Category Archives: SEO

Content Marketing – More Than Just Text

Blogging, Content creation, content marketing, Infographics, SEO, SEO video, Small Business Marketing, Video marketing, YouTube Marketing, , , ,

The hidden power of alternative content marketing

alternative content marketing

Content marketing is a very powerful tool. It can be used to bring in new customers, retain existing customers, and help your brand to establish its authority. All in all, content can do a great number of beneficial things for your brand when it is marketed correctly.

Beyond the blog

There is more to content marketing than simply posting in a blog. Content marketing extends far beyond basic text content – if you want to reach as much of your market as possible, you will need to explore alternative types of content marketing. With different types of content you can appeal to people with different learning styles and those who prefer to receive information from sources other than plain text.

Why alternative content rocks

alternative-content-ideasFor a visual learner there isn’t much that’s more difficult to get through than a wall of text, regardless of how much they need the information it contains. For someone who learns best when someone else is demonstrating a process, text isn’t going to do much good unless it is accompanied by images or a video of some kind.
Alternative content appeals to individuals like these as well as others with similar learning styles.
Examples of alternative content include:

    • Infographics – An alternative to typical text-based content, an infographic can provide consumers with a more visually appealing representation of the information that they need. Infographics are ideal for visual learners and are well-suited to instances where the information that needs to be shared can easily be illustrated by a knowledgeable professional.  Take for example the infographic below, the idea is to take a subject matter of expertise and create something unique and entertaining that has never been done before.

    • Videos – Videos can attract consumers and can be used alone as well as in combination with test, images, and more. Videos appeal most to visual and auditory learners because they can simultaneously show and explain an idea. Video marketing is very popular, and there are even video search engines (think YouTube) to help locate just the right video for your needs.

Video: Why Use Video Marketing?

Alternative content allows you to diversify the content that you offer and broaden your brand’s appeal by reaching out to a wider audience. There is no more need to worry about alienating anyone by not providing the right kind of content; now you can build your audience with as much content as you can afford to create.

Your takeaway

your-takeaway-bags
In the early days of the internet there were no alternatives to plain text. The most that could be done at the time was basic formatting; text could be bold, italic, or underlined. Lists could be made, and text could be separated by headings and subheadings, but that was the extent of a brand’s ability to make their content stand out and be easier to consume.
Fast forward to today and there are so many more options than the early founders of the web might have ever dreamed of.
Now is the perfect time to invest in an alternative form of content and see where the experience will take you and your customers – who knows what your first infographic or video series will bring to your brand?

infographic-about-infographics_5089d6abbf593

Our guest blogger, Kris Dietz, loves creating something amazing then spreading the word about it! My mission is to develop and mold SEO into an amazing outlet of sharing valuable resources. I enjoy networking and meeting like-minded individuals.

SEO Vs. PPC: Which Brings The Best ROI?

AdWords, PPC, SEO, Small Business Marketing, ,

seo-vs-ppcPay Per Click advertising used to be the best possible way to encourage the search engine gods to work in your favor. PPC, as it is commonly called, is a method of purchasing spots within search results. They are listed as sponsored results, but are still relevant to the users initial search string.  For website owners looking to gain web presence, pay per click advertising is an easy way to generate traffic.

The Benefits of PPC

There are some significant reasons why anyone would use pay per click advertisements in order to gain website traffic. First of all, they immediately get your name out in front of a lot of people. On top of that, those people are the right people. PPC targets internet visitors who are searching for what your website is about. For website owners, it is a jump to the front of the line button that puts them in front of the consumers we are all competing for.

The Drawbacks of PPC

As good as PPC is, it has been limited by the behaviors of internet users. They know the result is sponsored and choose not to click it. According to web usage studies, the majority of users will not click on a search result if it has been sponsored.  It is also very expensive. Even though PPC is delivering its promise of getting your website to the front of the line, what value does that serve if no one visits it?

How SEO Differs

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the practice of using techniques to appear at the top of the list without buying the spot.  Called organic results, search engine results from websites that have been optimized read exactly like those that have not. Internet surfers, therefore, are just as willing to click on those as they would any other site.

Everyone Can’t Be In the Front

SEO can get you to the front of the line, but it can just as easily get someone else there too. Because of that, staying in front can be a competition that requires regular work. This is because the secrets of SEO are publically available. With a little time and motivation, anyone can be listed on top. Unlike PPC, which guarantees the spot, SEO spots must be maintained.

When to Choose Which

Because PPC will immediately put you in front, and maintain that spot for a certain amount of time, it is best suited for new websites. During that time, they can be exposed to users, even though they will most likely receive fewer clicks than the organic results.  SEO can be used for any website that is comfortable with taking the time to not only develop into the top spot, but also maintain it.

Ultimately, the choice you make will depend on your website or company’s marketing budget and time to enter the market. If you just created a new product and are launching the website in the middle of November you may not have enough time to use SEO effectively to reach the holiday online shopping crowd.

On the other hand, if you created a hot holiday item and it is the middle of March; go for SEO. It will take a little bit longer to reach your top spots, but the returns will be exponentially higher than PPC, with higher click-thru ratios to your site. In this scenario, it is also important to look at the budget and make sure it is feasible. Shop around for SEO companies and find the most competitive rate.

Our guest blogger, Ryan Duncan, has been practicing website design and search engine optimization for the past 7 years and founded Funnel Boost Media in 2011. FBM is focused on providing a unique online marketing experience to it’s clients that brings results and focuses on branding at the same time. Located in the San Antonio, Tx area, Funnel Boost Media provides internet marketing solutions to businesses all over the South Texas region.

How to Recover From Google Penalties

SEO, SEO tools, Small Business Marketing, , ,

Recovering from Google penalties

Success or failure of your website hinges upon the appropriate use of Google to rank your site in search listings. Unfortunately, Google has the ability to hand out penalties which can adversely affect how far up the search rankings your website is listed. These penalties are put in place usually because Google believes that your site manipulates the ranking data through various spamming or black-hat SEO techniques. This can result in your website appearing way down the pecking order of sites in your category of keywords making it difficult for potential visitors to find your site at all.

Thankfully, there are a number of steps which can be taken to recover from Google penalties which we will outline below. Follow these steps and your site will hopefully be given a fair search ranking.

First Step: Find Out The Nature of The Penalty

In order to begin recovery you will need to know exactly what type of penalty has been levelled against your site. There are two categories of Google Penalties, Manual and Automatic.

  • Identifying Manual Penalties: There are two types of manual penalty which your site may be effected by. To assess whether or not you have been given an Unnatural Link Warning, log in to your Webmaster Tools account which is provided by Google to help site owners maximise their search rankings. From there look for any alerts directly from Google in your inbox which states that your site violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines in the form of unnatural links which lead to your site, unfairly effecting PageRank. The second type of manual penalty is De-Indexation. To find out if you have fallen foul of this penalty, go to Google.com and type in Site:yourdomain with the appropriate ending (com, org, net, etc.) into the search box. If your site doesn’t appear in the resulting search, you’ve been de-indexed which means that your site is ‘off the radar’.
  • Identifying Automatic Penalties: To find out whether or not you’ve been hit with an Identifying Algorithmic Filter penalty, log in to your Google account and click on your analytics reports. Look through the graph presented which shows your site traffic, if at some point there is a complete drop in visitors which never rises, then your site has most probably been de-indexed from searches.

Second Step: Recover From Manual Google Penalties

If you have found that your site has been struck by a manual penalty in the form of unnatural linking, then do the following to recover a fair search ranking:

  1. Do as Google Asks!: In the original notification mentioned above, you will have been told to look for artificial or unnatural links which point to your site and are being used to manipulate your PageRank. Familiarise yourself with the forms of unnatural or artificial links available so that you can identify them more easily. This will involve a bit of online research, here are is a video from Google about this to get you started.
  2. Locate & Remove Unnatural Links: To remove these unwanted links, log in to your Webmaster Tools and look for the Traffic section. Here you should be able to find stats on the links to your site from other sources. Look for ones which appear unnatural and often added together on the same day in large numbers. Take a note of these then go to this website and type in your URL. Here you will be given a report about the sources back-linking to your site, and which ones may be ‘bad’. Now here is the tricky part, if these links have not been created by yourself you will need to contact the Webmasters of those sites directly and ask them to delete the links. Be warned, they do sometimes try to charge you for this, if they try this scam take a screen capture of the request and attach it to your correspondence with Google about your penalties. Now, use the Google Link Disavow Tool which will let you report these links directly to Google who should remove them from consideration when calculating your PageRank.
  3. Resubmit Your Site For Ranking: Finally you will need to resubmit your website for ranking via Google. You can do this by following Google’s guidelines.

If you believe your site has been de-indexed then you will also be required to apply for reconsideration directly.

Third Step: Recover From Automatic Google Penalties

If you have identified automatic penalties via algorithmic filters, you will need to follow these steps to recover your PageRank:

  1. Find Duplicate Content: The majority of these penalties are brought about by the existence of duplicate content. To find duplicates, take a portion of the content and paste it into Google search exactly. If you have used a piece of content more than once on your sites, then removing the duplicates will help recover your PageRank. If it is the case that someone else has used your content and created a duplicate, then you unfortunately have only three options. First, contact the site owner and inform them that you hold the copyright for that content, providing links, and request that they remove their duplicates or you will have to take them to court. Second, you could contact the web-host who could remove the offending website completely if you can prove the content is yours. Finally, you may have to use a lawyer to threaten legal action if they do not meet your requests.
  2. Remove Low Quality Content:Familiarise yourself with Google’s Quality Controlguidelines. After this, delete any pages you might have which do not pass this benchmark, often pages with little or no content in them.
  3. Remove Over Advertising: Delete advertising which is overtly excessive which could slow down your site and drown out any content.
  4. Increase Page Load Speeds: If your site is really slow to load, Google might not index it properly. Follow these recommendations to increase your site’s speed.
  5. Resubmit: Finally, when you are convinced your page is in a better position to be evaluated for PageRank, resubmit your site for reconsideration.

alice-mcleanAuthor’s bio: Alice McLean is a writer at bestessays.com  with a background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.

What Makes A Piece Of Content Go Viral?

SEO

viral contentGoing viral is the dream of every internet marketer, because when a piece of content goes viral you get a great deal of attention. Not only are you able to reach a high amount of customers, but you will also continue to reach a new client base as the content continues to spread which means that you can make a lot of new customers. Therefore, the goal of every marketer becomes going viral, but it can be tricky to write a piece that will take off the way that you want. The following are a few tips that will help explain how to create viral content.

Skimable

The first thing you need to do is make sure that your article is easy to skim. Headings and subheadings as well as short paragraphs all make content easy to briefly look over. According to Jacob Nielsen reports, only about 20% of the content on a web page is read by users, so make sure that readers are easily able to pick up what you are offering if you want them to continue to share it.

Share Buttons

This might seem like a no-brainer, but many people forget to include share buttons for different social media websites on their web pages. Do not assume that your content is not going to be shared, because you never know which piece is going to take off and what will strike a chord in people. Make sure to place these buttons at the top of every post and at the bottom so that sharing is a simple task for readers.

Practical Information

If you offer information that readers can use right away they are more likely to pass on the hints to their friends and family members via that sacred share button. Hands-on

information that concerns your topic or subject will be a lot more likely to spread. For instance, information about training classes for information technology that includes dates, times, and prices is likely going to get shared with a friend over an article that is simply about training classes.

Rarity

Finally, attempt to write about niche topics or create content that has not already been floated out there into the online world. When people read content that they think is unique or at least hard to come by, they are more likely to share it since it will appear to be of much more high value to their networks. Therefore, explore topics that are a bit outside of the box.

Consistent

The first thing you need to do is slowly build a consistent reputation for your work. By always making sure that your writing is of the highest quality you will slowly start to build an audience that comes to depend on your content. Once you get a large group or readers to trust what you write you will find that they are much more apt to share your content on a regular basis. By writing high caliber pieces on a frequent basis you can easily build a consistent reputation.

Our Guest blogger Mark Chan is a freelance writer. He blogs about social media and SEO.