Monthly Archives: April 2014

Your Ultimate Guide To A Penalty Proof Website

SEO is an undeniable part of your website maintenance, regardless of whether you are just starting out or are already a part of a competitive niche. Your website needs to come up in page ranks for you to get maximum user attention. Surveys have proved that a huge percentage of visitors would not even look past the first couple of pages of a search engine list. This spells trouble for you if you have not put in a lot of work in developing your SEO and thus falling far behind on your search turf.

Some might argue that SEO is not the only marketing input that gives customer conversions. However, if you have a website, it is important to invest in as many techniques as you possibly can to lead targeted visitors to your site. Organic search results remain the biggest traffic leads amongst the many techniques that you can imply. What is even more important is that SEO can be an inclusive part of every technique that you use to get traffic to your sites. You can use keyword treatment for press releases and even guest posting on other blogs.

Yet the biggest problem that most companies have is that they cannot really keep up with the latest SEO trends. It is sometimes difficult to rely on SEO because search engines change their algorithms and some aspects that might have been working quite well might stop working for your website’s search ranks. However, it is quite simple to keep with SEO trends if you just have a simple strategy working for you. Here is an ultimate guide of tips to help you in this direction.

Creating a twitter stream for specific updates

Keeping a tab on all the latest updates on SEO might become overwhelming fast. However, you can use twitter to your advantage to keep yourself up to date on every passing fad and established trend in the niche. Just start valid twitter streams on specific subjects. Make sure that you streams are not based on generic topics such SEO or SMO. Rather, streams based on “Google recent SEO updates”, “Google Penguin”, Google Panda” and “Google Hummingbird” might yield much interesting updates.

Twitter can also be used to follow niche thought leaders for current updates and new tricks related to SEO. The fundamental thing about this strategy is that not only would you stay on trend about the latest in SEO but you will also pick up new tricks related to twitter updating and social media maintenance for new traffic.

Subscriptions to popular SEO blogs

Popular niche experts follow through on their expert tips on their blogs. Following such blogs will always keep you one-step ahead of the completion. However, do not be restricted to just SEO blogs, you should be subscribing to related niche blogs to expand your field of coverage. While reading your RSS feeds or email subscription of latest updates is important, it is also important to be interactive with the niche. Once you start interacting with your bloggers via comments or emails, you will also be on their radar. What is more blog commenting has also been known to be a huge traffic pusher for many blogs.

Periodical brushing up on your SEO current trends

While many tips in combination will help you in this field, however, you will be remiss if you do not do the most basic thing to keep up with current SEO trends in the field. You should take 15-20 minutes chalked in every week in your busy schedule to just take the time to brush up on what is currently new in the niche. This might also be an ideal time to take in short video posts or podcasts on the subject, so you can multitask while still brushing up on the current SEO trends.

Google Webmaster tool help

Google webmaster can be your go to tool for optimization but what people often neglect is that it can be just as effective for resources on SEO. It is Google’s own product so it is one of the most up to date resources for the search engine. You can also find out detailed information on the performance of your website. This can also help you track the performance of your SEO tactics. You can finalize which tactics you should invest more time in and which ones to scrap.

Join social media groups focused on SEO

You can be a part of common forums where people with similar queries to yours focus on providing solutions and discussions on the topic. You will be amazed to notice just how much you can learn from these discussions. Join a social media focused group on SEO – LinkedIn, FaceBook or even Tumblr can provide excellent platforms for this. You can also create such groups with the intention of bringing together like-minded individuals and experts to your aid.

Brushing up on mobile SEO

Mobile SEO has been gathering quite a lot of popularity in the recent years. Targeted customers are most likely to approach websites from a platform that is most accessible to them at all times. With the introduction of Smartphone and tablets, the trend has shifted towards mobile search. It is important that you customize your SEO trend gathering according to a mobile strategy to gain maximum benefits out of this.

Marketing Trends That Every Startup Entrepreneur Should Definitely Consider This Year

Each year the importance of social media to a well-rounded online marketing plan keeps getting undeniable. You have to invest in your social media strategies to get the maximum ROI on your website online marketing. You also have to consider that each year the number of social media platforms also keep increasing so you have the chance of attaining maximum exposure with this particular aspect of your marketing plan. However, every New Year shows a pathway of successful social media trends. In fact, sticking to outdated trends might actually harm your credibility in the niche and not get you enough returns on the time and money you invest in them. Here is a list of the most up to date trends in the field of Social media marketing to get your startup website going in the head to head in the game with the big leagues of your niche.

Building up rapport with your target audiences

The biggest trend that has compounded over the years is to build rapport with your target audiences. You can do it in several mall ways. The biggest draw however, is to make your online presence most resourceful for your customers. How you can extend this strategy to your social media platform depends on your own creativity. Some brands take social media platforms as their main customer support bases. You can post in queries or reviews on their social media pages and they would directly get back to you on these. However, beware of restraint on the strategy, it can get negative pretty fast if you do not keep it in check.

Get in step with the shift in technology

Shifting technology will always affect your overall online marketing and social media strategies. If your audience is moving towards a platform other than their desktops, you need to be moving your strategy to suit that choice. For instance, the emergence of tablets and Smartphone mean that most of social media marketing changed gears for mobile platforms. As such, social sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr will be your most valid platform choices to connect with your audiences. You should also redesign your company blog to be responsive to every platform through which your audiences access it.

Analytics Vs. predictive tools

Tracking your moves during your social media strategy implementation has been the most important aspect for improvements in this regard. However, while earlier simple analysis tools remained your best bet to getting trackback information on your strategy, now you have a whole array of predictive tools at your disposal to get details that are more concurrent. These tools use data mining techniques, modeling and diverse statistics to give you abject information about your social media strategy.

Video marketing strategies

Single dimensional marketing will no longer fly for social media. You need to be up-to-date with what your target audience needs from you. Research has shown that most niche audiences tend to absorb more from short videos on popular video networking sites or on company websites than any other form of information distribu8tion. Having your own YouTube channel or Vimeo account is absolutely necessary but more important is to lock down on interesting content to share with your niche audiences via video marketing techniques.

Mobile applications for mobile platform marketing

Every survey conducted in the field of web accessibility has shown in multiple counts of results that prove that most websites are now being accessed over some kind of mobile platform – Smartphone, tablet or mobile gadgets. It is therefore, excessively important that your website be ready to face the challenge. In fact all your marketing solutions need to be designed to be mobile responsive and adaptive over a vast variety of technologies. This includes the interface design, so you have to keep your information fluid to make the most impact.

Engagement and interactive online presence

If you are just starting with your online branding strategies, you have to stay committed to the project for quite a while before you start seeing positive results. The idea is to create an engaging online presence. Your company should be the go-to resource when people start looking for interesting news and discussions pertaining to important topics in the niche. You have to be as up-to-date as possible and always make it a point to answer your readers and engage in actual conversations.

Your best resourceful tools for Social media marketing this year

1.) Facebook Advertisements – Advertising is very important and most social media platforms now give you the ideal platform to present your products on a platform which already as interested audiences flocking in. Facebook ads rose up like a shining beacon but they had started to lose traction during the last quarter of previous year. This year the platform has reinvented their platform with video advertisements, which give the companies a chance to humanize their messages making bigger impact on people.

2.) Google+ Ads – Google has just started testing out +post ads. Since this is one of the most powerful social media platforms considering direct association with Google, you should definitely be ready to roll out advertisements on this platform as soon as it rolls out the advantage.

3.) Twitter ads – Twitter launched TV ad targeting and many other re-branding overtures to create a renewed hype around the platform. The rebranding also included new ad interface design, which is rigged to attract a lot more attention on various social media as well as search engine platforms. It is safe to say that while the other platforms are still growing with their strategies, you can never take Twitter for granted. The platform should always be a part of your social media and advertisement strategy.

Why Choose WordPress Among Plenty Other Blogging Platforms?

Why is there so much fuss about WordPress? Everyone already knows about plenty of blogging platforms available so what makes WordPress platform different from them?

Here are some facts about WP that can help you understand this in a better way:

1.) WP is an open source and a free blogging tool

2.) WP features template system and plug-in architecture

3.) Theme changing is seamless and incredibly fast in it.

4.) Large numbers of plugins around 26,000 are available.

For those who are new to blogging must know that WordPress had a humble beginning back in the year 2003 but till date over 60 million websites use this powerful tool. WP is like a sleeping giant and now is currently the most used blogging system worldwide.

The Core

The company gains its unique character trait from its governing body. This governing body runs as a meritocracy rather than being a general democratic structure or a top-heavy pyramid. In such work system lack of personal agenda is paramount and so it creates a work environment that encourages constructive and positive thinking. “We are in it together” such mental thinking is followed which creates a healthy place to work together.

The core teams that exist value the concept of teamwork a lot. The core is made up of groups of committed individuals having years of experience working together and as a team. Their attitudes stream into more specified groups within the family of WordPress and encourage active participation of everyone for contributing to the development and the growth of business.

Not convinced yet? Check out some features that WP users are offered with more tech savvy:

CSS

The WP Company prides itself on creating a platform not only for the novice computer geeks who had just discovered what platform means, but also for the advanced HTML aficionados and experts. The company is so user-friendly that accessing CSS could not have been easier anywhere else. When setting the layouts for your website, the company offers endless range of options. If user has some specific requirements and ideas beforehand then they can even create their unique theme based on those ideas.

So what part this so talked “WordPress Community” plays in all this?

At WordPress lots of options are available for everyone and anyone to become a part of this one-of-a-kind community and contribute to its growth. Check out some of the ideas:

On the blogs all those post comments that you read and love can also prove beneficial for others. So by commenting also you are contributing to the conversation.

Want to become a blogger? Why stop yourself? Just start one today and start thinking on paper. There is nothing to lose but a lot to gain.

Get amazing contents to read just by following a person or a business’ blog. This way you can support the writer, can receive regular emails from them, get to read many awesome contents and at the least make the writer feel proud too.

Attend WordCamp, a conference that is organized and run by the community individuals to network, connect and learn from one another.

These are just few of the many ideas and so whether you run a small business, or you are a multi-tiered business operator or you just want to blog about your newly hatched chickens, for everything you can find an option that will suit your needs.

WordPress is friendly, as simple as that!

You can chose from lot of platforms available on the internet but if you have anything to share to the world then why not do it with something this powerful and creative as WP. Don’t go anywhere else and save time by choosing the best, The WordPress.

International SEO- Tips And Tricks That You Must Try

A strategic content is quite important when it comes to marketing efforts and business branding. But to contrive a suitable way for international marketing can be somewhat tricky. There might be several challenges on the way and building an effective strategy becomes an important part of search engine marketing. When you are working with the aim of making your page in accordance to national SEO, things are bit easy; however for international SEO, all you need is a bit of knowledge of other international languages that are prevalent in the world.

Below is a report where you can find the tidbits of international SEO and tips to kick start the marketing internationally.

There are conventional ways of achieving a greater traffic internationally than nationally. Ever wondered how? The answer is simple. When you are going for a search result in the search engine where the keyword is typed in English, millions of results follow up in the order of relevancy and SEO. When you want to write the same query, just translated to a different language, the results will be quite limited. The irony here is, you might find umpteen pages fighting to get the rankings in English but there are really few pages that have international languages incorporated in them. This is just the budding stage of international SEO and the opportunities are many. So the sooner you act, the better it is!

Going for international languages in the website would require you to follow the alphabet trends of different languages. For example, if a user searches for “travel ideas” or “journey ideas”, Google knows what the user is probably looking for and the results are healed. The case is just not so in a different language. The Latin alphabet grapheme “Æ” is a ligature of both “A” and “E” in English. The correct form of alphabet should be used so that the results are rightly interpreted.

To target in different locales is not that difficult in English. There needs to be more effort internationally and focus should be there on the content wording and intent of writing.

It is always required to take the help from relying translating experts who can turn the page to another language from English and vice versa. Furthermore, colors, texts and objects should also be localized so that the interpretation never goes wrong.

It is typically in the case of America where the online survey culture is more prevalent. While certain brands have their own recognition in the nation, they are not recognizable on an international platform. The SEO becomes far more important here as it reduces the hunt for the exact solution. The online survey feature has not gained that significant exposure in India and therefore it is the need of the hour to shift focus on only Indian market.

In the world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) are gaining importance. These two tactics can give an advantage of overall traffic accumulation. While SEO simply looks for the right kind of keyword, the keywords that receive high responses and conversions on PPC are the major targets for the SEO content.

The prerequisite is to target on the international platform rather than just centering domestically. Digital business needs to be more opened up and argus-eyed for the remaining competitors. When you can have a check over what is happening in the shop next door, knowing details of your competitor in the digital world is not feasible. Therefore being vigilant is highly important to furnish the next stage plans for your business. Now as the rivalries are increasing, even bigger firms are maneuvering for better ideas and international search engine optimization techniques.

Components Of An Extraordinary Social Media Campaign

So, you are all set for a social media campaign, but you don’t know how to start it? Well, this article would help you out. First of all, you need to keep in mind that it would not be easy. You would need to put in a lot of effort. Additionally, it would take time. At times, you might feel like leaving it in the middle, but if you continue, you would get the desired results.

Let us first discuss about the two most important elements, which would help you in the social media campaign that you are heading towards to.

People

The first element is the people. Don’t take it wrong by the way, we are not talking about any class of people you can find to impose your ideas on to. In fact, nobody would let you impose your ideas on to them. But, if you focus on the right bunch of people, you would be doing it right. Remember, only those people would people would listen to you who are actually being affected by your idea and hence, you should target them only. Later on, if you are lucky, you might be able to target the unrelated public too.

Also, do not give the responsibility of the campaign to anybody who is free in your company. Instead, search for a person who is smart and at the same time flexible, which would be able to tackle the changing needs of the market. You might have to change the plan sometimes and the person should be able to handle the changes.

How you present yourself to the world is equally important, make sure that there are no mistakes left out there. And to make sure that there are no mistakes, you would need the second element, Practice.

Practice

If you are thinking that you can just tweet about your new business idea or just post a Facebook status and you would get million likes, you are wrong. You need to plan a few things ahead before posting your first Facebook status about the social media campaign.

Time to time, you would need to analyse where your audience is going and in case your audience is bored, you might need to change the plan and think of something interesting to give to them. It would not take much money of yours but it would surely need you to invest some time in it.

Next, we come to the components of an extraordinary social media campaign. Go through them and make sure that you understand each step properly:

1. Your Purpose

First of all, think yourself why you need this social media campaign and why is it important to you. In case it is really important to you, you would get the answers yourself and you would be able to invest your time and money wisely.

2. Research on the Matter

You would need to perform an extensive research so as to make sure that there are no flaws in your campaign. A single inaccurate fact might take away a couple of your clients from you. And in business, loss of a single client might be painful. Also, collecting the data is one part and implementing it is another. Hence, make sure that you have sensible people who are able to analyse the data and build up something huge with it.

3. Understand the Objectives

Once you are clear in your objectives and you are firm towards achieving them, nobody can stop you, except you. Divide your objectives into smaller ones and associate a deadline with them. Then, keep on accomplishing those and one day, you would get your objectives accomplished.

4. Keep an Eye on the Stats

Deadlines are created for meeting. Hence, make sure that you do not skip any. And, in case you skip, work faster so that the overall progress is not delayed. Also, understand what is actually important to you. If there are 1000 likes on your Facebook page and you know how you have achieved them (by requesting the friends again and again), this is not going to help your business in future. Hence, act maturely and count only those things as success which actually deserves to be.

5. Strategy and Software

Following the right strategy is important, no doubt but these days, apart from strategy, one thing that would re-define your success is what kind of software and tools are using. Remember, this is the era of the SMART work and not the hard work. Hence, it is important that you go for right software’s which not only save you money, but time and effort as well.

You can take help of the professionals in case you are unaware of the social media tools.

6. Documentation

When it is about business, everything needs to be legal and documentation is something that you should take care of. You can appoint a person specifically for this purpose. As long as the social media campaign is going on, you should have each and every detail of it on paper so that problems do not occur later on. Social media policy, engagement practices, implementation plans, privacy, social media roles, strategy documentation, permissions in written format etc. need to be there with you all the time.

7. Execution of the Plan

This is the major part of the social media campaign and if you have done the previous steps right, chances is that you would not face any problem with this one. You might feel that you are sitting on the computer all day long in the initial days, but soon, you would get to see the results and then it would motivate you.

8. Measurements and Adjustments

There are many social media tools available in the market which would help you to measure the growth of your social media campaign. You should use them to find out the weekly or monthly growth of your plan. In case you are doing everything right, measurements would be fine but in case measurements do not turn out to be nice, you would need to make adjustments in your plan. Do not hesitate to adjust, you are doing it for the first time and mistakes would happen. You just need to make sure that no mistake is repeated.

As a tip, remember that the digital world today runs on latest tools, and keeping yourself updates might save you a lot of time. As soon as you hear about a new approach towards business, try it in your business, you might get better returns than ever before.

Top Highly Evolved Tools To Help You Jumpstart Your Content Marketing Process

Your core marketing process should be based on indispensable content. The internet is a massive organization with millions of different portals offering advice’s tips or tricks on a variety of subjects. To come up ahead of your competition, you should be able to understand the core rule of marketing and stick to it regardless of the time it takes for you to build on it. Only websites and blogs that impart crucial information to their target audiences survive in this cutthroat competition and trying to cut corners on this foundation might get you a dwindling traffic stream, which pretty soon will dry up.

Instead, embrace the new age content marketing process. Understand the different trends that work best with your brand of content but most importantly discover your unique tone that will set your content apart from the crowd. Fortunately, you can use the different emerging trends in content marketing as your inspiration. However, before that you should take a look at the following list of highly evolved resources that will help you effectively jump start your content creation and marketing strategy.

Discovering new content

You need to discover new trends in content marketing, but most importantly, it is important to discover new style, tone, and fresh content. These tools will help you with coming up with new ideas to curate improved content for your blog.

Quora – this social network platform has fast gained popularity and it is an excellent site to identify upcoming content trends. You can find many different topics broached in question and answer format.

Feedly – with Google reader having shut its gates Feedly has become the most popular source to curate RSS content feed at one place.

Twitter – This social network site still remains one of the best micro sites to hunt for new content discovery and idea generation.

Organizing content

These tools will help you organize all your content streams so you are on top of the industry news. These are also remarkable tools to help you curate amazing pieces of content for reproduction or rehashing on your site.

Pinterest – You can use the board site to organize all your content ideas and also place different content topics alongside to understand what sequence to publish it in. you can also curate resources to help design interesting infographics and design content from this site.

Evernote – It is a multi- use tool to help you remember every priority in your life. It is not just restricted to content organization but also all goals related to your website or blog can be tracked with this tool.

Google calendar – Probably the most easily accessible and popular organization tool in the web world, the Google calendar can be used to prepare a concise editorial calendar for your website and mange your content production.

Creating content

Google keyword tool – The correct pairings of keywords on your posts can help get you farther up the search engine pages. You can use the Google keyword tool for much more concise data on keyword optimization and content generation ideas through competitive analysis of each keyword on the global rank basis.

Embedded tweets – Embedding live tweets in your post will help make them much more interactive. The target audience can directly follow the author and continue the conversation on the twitter platform giving a huge potential for virality.

Issue – this is a new age content creation tool wherein you can create look books and online magazine style issues for your blog. They have both free and paid versions available.

Marketing and distribution of fine content

Finally, this category of tools will help you fine-tune your content distribution process. You can depend on these tools to distribute and market your content to get the maximum attention in your niche.

Syndication PR sites – These sites are incredible for funneling useful content and pre-event news on a massive platform. You can write SEO optimized press releases and then distribute on various successful channels such as SBWIRE, PRWEB or other syndication PR sites. Journalists, opt-in subscribers and millions of business owners around the world who are looking for the next new find of content patronize these sites.

Email autoresponders – Syndicating your website or blog with email autoresponders should be your first task for content distribution process. The most popular tools in this category are Aweber, Mailchimp and iContact. There are both paid and free versions to these auto responders to test your mettle before flying full strength with the tools.

Promoted posts on Facebook – This has started gaining so much popularity, that the promoted posts option on Facebook deserves special mention. Every company should have a FaceBook page and startups should definitely use the promoted posts feature to get viral attention on to their blogs. You can also use buffer or hootsuite to automate your social networking posts and their frequency throughout the day.

Tweak Your Online Marketing Strategies For Better Results When On A Tighter Budget

Most startup businesses make the simple mistake of starting up marketing campaigns without a clear enough statement of work. This is especially true for online marketing campaigns. Often startups do not have the budget leeway to put together an elaborate online marketing plan. Often times they would compensate this by choosing some top of the line marketing strategies trending at that time and funneling their entire budget in to it. This is a massively wrong move.

Your internet marketing campaign should be tailor made to your niche, your website, and your expected industry returns. It should be decided according to your company’s priority and not follow market trends at random. Here is a succinct way of tweaking your online marketing strategies for a tighter budget without compromising on your marketing returns.

Local celebrity endorsement

The internet has now made it possible to create a steroidal influence of celebrity status. In fact, with social networks on the rise, there is now scope for a multitude of different local celebrities to come in the limelight. These might be everyday professionals who have a massive fan following and might be even coming in the news for unsung laurels. You can offer your products or services free trials to these local celebrities with just one condition – to provide an honest feedback at the end of a period of use. If you can tap in to independent bloggers or reviewers with access to websites with moderate traffic, this move can be a part of your extended web PR.

Start a networking hub on social media or independent forums

Networking hubs or social media groups allow you to get like-minded, progressive thinkers to get together with your brand. You can use LinkedIn groups or even Facebook groups for this purpose. However, make sure you are not hard selling your products or services in these forums. That can be a fast way to lose your audience. The groups should be informative, resourceful and conversation starters. All the while during the process of helping your target audience, you can also direct them towards your website for more information. The best part is this strategy is totally free of cost.

Niche blogs publication PR

Being published on niche blogs is the fastest way of gathering expertise levels within your niche. People want to hear more about the recent developments in the field when they visit these blogs. Making sure that your business is often talked about in these portals will automatically amplify your branding process. You can either buy sponsorship on these blogs or invite them for free trials of your products or services. You can also send in your press release and PR kit to these blogs on specific events or product launches.

Maximizing your YouTube channel’s branding output

YouTube is an amazing platform for startups and big brands alike. Now you can tap in to a platform with a potential of over 800 million unique visitors every month, and what is more, the platform is free. Creating marketing videos for YouTube can make it possible to grow your branding portfolio exponentially. However, keep in mind that just posting random videos might not be getting you the desired results. You need to put forward a clear message, which are editorial as well as a call out to action for your target audience. It is important to work on the SEO for every video, preferably with a keyword rich headline and transcript for the video.

EBook, Case studies and marketing deliverable for easy information access on the website

Building brand expertise is not a day’s job. You have to consistently provide information and resources to your clients to help them increase their rapport with your brand. Increased audience interactions will help increase the ROI and conversions on every single lead that you get through your website. Invest in creating powerful resources; provide industry specific eBooks, case studies, and marketing deliverable’s on a fixed frequency. This is the safest and fastest way to get your audience to start depending on your brand for the most congruent industry information.

Reports and reassessment of the online strategies

While all the above-mentioned tweaks are sure shot way of generating organic traffic to your site and get your brand validated as an expert in the field, you still have to keep reassessing your strategy periodically. Google and every major search engine send out updates to their algorithms and often a strategy, which worked fine, might start showing problems. You might also keep a finger on the pulse of social media to tap in to new potential forums and hubs that are launched every day. Make sure a report of your existing online strategy is available to all key authorities within the company, so they can help you monitor the status of your website as impartial viewers.

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