelevant, untrustworthy sites.

Basically keep your links looking natural by guest blogging quality content with your link included naturally.

Keyword Backlinks

For many years now having keyword backlinks used to play a huge role in the positioning of your website on Google, not so much today. A keyword backlink is your targeted keyword used as an anchor text and usually pointing back to your homepage.

I believe keyword backlinks are important, but something you shouldn’t focus all your attention on. You should never only focus on your homepage, you should always build links to all web pages within your website. Every page is important, not just your homepage so build links to all.

If you wasn’t already aware, you should only try and optimize 2 main keywords for each web page, anymore than 2 will start looking unnatural. From these 2 keywords you need to build a list of variants using Google Keyword Tool and Trends. If you are using the same keyword backlinks to your pages, it will start looking unnatural. This is why having a list of variants will keep your links looking natural with the added advantage of being ranked higher for more key phrases.

Brand Links

Brand backlinks are anchor links that contain your company name, website address or a company employee. Branding is huge with Internet marketing at the minute and will be for many years.

Creating brand backlinks will increase your websites traffic on search results in the long run. The key is creating the quality content surrounding your backlink. If your end goal is to get ranked for keywords along the lines of ‘Builder London’, your content should be focused around that theme. For example, you could write an article on how buildings have evolved in London over the past 100 years. This content will be high value and of interest to users, at the same time, 100% focused on your keyword. Instead of using a keyword backlink, use a brand backlink. This way Google will connect your brand and website with the theme of your article (Builder London), thus increasing your sites authority and trust, which will then lead to higher rankings for this keyword, amongst other variants.

Brand backlinks will give your site more authority over keyword backlinks as your content will be connected to all text within the article. Not around the targeted keyword link.

Maintain A Ratio

Before reevaluating your inbound link campaign, have a company generate an internet marketing strategy for your business, not only for your links, but for blogging and social signal. If you are promoting all of these sections, your site will see a return on visitors. I would suggest creating 5 brand links for every one keyword backlink. This way your inbound links stay looking natural.

By Kev Massey – Kev is the Sales Manager at SixtyMarketing and writes the majority of blog posts for SixtyMarketing giving free, useful Internet marketing & web design tips. Please follow Kev and his team on Facebook for their latest posts.

10 Tips To Help Establish Online Authority In Your Niche

Blogging, content marketing, Facebook Marketing, Reputation, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketing,

online authorityAn online business with authority will stay ahead of the competition. Of course, when looking to get to the top, one must work hard. Here are 10 tips to help establish online authority in your niche.

Organic search results: When using a major search engine, a potential customer will place a lot of value on the top results. Remember, a business that ranks highly for the main keywords will have a serious advantage against the competition. Luckily, a website owner with great content and solid links can rank highly in the leading search engines

Guest posting: A well-written guest post will build the authority of an author. To get started, the business owner should contact bloggers to swap posts. With a well-written post, a business owner will see a serious spike in traffic to his or her website.

Advertisements: When searching on Google, one will see ads. When the ads of a company appear at the top of the search results, one will gain more customers. Remember, when a business has more exposure, customers will take notice.

Articles: A business owner should write articles relevant to his or her field. Then, the expert can posts articles all over the Internet. This will help a person establish their authority and gain in the SEO results. Remember, an informative article will help the individual gain authority for the short and long-term.

Social media: Now, customers expect to see a company on Facebook and Twitter. Luckily, one can set up social media accounts in an afternoon.

Website: When making a website, one must keep customers in mind. Ideally, the webmaster should include solid and interesting content on the Web pages. When including useful information, one will have a leg up on establishing a rapport with visitors.

Book: When an author can write an e-book, he or she will gain a loyal following. Fortunately, one can write an electronic book in their spare time. When giving the material away, an entrepreneur will go a long way in marketing his or her idea to thousands of followers.

Questions and answers: There are plenty of question and answer sites on the Internet. An informed individual should sign up for these sites and start answering questions. When doing so, the site owner will gain interested and loyal followers. Using these sites can also help a business owner with their SEO results.

Videos: People love to watch videos on the Internet. When posting an informative and helpful video, an entrepreneur can garner interest in his or her product or service. Remember, with a video, one can highlight their big ideas.

Press release: When writing a press release, a company can create a buzz for a product release. To get started, an individual should research the basics of a press release. Then, the entrepreneur should write the content and release it on news sites. With well-written release, a company should build authority on the Internet quickly.

When following these 10 tips, a company should have no problem establishing online authority in their niche.

Mark Smith is a business developer and technology enthusiest who swears by the Servecorp virtual office.

Why You Should Be A Social CEO

Blogging, content marketing, Copywriting, Facebook Marketing, Pinterest, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketing, ,

Three-quarters of executives wants their chief executive officer to become the social face of their brand, a new study from KRC Research and Weber Shandwick has revealed.

That’s because eight in 10 executives believe CEO sociability improves company reputation. 630 executives were interviewed and the vast majority wants their CEOs to use social media channels and engage with customers more frequently.

The benefits of a social CEO

The report actually predicts that the number of CEOs participating in social media will increase by 50 per cent in the next five years as people’s need to put a face to a brand and see who’s behind a company grows.

Some companies may be tempted to offload this responsibility on someone other than the CEO, but it should remembered that with a unique position comes a unique ability to influence how people feel about a company.

A social CEO can:

• Humanise the company

• Boost the company’s reputation

• Improve business results

• Show the company is innovative

• Set a social example for employees

Clearly all these duties can be carried out by someone other than a CEO, but it’s very rare for a company to have an employee who is better placed to lead from the front on these matters.

So, it’s time for CEOs to start taking social media seriously and learn how to use it to their businesses’ benefit.

They need to understand that social media takes time and it’s not just about updating the company’s blog or a social account like Facebook or LinkedIn with annoying promotional messages that customers will probably ignore.

CEOs should use social platforms to engage with conversation with existing and potential customers. They also need to understand that their social media activity should revolve around their audience. It’s all about the needs, wants and desires of the people a firm is trying to reach. It shouldn’t be all about the company.

The CEO Blogger

A blog is a great way to introduce a CEO to customers as it provides a solid platform to which other social activities can be anchor.

However, content needs to be well-written and helpful. Try and stay away from dull posts about what you had for breakfast and instead focus on tips and advice that will help people out.

Engaging in conversation and replying to comments will help gain customers’ trust, especially if they come right from the top.

In fact, the report showed that 32 percent of the executives with a socially active CEO believed comments posted by CEOs on social media channels are more credible, compared to 24 percent of executives who deemed CEO comments quoted by news media to be more credible.

The habits of highly social CEOs

Aside from blogging, Weber Shandwick’s report outlines several habits of highly social CEOs. These are:

1. Using a bigger set of social tools

2. Maintaining a presence on the company website

3. Writing their own content

4. Acting spontaneously but not becoming too informal

5. Engaging a wider variety of external stakeholders

Having a social CEO can bring so many benefits to a business so long as the CEO understands what social media is and doesn’t see it as a tool to push the company’s products and services on their customer’s feeds.

Guest post Alex Gavril – part of the 123-reg blog team. The company is the UK’s largest provider of domain names and offers a range of services including web hosting.

Symbiotic Relationship Between SEO and Content Management Key To Future Gains

Blogging, content marketing, Copywriting, SEO, Small Business Marketing

SEO and Content Management

The major buzzword around SEO campaigns these days is ‘quality’ – and predominantly it is being used in reference to content.

Indeed, Google seems to have developed an obsession with content management and, with it becoming increasingly difficult to successfully harness the majority of SEO techniques without incurring penalties, content is King.

This doesn’t mean, however, that quality content alone can deliver a successful SEO campaign – many great writers don’t know the first thing about online marketing strategy, let alone site mapping.  What it does indicate, however, is that there needs to be a symbiotic relationship between SEO and content management – the two need to go hand in hand.

Objectifying Quality

The almost contradictory reality within new SEO techniques is that Google’s algorithm tools are now judging quality; something that is generally subjective.  Indeed, recently, Google’s Vice President, Amit Singhal, stated that – “If you build high-quality content that adds value, and your readers and your users seek you out, then you don’t need to worry about anything else”.

Ensure Quality Content:

Questions to ask yourself

1. Is it unique?

2. Is it useful?

3. Is it well written?

Still, in the absence of each and every website being manually assessed by content and design professionals, with niche industry expertise, there will always be techniques that you can successfully implement, in order to enhance your website’s success.  And, on that note, Singhal also pointed out that discounting SEO would be like discounting marketing in general.

Importance of Trust and Genuine Interaction

If quality is key to content, then genuine intent is key to SEO and, in truth, once more, the two are interconnected.  Quality, unique and useful content is a major source of improving trust.  All of this can be lost, however, if you then partake in ‘shortcut’ SEO initiatives, such as paid link schemes, or over indulge in advertising.

One of the most important elements of trust – both online and in the ‘real’ word – is making yourself known.  Google seems to be intent on creating an online marketplace, which applauds the same attributes appreciated in the outside world – just with a more futuristic Star Trek-esque pizzazz.  Simply, as online marketing evolves to become ever more important, to both global and local businesses, becoming a trusted individual – as opposed to just a trusted website -is key to your success.

The process to making yourself known, in this respect, is really quite straight forward and simply revolves around developing a personal profile – a photograph, brief history, business address, certification, testimonials (real ones) and links to your personal Facebook page – is really all that is required.

There are many other techniques to support your trust building campaign, but truly they all revolve around being an active, genuine and useful member of your online community.  Yes, link building with high trust-ranking sites, such as; Universities and Government Offices, helps, but the consensus seems to be that if your content is quality and your interaction genuine and thorough, then you will achieve this anyway.

Other Trust Building Tips

(taken from ‘Proving Stuff on the Web’)

 

1. Clean and clear design

2. Correct spelling and grammar

3. Quality photograph of authors

4.Citations to other trustworthy sites

5. High quality graphics, screenshots,

or other images
6. Sign of social adoption (likes, shares)

7. External validation from reviewed platforms

8. Short, simple and memorable domain/brand name

9. Well reasoned, logical and intelligent content
10. Professional logo

11. On site interaction and engagement

12. Frequently updated content

13. Clear indication from author if/when bias or conflict of interest exists

Combining Your SEO With Content Management

With the basics of both content creation and SEO strategy firmly in place, it is now time to create a symbiotic relationship between the two, in an all encompassing campaign.  Indeed, such is the benefit of this symbiosis that some major agencies have even merged, in order to reap the rewards.  Loud Interactive and Alpha Zeta’s was one prime example, with some suggesting that the combined capacity had created the “ultimate web traffic stimulant”.

Fundamentally, this balance is part of ensuring that you are not simply trying to get as many people to your website as possible, but rather you are attracting the right visitors – those that will translate into tangible benefits.  This is unless you are running a site purely to make money from Adsense – in which case one-time visitors are what you are after.

To simplify things into a four-step programme of challenges; you are looking to achieve the following through your campaign:

1. Brand Identity

2. Sales

3. Interaction

4. Repeat Visitors

Within this 4-step programme, it is clear to see that quality is of primary importance.

With regards to your brand identity, it is imperative that people associate your brand/company name with quality – in terms of Information, Service and Product.  This is a major component of trust-building and it needs to be backed up at all times by quality content.

SEO techniques, such as; guest blogging and link building, as well as on site optimisation, are crucially important in ensuring that you can attract traffic to your site, but it is the reputation you can establish within your target base that will, ultimately, have more of an impact on your sales.

Interaction is the next vital component of this four-step programme and its benefits are multi-faceted.

Firstly, by inspiring and encouraging an individual to interact on your site, you are making them feel like an active and participatory member of your community.  The better a reputation your site gets, the keener other individuals and companies will be to become a part of it.

This interaction, too, develops increased trust and, of course, the additional comments and ideas from members of your community will help to enhance the benefit of your content.  It can also serve as a marketing tool in itself, by attracting other people to enter into the discussion and, thus, visit your site.

The final step involves being able to attract repeat traffic.  One sure way to ensure the success of your website is to develop an active and loyal support base.  All of the above components contribute towards this and it is crucial to maximise interaction and provide users with the information that they want.

Another major factor in securing such a loyal support base is to ensure consistency, both in terms of quality and frequency.  It is crucial that you are on top of current trends and, thus, are consistently able to provide visitors with the information they desire.  This involves having content writers who, as well as being excellent writers versed in your specific industry or sector, also have excellent research capabilities.  Developing strong relationships and partnerships with other industry leaders is also crucial, in this respect, to ensure you stay one step ahead.

Final Thoughts

Simply, it is highly beneficial to develop your content and SEO campaigns together, in order to ensure that everything fits into an overriding website management strategy.

Quality content is only quality if it is what your customers want and if it translates into sales.  Likewise, a successful SEO campaign, which attracts traffic to your site, is only truly beneficial if it is the right traffic and, thus, translates into sales.

A successful dual content and SEO strategy can help you to develop your brand and truly pave the way to becoming a successful, highly trusted, quality market leader.

Our guest author: Jonathan is the CEO of Fresh Fire Media, a company that specialises in fully comprehensive website development – from the building and hosting, to the content, SEO and marketing.  With an integrated service, they provide a well oiled, collaborative digital presence that delivers exceptional results with longevity.