Category Archives: General Information

The Online Marketing Your Customers Really Want

When it comes to online marketing, you want your company at it’s best. Websites that have a solid reputation have a done a really good job at marketing themselves off and online. It takes a lot of hard work and time, but pays off in the long run.

Establishing your reputation and trust factors with anyone that contacts you is a must. Here are a few of my favorite online marketing tips when it comes to representing yourself or your brand online.

Online Marketing Tips

Be Social…

Social Media is the easiest and best way to communicate with the new generation of customers. This works for both good and bad reviews. Make sure you’re spending time responding to negative reviews online.

Handling negative reviews can help just as much, if not more than positive reviews when a customer is searching for a service. Some customers even put more stock into trusting that you’ll see your service through, right or wrong.

Be Persuasive…

Online MarketingUse the words that your customers are searching for. Focus on persuasive words that encourage customer interaction, in particular: new, instantly, and free. When customers see these words, they’ll enjoy their purchases more due to assumed value given to them.

Don’t just sell your products, show that you’re willing to go the extra mile and offer an outstanding service to them. Afterall, the customer went through the steps to select you, don’t let them continue to feel the hassle of a difficult process if it’s unnecessary.

Be Personal…

Always show the customer seeing themselves needing your service. Avoid getting granular right from the start. Take the time to listen to the customer. Hear their issues and give high level advice you think they would need. Automatically focusing on the granular nitty-gritty details may confuse the customer or cause confusion about the service they’re searching for and push them away.

Personal customization is perfect for establishing long-term relationships with clients. If you personalize everyone’s experience, the customer in turn will likely remember you the next time; or even recommend you more easily to their friends and family.

Be Genuine…

Customers appreciate a quick response to any question they have. If a customer is reaching out to your business through email, social media, contact form, etc; always respond genuinely.

Only push a service or a product if it can answer a direct question that a customer may have. Being aggressive for a sale can have a very negative effect on your brand or business(Verizon Pushy Sales Tactics). Make sure your responses are proper and serve a purpose to benefiting the customer.

Quick tips for answer a message:

  • Avoid aggressiveness – pushy sales pitches end up pushing people away
  • Stay transparent – avoid smoke and mirror message
  • Recognize responsibility – take ownership of any mistakes, or if you can easily help a customer in need

Be Understanding…

Just like the being genuine above, listen to your customers when they speak. Take their actions and insights and work to see if it will improve your process. Work to make sure that you can adapt to their needs to continue providing the best service possible, even if it’s a per customer situation.

Be Smart…

Knowledge is power. Don’t hesitate to write or promote what you know on your website. Start a blog, start writing, take pictures of your work, and get personal reviews in text and video. Start showing off and don’t hesitate to show that you’re a subject matter expert in your field.

While this is the most “SEO” friendly concept in this post – it rings true across the board. There is a time and a place to show your work, the brand support, etc. Becoming a subject matter expert is the end game for a lot of businesses. Brand trust gets established the most in this phase, and you should always think about ways to show off your good work.

So there you have it, my favorite tips when it comes to online marketing. What are yours? Feel free to leave your favorite ideas or recommendations in the comments below!

Articles of the Week – 9/19/2015

Here we are, week two of the challenge. Thanks to one of the articles below, I’ve decided to go with a “best of” list for articles that I found interesting. I haven’t done this kind of post in a long time, so it’s good to get back to giving props to other people in the industry who are working hard getting their voices heard.

Articles of the Week – 9/19/2015

Scientific Reason Why Bullets Are Bad For Presentations

A scientific look into why bullet points are bad for PowerPoint presentations. I am guilty of this every single week – as we make PPT presentations with bullets all over the place. This article though isn’t just about why a person doesn’t want to read bullet points, but how the brain can actually hinder the impact of your presentation due to “cognitive exertion.”

21 Actionable SEO Techniques You Can Use Right Now

When it comes to SEO and backlinking, Backlinko is one of my favorite reads. This post is no different and provides excellent doable items that you can incorporate into your website and external linking strategy immediately.

Google+ Links and Reviews Dropped From Google Search Results

Another strong death knell for Google+. Google+ links and reviews are no longer included in Google search results, even for searches for business names.

73 Types of Blog Posts That Are Proven to Work

My favorite post of the week by far. The post was actually from two weeks ago – but it’s this that’s inspired me to go through with this content challenge. Previously, I was only writing one type of content piece and I feel that’s what burned me out quickly. This post is helping me think about content differently, and is helping me brainstorm new ideas for the coming weeks to try and improve my writing ability.

One Size Does Not Fit All: Driving Conversions Through Audience Analysis

Solid insight in discussing why it is essential in analyzing the audience that visits your websites to increase conversion.

5 Tactics to Changing How Your Organization Thinks About Optimization

I really enjoyed reading this article as it deals with a lot of struggles that someone in an agency may have at any level. Very much worth the read if you work for an agency, or are trying to improve the understanding of SEO within your business.

How SEO Became Exciting

An interesting take on why SEO is exciting, and honestly I think David nails it. The psychology of a searcher is always more than just a keyword or a high-ranking page. Learning that a customer is following a particular purchase cycle and managing to show trust within that cycle is incredibly difficult. Adapting the funnel or purchase cycle to your website can be even more difficult with no experience.

Customers/Searchers have grown to understand that they’re not just looking for a keyword anymore, they’re going to do the research necessary to make educated decisions about what they spend their money on.

Overall, a solid week of quality content that’s just waiting to be read. Check back next week for a new post!

Content Writing Challenge

I admit, I’ve been way too sporadic when it comes to writing anything on this website. To be honest, I feel like I’ve been working so much lately that it’s sapped my wish to continue writing posts in my free time.

Coming to that realization has been a point of frustration with me and I’ve decided to do something about it. I’m challenging myself to write in my free time and create posts for this site.

Sure, a lot of what I write now may or may not be seen. It shouldn’t ever be about that when it comes to having the drive to write a post or not. It should be about learning how to become a better writer, continue to learn and share those learnings, but most importantly be about having fun.

I also think I’ve felt burnout with my personal writing goals because I’ve been going about them the wrong way. There’s more than one kind of post, and I’ve been stuck just posting that one kind of post for the longest time. I feel that if I change-up what I write about, and change the way I think about writing – everything will improve. At least that’s what I’m hoping!

Blog and Content Ideas I’m going to use;

  • Curation lists
  • How-To guides
  • Updating outdated content
  • Compile guides into major lists
  • “Best-Of” posts
  • Listicles

As you can see, there’s a whole mess of things to write about. I’ve really backed myself into a corner, and I’m determined to get out of it. My next challenge isn’t to just start writing, but to start building better habits on what to write.

I want to start creating posts and showing analytics and how writing consistently can certainly increase your online visibility. It’s not just about writing though, I want to dedicate some time on social promotion and displaying those results here.

This site has lost a good amount of visibility due to lack of interest on my part, and I’m not entirely worried about showing it’s poor stats. It’s localized to a small market (Pittsburgh), and I really can’t say that I have given it serious thought in months.

So here goes nothing, one post down!

Connect Your Google+ Business Page To Your Google Maps Listing

Google has finally enabled owners with verified business pages to connect to their business pages to their local business listing on Google Maps. Honestly, it feels like we have waited longer than we should have to have this ability for this kind of immersion. The confusion caused originally with having to register everything multiple times was unnecessary and it’s good to see Google making things a little more clear for the average and experienced user.

Google Business PageOn Google’s help page, Google gives the user detailed instructions on connecting your Google+ business page to your verified Google Maps listing. The process will connect your verified Google maps listing and your current business page together applying the business address, business information, business hours, Google Maps reviews, and more from the Google Maps side to your business page. Everything from the followers, posts, and managers of the Google+ business page will be retained.

Businesses with more than one business page within their manager page should find it easier as this process will combine two of the individual listings together.

Connecting your Google+ Business Page to Google Maps Listing

  1. Log in to Google+ and select Pages from the left-hand navigation menu and click Manage this page on the local page.
  2. The local page should look almost identical to your current page. This will include a verification shield next to the name of the page. If you hover over the shield, you should see ‘verified local business.”
  3. Click on Dashboard > Settings in the top left corner.
  4. Head to the “Profile” section. Next to “this page is connected to Google Maps”, click Connect a different page. This will allow you connect a different page.
  5. Select which page your like to connect to Google Maps in the “Link a different page to this location” dialog box.
  6. Once connected, you will see a list describing the changes to the newly-created page you’re connecting to the Google Maps listing, and the local Google+ page you’re disconnecting from Google Maps. If you’re ready, click “confirm.”

The new page connected to Maps will:

  • Display name and verification bade of former local page
  • Display all relevant business information
  • No longer display prior owner responses to local reviews
  • Carry over followers, posts, and managers
  • Carry over a custom URL if you’ve set one up

The former local page will:

  • No longer display on Google Maps
  • No longer display relevant local business information
  • No longer display reviews
  • Will be renamed “Backup of page name”
  • Still visible on Google+
  • Retain all followers, posts, and managers from the former local page
  • Retain custom URL if created from the former local page
  • No longer displays AdWords Express campaigns associated with the page

Internet Marketing For Small Business Tips

Every site owner thinks it’s more complicated than it is to market themselves online. In reality, it’s super simple to get these 5 internet marketing for small business tips right in order to set yourselves up for success, and possibly get ahead of the competitor within the internet marketing front.

Sure, when it comes to applying SEO techniques to your website, there’s more complicated strategies and tactics that can be used. That’s where SEO consultants like myself would come in, however these fundamental SEO and internet marketing for small business tips are what I ended up spending a majority of my time on, simply because the small business owner didn’t understand to apply these helpful tips in the first place.

Internet Marketing for Small Business Tips

Write about your services

Too many times to count have I seen this fundamental tip completely missed when it comes to adding information about the services the business provides. I cringe when I see a service page that has a list of services performed and nothing more. It’s not service specific either, hair salons, construction companies, healthcare professionals ALL do this incorrectly.

In order to have a better chance of being found on Google, you must create more pages to your site. The more pages your website has, the more opportunity it has to be found by people searching for specific terms.

A few simple tips come from this recommendation as well;

  1. Each service should have it’s own web page.
  2. Each service page should have 300-500 words of content discussing the service, areas of support, anything relevant that the customer may search for
  3. If possible, pages should have testimonials / before and after shots of projects / something captivating that could convince a person to hire you

Get social!

Another fundamental thing that is often considered a missed opportunity. At this point, for local SEO purposes every single business should have a Google+ Business Page, Facebook Page, and a Twitter profile. Those three social media sites can have the ability to help your website, but also give people an outlet to write about your business(good or bad). What a better way to get the temperature of your business over time, or use it to push out services/daily specials you may have.

While it’s true that a lot of this is common knowledge, it is frustrating as a consumer when you can’t find anything about a particular company online. In this day and age, it’s almost alarming to not see something about a company within the social media sphere, which is why it’s astounding that it still isn’t an accepted practice when owning a business.

Utilize business directories

No, I’m not condoning the practice of submitting your website to every single directory you come across on the internet. In fact, employing that tactic can actually hurt your site than help it. Specifically what I’m talking about, is finding local directories in your area that you can trust, using the website Moz Local.

Moz Local is a free tool for providing you their own healthy directory of websites that are considered signals to ranking for local searches. The goal of your business citations within each directory should be correct. Every detail from address to phone number should be the same across all sites. Doing this allows Google to make the connection and consider these local citations to your business. Local citations are good for business.

Manage your reputation

Remember the advice above to create a social media presence for your business? Once you have established that presence online, you’re going to need someone to manage the accounts, be in charge of the day to day posting, and be able to effectively handle a positive or negative situation online. Bad reviews are going to happen, the ability to respond to a bad review will effectively help you in the long run for when people search your business. They’re going to see that negative review, but they’re also going to see how you handled that negative review. Nothing like turning a negative into a positive right?

These few internet marketing for small business tips can immediately help you wrangle in your internet marketing skills for your small business instantly. It’s not always about taking the short way out, and a lot of the times small business owners are looking for that route.

Of course these internet marketing for small business tips are easy to grasp, but can take time and patience to perfect. However, even the novice of people looking to help their own business online can make an impact with a bit of research and practice. When it comes to the Optimization of your website, it’s not always about showing up in the rankings higher than everyone else. Rankings will come, by doing these kind of optimizations. The more people that visit your website, they more chances to convert, and optimizing for those experiences can have a more profound benefit that just your rankings. It can help; ROI, reputability of your company and brand awareness.

The factors that get improved with these kinds of simple internet marketing for small business tips help immediately and in the long run of your business success. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message if you have any questions, I’m always willing to offer advice!

As an SEO, What Scares You?

As I was reading throughout the dozens of site I cruise daily. I came across an interesting comment from a reader within one of the dozen “x amount of SEO changes that will happen in 2014” articles.

It wasn’t so much what did you think would change in 2014, but what are you afraid of in 2014 when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. The more I thought about the question, the more I became more enamored with how instantaneous the question was it was but how much of an impact it could make.

We’re more or less playing by Google’s rules when it comes to optimizing a website. I don’t have a specific fear when it comes to SEO. After all, we’ve already come to realize that we must deal with “term not provided” change. Which for me, turned out for the better.

The more I think about the question, the more I keep circling back to an obvious answer for most people related to the web design and SEO field. The fear of falling behind.

It’s that fear of being caught off-guard by something and putting you further back than you were before. Search engine optimization is always about pushing forward. Serving new and informative content, finding ways to entice people to link to your website, learning new tactics that aren’t utilized by everyone in the competitive market near you, but what happens when you become the person that always feels like they’re trying to catch up?

That is the fear I have on a daily basis, and it’s that fear that causes me to constantly read, research, and most importantly; try when it comes to practicing search engine optimization. The changes that come from Google are always going to be there.

Sure, I would consider myself in a place that’s following the front-runners. However I’d consider myself a more learned early adaptor. I’m willing to learn new code or try things that could help put me ahead of the pack.

I’ve been doing SEO and website optimization for the better part of 7 years. I’ve seen and done a lot of things that I’m not proud of in the early days of SEO, but have continued to adapt and survive during even the harshest of environmental changes with SEO. I just couldn’t fathom the day I couldn’t do it any more.

So instead of what you think is going to happen in 2014 with SEO. What do you fear the most about it?

What scares you about the future of SEO?

Google News Alerts: Tips and Tricks

I’ve been using Google News Alerts for the past few months in order to track my interests, follow people in my specific industry, and to be on top of the most important news in my world. It’s strange though, because I feel that people are missing out on a top flight product that helps you read your essentials or continue progressive research as an SEO Consultant.

I’ve found that Google news alerts are ideal for following the most important stuff as it comes across on Google. I figured there’s no better way than to write about how to setup and manage Google alerts, so you can get information that’s tailored to your interests, as well as your particular field.

Setting up Google Alerts

The process of actually setting up your Google alerts is so easy it’s not even funny. Finding out different search parameters however can be a little tricker.

Visit:http://www.google.com/alerts

20130925-094226.jpg

Referencing the above image, is what you’ll see when you first go to the link supplied. This is the barebones setup of your Google Alerts. You can type anything you want within the search field, select the options and types of information you want to receive, how frequent you’ll receive it, and who it should be sent to.

While that’s simple enough, there are some search operators that can be used to create some technical searches to help you find the exact information you’re looking for without having to do the daily search yourself.

Questions within your niche

Using question type formulas can get you the jump on beating your competitor to the punch. Especially if you’re looking to see what kind of questions people are asking about a product or a service that you may offer. Being able to give your insight and advice immediately can give a lasting impression of your business within the mind of the person asking and reading the question.

  • Is * Keyword
  • How * Keyword
  • What * Keyword
  • Where * Keyword
  • Can * Keyword
  • Why * Keyword
  • Will * Keyword

Location based monitoring

Just as people are asking questions, you can find out if people within a certain location are speaking about the products or services you have. You can use these types of Google News Alerts search operators to help localize your searches.

  • Pittsburgh * Product
  • Product * Pittsburgh
  • Pittsburgh Product *

When people mention your brand

You can use google alerts to also find out when people manage your brand. This kind of things gives you the ability to see what, when, and if people are speaking about your business. It also helps in reputation management if people speak about your service in a negative manner. That also will go a long way in regards to retaining and obtaining new customers in the future.

  • yoursite.com
  • www.yoursite.com
  • business owner name
  • business product name

As you can see, there are just a few ways to take hold of Google News Alerts and make it your own. What special searches are you running that may be beneficial to others? Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below! I use these Google alerts daily to find information that I can write about or if there’s any kind of back linking oppurtunity available. Being an SEO Consultant, I have to be on top of my game with what’s going in in the industry, or I risk falling behind. I certainly can’t have that!