Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Let us explain seo for you…

You have opted to have a webpage designed to take your business to new heights – here at WikiSEO we strive to ensure that your business will be listed on the first page when people search on a major search engine, ensuring that SEO serves you in the best way possible.

So what is SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process whereby search results produce a list of websites according to what you typed into the search box. In order to optimize your search, your SEO Company is trained and qualified to ensure that you have optimal results and thus ensuring that your business will pop up on the search list, using relevant keywords to direct users to your page.

Keywords

The content of your website will include frequently searched keyword phrases, so that they can be relevant to a wide variety of search queries, in turn increasing traffic directed to your website. The more keywords and the more general they are, the more visitors you will have to your site.
Think about the words most pertinent to your business, ask clients which words they would use to describe your company – once you have the correct words, provide the keywords to your SEO Agency and they will ensure that they are utilised to their fullest potential. Your SEO Company will also assist you with this.

Frequent higher-ranking searches

When your website has been fully optimized by your SEO Consultants, the visibility of your website or web page in the search engine’s results will be ranked higher, ensuring that it appears higher up on the search list and more frequently – this means that more visitors will received it from the search engine’s users.

Various types of searches

Be Visible focuses on various types of searches – ensuring your keywords filter through to image search, local search, video search and can even go as far as ensuring industry-specific search engines.

Cross linking

Another one of your SEO Services would be cross linking. This is a clever way of linking pages of the same website to provide more links to the most important pages. This will improve the visibility of your website.

Chain needs strong links

The more sites linked to you, the more important your search engine thinks your site is, the higher you will rank. Make sure you share content with reputable sites, sharing articles and eBooks or commenting on blogs – as each one of these will put you a step closer to the top!

Regular updates

The more your site is updated, the more you are guaranteed that search engines will revert back to your site. This will ensure additional weight to your site. Your SEO Company will add your relevant keywords to the web page’s Meta data (a set of data that describes and gives information about other data) will also prove the relevancy of your site’s search listing, again increasing traffic.

In conclusion…

With the Internet so much more accessible today, more and more people are doing their research on the Net – and almost half of consumers choose to research a product or service before purchasing. Most times when people do a search they look at the top five searches and don’t even bother to look on the next page, unless they haven’t quite found the information they required.

This is why your keywords and SEO are so important. At WikiSEO we consider ourselves the SEO Specialists, working really hard to ensure the correct keywords are utilised – not only putting your business on the map, but making it very present in cyberspace too!

Why do your business desperately need Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

1. INCREASE RANKINGS

The stronger the SEO and the more cross links you have, the higher your rank will be on the search page.

2. INCREASED TRAFFIC

You could double the traffic to your website by simply insuring a strong SEO.

3. INCREASE CONVERSIONS

This is a very important factor contributing to the success of your online marketing strategy. You need to get your visitors to buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, register for a webinar or fill out a contact form.

What will a strong SEO do for you?

The most important part of Search Engine Optimization is to ensure that your website is easy for users and search engine robots to understand.

SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is about and how it may be useful for users.

What are the benefits of hiring an SEO specialist?

This is what they could do for your business:

• Review your site content or structure
• Give you technical advice on website development
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies

Important questions for you SEO Company

• Ask them to show you examples of their previous work and share some success stories
• Find out what online marketing services they offer
• Ask for advice to complement your organic search business
• What are their most important SEO techniques

“Google isn’t a search engine, it is a reputation management system.” – Clive Thomson, Wired Magazine

Despite the very stiff competition out there as far as websites are concerned, there are a number of things you can do to ensure that your website is at the top of the list where searches are concerned. Finding an excellent SEO specialist or company is your first step, but it is important that you are also aware of how to optimize your website.

There are many spots to aim for, according to your business needs and dimensions – but you can never go wrong with a strong SEO, good cross referencing and linking and always keep your website updated.

Advantages of having SEO Consultants

The most important factor of all, is that SEO will help people find your website. This is your first point of contact with your audience online.
SEO is an investment with a very high return. You will observe certain keywords having fantastic conversion rates.

Your SEO is working for you 365 days a year, even while you are asleep! The best marketing tool you could ask for! It pulls in sales for you and can multitask – automatically marketing for you at all hours of the day.

It will increase your sales without increasing your online marketing costs every time. It is ongoing – once put into place, constantly directing people to your site.

SEO can make your brand stronger and more easily recognized. This should be the greatest goal for any business, and if you are higher up on the search result page, people will definitely believe you to be the more credible business.

WikiSEO is an online marketing company in the UK that takes pride in ensuring that your search engine marketing will be of the highest standard.

We strive to give you the top-rated service expected from an SEO agency – offering advice, service and assistance where ever, whenever, you need it.

So what are the main benefits you will receive when WikiSEO implements a professional and strategic SEO and internet marketing campaign for your business?

WikiSEO will ensure the following :

• To drive quality traffic to your business through highly targeted, organic SEO, PPC and Social Media.
• Increase your leads – guaranteed. 
• Gain exposure to your targeted market through custom and individually researched keywords.
• We will build your brands credibility and familiarity on the web thus increasing your lead generation,sales and return customer retention

.

We have quality SEO packages that will suit your needs, reach and budget – click here to view our rates and prices.

As an added benefit, we also assist in professional social media management and brand building for businesses.

We are trusted by some of the biggest FORTUNE 500 companies in the world – Why don’t you give us a try?!

The 5 ways to create an inbound marketing strategy that will work

When you are just starting out as a small business owner, you might find that you are taking on the roles of many people. This could mean that you marketing strategy is going to be left undeveloped which is a big issue. Inbound marketing is going to help you get new customers and grow as a business. Inbound marketing is a great way in which to bring your brand closer to your potential customers and it is done via social media, videos, blogging and newsletters, to name a few.

Put some work into your online profiles

Your online presence goes beyond your website and it includes your various social media platforms. To help out your inbound marketing you should link your social media to your business. You should also make sure that all of your biographical pages that are included in your social media give a good description of who you are. Know that it is okay to use your personality to market your business.

Create a blog

A blog is a great way to connect with people. There is a lot of value in the content that is produced for blogs. A blog can help you to establish an authority in your field and it also adds great value to any keywords that you use for search engine optimization, if you use the keywords in your blog. By building informative content and answering the questions asked by your clients you are building yourself and your company up to be an authority in your field. You should also reference back to your own site or even include a blog in your website in order to increase your inbound links.

Contribute content on other websites

As a guest writer for other websites and blogs you will be posting content as an expert in your field. You should try to write content where your audience will be able to read it. Websites like content that is written about current happenings. When doing guest writing it is all about quality over quantity so you will not have to write blogs with new content every week for the sake of writing new blogs.

Highlight your successes

It is important that you make it known that content belongs to you. You will not be bragging if you let people know that the work is yours, as companies and customers will be more willing to work with people who have been doing outstanding work. It is a great idea if you keep an online up to date portfolio on your website of the work that you have done. If you are a writer and you have written a blog then include a short biography about yourself and if you are a photographer add a watermark to your photographs.

Publish your reviews

Publishing the reviews that you get from past customers and partners will help to increase your inbound links as these testimonials will build confidence and trust in the work that you do. You can also elevate other companies by mentioning positive things about them through social media.

Building up a successful inbound marketing strategy will take time but the hard work will pay off when your marketing is successful.

Best of all, all these features are included in our extensive SEO packages.

The 14 most effective marketing techniques for the Future

This year has seen many changes in the marketing industry. Trends have grown, some have fallen out of favour and others have surprised everyone as the underdogs that have overtaken some of the most used techniques. Here are the 14 best marketing techniques for 2015 that have surprised us all.

1. Content marketing seals its place as the norm

In the past content marketing was known for one thing and that was the buzzword. Fast forward to 2015 and content marketing has swiftly cemented its place as one of the marketing norms. This year saw content marketing being picked up and used by both huge well known corporations and the new companies trying to make a start.

2. Visual content
Although not at all a new trend, visual images have again blown us away as the marketing technique to use if you want to be noticed. While content marketing has a place in the hearts of marketers worldwide, the visual content form of marketing remains a popular choice simply because it is always more memorable than the text content. Up to 80% of people remember what they see while only 20% of these same people remember what they read.

3. Micro Content
Micro content has been around for a while but in 2015 it became a great marketing technique. Micro content is all about keeping content short and then pairing it up with a powerful image in order to make the message and the image memorable.

4. Micro content agencies
The population is all about instant gratification and people don’t want to have to read lots of text. Marketers identified this trend and soon agencies focusing of micro marketing were popping up and becoming wildly successful.

5. Native Advertising
Native advertising uses content as a way to build trust and to engage with consumers. In the past advertising focused on selling a product to a consumer and somewhat overlooked engaging with people and earning their trust. In 2014 marketers finally used native advertising correctly and they have been reaping the rewards.

6. Real time marketing
2014 has seen the popularity and accuracy of real time marketing take hold. A lot has been invested into making this possible with teams of social media specialists, strategists and brand managers using huge real time events, such as sports events, in order to do some great marketing.

7. Cross screen marketing
Following on the recent trends in handheld devices being used to connect to the internet to conduct searches, 2014 saw record numbers of people using their phones and tablets in order to connect to the internet. Marketers have accordingly shifted their strategies to the mobile handheld devices.

8. Using large amounts of data effectively
Making sense of the large amounts of data that are collected by businesses has again proved to be even more important than just gathering “Big Data”. Market strategists are using the information collected from the data in order to reach the correct target markets.

9. Proximity Marketing
With the majority of customers using mobile devices in order to search for products, companies providing beacons for marketers, who have used these to locate exactly where their customers were accessing websites from, have gained new popularity.

10. Altered reality advertising
2015 saw the rise of a new kind of advert, the altered reality advert. With these adverts consumers were brought into the advertising experience in ways they had never before. Companies that have apps are able to encourage customers to make their own adverts by taking photos and using the apps to create a form of personalised advertising.

11. Marketing Management
In the past businesses had to have dedicated people to analyse the huge amounts of data that were coming in through the multiple channels. This was very time consuming. In 2015 we have seen the creation of software the eases this process while at the same time speeding it up.

12. Interactive and custom created adverts
This year saw potential customers become fatigued by the same old flashing online advertising and marketers being urged to turn this around by applying traditional and native advertising techniques to their online advertising. Marketers have also been encouraged to remember that online marketing is only a part of the whole marketing campaign that a company should have.

13. Personalised content
In the marketing world 2015 will be known as the year when Coca Cola put everyone’s name on a bottle and encouraged them to share. And they were sharing more than a Coke, they were sharing the brand name. Customers like advertising that makes them feel special and they like advertising that makes them feel like individuals. If you as a company are able to make an emotional connection with your potential customers then you will be creating a long lasting impression.

14. Video content marketing
In 2015 video content marketing was used more than ever before. Companies began to create more videos and video analytics were both developed and perfected. Video content marketing has helped customers interact with content more than they have ever before.

At WikiSEO we will implement a 200 factor based SEO Strategy.

Local SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is ensuring that your company comes up on a search engine, the closer to the top of the list, the better. The higher up, the more hits your site will get, and depending on your follow through and service, this will lead to more sales and ensure that your marketing strategies are working for you.

How is Local SEO different from National SEO?

Local SEO works the same as National SEO, but with a few added elements. Firstly – you need to create and claim a local profile on Google or other platforms as you feel necessary. This will ensure that your local listing will show for localised search results.

You need to ensure that your citations (any place online that uses your company name, address and phone number) are all on the same page and in the same format as your local listing. For example if you have abbreviated your street name or written “Tel” in one place and “Telephone number” in another, it could confuse the search engine. It is very important that your local citation efforts match your local listing as closely as possible.

Another very important aspect to put into place are your reviews. Make sure you have allowed for feedback through your site, be it blogs or comments – the more good reviews you get, the higher you will be placed in local rankings.

On-site optimization – what must you ensure for local SEO?

It works in the same way as national SEO, with four very important factors to add:

1. As mentioned before, your name, address and phone number must be the same everywhere it is listed, and you should preferable have it on every page of your site, in the same format too. A page footer would be the ideal location.

2. It is a very good idea to use your city/town and province in your title tags, Meta descriptions and the content on your site, within context.

3. Make use of schema local mark-up – to help search engines identify and show your location.

4. Include a Keyhole Mark-up Language file on your site. The more legitimate signals you can get out there, the more exposed you will be.

Other factors to consider

How close is your business to the city centre? Why would this make an impact on your local SEO?

Google uses a system called “centroid bias”. It means that if someone is searching for a local doctor, Google will throw out the names of the doctors closest to the CBD first. So if you are close to the city centre you can use this tool to count for you. If you are not close to the CBD, then you need to ensure that all your other SEO factors are in place to ensure your company is listed closer to the top of the list when people search.

Other local SEO strategies

Make sure you have a local business page for all three major search engines. (Google, Yahoo and Bing). You will fill out your business information including location, phone number, business hours and details and information for each one, meaning that you will be running with three accounts. The more search engines you expose your business to, the more chance you have of being found in a search. Obviously you need to have the correct keywords and content in place as well.

Your photographs and content are also really important. Make sure they are quality photos but they must also be optimised so as not to delay your site opening when someone has chosen it. It needs to come up quickly and be appealing visually too, as to keep people’s attention to your site.
It is crucial to categorise your business properly. This is one of the most crucial steps to optimising for local SEO. This is really important because search engines will not display a business that has not been categorised, or one that is not categorised correctly.

The key to effective local SEO

In order to understand how you can create an effective local SEO plan you first need to be able to understand all of the components that contribute towards making local SEO work. Local SEO is the best way to encourage people to visit your website and also to encourage them to visit your business. Local SEO will bring local clients to your local business and increase the amount of business you are currently getting.

Today almost everyone owns a smartphone and with a smartphone they are able to get instant internet access. This has led to more people using their mobile phones to visit websites than ever before. Local SEO needs to be applicable to handheld devices while also accommodating personal computers.

In order for you to have an effective local SEO plan you need to take note of these effective tips and incorporate them into your local SEO plan.

1. Accurate keyword search

This might sound quite obvious but it really isn’t. While the usual keyword searches are applicable, you need to be able to look beyond the usual normal keyword research. You need to find those keywords that come naturally during a conversation and use those as well as your usual keywords.

2. Onsite development

Once you have discovered those terms that you would like to use as keywords for your website then you will need to do the optimisation so that your website will display on a search engine when someone does a search using your keywords. Every bit of your website content needs to be optimised and this includes your headings and descriptions. Content needs to be written for the visitors and not for SEO, this means you need to write content that makes sense. Be sure to include an accurate and up to date contact page.

3. Places page

A business should open a Google+ Business page and a Bing Places for Business page. You need to make sure that these pages are fully complete as these pages are very important, will appear at the top of the search results and include a map.

4. Reviews

These days’ businesses don’t have to do much in order to get some publicity and positive reviews do wonders for SEO. As a business you should encourage your customers to visit websites that allow them to leave reviews and encourage them to give feedback. As a business you can let people know about these review websites via newsletters and social media.

5. Directory listings

Getting your business onto directory listings such as the Yellow Pages will boost your local SEO. You should focus on top, well-known directory sites and list your address, telephone number and other contact details as accurately as possible. Consistency is very important as well.

6. Back links

When it comes to using back links it is all quality and not quantity. You should use a combination of infographics and engaging content in order to build up great quality back links. Search engines like to see natural links and by having good quality back links you will be increasing your local SEO effectiveness.

Effective local SEO takes time to build up and through consistent hard work and well thought out plans and content you will be able to get your website ranking well.

Did you know?

Over 91.5% of people do not search past page one when doing an internet search

Therefore, if your business does not appear on page one in the search results, those competitors who do appear on the first page will get all the traffic that you will not get.

What does this mean?

That is over 90% worth of search traffic that you will miss out on!

Recent stats show that if you make page 2, you will achieve almost 5% of all search traffic

Page 3 will get you almost 1%…

In conclusion…

If you don’t make it to the first three pages, you will miss out on approximately 96% of search traffic landing on your website!

Furthermore…

A recent survey with Google revealed the following stats showing the percentage of clicks you would get for the top 3 positions.

• If you make it to position 1 you get 33% of all clicks
• Position 2 will be 18%
• Position 3 will be 12%

Meaning that the total percentage of clicks for the top 3 positions will be a total of 63%

It’s a fact that most of conversions happen on page 1.

So what strategies can you develop to ensure a first-page position?

Search engine optimisation – utilising specific keywords that would get typed into the search box. Ensure your website has been fully optimised by a professional SEO company.

How does it work?

Google, Yahoo and MSN are spider-driven search engines. This means they utilise what they call “robots” or “crawlers” which score websites across the Internet.

Pages are scored based on their relevance determined by many variables which include link popularity, density and frequency of keywords in the page content.

SEO strategies to position yourself well:

Your keyword research is vital! You must know what people are searching for our there and how it pertains to your business. Your SEO Company will assist you with this.

Your SEO specialist can increase traffic by ensuring that you are linked to many high-ranking sites. In this way you will experience hits on your site from other sites. It is not about how many links you can create, it is about creating quality links that will get you results.

Research how Network Solutions could increase your SEO rankings.

Keep in mind that search engine algorithms change continuously as the Web is always evolving. Stay up to date to obtain the best rankings ensuring your keywords are always relevant.

Google looks at your page title as a signal of relevance to a certain keyword. Ensure that your Meta tags pertain to a specific pages’ keywords.

Ensure your content is reader-friendly, not too involved and write it for the layman. You would like to give a simple, clear picture to the Internet user out there without complicating it too much – this is a sure way to result in your readers losing interest. Keep it exciting and easy to read to keep your readers’ attention. Search engines have stated that creating quality content is the best way to rank for keywords and also create a positive user experience.

Social media – Use it! It is out there! It is important to establish a strong presence on social media sites. These sites send search engines signals of influence and authority!

Images, images and more images! You can search the web according to content and images. Make sure your images appear when people search through images. If you have quality images of a certain product on your site and utilise relevant keywords with your image, you can create another door to your website for those simply searching for an image. If your image is the most appealing, you would have just got another person to your site!

This is how rich snippets can play a part in increasing the traffic to your website

The strategies and practices surrounding search engine optimisation is constantly growing and changing to meet Google’s algorithm changes and adaptations. As a result, brands and marketers alike can no longer rely on the short cuts that they used to be able to make. Big impacts are being made through building trust and having quality website traffic coming through your website and it is these two factors that will lead to having more clicks on your website.

Rich snippets are basically summaries of information and data that a user can see on a webpage when they visit it. Rich snippets have no direct impact on the rankings that you want to see but rich snippets do have an indirect impact on websites rankings. Rich snippets are great for adding value to your organic listings that appear in a search engine and they increase the amount of traffic to your website. This increase in traffic will help in terms of your SEO.

How are rich snippets created? Rich snippets come in the form of Google authorship information which is what gives rich snippets their authenticity. Rich snippets improve the appearance of listings and they provide more information to the user. Rich snippets also improve the visibility of a website. In many ways the rich snippet verifies what the user is looking for and it makes them more likely to stay on a page.

What are the two ways in which to use rich snippets?

Google Authorship
This is the most popular way in which to create a rich snippet. This new feature allows people to see the name of the author as well as a bit about the author and how many Google+ followers they have. As content marketing is becoming a steady part of SEO, having guests create backlinks to your content is going to increase the traffic to your website and boost your rankings indirectly. The way to go about creating Google Authorship is to first set up a Google+ account and then link your Google+ account to the guest posts you write. Your Google+ profile will have a contributor section that you will be able to link back to your guest post. You can then complete the process by adding the URL where your guest post will appear. The last thing you will need to do is to verify the new connection you have made by using Google Snippets Rich Test Tool.

Ratings and client reviews
An interesting way to use rich snippets is through rating and reviews. Indirectly ratings and reviews are very important when it comes to SEO. This use of rich snippets will improve listings and it will provide potential customers with important feedback and information about the product and the company. The easiest set up is by using a voting system. Users can give a product, service, company or pretty much anything else a 1 to 5 star voting review without having to leave a comment. Plugins to provide a voting system come with most websites and blogs these days.

Read more why we are one of the leading seo agencies in London

The top 5 SEO trends for 2015

When 2015 kicked off many people thought that the art of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO was officially dying. In a way they were absolutely correct but they were wrong in thinking that SEO was going to disappear. SEO as an online marketing tool was not dying instead it was evolving and changing. Entrepreneurs everywhere rely heavily on making their online marketing a success.

This means that they invest a lot of time and energy in creating SEO strategies that are going to contribute to a successful marketing campaign.
2015 saw Google become uncompromising on companies and many companies were implementing what was slowly becoming outdated SEO methods. Those tricks of the SEO trade that had worked before were suddenly backfiring on businesses and were actually causing harm instead of bringing in more business. SEO tactics are now expected to include brand building, mobile expansion, content marketing and the integration of the various social media. SEO has officially changed and as an entrepreneur you should pay close attention to these top 5 trends of 2015:

1. Pay attention to the three components of SEO

2015 has seen the rise of 3 main components that have become the stand out features of modern SEO and they are content, social media and links. When these three are used together SEO for your website will become highly effective. Content needs to be unique and created specifically for the audience which you would like to target. Social media should be able to increase its reach and show search engines that people want to read your content. Links should be used to prove that your content is trustworthy. All of this would not be possible without great content.

2. Popularity of content marketing

In 2013 content marketing cemented its place as a top SEO tool. Creative content that speaks to a specific audience needs to be created while at the same time this content needs to tell its own story, the story of the business, the product, etc. Content has been target driven more than ever before and marketers like to see the content working for them.

3. Mobile is a must

More internet users are using their phones to browse the internet than ever before and in 2013/2014 websites that were not compatible with mobile devices were beginning to fall back in terms of rankings. It became increasingly important for businesses to create websites that were compatible with mobile devices. Today having a website that is not compatible is no longer an option. Websites should be aimed at users who use handheld devices and a website should be designed to be read on any type of handheld device.

4. Creating a strong brand is more important than building up links

A company’s brand is playing more of a role in building a websites ranking than ever before. Brands have become more important in SEO and by building your brand over time you are soon going to be seeing your search engine ranking also growing over time.

5. Social Media and SEO

Over 2015 SEO specialists have watched as social media and SEO have created an inseparable bond. SEO is more effective with the help of social media. Social media helps Google to pick up where a human has shared a piece of content from a website and every time a person shares content Google is able to pick up this information and this helps your website to get ranking.

When a company is thinking about creating an SEO plan or updating an SEO plan careful focus should be placed on balance and integrity and every SEO strategy should use the three components and ensure that the three support each other. As a company you should know your groups and opportunities well enough to be able to customise your SEO plan and get closer to your target audience.

The SEO Strategies that can damage your website rankings

There are numerous amounts of websites on the internet that claim to give great search engine optimisation advice and there are just as many self-proclaimed SEO experts out there who are more than happy to take your money in return for their bad advice. With all of these SEO options available it is becoming exceptionally difficult to decipher which SEO tips are going to work and help your website to get good ranking, and which SEO tips are going to land your website in hot water.

No matter what anyone says, good content matters. No one should try to fool the Google algorithms by placing in bad content full of SEO keywords in order to get their website to rank well.

What are the four worst SEO strategies?

1. Purchasing backlinks instead of getting authentic backlinks
Buying backlinks is a huge mistake and as a business, you should not even be considering this. The internet is full of websites that offer bulk backlinks at a more than affordable price. Why is this a mistake? Well these sites that sell backlinks don’t care which sites are going to give you backlinks. This means that sites that have absolutely nothing to do with your website or company will give you backlinks and as a result Google will be able to pick up that your backlinks are not authentic. Your reputation as a credible company website will take a dive and your potential customers will not be able to find you when they do a Google search.

2. Using content that is not relevant to your business
It does sound stupid that a business would use content that does not relate at all to what it is that the business does. However some companies out there try to do just this. They stuff their websites with content that is not at all relevant to what they do and then they stuff it further with the keywords that they want Google to pick up during a search. Google is able to pick up when you are doing this and once it is picked up, Google will de index your website. Content should always be relevant to your business, customers or industry. Original content will make your website credible.

3. Spam
When you are trying to rein in some new clients it might be tempting to visit pages that are relevant to your company and leaving comments on the site that link back to your website. But this will in all likelihood fail and those who see your comments will think that they are spam especially if they are badly written.
On your own website you should filter all comments. This will allow you to first read the comments and then choose which comments you will allow on your website. This is hugely beneficial as it will prevent useless and even harmful comments from sitting on your website for hours and days before you notice them. If the comments left on your website are not helpful then they shouldn’t be up there.

4. Too many anchor text links
An anchor text link is a URL link which is attached to your keywords. Having too many anchor text links looks very strange and Google does not like this. Remember that you are writing content that needs to be easily read by your website visitors and text that makes no sense is not worth having on your website.

By avoiding these bad practices you will be preventing your business and website from looking ridiculous. Stick to SEO advice from the real pros and you will soon enjoy some major benefits.

The benefits of high quality content

Content that engages with a reader is needed for effective SEO. High quality content is even better and Google loves to see websites that use high quality content. As the algorithms of search engines have changed, high quality content has become a must on websites and as a part of online marketing strategies. When a website provides high quality content it is not only creating content that will be an amazingly useful tool for SEO, it is creating content that is going to help make a business an authority within its industry. Having high quality content that is continuously updated will also let the various search engines know that your website is active.

High quality content is great for SEO. When you have created high quality content that is full of relevant and useful information then you will soon be having bloggers and others quoting your website. This will boost your website ranking and play an important part in your SEO strategy.

Google has made life a bit easier for content writers by compiling a list of factors that will help them to identify whether or not the content they have written is high quality. High quality content is long, it contains images and videos, it has the correct text formatting, it has correct spelling and grammar, it contains links that link back to other high quality sites, and it has backlinks and social shares from high quality sources.

In order for you to make sure that you have high quality content on your website you will need to invest lots of time and you will need to have some skill. Because it is time consuming to create constantly updated high quality content you should think about hiring someone to create the content for you so that you can concentrate on other factors within your business. To find someone to do the content for you and to make sure it is kept up to date, you can look to professional SEO companies or you can search social media such as LinkedIn in order to find someone.

By applying these content strategies to your website you will be able to increase your business’ reputation and your websites ranking:

Internal content
When we talk about internal content we are focusing on blogs. Using blogs is the easiest way in which to create high quality content. While you can have one person working full time on creating blogs it is probably best to assign blogs to a number of people so that they can contribute a variety of different topics and information to the readers. This will give the blog readers more information and it will engage with them.
All blogs should be edited before they are posted as correct grammar and spelling will contribute greatly to the quality of the content created.

External content
Eternal content includes writing guest blogs and other guest writing for external websites and publishers. By contributing to external content you will be increasing your companies brand, authority and influence. In order to secure platforms on which to create external content you will need to first build relationships with the relevant external parties. Why should you create external content? External content is going to build your inbound links, it is going to increase your author rank and it is going to establish your brand and increase your social media exposure. All of these factors are going to contribute greatly to your SEO strategy and your website’s ranking.

Use more than the written word
These days content is more than just words. Content should also include images and videos in order for the quality to be considered high. Images and videos can be shared on other platforms. With links back to your website, the images and videos that you post will both attract and increase the amount to traffic to your website. Your SEO can be greatly improved if you include images and videos and you can get ranked in a number of different search engines. With increased exposure and awareness you will also be experiencing more inbound links.

In this social media age we are constantly seeing new social media platforms and other publishing platforms being created that you can use to remain visible. Posting high quality content across the many available platforms will lead to growth in traffic can lead to an increase in sales.

Pay per click is a must have for your online marketing campaign and this is why
Google changed the way in which online marketing was done when it introduced pay per click advertising to its list of services available to clients and users. Pay per click has so many benefits that a business should take advantage of because it is going to save the business money and time, both of which are precious commodities.

Pay per click advertising consists of those adverts that appear next to a search on Google. They are labelled as Ads and they are displayed next to, above or below a Google search. They are triggered by the use of keywords which increases the possibility of your ads reaching the audience that you want to reach. Pay per click adverts give a business full control over the ad a characteristic that is unlike the majority of marketing techniques available.

Reasons to use pay per click

1. Absolute transparency
When you are spending money on marketing you are usually making a pricey investment and you want it to help you to make a profit. Pay per click is a completely transparent marketing technique. As the advertiser you will be able to see exactly whether or not your ad is reaching the right people and you will also have full control over how much of your budget gets spent each month. This means that if a pay per click ad isn’t working then the marketer can pull the campaign or fix the issues that are preventing the campaign from being successful.

2. The ability to locate where your audience is
Part of pay per click is being able to locate where your target market is living and design a campaign that is able to locate the areas in which your audience lives. Local SEO keywords and techniques can be used to place the ad geographically in the areas in which you work.

3. Free exposure to your audience
Pay per click means that you will only pay for the advert when it is clicked on by a search engine user, but the ad will still be displayed along with your company name (if it is in the heading) next to the search results. This means that it will still be noticed even if it is not clicked on.

4. Full control over the ad
Having the correct keywords in your ad will increase the effectiveness of the ad. When you use keywords cleverly then you will have even more control over your ad. Most popular search engines such as Google will give you control over the keywords used, the location of the searcher, the date and time that it will appear and the type of device that the ad will be able to be viewed on.

5. Pay per click works
If pay per click didn’t work then it would not be as popular and remained as popular as it is. In the United States of America, pay per click has been known to cost marketers up to 2 billion US dollars a year. Marketers have done their research and they know what works and what doesn’t. They wouldn’t be spending that type amount on pay per click if it wasn’t working.

During an SEO audit we take a comprehensive look at your website, searching for any possible issues—major or minor—that could be dampening your search engine rankings.

SEO audits look at, but are not limited to:

• URL structure/all site domains and sub-domains
• Potential technical issues
• Potential code issues
• Potential design implications on SEO efforts Internal linking strategy
• External linking strategy
• Site content quality and strategy
• On page SEO factors Potential crawl issues
• Potential duplicate content issues “Unique factor” on dynamically driven websites
• Keyword research and analysis (if requested) Current analytics Blog optimization (if applicable)
• Current search engine indexing Site architecture
• Social media presence as it applies to search engine rankings
• Potential link preservation issues
• After a thorough website audit – we implement the ultimate turnaround plan for your website.

Online marketing is possibly the biggest marketing method in the world. The internet is the largest marketing channel used today and it is capable of reaching millions of people regardless of their geographical boundaries. Google display advertising is a popular marketing tool used by a large variety of companies around the world simply because they are effective and they are relatively cheap.

There is one stand out way in which Google display advertising has changed websites in particular. Many websites might have open spaces and instead of leaving the spaces empty, a website owner can choose to sell or rent the space to another company for advertising purposes. This means that those who visit websites are going to receive information about two different companies at the same time. This marketing technique can be arranged to suit your own needs. As an advert owner you will have some control over where your ad will appear such as on which website your ad will appear. Because you will be able to decide where you want your advert to appear, you will have more control over reaching your target audience. Website owners can make money from Google display advertising.

Google display adverts are not limited to websites visited on computers, they are also easily viewed on mobile devices. The variety of media that can be applied to a Google display ad are diverse and rich: text, image and video are some of the few options available to the Google display ad owner. The Google display adverts reach a massive amount of people online, in fact they reach around 90% of internet users especially as Google display advertising is available on almost every website.

Google display advertising is also not limited to just ads on websites, Google display advertising goes beyond that and includes remarking and Adwords.
As there are thousands of websites and thousands of internet users each day, marketers have felt that perhaps their Google display ad is not going to reach to right audience. Google was also aware of this and as a result a number of techniques have been developed to help to ensure that a company’s display adverts reach the right audience. The Google display network has a number of techniques that you can use in order to reach the people you want to reach.

1. Keywords
Contextual targeting is used to help the Google display ad to reach the right audience. Keywords that you select will help your ad to find the right audience and be displayed in the right places.

2. Choose the site or place where you want your ad to appear
Google display advertising will give you the option to place your ad on the site that you would like to use. This means that you will have the opportunity to display your ad on a site that is similar to yours and perhaps even has the same audience as you.

3. Reach past audiences
There will be many times when people will visit your website and not stay around long enough to buy anything or to even find out all about the things that you have to offer. Google remarketing is part of the Google display network of advertising that will help you to get your name out there.

Google Adwords are based on the Pay per Click concepts that have revolutionised the way in which businesses market themselves. Google Adwords are a part of internet marketing and every business should be considering using this marketing tool to increase the reach of their business. Google Adwords are an inexpensive marketing tool that is able to extend beyond the geographical boundaries that may inhibit conventional marketing tools.
When most companies begin their Adword campaigns they start off with a moderately sized budget that will allow them to get a feel for how successful their campaign will be. Google Adwords allow businesses to adjust their Adword budget which gives the company flexibility in their online Adword marketing campaign.
The Pay per Click (PPC) search engine advertising concept was first introduced in 1998 at a TED Talk Conference. The concept proved to be popular. Pay per click meant that companies would only have to pay for their advertising if someone clicked on their advert. In 1999 Google decided to launch their own form of online search engine pay per click advertising in the form of a pay per click advert known as an Adword.

In order for a business to get an Adword campaign going they first need to bid on the keywords that they are interested in using. There are many popular keywords that relate to a variety of companies and it should be expected that not all companies will be able to make use of the keywords. Once a company has won their desired keywords, they will be able to launch their Adword campaign.

As you now know, Google Adwords are linked to keywords and keywords are used in Google search engine searches by users. It should then be understood that the Adwords will be triggered when a user does a search using the same keywords that are within the Adword. The Adword will appear next to a Google search, above a search or below it. It is a great eye catching marketing tool. If a business has a website that has optimised keywords and their Adword campaign uses these same keywords then they will have double the marketing impact as the Adword might just appear alongside their website. If this happens then the company might be able to save money as the Google user will be able to go straight to the company’s website instead of clicking on the Adword.
Remember that the business will save money if this happens because the company is only paying per Adword click.
If a company is set up to serve a nationwide clientele then Adwords are a definite must have. Most conventional marketing techniques focus on local or regional advertising and those conventional methods that are able to focus on nationally based clients are usually very expensive. Adwords overcome this financial issue.

Unlike any other marketing techniques, the Adword allows a company to track exactly which keywords and which campaigns are working and are effective. This will allow the company to drop those keywords and Adwords that are not working. While market research can eventually inform the company about which adverts are working, the information gained from Adwords is more accurate.
The pay per click concept has proved to be hugely successful for both businesses and search engines and we can expect them to be popular marketing tool for years to come.

SMO is similar to SEO in that the ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website. It is the use of Social Media to generate interest in your business. It is the use of RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, social media sites and video and blogging sites to increase awareness of your business.

SMO also improves SEO performance. If you have a good SMO it will drive traffic from both direct social site referrals and from search engines

Where did it originate?

First used by Rohit Bhargava in 2006, with his core focus being on driving traffic to websites from social sites.

This has remained the main purpose of SMO, optimising a website and its content in terms of sharing across social media and other networking sites.

Search engines are increasingly using the recommendations of users of social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Google+) to rank pages in the search engine result pages.

If we had to compare SEO to SMO we could say:

SEO focuses on technical structure of websites

SMO focuses more on user experience and quality of the content itself. SMO is more concerned with quality content, authority of the author and the user experience of interacting with the content and the author.

How can you improve your SMO?

Free tips:

* Reputation – Build it as a reliable and qualified source

Research thoroughly, produce original content. You will become a respected and qualified source. It is vital to focus on how you engage with others and how you support them. Being helpful goes a long way to securing a good reputation.

* Encourage more sharing – engagement with your audience is key. Promote sharing and provide feedback to those who comment

Engagement with your audience includes comments, mentions, sharing and likes.

* Research every aspect of social media and make sure you know your product/service well and how it can fit in on social media. Make sure you know what you are talking about

* Be original and creative

* Always better yourself. Find other sociable experts in your field, socialise – get yourself out there – people by from people – even on the Net.
* Optimise – You can never optimise enough – always stay fresh, make are your SEO and SMO are at their fullest potential.

More interesting facts about social media optimisation

Content marketing is becoming standard practice. It delivers, three times more leads than traditional marketing values and costs 62% less. This makes it the most effective strategy for SEO. Content marketers are creating an increasing amount of content which means web-based information is doubling every 9 – 24 months!

Taking into account that those surfing the web can also only absorb so much information at a time, their time is limited and they are going to need quick results and want to find what they are searching for as quickly as possible.

To further your SMO potential, keep in mind it is not only about making changes to your site. Make sure your content is portable. Incorporate PDFs, video and audio files. By submitting these to relevant sites your content will travel further and ultimately drive links back to your site.

It is up to your web community to get your content to travel, make sure it is interesting, easy to read and that you interact as much as possible!

So a good balance between your SEO and SMO will ensure that you come out on top on the search

10 Social Media Tips

When social media is done well a business can increase the amount of money it makes and the amount of new clients it attracts and turns into conversions. A business is almost invisible if it doesn’t have a noticeable social media presence.
Social media has also become exceptionally important in the world of SEO as social media is able to drive traffic to your website, and this will not only help your business to grow but it can also help to cement your place as a leading authority in your field. There is a huge amount of social media platforms available for businesses to use for free these days and it is understandably difficult to choose which platforms are going to work best for you.

The best thing to do when starting out your education in social media is to research all of the types of social media and then to try out the ones that you believe will work best for you. Once you have decided which ones will work best for you, you will understandably want your social media experience to be a success.

Successful social media however takes time and practice and by applying these 10 social media tips you will be on the road to social media success.

1. Grammar and spelling matter
The days of mobile phone style spelling is over and such spelling should never be used when updating your business’ social media platforms. It looks unprofessional and even if this style of text was acceptable, not all people will know what you are talking about. Make sure that whatever you post is grammatically correct and that the spelling is accurate.

2. Share information at the right time
Believe it or not but there are different times of the day and night when the information and images that you choose to share will reach more people than usual. For instance businesses are more likely to reach more people on Facebook between 1pm and 4pm while reaching people on Google+ is more effective between 9am and 11am. Don’t let this stress you out as you don’t have to update your social media accounts all through the day and night just to reach people. Most social media platforms allow users to upload information on a schedule which will then post your updates for you.

3. Increase the number of people on your email list
Email might not be a part of social media but it can be incorporated into your social media. As of 2016 up to 91% of consumers are checking their emails on almost every day. Email is still preferred as the method to reach consumers. So increase your email mailing list by providing an online form for people to use to sign up to your email mailing list.

4. Choose the right platform for you
It goes without saying that not all social media platforms are going to be suitable for the needs that you have. So it is usually best to try them all before deciding which ones will work best for your business.

5. Keep posts short and interesting
When using social media as a business, you should keep your posts short and to the point. Nothing kills interest on social media like a business posting a novel on their social media platforms. Research has shown that people are more inclined to read and remember shorter posts. It is also important to not make your posts be blatantly used for advertising. When people pick up that you are only trying to market your business, they will either block your posts or they will “unfollow” you.

6. Respond to commentary
Social media is a great way to interact with your customers. It allows for communication to go both ways and this in turn allows you to get informative feedback that will help you to improve your brand and improve your products. Try to respond to comments immediately, the quicker you respond will show your customers that you appreciate their feedback.

7. Use images
Did you know that images are better than written content when it comes to social media? Images are more memorable and they are going to grab the attention of your followers much quicker than you’d think. A great image with a short but catchy piece of written content will get lots of attention.

8. Have a detailed profile
When you are investing time in building up your social media presence then you might as well do it properly. Having a detailed profile will give people a good idea about exactly what your business does as well as how to get hold of you. A detailed profile will show them that you are a serious and professional business.

9. Don’t over post
You might think that sharing lots of content and updating your social media accounts each day is a good idea however most people who use social media think that when a business over posts on their social media accounts they are actually just trying to market. It is best to limit the amounts of posts you do to about 1 to 4 times a week.

10. Hire a social media administrator or manager

Successful social media management is an ongoing process that takes up lots of time and will require attention to detail. Hiring someone to do it for you will take the pressure off of you and a skilled social media manager will have a few tricks up their sleeves that are bound to increase your company’s social media presence.

YouTube Advertising vs. Google Adwords
Online marketing takes on so many different forms. Text, images and videos, media rich online advertising is giving marketers endless opportunities to reach new audiences with successful campaigns that are able to increase the money making potential of a business. YouTube advertising and Google Adword advertising are two different types of marketing techniques that share a few similarities.

These two forms of online advertising are both popular and both have proved to be successful. Marketers have focused their time and attention on these two techniques in the past few years.

YouTube advertising
With millions of users logging onto YouTube each day, using YouTube advertising is going to help you to reach huge numbers of people across countless geographical boarders. And with YouTube advertising, your ads can be structured in such a way that they will be reaching your desired audience.

Why use YouTube advertising?

1. You are saving money
With YouTube advertising you will only be paying out money when people watch your advert. This means that you won’t be wasting money on targeting the incorrect target audience who aren’t interested in your company or products.

2. Reach the customers you want to reach
By using YouTube advertising you will be able to receive data feedback regarding the demographics of those who are watching your YouTube adverts. Age groups, genders, geographical locations and languages are just some of the few helpful bits of data that you will receive that will help you to structure your YouTube adverts to reach those who you want to reach.

3. YouTube adverts work on many devices
These days the internet can be accessed across many different devices. YouTube advertising can be displayed on most devices including hand held devices.

4. Analytics
Just like many social media networks and online advertising tools, YouTube advertising will help you to analyse the people who are watching your videos. By understanding the people and how they interact with your advertising, you will be able to improve your video advertising.

5. Create a YouTube following
When you are creating YouTube advertising campaigns you will of course need to have a YouTube channel. If the advertisements that you create are interesting and entertaining you will soon gain followers who will be keen to see more from you and you will be able to target them with your future adverts first.

Google Adwords
Google Adwords reach around 90% of Google users and they can be displayed anywhere on a Google search results page. While YouTube advertising is used only on YouTube, which means that it can be limited in some ways, Google Adwords are going to show up almost every time someone uses a keyword in a search if the keyword is also included in the Google Adword. Adwords are pay per click.

Why use Google Adwords?

1. Attract more customers
Google Adwords are triggered by keywords. Adwords are structured to include keywords that will help you to reach your audience. Adwords are able to get existing customers to come back for more.

2. Advertise where ever you please
With Google Adwords you can choose to advertise locally, nationally or globally. Geographic distances mean nothing when it comes to Google Adwords. This will enable you to reach many more people and expand your business further.

3. Timing
Reaching the right people at the right time is going to greatly improve the chances you will have to sell more products to a new audience of people.

4. Pay per click
Along with having full control over what is included in your Google Adwords you will also have control over the money you are spending. You will only pay for your Adwords when someone clicks on them.

5. Start off with any budget
Google Adwords will allow you to have full control of your start off budget. This will let you “test the waters” before committing to an expensive marketing campaign that might not pay off.

YouTube advertising and Google Adwords are both successful forms of online advertising and they can be used together to increase the reach of a marketing campaign. Both forms of marketing allow you to have control over your spending and have the benefit of getting valuable information about the type of people you are wanting to reach through your online advertising.

Why should a business use YouTube?

With the vast number of social media platforms to choose from it can be easy to overlook YouTube simply because it is so unlike all of the other networking platforms. Many people think that having a YouTube account will be too difficult to keep up to date with relevant and interesting videos. Many businesses are also under the impression that the videos that they place on YouTube will need to be expensively produced. YouTube is very important for businesses to use and if YouTube marketing is done correctly then it won’t cost a company a fortune to keep updated with videos and information.

Reasons why every business should have YouTube

1. Huge audience reaching potential
With 2 million videos watched each day on YouTube, as a business you will have a massive amount of people to reach with your message. If you have done your market research correctly then you will be able to create the types of videos that people will want to watch. You shouldn’t want to give up the opportunity of reach vast new audiences of people just because YouTube seems difficult to break into.

2. You don’t have to produce YouTube videos immediately
YouTube is full of videos that are not at all creatively produced pieces of videography. There are other ways in which a YouTube account can be used. You can, for instance, use your position as an industry leader to give commentary on the advancements that have taken place within your industry. You can also share videos related to your field with your YouTube subscribers and you can then bring your Facebook account into it by sharing the same videos on your Facebook account or any other social media accounts.

3. YouTube is owned by Google
Because YouTube is owned by Google the possibilities to increase and better your SEO strategies are made possible. SEO on YouTube is becoming popular. Keywords can be placed in the title and the description of the video. This will help to drive more traffic to your website and increase your visibility as well as your websites ranking on YouTube.

4. YouTube can be accessed worldwide
By having global coverage, if your business is a globally trading enterprise you will be greatly increasing your reach. Even if you are not trading globally, should you make a really interesting video it would have the possibility of going viral and reaching new audiences who will sit up and take notice of your company. They will then also look for you online.

5. You don’t have to make a blockbuster
For some people having a YouTube account is daunting because they feel the pressure to create long blockbuster style videos which is completely unnecessary. Some of the best YouTube videos, some of those videos that have reached vast audiences have been around 3 minutes long. If you are able to create a video that is eye catching and is able to get the message across in around 3 minutes then you have created the perfect video. Shorter videos are going to be watched right to the end.
YouTube is for all businesses regardless of their size. YouTube is free to use so as a marketing tool it should not be passed up.

Statistics prove that video advertising is the next big thing

It is no surprise that online video advertising is growing fast with each passing year. As trends change so does the marketing techniques that go along with them. In the past it was content that lured in vast audiences of interested people, then pictures and infographics took the lead and became the ideal marketing tools to convey information. Today video is the way to go if you want people to sit up and take notice of the work that your business is doing.

Those in the marketing industry know that video is taking over and they have been continually doing research to find out how people react to certain marketing tools. In 2012/2013 marketing research was conducted in the United States of America. It was based primarily on video marketing and these are some of the amazing statistics that it uncovered:

• In March 2013 alone, 85% of internet users viewed videos online and video ads comprised of 25% of the 85%.

• $66 billion will be spent on television marketing while only $4.14 billion will be spent on online video marketing, despite the increase in popularity of online video advertising.

• In June of 2013 the number of those internet users who watch online videos grew by 2% and around 44 billion online videos were watched by US citizens.

• YouTube is the most popular online video viewing website and it has around 1 billion unique viewers each month, who watch around 6 billion hours of video each month.

• Most advertisers who use online videos use entertaining videos to reach viewers.

• In a survey done by Rocket Fuel, 46% of people who participated in the survey said they would be moving from television to online viewing.

• Media buyers who responded said they would be increasing their expenses for online videos by up to 53% following the recent trends.

• Online video advertisements grew by 64% in 2012/2013.
The effectiveness of online video marketing cannot be denied and these facts give some weight to the growing certainty that online videos are soon to be the marketing tool that no company can be without.

• By June 2013 there were more than 20 billion video ad impressions.

• Over 50% of United States citizens were reached using video adverts.

• Switching to online video advertising has the ability to do more at a cheaper rate.

• 15% of people remember the general ad, 33% would remember the brand, over 45% would remember the message and around 40% like the ads they see.

A study done by BrightRoll on 150 executives in advertising revealed these interesting statistics:

• 91% thought that online video advertising was more effective than display advertising

• 75% said that it was better than TV advertising

• 68% stated that they thought video advertising was more effective than social media

• 47% of them thought that online video could do better than TV adverts when it came to creating interest and taking action and 25% felt that it could at least match the interest and involvement that TV ads can create.

• 54% of respondents said that they believed that online video ads would stir up more engagement than TV ads could do while 15% said it could gain the same amount.

With online advertising it is believed that not only the reach of an advertising campaign can be increased but the engagement of viewers can also be increased.

• 73% of advertisers will be increasing their budgets on pre roll ads and 53% will be increasing their budgets on social videos.

• Around 25% of advertisers believe that of all the media industry methods, online videos will grow the most and at the same time 25% of advertisers think that TV advertising will decrease.

All of these statistics are based on the opinions of advertisers and on the responses received by viewers but they are reflective of the current shift in the growing popularity of online video marketing.

Statistics prove that video advertising is the next big thing

It is no surprise that online video advertising is growing fast with each passing year. As trends change so does the marketing techniques that go along with them. In the past it was content that lured in vast audiences of interested people, then pictures and infographics took the lead and became the ideal marketing tools to convey information. Today video is the way to go if you want people to sit up and take notice of the work that your business is doing.

Those in the marketing industry know that video is taking over and they have been continually doing research to find out how people react to certain marketing tools. In 2012/2013 marketing research was conducted in the United States of America. It was based primarily on video marketing and these are some of the amazing statistics that it uncovered:

• In March 2013 alone, 85% of internet users viewed videos online and video ads comprised of 25% of the 85%.

• $66 billion will be spent on television marketing while only $4.14 billion will be spent on online video marketing, despite the increase in popularity of online video advertising.

• In June of 2013 the number of those internet users who watch online videos grew by 2% and around 44 billion online videos were watched by US citizens.

• YouTube is the most popular online video viewing website and it has around 1 billion unique viewers each month, who watch around 6 billion hours of video each month.

• Most advertisers who use online videos use entertaining videos to reach viewers.

• In a survey done by Rocket Fuel, 46% of people who participated in the survey said they would be moving from television to online viewing.

• Media buyers who responded said they would be increasing their expenses for online videos by up to 53% following the recent trends.

• Online video advertisements grew by 64% in 2012/2013.

The effectiveness of online video marketing cannot be denied and these facts give some weight to the growing certainty that online videos are soon to be the marketing tool that no company can be without.

• By June 2013 there were more than 20 billion video ad impressions.

• Over 50% of United States citizens were reached using video adverts.

• Switching to online video advertising has the ability to do more at a cheaper rate.

• 15% of people remember the general ad, 33% would remember the brand, over 45% would remember the message and around 40% like the ads they see.

A study done by BrightRoll on 150 executives in advertising revealed these interesting statistics:

• 91% thought that online video advertising was more effective than display advertising
• 75% said that it was better than TV advertising
• 68% stated that they thought video advertising was more effective than social media
• 47% of them thought that online video could do better than TV adverts when it came to creating interest and taking action and 25% felt that it could at least match the interest and involvement that TV ads can create.
• 54% of respondents said that they believed that online video ads would stir up more engagement than TV ads could do while 15% said it could gain the same amount.
With online advertising it is believed that not only the reach of an advertising campaign can be increased but the engagement of viewers can also be increased.
• 73% of advertisers will be increasing their budgets on pre roll ads and 53% will be increasing their budgets on social videos.
• Around 25% of advertisers believe that of all the media industry methods, online videos will grow the most and at the same time 25% of advertisers think that TV advertising will decrease.
All of these statistics are based on the opinions of advertisers and on the responses received by viewers but they are reflective of the current shift in the growing popularity of online video marketing.

Why you need constant content marketing?

You have recognised the benefits of content marketing to increase brand awareness and generate leads, but how do you know that it is working for you. You can’t just churn out your content and hope for the best, you need to track the effectiveness of our content by measuring and analysing specific data

Measuring progress

You can measure your social media followers, website visits, blog post shares, email subscriptions and so much more, but first you need to identify your marketing goals and decide which of these results are most important to your business.

How do you do this?

Firstly, you need to prioritize your marketing goals, then you need define your key performance indicators (KPIs). Plan how often you will need to gather this data and define who would be responsible for measuring and reporting the data.

Start by splitting the data into three categories

1. Content consumption

This will help to see if you are delivering the content your audience wants to know about. If you get it right, you can expect more website visits, page views and social media engagement.

2. Content shares

If your content gets shared, this proves its value to consumers. Try to define which of your content is more shareable and focus on delivering more of this to your readers. Staying interactive will not only provide you the valuable feedback you will need to ensure success, but it will also make you aware of what is working and what is not working.

3. Conversions

This is your ultimate goal and the most difficult to quantify. Leads are your first step in converting to paying customers and convincing people to take further action, the ultimate goal is of course to generate revenue from your website.

The next step

Once you have analysed and defined how to track these relevant areas, and understood which content results in more leads and customers, you can modify future content marketing strategies to make your web content more valuable.

Track you metrics regularly and try to understand where there are opportunities for improvement. It is important to set time aside to maintain this, you need to be aware of whether your content marketing is creating the impact you intended.

Adapt your content to the needs of your audience. The only way you can do this is by monitoring your feedback.

Examine your objectives constantly and modify accordingly. It is a good idea to establish your sure phrase and ethos of your business and keep that constant, altering content as you see the need.

Content tips

Each sentence in your content is vital to keep attention. It is the most basic building block of communication. Ensure your sentences are clear, concise and complete.

Make sure your information is accurate! The Web is not always reliable so follow up on your sources and ensure what you are putting on your website is true and accurate!

By following these suggestions you will more accurately be able to measure the value of our content and improve it. Tracking your results is not only good for business, but so good for your audience too.

5 best ways to increase sales on Pinterest
Pinterest is a great platform from which a business can sell a product and if you are serious about making your business successful then you should be setting up a Pinterest account. Pinterest is not just a place for people to share ideas through images. If you set up a Pinterest business account you will soon be reaping more benefits than you can imagine.
Revenue per click on Pinterest is much higher than other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Those who have seen the products available via Pinterest are more likely to buy the product. When a Pinterest user has click on your pin, they are already considering buying your product. And here is an interesting fact, the majority of Pinterest users have been identified as women.
Tips for Pinterest sales
1. Open a business account
Did you know that you as a business can open an account? Well now you do and you should open one if you are interested in making some money. A Pinterest business account is going to allow you to have access to some very valuable data that will help you to restructure the way in which you interact with both your current clients and your future clients.
2. Use Schema.org
If you really want to increase your conversion rate you need to have a look at using rich mark up. Rich mark-up analyses your pins and decides which will be displayed on the pins page. Rich pins will be seen by more people and if you include a price and a website link under your image, you will have more people clicking on your pins. Rich pins will increase your traffic and your sales.
3. Pay attention to the pin description
Make sure that the written description that is going along with your pin is going to stand out from the rest and that it is highly detailed. Be sure to include information about the product, information about the deal and why people should buy from you.
4. Start being creative visual marketing
With people being bombarded with images all day and every day, not all images are fun to look at anymore. This isn’t an altogether bad thing because this will give you the opportunity to be creative. You will need to be creative and flexible in order for your images to stand out from the rest. Create stunning images for your product pages to entice your potential clients to follow your boards, you can brainstorm new visuals for your growing brand and you can recreate your original images.
5. Use the hoover over Pin-it button
This is a great tool for marketing and selling through Pinterest. Those who have taken an interest in your image will be the only ones to see it so it won’t be distracting. It will also encourage people to pin your image as the pin-it button will appear over the image.

The 4 best ways to encourage customers to carry on supporting you

Over the last few years customers have grown to realize that their importance goes beyond simply being someone who purchases products and services. Customers know that their money is no longer the only important thing for a business. With the new age of social media most businesses have accounts on the most popular social media platforms which they use to reach out to customers.
Customers are aware that they are able to use their own social media to complain about a company or about a product on either their own personal social media platform or on the businesses platform. Either way this is going to do the business some harm as the complaint will be seen by hundreds, if not thousands, of clients and potential clients. Just one harmful comment can set a business back.

Businesses use the customer reviews that they get through their social media accounts and through their websites in order to change the way in which they structure their marketing strategies. These reviews also change the way in which businesses make decisions and they influence the decisions of businesses.

Don’t think for one minute that customers are unaware of this power shift. Customers have recognised that they are the ones who now hold the majority of the power in their relationships with the businesses which they support. It is this shift in power that makes the opinions and information that can be gained from customers all the more important for businesses because the way in which businesses interact with customers and treat customers, needs to and continues to change drastically.

In this new age of business, simply selling your goods and services is no longer going to ensure that you have the upper hand over your competitors.

There are 4 factors that contribute to encouraging your customers to come back and do business with you and as a business in this modern era you should consider using them.

1. Get onto a personal level
Customers value a human connection with the businesses they interact with and they expect to be treated as individuals. Companies can cement this personal connection by continuously reaching out to customers in order to get personalised feedback. You should never place your customers into a group and generalise them.

2. Customisation
As a business you should get to know who your customers are and to recognise them as individuals. You can do this by making their dealings with your business personal and one of the ways in which this has been done in the past is by allowing customers to customise the products that they buy. Customising products can be done easily, especially in the case of clothing and other similar products where the changes can be easily made.

3. Make your customers feel prestigious
Your customers like to feel special and they like to feel valued and set apart from other people. A business can do this by rewarding the loyalty of customers by providing VIP treatment, cash back rewards and offering discounts. This will encourage your customers to return and it will also encourage new customers to become loyal customers as they will get to see the types of benefits that they will receive.

4. Entertainment
When you include an entertainment factor into your business you will be attracting a new client base. Entertainment is memorable and it holds the attention of the customers. Think about how Red Bull transformed their brand. They started out as an energy drink company and today they sponsor or host everything from music concerts to sports events.

What are infographics?

You may have come across this term before, infographics. The name itself gives away what its purpose is. Infographics are used to share information in the form of a graphic illustration.

Infographics make sharing information with a wide range of diverse people an easy task and they make information simpler to read and simpler to understand. Many people, when confronted with a large amount of complex text or text that is pages long will either read just the beginning of the text or they will pass over the text completely and look for the same information but in a shorter form, or even better, in the form of an infographic.
Infographics can consist of pictures, cartoon style information displays and graphs. The easier the information is to read and remember, the more likely people are to the spend time going through the information.

Some of the earliest forms of infographics were used in Egypt around 5000 years ago. They have gained the reputation of being fun, colourful and eye catching. While infographics have been around for many years, they have not always been used. Tools have been developed over the years to make the use of infographics simpler and available for all people.
This has led to an increase in the use of infographics amongst the general population for all sorts of purposes. Infographics have become popular for use on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Uses for infographics

Infographics today are used for communicating a message, presenting lots of data in a compact, easy to understand way and they are used to discover the cause and effect relationships between things.
While infographics are often used to reach the public with information that is easy to understand and absorb, management within a business will also often use infographics to explain the progress and changes happening within a business to other management members. Charts, graphs and mind maps are used to introduce new products and show how a business has grown.

Marketing
Infographics are becoming a great part of content marketing and it is slowly taking over the use of extensive standalone text.
Marketing and infographics work well together for many reasons and marketers are beginning to use infographics more and more often. Humans are visual creatures and we are over exposed to information and images each day. Newspapers, televisions, magazines, the internet even billboards all contribute to the amount of information we are shown each day and the majority of what we are shown does not stay in our memory. In fact only around 1% of all of the sensory information that we come into contact with each day is going to stay in the memory.
Marketing and infographics work so well together because it makes use of short messages and well designed and well-chosen images. Even SEO is changing and becoming visual orientated to accommodate the research results that haven proven that images are more effective than written content.
In the age of infographics, a business will be able to easily get its message across into the memory of clients. This is a communication tool that should be used more often and one that we will in all likelihood be seeing more of in future.

The 10 methods to boost your websites conversion rates

Website conversion is the act of converting the visitors that you get to your website into paying customers who are going to buy from your company. Regardless of the types and amounts of marketing plans you have, increasing your conversions should remain one of your focus areas. When companies have a variety of marketing strategies in place that are working, a company will usually begin to neglect the conversion rates of their websites. Your websites conversion rates need to be improved and maintained constantly.

Methods to test and use in order to boost your website conversion rates

1. Find the selling points of each item that give the most conversion
Every product you have has a great selling point but this selling point is not going to be the same for each and every customer. Test each selling point to see how it works and how it can be adapted to each customer.

2. Layout of the landing page
Your landing page needs to be tested in two phases. Firstly you need to try out and test a number of different page designs in order to identify those designs that your customers are going to react to the most. Secondly once you have identified the right design you can make the relevant changes that will assist your landing page to perform optimally.

3. Include calls to action on your landing page
When you place a call to action on your landing page you will be able to increase your websites conversion rate and increase your company’s profitability.

4. Text placement
The places where you choose to put your text on a landing page will have an effect on those who are visiting your website. Where you place your text will determine whether or not you grab the attention of potential clients.

5. Mobile and desktop
You should do an analysis of your conversion rates via mobile devices and your conversion rates via a desktop. The one that proves to be weaker than the other can have its budget decreased. This will save you money and make you money as you can put that money into the budget of the device that is working for you.

6. Amount of time spent on a site
Find out who spends the most time on the site and target them.

7. The chat button
Many people, even when buying online, will want to talk to you about the product they are considering buying from you before they buy the product. By including an inexpensive chat button on your site, you will be giving them the means to contact you and this will increase your conversion rate.

8. Customise your landing page
When you have done the research to find out where the majority of your customers are located, you should consider customising your landing page according to their geographic location.

9. The conversion rate of returning website visitors
When doing research you will see that there are those visitors who have spent lots of time on your website but then did not buy anything. Once you have identified these people you will be able to create a campaign to target them and increase your conversion rate.

10. Checkout
When a customer is buying something from your website they want their product checkout processes to be quick and easy. If the checkout process is long and complicated they might be put off of buying your products.
You should test out all of these methods and find the one that will work best for you. These methods will increase the conversion rate of your website.

Making your mark with content marketing

Initial marketing for a start-up business can lead to the business becoming a success or ending up failing. Up to 9 out of 10 start-up businesses don’t turn into profitable companies. This is mostly because when the company first starts out the only people it can test its product and marketing on turn out to be paid testers or close associations.

Content marketing has revolutionised the way in which a start-up company can introduce itself and its products to the public. But this is not an easy task and if you want your content marketing to be successful then you will have to work very hard. A start up business must know every single aspect about what it is that they are marketing so that if questions are asked or if the quality of the product is called into question, the business will be able to answer for everything. The business will need to have a complete and intricate knowledge of who their target market is and what the best ways to reach their target market is.

Create a content marketing strategy

When you are going to use content marketing you are saving money and making money at the same time. Content marketing is cheaper than your traditional marketing methods (up to 60% at least) and at the same time it creates three times as many leads. Content marketing acknowledges that customers are going to buy products on their own time and content marketing uses this knowledge to create content that will build up a unique and individual brand. Your strategy will be the guide that helps you to develop content that will be a reflection of your business, your mission and your goals. Once you have created your strategy you will need to test it to see if it works. The feedback that you get from your strategy should be used to develop your strategy further.

An audience-business friendship

Before you sit down to write out a load of content you must know who you are writing the content for. The content that you write must speak to the needs and preferences of your audience so that they go from audience to client. If you write content that the audience loves, you will experience an increase in your conversions. But before you can get more business you will need to study every aspect of your audience and find out their interests and other information about them. Engaging with your audience through social media is a great way in which to get to know them and this will also help you to become friendly with them.

Increase your leads by being consistent

As a business you need to have a constant presence and you can do this by providing your audience with constant new content. You need to understand that most audiences have a limited attention span when it comes to content and this is mostly because they are constantly in contact with content that wants their attention. Research has shown that the businesses that create 15 blogs each month can expect to have 1200 new leads every month. In order to make sure that you consistently put new content out there, you can create a content schedule. This schedule will remind you when your next piece of new content needs to be produced.

Content marketing is not going to produce quick results and content marketing is not always easy but the benefits of well-structured content marketing outweigh the work that you need to put in. Build your brand and the trust of your customers by creating unique content for your audience.

6 Tips to reignite your email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is as alive as ever and it is still highly effective in marketing, with added new benefits. With the popularity that is surrounding social media you would be forgiven for assuming that email marketing has all but died. To date there are three and a half million people with email accounts and this number is only set to grow in the coming years. The amount of email account holders out there is enough to motivate any marketer to zero in their focus on this form of marketing.

Spam has been the one factor that has caused email marketing to get a very bad name. For some people email marketing is synonymous with unwanted spam. When email marketing is done correctly it has the potential to become one of the most useful marketing tools you will have and it can lead to an increase in sales.

This is how you can improve your email marketing:

• Sign up incentives
Offering people free downloads as incentives to sign up for your email marketing will encourage more people to sign up but you will need to make sure that the downloads that you are offering for free are better than the ones that people must pay for. When the free incentives are better than something that can be bought then you will find that people are happy to pay for content later on.

• Automation
One of the greatest benefits of using email marketing is that it can run on its own, all day and all night, while you take care of more important matters.

• Fine attention to detail
Pay attention to all of the things you are sending out to potential clients and making sure that you have done all of the marketing research that you can possibly do in order to be sure that you are targeting the right people with the right messages. Check your headlines to make sure that they are correctly laid out, find out the best times to send emails, present well laid out emails to those on your list and don’t make content too long drawn out.

• Exclusive access to content
Every person likes to be treated like a VIP and by offering exclusive deals and exclusive access to information you will be making people feel as though they are standing out from the crowd. Offer access to exclusive content at least once a month and if your content is valuable, then those who are on your contact list will remain on your contact list.

• Get the balance between free and for sale
When you make the mistake of offering free things for too long your potential clients will be scared away when you try to sell something. When you come across as someone who only wants to sell products and you forget about appealing to their human side, then you will find that people will not want to buy from you because they will think you are greedy. Once you get this balance right you will have successful marketing.

• Don’t neglect the growth of your mailing list
Once you have reached your 50 000th mailing list member there might be the temptation to stop focusing on the growth of your list. But the fact is that you can never have too many people on your list. The information you send via your mailing list can easily be used to encourage people to follow you on certain social media platforms and this will help you to engage with your fans in a wider variety of ways.

Email marketing is certainly not dead. It is as strong as ever and it should not be neglected. As a business person you should make use of all of the available marketing techniques out there in order for your business to have the best chance of growing.

Tips to get your YouTube videos ranked

Over the past two years YouTube has changed the way in which it ranks the videos that are posted. It used to be clicks that got your video ranked but that is no longer the case. YouTube’s new policy focuses on views instead of clicks. Holding the attention of a YouTube user has become much more important and if you want good ranking then you will have to ensure that the videos you post are both of a high quality and highly creative in order for you to get viewers to spend their time watching your video.

YouTube focused on more views with two aims in mind, namely to get the creators of videos to unleash their immense creativity and also to help YouTube to become the leading and most important form of media.

What can you do in order to get your videos to rank well?

Play by YouTube’s rules
You should not bother trying to skip around YouTube’s algorithms. One of the best ways to get your video to rank well is to focus on your videos title. Within your videos title you should include the keywords that you have chosen to focus on in order to get ranking. You should also focus on producing videos on schedule and produce them consistently in order to seal your place as a high ranking video contributor.

Have clear knowledge about who your audience is
You should know who your audience consists of and you should have a bit of background knowledge about them. This will help you to aim your video at the right people and choose the right keywords. If you have done your research properly then you can be sure that those who you are focusing on will watch your video to the end instead of just clicking on it.

Have a reason for your viewers to watch your video
The beginning of your video should give your viewers enough reason to continue watching your video.

Planning ahead
In order for you to create a high quality video you need to put in a great deal of planning. Make sure that you use a list during your pre-production that includes: a list of shots that need to be created, a story board, a list of needed props and a roll of footage that you might need while you are putting the final version of the video together.

Enthusiasm
When you are going to use actual people in your video, you need to make sure that you are using actors/people who have energy and life and who are not going to bore the person watching your video. A viewer will feel more drawn into the video if the person they are watching is speaking clearly and is moving around a bit.

Don’t fear risks
With every new project there will be those moments when you need to challenge the norm and take a few risks. When you start taking risks you are going to be exploring new creative territory that you might not have ventured into before and that you have perhaps even been told not to venture into.

Headlines and descriptions are important
While you are caught up in the creation of unique and creative videos you might be overlooking the importance of a well laid out headline and clever descriptions. Remember that the important keywords that will guide people to your video are included in your headlines and descriptions. You can make use of the Google Keyword Tool in order to find the right keywords for you.

All Entrepreneurs should be using local SEO

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is being used by every company that has a website, a blog or a social media page. This is because there are some huge benefits to having your online existence optimised for search engines. When SEO first took off entrepreneurs had visions of having to write huge amounts of content and include the relevant keywords in order to have their websites picked up in an online search.
While they were busy, hunched over, typing away at their keyboards trying to write content to highlight what it was that they were selling or doing, they were overlooking a little known SEO tool that would spring their business’ online presence forward.
Local SEO has been widely overlooked and often not even noticed. SEO is a vast field and it has many twists, turns and even a few hidden places. The importance of local SEO, for one, has been largely over looked. With local SEO a business can not only optimise keywords for the products and services that they offer but they can add a geographic location as well.

As with all things that are brought to the attention of people for the first time, local SEO is gaining popularity and it is gaining it fast. Businesses and brands are tumbling over each other in order to get onto the first page of a SERP search using geographic locations as part of their SEO keywords.

Going mobile
In the world that we inhabit today almost everyone, including you the person reading this, has a handheld mobile device such as a cellular phone. With the advent of technology, smartphones and tablets were created and with their internet accessing capabilities, those who did online searches for products and services using personal computers, were suddenly able to do their searches using the technology that they carried around in their hands.

Research has shown us that a whopping 46% of those who do searches were doing so using their handheld mobile devices. This opened up the possibility for them to conduct an online search no matter where they were located. To convince you further that local SEO can and should be used by every entrepreneur, search engines took a huge liking to the local SEO field. Remember that search engines usually have a record of the location where a person is using the search engine. This means that even a huge known company could suddenly be outranked by a smaller competitor based purely on the location of each business.

Reduce the amount of competition you have
Most companies will have a national SEO plan as part of their SEO strategy and by having a national plan they are actually doing their business more harm than good if the company is not national. When using a national strategic plan you are placing yourself in direct competition with companies that are doing business nationwide. These companies are focusing on the same keywords that you are using and they are not focusing on the local region where you are operating. Once you have specified where you are operating and you have included the location in your keywords then you are opening up your business to get attention locally.

Increase your visibility, increase your PR
Local media will cover your operations if you are using content that places an emphasis on your local area. This is because you are prioritising the local community and by doing that you are placing a spot light on your area of the community. When you team up local media and optimisation that is focused on the local areas then you are creating a marketers dream. Remember that if the local area in which you are operating is small, then having a presence in the local media such as newspapers will make you even better known.

Even a national company should think about investing in local SEO

Companies that are operating across the nation and who are working with a wide range of audiences might scoff at the idea of using local SEO. After all their targets are based anywhere and everywhere in the country. But focusing on a few key target groups will have some big benefits. As a nationally based company why just settle for one SEO plan if you can have the best of both worlds?

Increase your exposure everywhere including social media

It is not a difficult thing at all to optimise your SEO so that it speaks to the local community. As a business you should claim your social media presence on every platform and keep things consistent. You can keep things consistent by using the same phone numbers, the same addresses and of course the same company name and logo.
You should also get involved with the local community. You are an up and coming business person and you are on your way to becoming a well-known figure within your local community. By socialising within your community you are creating a long term strategy and cementing your business’ status.
Local SEO has the capability of boosting an entrepreneurs status and business opportunities.

Make your online profile eye catching: Here are 5 affordable ways

As a business person you should already know that having an online social media profile that stands out is something that has become an essential part of making your business successful, whether you are a start-up company or not. You might think that it is not possible to make your profile stand out without paying out lots of money. In this modern day and age there are ways in which to cut corners and save money without cutting back on quality.

Here are the 5 affordable ways to make your online presence stand out:

Branding consistency
Keeping your brand consistent through social media will cost you nothing. You should be keeping everything the same across all of your online social media platforms. Having consistent branding means having the same or similar biography, information and profile pictures across all of your social media networks. People trust brand consistency and having brand consistency will help you to build trust. This is an essential part of your social media presence.

Use a professional head shot for all of your social media accounts
Having professional headshots taken sounds like a pricey thing even more so if you are a start-up business. Do a bit of research online and you will soon find that there are websites out there that offer affordable packages.

Have a one of a kind biography
A biography is the one way in which people get to know a little bit about you and this will help to build trust among those who you are targeting with your online media presence. The best way to do this is to find a professional writer who will be able to create a one of a kind biography that will give people the information that they are looking for while keeping the content short and professional. Biography lengths and requirements change according to the type of social media that you are using. Try to keep your online biography uniform while sticking to the limitations set by the social media. You can find a professional writer on a number of websites and they are affordable.

Graphics for your social media
Finding a graphic artist who will be able to create custom graphic designs is not difficult or expensive. There are many graphic artists out there these days and perhaps you are even friends with a few of them. Why not make some connections, both in the real world and online, and find an artist who can create unique graphic art that can be used for a variety of branding needs.

Keep updating and connecting
There is no point in having social networking platforms if you are not going to use them. Keeping your social media accounts up to date with new content as well as liking, sharing, commenting and participating on each social network will keep you and your business in the eyes of the other social networking users. People like to see new and unique content so update your profiles using attention grabbing content.
By applying these tips you are helping your business and brand to grow. You will be able to reach new people, new targets and achieve your overall goals.