Category Archives: Blogging

Four Benefits of Content Marketing for Small Businesses

Blogging, content marketing, Small Business Marketing

Engaging And Traffic Generating ContentAre you using content marketing to grow your small business? If not, start using it at the earliest otherwise you are likely to lose your customers to your competitors.

Content marketing is important for small businesses because it allows them to build customer relationship as well as create product awareness by providing valuable information to the consumer. Many businesses have already allocated portions of their budget to content marketing and other digital marketing platforms because consumers are spending more of their time online.

According to Content Marketing Institute, 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers are using content marketing. These figures clearly indicate that businesses of all sizes are using content marketing. If you own a small business, you should be taking the fullest advantage of content marketing because unlike print marketing, content marketing is very affordable, and is much more targeted. Here are four ways that small businesses can benefit from content marketing.

1.   Educates your customers
As a small business owner, you should take this opportunity of creating content that is informative, relevant and credible to educate your customers on your business, products, services, solutions, etc. It will help customers understand your business better, and they are likely to share your content on social channels with their friends and family. Content that is well put on your business website has chances of getting noticed and likely to help customers in their buying decision.

2.   Builds brand awareness through engagement
The content that you publish in your small business website should be related to your business and should be of quality. This not only builds brand awareness and loyalty, but also drives traffic to your site. Content in your website is a reflection of your business, so be creative and post worthwhile content, so that consumers will stay on your site for longer and the chances of engagement will increase.

3.   Strong customer relationships
Customers are looking for solutions to their problems and by creating and publishing meaningful content you will be able to solve their problems. Customers will have a good rapport with your business once they see you are honestly trying to help them solve their problems with helpful content. It will help you establish as a valuable and long lasting relation between your business and your customers.

4.   Improves your listing in organic search engine results
Quality content in your business website will draw visitors to your site, and in this way your small business can achieve high organic search engine result listings. Content such as white papers, blog posts, case studies, e-books and so forth to educate consumers will earn you a reputation as a reliable source of information and help you in improving your websites search engine ranking.

Content marketing is a must for every serious small business and if you are finding it difficult and don’t have the knowledge to do it in-house, it is better to outsource your content marketing needs to a reputed service provider in order to reap the maximum benefits.

Our guest blogger Nancy R Jones is a writer and blogger for Marvist Consulting LLC which offers small business Internet marketing services. Internet marketing strategy services from Marvist Consulting are aimed to help you build online credibility, generate business leads & enable revenue generation. Since establishment in 2005, Marvist’s SEO services have earned the goodwill of clients with uncompromising commitment to business values while delivering expert services.
 

How To Beat the Google Hummingbird Update

Blogging, content marketing, Hummingbird algorithm, Mobile Marketing, responsive web design, SEO, Small Business Marketing

The Google Hummingbird update is the biggest change in the search algorithm since 2001 and as with any update it is always a good idea to look at how your site could be affected by it and how you can combat those problems. The good news is that even though this is a major update it will not affect your website quite the way you thought, so in all honesty it should be that bit easier to beat it as will now be explained.

Be mobile.

A major part of this update is that it really does improve what happens with mobile search as Google rightfully realize that more people are using their smartphones on the move. What this means is that if you want to beat it, then you are going to need a mobile website because without it you stand to lose out as your site will just be lost in the vastness of those results pages.

Get a responsive site template.

If your site has been penalized with this update, then one thing you can do is to get in touch with your designer and ask them if you can be set up with a responsive design template. The reason why this is important is because it will mean that your site looks so much better on mobile phones as it means that your website will automatically be resized as soon as they land on it. By seeing you are prepared for these changes it should ultimately mean that your site stands a better chance of ranking higher.

Long tailed keywords.

However, perhaps the best way to beat this Hummingbird update is to spend some time looking at long tailed keywords as the main aim, aside from mobile search, is to improve the results that you get when you ask a question. This means that you should perhaps get in touch with your SEO company and get them to do some work on this area because if some clever work is done with regard to these keywords it should mean that your website will rank higher.

Use white-hat techniques.

Even though it is not directly mentioned in updates, it is still the case that your website should only use white-hat techniques or you stand to be punished. This update may be a major one, but it does still include various aspects of the older updates such as Panda and Penguin and Penguin 2.0 in particular would hit black-hat websites hard and the same applies here.

In short, when it comes to trying to beating this Hummingbird update it does involve you using special templates to enhance the viewing experience for somebody that is using their phone and also it places more importance on keywords than ever before. Generally speaking there may not be that much you have to do to your website in order to survive, but if you are unsure about anything remember to talk to a professional who can guide you through the process and advise you correctly on what your next step should be.

Henry Hernandez is a veteran, father and CEO of an Austin SEO company. You can learn more about Henry by checking out his Google+ Page.

Why Google’s Matt Cutts Thinks Moderation Is Key To Guest Blogging

Blogging, Business Tech, Content creation, content marketing, guest blogging, Link Building, Organic SEO, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, , , ,

SEO experts, writers, marketers, and business owners have been writing about guest blogging for years now. Guest blogging is something that should help your company improve it’s branding and visibility, SEO, and reader satisfaction, so knowing you need to create a guest blogging strategy is pretty much a no-brainer. However, as Google continues to grow and develop, guest blogging is becoming trickier. It’s hard to know how to be successful when it comes to building links and exposure anymore, so of course it makes sense to go to the man with all the answers: Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

A Quick Recap: Why Guest Blogging Is Beneficial

For those who are unfamiliar, guest blogging is essentially the act of writing a piece of content, publishing that content on a different (but related and relevant) website on the web, and then earning a link back to your company in an author bio in return. As discussed above, guest blogging is a great way to build up your linking portfolio as well as earn you visibility with a  new audience and really show the world that you know your stuff.

There are a few different strategies used by companies today. In general, how you want to setup your guest blogging has been according to your niche and size, and this isn’t going to change. A few different ways it has worked in the past include:

  • Hire a guest blogging agency. This is usually what very large companies do when they have a lot of guest posting needs. There are many agencies out there that do nothing but guest blog and build links for websites, and if you do your research, you can find plenty that produce great content.
  • Hire a team of in-house writers. This is usually the option for larger companies who don’t like going the freelance route. It gives you more control.
  • Hire freelance writer/writers. This is probably the most popular option. If you just want a little bit extra visibility, hire one or two writers to freelance is an easy way to make it happen. Be careful though and always monitor these writers!
  • Guest blog on your own. This is usually the route for very small companies. If you’re just getting started, and particularly if you work in an odd niche, this should work just fine.

As you can see, some of these strategies produce quite a few guest posts. In the past this was a great way to improve SEO because you earned a lot of authoritative backlinks and all of that visibility, not to mention it allowed you to really work with a variety of blogs (also good for SEO). While this still works, Cutts says that moving forward guest blogging approaches need not be quite as forceful.

Why Cutts Say Moderation Is a Necessity (And How to React)

The biggest thing to understand is that Google is working to put less emphasis on linking and more emphasis on the actual content. While backlinks will still be important, they aren’t as important, and therefore Cutts explained in his latest video that moderation is the key to success moving forward. You can watch the video below:


As you can see, Cutts does make it clear that Google can easily tell the difference between a guest blog and a blog that paid for links, so no worries there.  Still, moderation will allow you to make sure that you are not just spinning articles; you’re actually writing meaningful content, which will be better for your reputation in the long run.

Do you have a guest blogging strategy that doesn’t worry about moderation? What do you think is the best way to use guest blogging to your advantage? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for HigherVisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country.

5 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

Blogging, Small Business Marketing, Wordpress, , ,

WordPress pluginsWordPress is a blogging platform which has so many features that will enable its users to customize their blog to meet their needs. There are thousands of plugins, themes, and scripts available for WordPress that can be installed easily to enhance your blog performance. However, using too many features of WordPress for your blog can potentially slow down your blog speed. Here are 5 simple ways to speed up your WordPress blog:

1. Remove Unnecessary Plugins

Plugins can be useful for your blog, but too many plugins will affect your blog load speed. In other words, if you have too many plugins installed on your WordPress blog, your visitors will have more time to wait your blog to load completely. That’s why it is necessary for you to remove plugins that you don’t really use. If you have some unused plugins, you should remove them completely from your WordPress blog. In this way, you can improve your blog performance.

2. Simplify Your Widgets

Sometimes, having too many widgets will also make your blog load slowly. So, don’t clutter your blog with useless widgets that don’t really help your visitors at all. Some widgets are beautiful to put on your blog, but are they really necessary for you? For instance, displaying pictures from Flickr might allow your visitors to see beautiful pictures while they read your blog, but is it necessary for you? Unless you’re having an image-hosting blog, it won’t be necessary for you. So, you should simplify your widgets to boost your blog speed and make your blog as clean as possible.

3. Compress Your Images And Use Wp Super Cache

Compress your images so that your visitors can load your blog images quickly. Be sure to use the WP Super Cache plugin as well. This plugin increases your blog loading time significantly. This plugin will create HTML files for your dynamic blog. So, instead of loading your blog through PHP scripts, the plugin will just load the HTML files, which will make the load time faster.

4. Use A Simple WordPress Theme

Your WordPress theme can also contain lots of files and media that can only slow the speed of your blog. It is better for you to use a simple WordPress theme, which have less images and less media files within it. Make sure that this theme is optimized for SEO as well, so that your blog will have a good performance in the search engine. Changing your WordPress theme can effectively fix your blog speed problem.

5. Use A Web Hosting Service Specialized For WordPress

If you have an extensive blog, with heavy content updates every day, you should consider using a web hosting service that is specialized for WordPress. The difference between using a regular web hosting service and using the service which is specialized for WordPress is that the specialized WordPress hosting is fully optimized for WordPress, which means it has been tweaked to ensure that every WordPress blog can run smoothly and load quickly with it. So, if you want to speed up your WordPress blog significantly, using a specialized WordPress hosting will help you to do it.

Those are some simple ways to speed up your WordPress blog. Follow the tips above to ensure maximum performance of your blog and prevent your visitors from getting frustrated when they try to access your blog.

About Chris

Chris is an SEO Consultant who is an expert in helping websites owners understand ranking effects and how website loading and other aspects affect web rankings. He recently used a new application called www.readycache.com to boost website loading speed.