Category Archives: guest blogging

New Advertising Ideas To Help Your Business

Blogging, content marketing, email marketing, guest blogging, interactive ads, Small Business Marketing, , , ,

Innovative Advertising IdeasSavvy business owners are always on the lookout for new forms of advertising, and unique ways to surprise potential customers. In recent years, we have seen the advent of the QR code to engage mobile phone users. Another popular method of advertising in recent years is having a viral sensation, the way the new Old Spice man has been.

Here are some other new advertising ideas that may give you some ideas of your own for your business:

Interactive ads within a magazine

You know about scratch and sniff ads, or the peel-open perfume ads. But that is just the beginning.  Forbes magazine recently made an issue Wi-Fi-enabled, which means that the reader carrying it around could get free Wi-Fi. Microsoft sponsored the ad, along with T-Mobile to provide the technology to make the magazine Wi-Fi-enabled.  Springwise says that “the campaign, created with advertising tech firm Americhip, simultaneously promoted the validity of Microsoft’s cloud-based program and gave Forbes’ readership another reason to carry the publication with them – killing two birds with one stone.”

You may not have Microsoft’s budget, but try to think of some interactive way that you could reach out to readers. Even something as simple as asking potential customers to identify a photo or quote, and directing them to your website to potentially win a prize, could help engage them in what you do.

Marketing to bloggers

A small business with a small budget does not have the money for a big advertising or marketing campaign. But they can easily get some good buzz by marketing to bloggers. Here’s what you can do – reach out to bloggers in your area, or your field. For example, if you market baseball t-shirts related to the New York Mets, a good way to get your product out there is to offer a free t-shirt to any blogger who gives you a plug in the blog.

There are several reasons why doing so can be appealing to you:  bloggers are easier to reach than their counterparts in the mainstream media, they have a fan base and a good number of readers, and they generally are savvy in social media as well. This can help promote your business, and if the bloggers like the product, they will tell their friends, and their friends will tell their friends, and so on and so on.

Email advertising

You may already be doing internet advertising. Email advertising is less well-known, but can provide a terrific bang for the buck. Think about it – whether on a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer, people will check their emails on all of the devices. So if you have an ad running in, say, a newspaper’s “Top 10 Articles of the Day” newsletter, the reader will get to read the ad wherever he or she is.

In addition, email ad platforms like LiveIntent will seamlessly update the ads, if need be.  So if you had a Memorial Day sales ad in an email newsletter, but the reader does not actually open the ad until late June, you can switch out the ad dynamically to reflect the new ad in the old email.

That is just the beginning of new marketing and advertising ideas out there. Tell us about what you new ideas you have tried with your business.

Lisa Swan writes for a variety of tech and business sites, including Huffington Post. She lives in New York City.

Seven Tips For Engaging And Traffic Generating Content

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

content marketingWebsites tend to be the first place that your customers turn to in order to find the information about your company, products or services that they want. Most businesses today know that having an online presence is important, which is why most companies today have a website.

Along with simply having a website, the content on your website is important. You need to make sure that your site contains information that your audience wants, and you also want to make sure it includes the information that will give you a better chance at having a solid SEO strategy.

In order to create the best possible content for your website, you need to implement the following tips.

1. Be concise.

Internet users don’t have hours to spend reading the content on your website, so don’t bombard them with long pages full of copy. In fact, if a reader believes that your content is too long, they’re not going to stay and read what you have to say. Make sure that your content is clear and concise. Don’t write fluff copy. Instead, stick to the point, and give your readers exactly what they want.

2. Use headers.

Most Internet users will scan websites before deciding whether or not they’re going to read the copy. This is why it’s extremely important to use headers on your website. This allows you to break your content up into appropriate sections and allows your readers to easily find what it is that they’re looking for.

3. Format appropriately.

The format of your content is important. If your content is formatted in a way that allows your readers to find information in a clear and easy way, it’s going to attract them to your site. Be sure to keep your paragraphs short, use bullet points when appropriate, and always bold your headings. The better your content is formatted, the more attractive it will be for your audience.

4. Stay active.

Your readers are scanning your content in real time, so make sure that you are always using active voice and calls to action to help your audience stay interested in your content and stay on your site.

5. Proofread your work.

The last thing you want to do is work hard on content, publish it, and find that you have spelling or grammatical mistakes. Make sure that you are always proofreading your work before you launch it live on your site. Have other people read through the content to ensure it’s perfect, and even use a spelling and grammar checker like Grammarly grammar check online tool to help ensure your content is complete and error free.

6. Add content to all pages.

Search engine crawlers will look at every web page that has content, so in order to give your website the best advantage for being ranked on search engines, you want to make sure you have content on every page. Even a sentence or two can help boost your site’s rankings.

7. Don’t forget about your images.

Images and videos on your site should have alt tags that contain content. These items are also scanned by search engines, so adding keywords to these videos and images will help your site’s SEO strategy.

Our Guest Blogger – John Martinez is a marketer and freelance writer currently living in San Francisco. John loves teaching interactive marketing and SEO techniques.

What To Do When Your Google Rankings Take A Dive

Blogging, content marketing, guest blogging, SEO, Small Business Marketing

When your Google ranking declinesIf you’re an online business or your business has an online presence then there are few worse feelings than going to check on your page 1 ranking which is bringing in most of your sites traffic, and finding that it’s now on page 5. That’s enough to make any online marketer and online business owner lose sleep. Rankings positions are hugely important if you want your business to succeed, the difference between being ranked number 1 and number 20 in Google is immense as if you’re ranked 20th you pretty much might as well not be ranked at all. When was the last time you searched for something on Google and clicked on a result on page 2 or 3? If your rankings have taken a dive all of a sudden then now is not the time to panic, it’s time to find out why and get your rankings back to where they were so let’s take a look at what you need to do.

Find Out Where You Are

If you have a search term that you have been ranking on page 1 for and all of a sudden it’s gone then the first thing you need to do is to find out where it’s gone to. Are you still in the top 20, 50, 100? If you have slipped into page 2 or 3 then it’s not so bad and it won’t be too hard getting back to where you once where but if you have fallen out of the top 100 altogether then you might have problems. There are tools you can use to tell you where you are ranking but they aren’t always reliable so I prefer to search for them manually. Just make sure to clear your browser search history and sign out of your Google account and they can distort the results.

Learn Lessons

You should use the experience of losing your good ranking positions as an opportunity to learn lessons and improve your website and your online marketing strategies. If the latest algorithm shake up by Google has hit your site in an undesirable way then you need to take their not so subtle hint that there’s something wrong with what you’re doing. This doesn’t mean that you need to pander to everything that Google wants but it provides an opportunity for you to take a look at yourself and find areas that you can improve so that your customers get the best possible experience and service when they visit your site.

What Are You Missing?

You may find that your website needs a blog so that you can regularly update it with fresh content, not just for the sake of it but to provide visitors with exciting, entertaining and educational content. That could make your site more popular as people will use it to find out about the latest news and developments in whatever industry it is that you are working in. That’s how brand reputations are built and improved.

You may find that you need to earn links from more relevant and reputable websites. Gone are the days when you could submit your website to a few online directories and see your rankings sore. Today you will need to earn links in a natural way from high quality websites within the same or at least a similar industry to yours and the only way to do that is to make the best possible website and put genuine effort into your marketing strategies.

Don’t look at a drop in rankings as the end of your SEO and online marketing efforts, instead look at it as an opportunity to create the website and online brand image that you’ve always wanted. If you put your customers first then it’s inevitable that you’ll get the links you want, the visitors, Facebook likes, Twitter followers and your rankings will improve once again.

Don’t Worry About Old Links

Lots of people waste time contacting websites that are linking to them asking them to remove there link to the site which they believe is harming their rankings. This is a waste of time as Google have acknowledged that they ignore low quality links and instead focus on the high quality ones so leave the old links and focus your efforts on earning high quality ones, not by asking for them, buying them or exchanging but by making your site a true source of knowledge, information, excitement and quality within your industry.

By Stuart Cooke an online marketer who owns Pinnacle SEO and he gets lots of clients asking him to improve their rankings after they’ve taken a dive.

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.