How Long Does It Really Take To Rank?

Ever wished there was a button to push to get your website instantly ranked? Sorry, that is not how ranking works.

How long does it take to rank your business website? Let's imagine you have been working with an SEO or marketing company for two months but have not noticed any improvement in ranking. They guaranteed your website would be ranked #1 within the first 30 days for your keywords. You would be frustrated that you have not seen those outcomes! Yet when you complained, they explained that they added some meta tags and some backlink building. So you are left wondering when all these wonderful promises are going to help get your business website get ranked and what do terms like meta tags and backlinking mean? In this article we will talk about why SEO companies can't guarantee ranking results, why you can't just set up your site and leave, why SEO takes time, variables that influence ranking, and why marketing is an art.

Have You Looked At The SEO Packages And Wondered What They All Mean?

You need to understand what SEO conditions and terms mean; otherwise you may be spending money on a worthless marketing package. True SEO and improving your website takes time, and for valid reasons.  Even with professional help and using the latest top-notch methods, it takes time to improve its ranking. There are companies who will guarantee faster outcomes, those who say they can get you to # 1, or that they can get your website a top ranking within a couple of weeks. The sad fact is, this is just not how it works. Beware and stay away from the companies that guarantee this!

Why Is SEO Similar To Working Out At The Gym?

Unless you are offering very unique products or services, or have very few competitors, it will indeed require some time and consistent effort. Great results take time, especially if you are a new business settings things up. Think of someone that is overweight and out of shape. Is going to the gym once or twice going to make them thin and fit? No, they have to do it often and keep doing it consistently. Unless they use a personal trainer who knows how the body works, it will take even longer to get fit and trim.  SEO works the same way!  If you stop your SEO routine, it is the same thing as if you stop eating right or working out.  There will be no positive results! Also, if you first spend the time needed to self educate plus putting SEO into constant consistent use, it will take even longer!  Sorry, but SEO results take time; need an educated strategy, and consistent effort.

Why Does SEO Take Time?

SEO takes time to improve and maintain your present ranking position. It all depends on many variables from thousands of aspects. If all the aspects which are known to effect higher ranking positions are favorably positioned, your web page ranking will go up in the search engines. It is all up to the current (ever changing) algorithms of search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. SEO is a long-term continuous technique; it is not a one-time enhanced activity and then abandoned. The search engines are constantly hungry and you have to update your website information constantly. It is just like feeding a baby; it will continue to get hungry again and again. If it doesn't get feed, it will die. The same rule of thumb goes with to ranking your website. Unless you continue to frequently update it with fresh unique content, your rankings will fall and then die.

Which Factors Count?   8 SEO Variable Factors:

SEO Factor #1 – What Is The Age Of Your Domain Name?

Is your website new? If so, how old are the top rated websites you will be competing against? If they are older then it is probably going to take at least a year to catch up, unless your competitors are bad at marketing and backlinking. Chances are they have spent precious effort and energy placing blogs and videos on their website trying to attempt to create fresh and unique content that will help them rank. You will need a good plan, consistent proven effort, and time to catch up. One of the hardest ranking challenges are competing with sites that has been around longer and are also actively competing for ranking. However, it can be done!

SEO Factor #2 - How Often Do You Have Fresh Unique Content?

Most marketers will agree that having lots of original, top quality content is essential. The fresh unique content you put out is what will drive the hungry search engines and visitors to your website. Search engines reward sites that have new fresh content and ignore the ones with common or stale content. Check out our article, “Has Your Social Media Gone Stale?” It will explain why you need to keep feeding the search engines with constant fresh content.

SEO Factor #3 - The Quantity And Relevance Of Your Material

Search engines decide which websites are the best match to explain the keywords placed into the search engines. If your website is about plumbing, it should have articles and videos that are related to explaining plumbing. The competitor that has the best quality and freshest content is the one that Google will rank higher.

SEO Factor #4 - Backlinks Need To Be "Natural Links"

You’ll need quality backlinks (links coming from websites with high rankings) to your website to demonstrate to search engines like Google that you are an authority in your niche. You may be thinking “Great! I saw an ad for 10,000 inbound links for $50 – problem solved!” Sorry, but search engines have a lot of requirements for positioning a website, and thousands of methods of keeping you from gaming the system. If your website goes from just a few links to thousands in a short time period it looks suspicious. They will assume that it is not because you have just released an incredibly popular website content that everyone discovered and linked to right away. Search engines like to see "natural links".  If you get too many links in an extremely short time period, search engines may punish your website by dropping you down even lower in their rankings or dropping you completely out of the Google search. This means you can't just buy high quality links and get credit with them. Also, the links should be from top high quality websites that are at least somewhat related to your niche.  

SEO Factor #5- The Keywords In Question

Putting keywords in your articles helps your ranking, but watch out for keyword stuffing. (Shoving as many keywords in as possible.) The search engines are looking for keyword stuffing and if you are found doing this, they may be put your website on their black list. It may also turn off humans as your article may look spammy and difficult to read.  If it seems unnatural to place a keyword in a certain part of your article, it probably will be classified as "stuffed".  It is best to just place keywords naturally in the title, first paragraph, meta description, H1,H2,H3 tags, title tags or image tags.  

SEO Factor #6 - Your Industry And Competition

Some industries are highly competitive and a few have little competition. If you want to win the race to the #1 ranking position for your niche, the first thing you need to do is get professional advice for a strategy.  You will need constant fresh content, taking ownership of your very own unique long-tail keywords, to focus on keywords that will drive traffic to your website, and making those keywords uniquely yours (not just on your website but in your niche). The bottom line to winning the ranking competition in a highly competitive market segment is to either out-think your competitors or spend more trying than they do. Reviews on Google Plus stressing your keywords and engaging activities with your customers are also very important.

SEO Factor #7- The Algorithm Of The Search Engines

Ask not what Google can do for you, but what you can do to make your site more attractive and appealing for Google. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are regularly changing their algorithms in an attempt to provide a better assistance for searching and more appropriate searches. SEO strategies are constantly modified. So if you are trying to use SEO for ranking, you must keep up-to-date with the constant changes.  What was popular just a few years ago is now probably banned on sites.

SEO Factor #8 - Certain Items Rank At Different Speeds

- Videos - Depending on your competition, a video can be ranked within a day to a week. This is why I personally love videos.

- Blogging - Keeping your content fresh and unique to attract websites with high ranking links to your website will makes your blogging time well worthwhile. It takes longer for a blog to be noticed and ranked than a video (a minimum of 24 hours) as it has so many variables. Using a keyword as a meta tag and creating interesting unique content which creates buzz and drives scores of new visitors will also help improve the speed.

- Local Directories - Registering in local directories usually takes between 3 and 6 months for search engines to notice.

Once your website starts to climb, your competitors will notice and begin working even harder on their own exposure. Good marketing is an art that needs commitment, practice, and time to devote to continuous analysis and learning.

Back to you...

Have you found some ways to decrease the time it takes to climb up the rankings in the search engines? If so, our readers would love to hear about it. Please comment below.

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5 Reasons Why to Be On Instagram

Why should you be on Instagram for business?

Instagram: The Concept

Instagram is a social networking photo sharing service that allows the users to upload and share pictures on different networking sites. The most common social networking sites through which Instagram shares the images are Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram - The Benefits

Instagram definitely has its share of benefits. Many businesses have started using Instagram to create stronger relationship with clients. Businesses can easily upload pictures of their services and products while applying some sort of the digital filter in several social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook via Instagram photo-sharing application. This helps in creating a positive brand name for their business.

Another benefit of using Instagram is that it allows the uploader to share images and share information through hashtags. It is the hashtags that help in gathering all the necessary search results and organizing them categorically on the website of Instagram. In fact, this concept helps in getting connected with other notable heads on the industry as well customers in a very effective way.  

How Can You Use Instagram For Business?

You can use Instagram to show off your products, services, show how things are made, show what your products can do, before and after pictures, portfolio of your work, events, and more. You can post questions with your picture to your follower to get the conversation started and engage.

Does Instagram Drive Traffic?

Definitely! Instagram provides shortcut badges to business brands to drive heavier traffic. Any business and brand can simply include an Instagram icon onto their web portals to notify clients about their photo-sharing profiles. Instagram not only has launched the OPP (Online Profile Page) but it also offers a significant way for the brands to make clients look at the profiles with more intensity. Instagram has introduced icons and shortcut badges that can easily link to the client brand's Instagram profile. It is easier for the businesses to place icons on a brand's online portal that encourages a single click access to the profiles. This allows the businesses greater chance to highlight their services and promotional offers. Facebook owns Instagram. And according to Facebook officials, there is a strong demand for Instagram feature from Facebook users. Instagram badges are designed to help brands bring more clients to their profile pages while driving up more traffic to the Instagram site. This also helps in introducing more clients to the Instagram concept. The end result: more Instagram users to look out for.

You can also use hashtags in Instagram. This is important  when people are searching. They can find your brand and pictures when you use the hashtags correctly.

Does Instagram Push Your Brand Out?

Again, a very common question. The answer is a BIG YES. Instagram, at its present stage, can be highly beneficial in developing a very distinct and winning personality for the business. When combined with some other type of social media, Instagram can be highly beneficial in pushing your brand out to a different height. It is an excellent promotional concept that takes advertising to an altogether different level. It also provides a great opportunity to figure out about the client reactions about the business and brand while calculating  the potential leads. However, the quality of photos being uploaded and shared makes a big difference. It is something that needs to be focused on strongly in order to allow Instagram to push your brand to a great height. Sharing the right set of photos through can make wonders for your business in gaining positive remarks from prospects.

How Can You Use Instagram To Market Your Brand And Business?

Before any further discussion, let's provide a very simple fact about Instagram: it is very easy to use. This application allows the user to create great images with little effort. In fact, sharing the images on social networking sites through Instagram is simple, fast, and extremely easy. Sharing photos to social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook can be done directly through Instagram. In fact, Instagram can also be used to share photos through private emails. Use this to drive traffic back to your website or Facebook fan page.

Now, coming to the actual point - does Instagram help in marketing a particular brand and business? Yes, definitely yes! It does and does it with absolute ease. Instagram allows the option of visual concept sharing without any sort of cheap advertisements. It is something like visual storytelling that effectively does that promises higher continuity & more artistic value than any of the other platforms present. Instagram profiles simply focuses on business awareness and product branding. The concept of clickable links in comments and captions are absent in this approach. Instagram uses a very simple yet effective way to market your business and brand. Also, being mobile is preferred by most of the businesses for promotional campaigns.

Instagram & Facebook - The Connection String

Instagram can be easily connected to Facebook by simply tapping on the Instagram's profile tab. Once the profile tab is tapped, a new window will open that says, "Edit Sharing Settings". Tap the new window and select "Facebook" from the list of social network site opitons being displayed. After selecting "Facebook", simply log in to get connected.

Back To You…

Are you following any brands on Instagram? If you are using this for your business feel free to share with others how you are using it for your businesss. Leave your comments below.

About Our Guest Blogger Diana Maria:

Diana is a writer/blogger by profession. She loves writing, traveling, and reading books. She contributes to David Fett

Check out the other guest blogging articles she wrote for St. Paul Marketing Team:
  • Video Marketing: Beefing Up Your Social Media Campaign
  • SEO: How To Get Your Business From Invisible To Rock Star
  • SEO: 5 Questions You May Not Think To Ask

Visit Diana's website: http://worldfinancialgroupreviewsblog.com/

Connect with Diana on Facebook, Twitter, and business Twitter World Financial Group.

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Facebook Fan Pages: What To Post?

Are you looking for ideas of what to post on your Facebook Fan page?

Did you know that not posting is costing you a fortune and your brand goes stale! Here’s the inside secrets of what to post.

Every business has its own brand and its needs are different. No matter what - always follow the 80/20 rule of fan page posting. This means that 80% or your posts should be non-marketing messages (posts that create interests by giving value, tips) and the other 20% can be posts that market, advertise or promote your business or brand. So this brings us back to the question on what kind of topics to post? 

Do you want to have more interaction and engagements with your posts going viral? Here are 16 posting tips you can use for you Facebook Fan Page which can be tailored to fit your businesses brand:

Posting Tip #1 - Images-Photos-Graphics

Take pictures of your new products or ones showing their usage. Be creative with services and show the end result if possible. Funny cartoons or pictures related to your product or service are great for capturing attention. People are on information overload and don’t have time to scroll and read. Pictures will grab their attention.

Posting Tip #2 - Videos

Videos can show demonstrations of your product or services to create desires for wanting your product or service.  By answering common or frequently asked questions on a video, you will appear as an authority in your niche. Video marketing is a great way to get the audience to know, like, and trust you.

Check out the 8 benefits of video marketing below:

Posting Tip #3 - Blog Posts

When you post an article from you blog on Facebook it can be a great tool to attract more prospects back to your website. Blogging can help your local business as it can drive traffic, raise your company’s brand, and make you look more credible.

Posting Tip #4 - Personal Stories

People are drawn like magnets to a personal story.  If you can use one involving your product or service, you will capture attention and create desire for your product or service.

Posting Tip #5 - Questions

Do you want people to leave a comment and interact with you? Ask your fans a question! Engage with them by answering the question and then end with another question to keep the conversation going.

Posting Tip #6 - Tips

Give your readers short tips with a graphic. This is great for capturing attention.

Posting Tip #7 - Create A Theme

Creating your post around a current event, holiday so your brand can capture more attention.

Posting Tip #8 - Business Updates

A great way to keep in touch with customers is with updates about your brand, niche, product, or service. It gives them a reason to revisit your page.

Posting Tip #9 - Special Deals

By creating deals around certain time lines will help move people into immediate action towards purchasing your product or service.

Posting Tip #10 - Testimonials

Post testimonials of your product or service. This makes your brand more credible to others.

Posting Tip #11 - Events

Informing people of the time, date, cost, location, and other important facts for an event captures their interest and moves them into action. It also creates belief that your fan page is a credible information source.

Posting Tip #12 - Fill In The Blank Status Updates

A great way to create engagement with your audience is to ask them to fill in the blank on status updates. When you get the audience to participate they will feel involved. The more involvement they feel, the more they will trust you.

Posting Tip #13 - Customer Of The Day Or Client Of The Day 

Having people compete for a title such as customer of the day/week/month or client of the day/week/month creates involvement as they get into action. Offering a small prize and updates about who is winning will create even more competition and involvement.

Posting Tip #14 - Links

By providing links to your other social media channels, fans can research more information about your business. Lead them to other areas of your marketing funnel.

Posting Tip #15 -  Cross Promote With Other Businesses

Look for opportunities where you can cross promote your business with another business. Their customers can be introduced to your brand and business.

Posting Tip #16 - Share Other Business Posts

By sharing posts from other businesses, their owners and employees will appreciate you and may help you in return by posting some of your business posts. 

Back To You…

Do you have some ideas you think need to be added to our list of ideas to use for Facebook Fan Page postings? Leave them in the comments below and let’s brainstorm together!

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Has Your Social Media Gone Stale?

Are you turning customers off and away from your business?

What makes certain businesses more interesting? Why do some Facebook Fan pages have more LIKES? Why do some Twitter posts have more retweets than others?  What do all these questions have in common?

Before we get to the answer of what they are all missing, I want to tell you a story that is an analogy. What if you were to walk into a bakery and find all the bread and bagels so old there was mold on them, wouldn’t you be turned off? In fact you would probably not even return to that bakery and would tell your friends about it. The word would spread quickly and customers would stop coming and eventually they would be out of business.

Social media is the same way in that it has a shelf life. When someone goes to your blog, Facebook Fan page, Google+ Business page, Twitter, etc. they want to find new fresh content.

To answer your question about what all those questions above have in common, is that they should all have fresh content and updated posts. Readers are constantly hungry for fresh content.  When they go to your blog or social media profile they are looking for fresh and unique content. Why build a fan page and then abandon it? It is important to make a positive brand name for your online business and not turn off potential clients with your lack of actions. In this post we will discuss 3 reasons why it is important to have fresh content.

Did You Abandon Your Profile?

With so many social sites out there and new ones coming in, it can be easy to sign up, set up camp, and then leave your site. Are you guilty of this with your own social media? When was the last time you posted on your Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, or Google+ Business page, etc.? When was the last time you posted your own blog post or video and shared it on your social sites? If you are guilty of not updating it daily or producing fresh content then you are not only repelling people away, you are throwing away all that potential to spread positive words about your business and brand! You are ignoring the chance to develop relationships with your fans and prospects. Your social media needs to be updated daily even if it simply is to say "Happy Friday" to your followers and fans and giving them the latest daily scoop on your business.

Have Your Social Media Sites Become A Static Billboard?

Social media is meant to be social with current news. That's right; you can’t just set up a site and be done with it like a billboard or a yellow page listing. It this were to be true, people would have just stuck to the yellow pages. Instead they have now gone online looking for a more personal and current touch by going to your fan page. When they hit the LIKE button or answer your posts, they want that interaction. Social media is a place for your business and brand to shine by engaging with your fans and potential clients. If you are not interacting or posting, why have a fan page and why be on social media at all?

Why Do You Need Fresh Content For Your Website And Social Media Sites?

Fresh Content Reason #1- Ranking & SEO

Do you want your website to rank above your competitor's websites? Do you want to increase the traffic to you social media sites? The fresh unique content you put out is what will drive the hungry search engines to your sites. Search engines reward sites that have new content and ignore the ones with stale content. Google and other search engines look for the most relevant current information on topics and place them on the top of the page where people are searching. This is how people can find your business when they are searching for information about your niche. You need to constantly put out fresh spider food (content) to stay at the top of the page. It is an ongoing feeding, not a just a onetime feeding. Online spiders are always hungry and they get mad if they can't find new fresh content to feed upon.

Let's say you are a plumber and no other plumber in your area is pumping out fresh information. Google would rank your site with fresh content information above the other stale content plumbing sites because the bots are looking constantly for sites that are hot with updated content. They way they say thank you for their fresh spider food by ranking you higher than your competitors.

Are you keeping your business site and social media sites hot? To stay hot you need to be posting fresh and unique content daily.  Are you producing your own content (or outsourcing it so it is taken care of?) such as blog posts, videos, tips, or stories, that have to do with your niche?  If you are doing all this daily, you are going to look like fireworks in the sky and your business is going to be buzzing. You will start ranking higher and when people do a search, they will find your website, Facebook Fan page, Twitter, Google+ Business Page, etc. Wouldn't you want them to find you and not your competitor?

Fresh Content Reason #2 - Newsworthy

There are thousands of websites that have free articles so why can’t you just copy and paste them to your site? Search engines will penalize you for taking other peoples articles, this is called duplicate content. Duplicate content is information that is found in more than one place or URL.

Think of your blog and your social media sites like a news channel. You need to be talking about the latest trends, tips and what is going on in your niche. Even if you are just a plumber or dentist there are many things you can do to produce fresh content. If you were searching for the latest cell phones on Google, would you rather read a blog post from 2 years ago or one that was a week old? I am sure you would agree that the one that is a week old would be more of interest to you since technology is constantly changing and the other post is out of date.

Fresh Content Reason #3 - Keep Your Brand Alive

Back to the example above about walking into a bagel store or bakery and finding that all the bread gone stale. What if this was your social media presence? If they went to your website or Facebook Fan page are they going to find posts that are over a month old?  If so, they probably would not come back for more and worse yet they probably will tell their friends. On the other hand, if you updated all your social media and blog post they could hit the LIKE button, share it, or comment, etc. They would more likely to return again since you are looking like the expert of your field that has great current resources versus your competitor that has stale content that is out dated.  Pumping out fresh content on your social media sites will keep your fans interested and bring in more traffic.

How Fresh Is Your Site And Social Media Posts?

What would your potential customers find right now if they were to visit your website or social media site? Fresh juicy content? Don’t risk your brand going stale by abandoning your site or social media profile! Having a Facebook Fan page that has posts over a month old or a Twitter stream that is not updated is not a good image for your brand and business. At the opposite extreme, you don’t want too many posts that annoy your followers and fans.

Do You Need Help With Your Social Media?

The St. Paul Marketing Team understands how overwhelming and demanding the time that is needed to keep your brand fresh. This is why the St. Paul Marketing Team has a team that creates fresh content to pump into your website or social media sites. This  keep both the hungry spider bots and the hungry potential customers fed.

Your Turn...

Have you found a positive solution to the challenge of keeping your content fresh that you would like to share with our readers?  If so, please share your experiences by commenting below.

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Effective Email Marketing: Requirements and Benefits 

What is the most effective means of staying in touch with prospects and clients in terms of cost and reach?  Email marketing! 

Emails provide not only an essential way to communicate both necessary and important information, but also it is a surefire method of building your reputation. It also provides trust among clients and prospective clients as they get to know, like, and trust you. While expensive advertisements tend to rule in terms of effectiveness, the Internet with the social media networking provides great opportunities to advertise. You can place an ad on Facebook for example and offer a webinar, Ebook, or video in exchange for the opting-in so you can capture their email and get them on your email list. Then the email marketing begins.

Here are some requirements of effective marketing and benefits of using email marketing for your business.

What Are The Requirements Of Effective Marketing?

1. Quality:

Email marketing informs people who are already interested in your product or services. They have opted-in for receiving your emails and want to know about updates within your niche and new products or services. Your email list caters to a group of people who know you and knows about your business. Many will follow you back to your social media sites and fan pages. They will refer friends and family to your products and services through giving your posts, comments, videos, or blog, a like, a plus-one, comment or share in their social media channel. This definitely improves your search rank and hence visibility.

2. Reach: 

The reach of email marketing can be huge. Your list can be divided into segments such as those interested in your niche or targeting customers. This can save time while it makes it easy to have focused campaigns.

3. Money: 

While most forms of advertising costs you a fortune, email marketing can be done for peanuts.  

What Are The Benefits Of Email Marketing?

1. Cost: 

Most paid advertising modes cost a fortune. The time of duration or display on TV, or the number of time it is going to be shown, the page and position on the newspaper, the size and colors of the advertisement can only add to the cost. Other popular modes of advertisements can be equally costly. 

2. Promptness: 

While most paid marketing campaigns have a developing time and more time to be aired or published, email marketing can be developed in a very short time and within hours can reach the people declaring your news.

3. Personalized: 

One of the major aspects of email marketing is the very personal flavor that can be added to it. Mentioning their name makes it extremely personalized as customers like to be pampered and recognized. Moreover you can store a database of their personal choices and pamper them with special targeted offers.  Wishing them happy birthday and remembering their anniversaries can be added to your services and hence conversions.

4. Engaging Content: 

The fact that email marketing can be designed in a very short time, and that the templates can be saved for multiple uses, gives you the liberty of communicating with your customers and prospects frequently. Engaging content as well as informative content will make sure that they remain hooked to your emails and don’t unsubscribe.

5. Networking: 

Emails can be forwarded to friends and family at the click of a button and that makes it even more interesting, valuable, and viral. This way it can raise your customer base substantially at no extra cost.

6. Eco-Friendly: 

Email marketing can be more eco-friendly when compared to print media, or mail marketing campaigns.

Finally:

The major advantage in email marketing is that the emails can be target specific and the overhead cost of such advertisements is extremely low compared to the other forms. Also, the fact that your email campaigns can be traced and tracked for effectiveness with some easy metrics, makes them awesome. One thing should be kept in mind that email marketing should not become a spam for the clients and prospective clients.

Your Turn... 

If you have had positive experiences and improved ROI using email marketing, please comment below and share with our audience your experiences.

About Our Guest Blogger Diana Maria:

Diana is a writer/blogger by profession. She loves writing, traveling, and reading books. She contributes for World Financial Group and Betaout.

Check out her other guest blogging articles she wrote for St. Paul Marketing Team:
  • Video Marketing: Beefing Up Your Social Media Campaign
  • SEO: How To Get Your Business From Invisible To Rock Star
  • SEO: 5 Questions You May Not Think To Ask

Visit Diana's website: http://worldfinancialgroupreviewsblog.com/

Connect with Diana on Facebook, Twitter, and business Twitter World Financial Group.

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Guest Post: An Article On Steroids

Should you accept guest posts or write guest posts for others?

Could guest posts be your ticket to earning big traffic and monthly revenues?  Yes!  Guest blogging is a great way to help grow your business. It is a free traffic strategy or an SEO backlink strategy at most. In this post we will discuss: What guest posting is, how it works, and why you want guest posts.

Search engines have changed their algorithms in a manner where content on your page is important. When you write meaningful subject matter that readers find relevant enough to share with their fellow peers, you rise in the new search engine results Page (SERP). It's all about giving value.

What Is Guest Posting?

Guest posts are articles submitted by non-members of a website or blog. It is another form of article marketing. What it is, is actually going directly to important websites with higher Page Rank and placing your guest post on there. When you write for a guest post you put links that go back to your blog or website. This provides backlinks back to your website or blog. 

Most blogging sites that have guest bloggers allow backlinks in the author’s bio. This ensures that this writer is real and also provides a way to pay back the guest blogger with a link or links.

You can view guest posting as article marketing on steroids!

How Does It Work And What Are The Steps Involved?

You contact the owners of blogs and websites that are within your niche. Offer them an original article full of content and value in exchange for a link back to your website or blog. Towards the end of your post, ask a specific question of the reader and encourage them to reply with their answer. Then, after the post goes live, respond to each and every comment made on your post. Often you can build real connections via the comments and with blog owners as a result of a few posts.

What To Look For When Searching For A Site To Post On:

• A blog that is in the same niche
• Industry leaders
• Make sure their blog is of great quality
• Look for a high Page Rank
• Check to see they have social share buttons
• A place at the end to put your bio

Why Put The Effort Into Guest Posting?

Guest posting is a great way to build relationships with other business and blog owners in your market. When you focus on building strong relationships and helping others grow their business, you’ll gain more than just a single backlink or blog post could get you. This is where the real leverage is at.

Why Guest Posting Is Beneficial?

1. Traffic - SEO And Link Juice

Guest posts can bring lots of direct traffic to your website or blog.Other websites within your market are going to be linking to your website, often with the anchor text of your choice! Search bots love sites that have authentic information to offer especially if they can’t find it anywhere else. One of the many criteria for search engines is the quality of links that points towards a website also know as a backlink or off page links. Why is this important to you? This is important because the more links you have from relevant websites, the greater your chance is to reach the top ten on the search results page. By guest posting on websites that are related to or are similar to your website you are increasing the level of ranking via quality backlinks.

2. Establish Authority

How does a having a well written articles full of values and tips establishes you as a leader? When you submit a post not only is it important for search bots but also humans. They will read your article when you provide solutions to their answers. They want the gossip and the juice. You will be exposed to readers of a niche category who are looking for information, solutions, and answers. They are more likely to follow you if you write quality articles, and this establishes you as an authority.

3. Building Strong Relationships

Ever been to a blog that has the most boring topic or not even good English and yet has a lot of comments? This is because they have established relationships with other bloggers and these bloggers are helping them back by commenting. So you don’t have to have the greatest content to have a lot of comments or traffic.

If you comment and tweet out their blog posts and hit the LIKE button on Facebook or +1 on Google+, they are more likely to reciprocate back to you. Guest blogging can amp up the relationship. How you may ask? If you have good relationship with your fellow bloggers and their readers then they will keep coming to your blog regularly. They may even subscribe to your email list and whenever you publish your latest blog post they will comment on it. If they share your latest blog post on their social media sites it will help bring your site more brand awareness and boost traffic. They can even refer advertisers to your site or write a blog post back for your site.

4. Branding

Guest posting is a great way to get your blog or business out there to let people know that you exist and for them to find you. How will people know your website exists if you don't plant seeds? Every time you write a guest post for another site it plants a seed so, people know you exist. This gets your ideas out there and this is a great way to share it with readers who are interested in your article. Writing about your niche helps to establish your brand. Look for blogs and website that allow their guest posters to have the author's picture in their bio. The St. Paul Marketing Team believes in branding and at the end of all our guest posts we also allow the links and social sites to help brand the author's website or blog.

Why Would You Want Guest Bloggers On Your Site?

So it might sound scary to have guest bloggers, but look at all the benefits:

• Links to your site.
• It drives their fans and readers to your site.
• It is a cost free article.
• It gives you a break from having to write an article.
• It increases your relationship with the guest blogger.
• It provides fresh content with a new style.
• The author is likely to share it on social sites.

Guest blogging is definitely is a great way to grow your business online, not only from a purely traffic and conversion perspective, but also from a long term partnership perspective. The more successful the website is, the more traffic you will be able to generate to your own website, but this in turn requires you to provide very high quality articles in order to succeed.

Back To You….

If you have had interesting experiences with guest blogging which has increased your exposure or have been a guest blogger that gained exposure, we would like to share your experience with our audience. Please comment below.

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SEO: 5 Questions You May Not Think To Ask

What is the most important factor to determine the success of a SEO campaign?

There are many factors in determining the success of a SEO campaign, but the most important factor is before starting the project to have an open conversation between the client and the SEO Solutions Company or specialist. This not only clears any doubts, but it also helps in the designing of better and more efficient solutions for the SEO project. Here is a list of five questions for both the client and the specialist to ask each other. You may not have thought of asking, but will be much better in every aspect if you ask.

5 Questions To Ask The SEO client:

Question 1: What is the niche or the target audience for the site?

Reason:  With the niche or the target audience known it becomes easier to develop the content. The unique interests, search patterns, and preferences of each niche audience helps to develop a more focused content that can be used more effectively for SEO purpose. Knowing the market of the target audience, helps in setting up more specific marketing goals.

Also understand what their brand message is and how they want their presence known on the Internet. This will also help you design marketing collaterals and other plans in a much more focused way.

Question 2: Which target market and markets do they intend to explore in terms of location or geography?

Reason: If a company is looking for global exposure their case will be different from a company looking for a specific country or location for business expansion. Asking about the preferred market or location will help determine specific SEO that will drive relevant traffic to the website.

Also asking about the preferred local search engine will help you do more focused SEO.

Question 3: Who are their top competitors?

Reason: Asking about their competitors and going through their competitors websites will help you understand a few factors necessary for better SEO. It will help you to identify the unique aspects of the competitors that draw traffic and better rankings. It will also help you identify their competitor's weakness and client’s strength. This can be used to determine the right content. Look for certain features on their competitors sites that the clients would like to also use in their site and find the competitors flaws that you can use as a competitive advantage.

Question 4: What is the final goal of the site?

Reason: Knowing the final objective of the website determines which methods or ways to boost traffic and achieve the right results. This will also determine the correct performance indicators to explain the success or failure of the SEO campaign.  

Question 5: Have there been previous SEO attempts?

Reason: This question will determine where you will need to start. This includes information regarding previous keywords used and to new keywords to target.  Knowing the webmaster control functions of the webpage will give you the keys to optimizing the site.

5 Questions To Ask The SEO Specialist:

Question 1: Can you rank my site to rank number 1 quickly?

If they answer “YES” - avoid this company!  SEO is a long drawn out and tedious process that needs to be given time for you to rank higher. Saying yes means they are either bluffing or using Black-hat SEO practices (using non approved practices which can get your site banned). Check out this related article, "Can SEO Gaurantee My Business Will GEt Top Rankings In The Search Engine Results".

Question 2: Can you show some testimonials?

Testimonials from precious clients will help you understand a company’s or specialist's potential. In case there is no testimonials available, try to get a client list to determine some feedback about them.

Question 3: Does SEO really work these days?

This will give you insights about SEO and how they tackle the new algorithms of search engines. They might show you some samples to prove their point.

Question 4: Should you use SEO software?

Good SEO companies will help you understand why it is useless to use any type of SEO software.

Question 5: Have any of your sites been blacklisted?

The answer will tell if the company is honest with its clients and uses only white-hat approved SEO trade practices.

Back To You:

Whether you are the client or the SEO specialist, it is always best to communicate. The more you ask questions and clear away the confusions, the better it will be for making the picture clear. Don’t feel shy, go ahead and ask the question that is on your mind that will always yield better results.

If you have had good or bad experiences due to communications prior to starting an SEO project, please share these experiences with us below.

About Our Guest Blogger Diana Maria:

Diana is a writer/blogger by profession. She loves writing, traveling, and reading books. She contributes for World Financial Group. 

Check out her other guest blogging articles she wrote for St. Paul Marketing Team:
  • Video Marketing: Beefing Up Your Social Media Campaign
  • SEO: How To Get Your Business From Invisible To Rock Star

Visit Diana's website: http://worldfinancialgroupreviewsblog.com/

Connect with Diana on Facebook, Twitter, and business Twitter World Financial Group

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3 Reasons Why You Need To Outsource Your Video Marketing 

What is the number one way to grab attention and engage online?

Videos are the best marketing strategy by far. They are designed in a similar fashion to basic TV commercials. In this article we will talk about the 3 reasons why you need to outsource your video marketing and how it can give you the best return on your advertising investment. Knowing what to do and what not to do puts your brand above the competition. By outsourcing your video marketing, you can count on getting quality videos to market your brand and business. Start outsourcing your video marketing today.

What Are The Advantages Of Video Marketing?

Videos are action oriented which captures the attention of viewers better than stand alone ads. The action of a video combined with the use of audio, makes this format even better at grabbing people's attention. Internet websites are usually packed full of ads promoting all types of products and services. In the competitive business market, it makes sense to use a format that will be better at getting people's attention than traditional banner ads.

When you see something over and over it increases your belief and increases their credibility.  The more visually familiar people are with your brand, product or service the better your return on your investment. Hiring a professional videographer to increase your professional appearance is priceless.

Video marketing can be designed around the needs of people who use the product or service (target market). The video can showcase products available for sale or as a forum for someone to discuss various service options their company or organization has available. Retail stores, charitable organizations, and real estate offices can use this type of marketing tool. Videos usually run for less than one minute so it does not detract from the Internet browsing experience of people shopping online.

Why Should You Hire A Professional Video Production Services? 

Outsource Reason #1 - Profitable

The first step for most businesses looking to use video marketing is to hire a professional video production company. These professionals know which type of video will work best for what a company wants to promote. The cost of video marketing is a lot less than you might think. When you hire a video marketing company they take the worry out of web marketing and management. They will give you the best bang for your buck. They know how to make videos that grab attention while conveying message and call to action. They understand the mindset of the target audience and use it when creating a campaign for you. They will help you get more leads for a lower cost than you were able to without them.

Outsource Reason #2 - Connections With Affiliate Websites 

The professional service will usually make contacts with affiliate websites who will host the videos in exchange for a similar hosting from the business using the videos. For example, a real estate office can create affiliates with financial institutions and furniture stores, because these fields are related to their industry.

There are also many businesses that use social networks to promote their services or products. These networks generally charge a small fee to have video ads placed on them. The benefit of paying to advertise on a social network is well worth the cost. Studies have shown video ads placed on social networks have higher success ratios than ads placed anywhere else on the Internet. 

Outsource Reason #3 - Improve Search Engine Ranking

The expertise of a professional video company will also benefit businesses because they know where to place the videos in order to get the best results. While creating captivating ads is an important part of advertising, the placement of the videos is also a key part of a successful video marketing strategy. A video marketing professional can code the video title and description with long tail keywords. They can take your video and submit it to many sites to get your ranking up on the search engines.

The options offered through these websites include tools for managing the videos placed online. In addition to the professional companies available to create video productions for online use, there are also several major search engine sites that offer tools and consultations for anyone looking to create videos for online advertising.

Part of a good marketing strategy is analyzing the results of the videos to see how well the campaign is doing at drawing in new customers or clients. The results are not instant, but a video marketing company can get your videos ranked. It is only a matter of time that people will find your video in the future.

Back To You…

Have you outsourced videos to market your business? Please share your experiences with us below

About Our Guest Blogger James Pattrick:

James Pattrick is known for writing informative articles on Internet Marketing, Business, and Home Security related issues. He contributes his article on HomeAlarmMonitoring.org.

Visit his website: http://www.homealarmonitoring.org

Connect with James on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. 

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Insights On Mobile Marketing Trends

What are the new hot trends in mobile advertising and marketing?

Retailer's wanting to increase their profits need to wake-up! Mobile marketing has not only arrived - it is starting to dominate online marketing. Consumer's are letting retailers know their mobile marketing culture trends through their increasing wild reactions to frequent mobile usage? In this article, we’ll highlight some of the hottest trends and new possibilities with mobile marketing.

Today's hunters don't carry bows and arrows, they carry their mobile devices for hunting hot deals. Consumers increasingly prefer using mobile devices to make informed decisions when hunting for deals on products and services. In the U.S., over 50% of consumers use Smartphones. Based on this number, many retailers are now focusing mainly on mobile marketing. Marketers are especially careful of timing when sending out their messages so they're compatible with the device the consumer is using at that moment.

How Can You Blend Mobile Marketing With Social Media?

What is the most intimate type of technology a user has access to through social media? Most will agree that it is their mobile device. Therefore, social networking represents a humongous part of a mobile user's time. Unlimited access via mobile is fertile ground for many advertisers to zero in on certain demographics when delivering products and services to consumers via strategies known as social targeting and retargeting. According to comScore, 45% of all Facebook traffic and 55% of all Twitter traffic is mobile. With the help of network partners such as Facebook and Twitter, advertisers can significantly customize messaging by tracking social conversations related to a user's location to target them.

Retargeting is where advertisers use the collaborative technology of Adelphic and BlueCava, for example, using linked devices to deliver ads based on a consumer's registration data to track usage patterns. Since the attention span of consumers is extremely short, advertisers must make all of their content accessible across mobile web and through apps. They must also meet the consumer's expectations and primary needs as well to create a successful marketing campaign.

Engaging consumers through the mobile marketing culture has motivated advertisers to focus on four main areas:

• QR codes
• Google Goggles
• Shazam 
• Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)

In the past six months, 63% of mobile marketing has come from QR codes. Consumers want automatic access to what’s important to them. QR codes make this possible, since they hold alphanumeric data and are very easy and practical to use for any sized business.  

QR Codes And Their Influence On Mobile Marketing

When you capture a QR code with a camera-integrated phone, you can connect to electronic content on the web, trigger numerous phone functions, and link the device to a web browser to be immediately added to a company's opt-in mailing list.

An app designed for the QR code reader that has made its mark worldwide is i-nigma that can virtually accommodate any type of camera phone. Facebook functions, such as Sharing and Liking, allows consumers to easily access URLs linked to new landing pages, which in turn enhances the effectiveness of SEO and SMO by encouraging more sharing between users.

The Future Of QR Codes

The next series of marketing barcodes will be capable of containing even more data–so much so that an Internet connection will not be required–all necessary data will be embedded in the code–soon making today's technology outdated.

Are you using mobile marketing for your business? If so, share with us your latest marketing update ideas.

About Our Guest Blogger Myke Thomas:

Myke Thomas is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. His blog WireLessInternetReviews.com focuses on telecom bloggers and technology bloggers. 

Visit Myke's website: http://www.WireLessInternetReviews.com

Connect with Myke on Facebook,  Google+,  and Twitter. 

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Why Are Local Online Business Directories A Must For All Businesses?

Do you want to get your business maximum exposure on a limited budget?

Where would that be, you might ask? Online of course! In this article we discuss the benefits of using local online business directories and what they can do for your business. Lets' face it, either your business can be found online or it can't.  The famous ‘Yellow Pages’ is a paper local directory where important business information and ads have been placed for years. Its present function is now more likely to be used for a toddler's booster chair. Rarely is it used anymore as a source when people are searching for a product or service. (What a waste of money to advertise there!) To stay in business in today's competitive market, you must maintain a minimum of marketing activities. Being listed online is not a choice, but a minimum starting point for all serious business owners!

What Is A Local Online Business Directory?

Remember when information was accessed only with the help of a hard copy manually? One would have to go through page by page to get the information that he would be seeking for. With the invention of the Internet and consequently the digitization of these directories, listings have been made very easy to access. Just type in what and where and the business you are seeking appears.

4 Purposes Of Online Business Directories:

Purpose # 1 - Less Paper Work

Was it possible to update a paper directory? No way! People needed to wait until the next  directory was printed. Now when there are updates needed in the data, just a few seconds for corrections are needed for an update. There are so many pages in a paper directory that it is too heavy to carry around and hard to even find a place to store it.

Purpose # 2 - More Online Usage

Where do most consumers immediately prefer to search for a business?  Online of course!  Especially in countries like the US, a business needs to mandatorily have their business be listed in a business directory because more than 70 percent of people search on the Internet for a product or service. If you need a dentist for example and you live in Woodbury, MN,  you would go to Google and type, “Dentist in Woodbury, MN”. You would then see a choice of dentists that would be listed. If your were a dentist in that area, you would want your business to be listed. Ask your yourself when was the last time you searched for something with the yellow pages? Chances are it was a long time ago!

Purpose # 3 - Exposure

Are you placing new advertisements in paper directories? With online advertising in directories, just place it once and if nothing changes, you're done. What if there is an error? If there is an error online, it is very simple to change. Your change can be immediate, no need to wait until next year's directory comes out. There is also no monthly advertising fee. The directory site places your keywords that will make your business information search engine optimized. The better your search engine rankings, the better your business is exposed and the better chance your business has to grow. 

Purpose # 4 - Cost

Have you checked the price a paper 'Yellow Pages' business listing plus the advertising in it? It is now a monthly out of sight expense! The cost of an online listing, plus advertising and having a professional do it all for you, is a fraction of the cost of advertising in the paper 'Yellow Pages'. That's right, a fraction of the cost!  Plus it is a one- time fee, unlike the monthly fees of the paper Yellow Pages.  

Why Do You Need Your Business Listed In The Online Business Directories (benefits)?

• Exposure - It's the ideal vehicle for your business to be found and connected with searchers who are actively searching for your product or service.

 • Competition - It gives your business a chance to step ahead of your competitors. Many of the directories such as Google+ Local, place your business in a competitive order. How? Stay tuned for another article explaining this soon.

• Less Errors - They can be corrected immediately.

• Categorizes Your Business - It places your business in the correct niche.

Should You Place Your Listings Yourself?

It is possible, but not recommended.  It is best to have a professional do it for you. Here are 3 reasons why you should hire a professional:

Outsource Reason #1 - Consistent 

Even if you had endless time, the biggest mistakes people make are not being consistent with their listings due to not having a master list to copy.  They may list their address as Ave. and in the next directory list it as Avenue. This will make it appear like you have 2 locations or 2 different businesses, which will weaken your competitive placement in the listing.

Outsource Reason #2 – Abundant Amount

If you only list in a few directories you are missing a huge opportunity to get found online by searchers.  There are way too many directories to be able to hit them all unless you do it consistently. Here are the top 50 local directories: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Merchant  Circle, LinkedIn, YellowPages.com, White pages, Super media, Yellowbook, City Search, Mapquest, Biznik, Local.com, Foursquare, ThinkLocal, CitySlick,Us Yellow Pages, My/city, Dex, BizJournala.com, teleAtlas, Justclicklocal, Discover Our Town, Metrobot, Best Dealas on, twibs, LocalEze,Kudzu, CityVoter, Manta, Zipweb, MathPoint, UsCity.net, Local Site submit, InfoUSA, Axciom, Infignos, Yellowassistance, ChoiceVendor.com, My huckleberry, Genieknows, MojoPages, Brownbook, Magic Yellow, CitySquares, TeleAtlas, Navteq GPS,and Judysbook. This list is just the tip of the iceberg as there are more than 200+ and growing out there. If you only list in a few directories you are missing a huge opportunity to get found online by searchers.  

Outsource Reason #3 – Time

It requires massive amounts of your time to find, enter and edit all of these directories. Professionals have a system, this is what they specialize.

Is Your business Listed In The Local Online Directories?

We would be happy to hear your experiences and comments about local online directories. Comment below.

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7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Custom Tabs For Your Facebook Fan Page

Is there a magical place where you can introduce your brand to a whole mass of people?

If you answered social media you are correct. To be more specific, it is on Facebook, the number one place where the entire world hangs out. However, to get the true magical power you need customized Facebook Fan Pages with customized tabs completely dedicated to that purpose.  Facebook Custom Tabs for fan pages are an important but easily overlooked tool for enhancing your Facebook Business Pages.  In this post we will discuss 7 reasons why you need to have custom tabs for your Facebook Fan Page.

How Can Facebook Fan Pages Help Your Business?

• Connects with an unlimited number of fans.
• Works 24/7 even while you sleep.
• Creates more exposure for your business so customers can find you.
• Gives platforms for discussions where current clients can have input with future prospects.
• Displays videos.
• Displays blogs posts.
• Makes your brand more credible.
• Not only do you stand out from plain Jane fan pages, but it becomes memorable.

How Can You Make Your Brand Stand Out From Your Competitors?

Having a Facebook Fan Page with custom tabs or apps gives your business the major firepower it needs to stand out. Custom tabs can blast you out of the plain Jane dead zone into the remarkable memorable zone. It ups your chances of gettting more likes.

Facebook Fan Page Custom Tabs are also called Apps, but Facebook refers to them as thumbnails or icons Custom Tab Images. Without tabs, your business falls into the dead zone where there is no credibility or trustworthiness.

Here Are 7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Custom Tabs For Your Facebook Fan Page:

Reason #1 – Places Your Website Inside Of Facebook

Would you like instant sales or recruits? It is now possible with custom tabs.

Facebook Tabs are essentially mini web pages that are embedded into your Facebook Timeline for viewers to see more about your product or services. They are great for adding a specific product, point, promotion, blog posts, social media sites, videos, or anything else that adds value and interest to your page. Your fans don’t have to leave Facebook to see your website. You can drive immediate traffic to your website. If you have an e-commerce site you can make a custom tab on your website where people can click on a product and purchase it without ever leaving Facebook.

Reason #2 - Gives Your Business A Larger Platform

Are you dreaming of having instant credibility? Instant credibility can now be a reality with custom tabs.

When you want to advertise your business or want to have your business known, you can not do it just by updating a status about it. No, no, no!  You need a bigger or we can say a larger space to let the people know about it completely. Custom tabs can help you in achieving this goal. The more you can display about your company, the more credibility you create for it. You don’t want to look like a plain Jane or a generic business do you? Custom tabs give you several more pages to use for your advertisement and can even make your company look bigger than what it is.  You can show them what is in your product or service for them. The more the visitors can see, the more they will know, like, and trust your company. You can control your online reputation and manage it the way you want it managed. Potential customers on your fan page can see other present happy customers talking about your brand through sharing their experiences and them interacting on there.

Reason #3 - Control Power

Would you like to be in control of your business reputation? You have found the power button.

The benefit of getting customizable tabs for a fan page that you have designed helps you be in charge of exactly what you want to display to visitors.  You can set exactly what information or how much of it should be accessible to the visitors. The customizable part helps you to design the way you want your pages represented. It is completely your choice of what sales, updates, promotions, and explanations of benefits and use of your product or services. It lets visitors feel involved by asking questions and getting answers.

Reason #4 - Captures Attention

Are you looking to gain viral visibility? You have now found the place where everything can come together to provide visitors with the total business experience.

One of the benefits of using custom tabs is that when a visitor clicks one of the links, it opens a new tab to enhance the visitors experience on your fan page. They can select their own multiple choice of tabs to engage and learn more about your product or service. This has the benefit of attracting the minds of visitors by bringing unique and interesting information without irritating them by requiring them to leave Facebook in order to see your website. The longer you keep your visitors engaged on your pages, the more viral visibility you gain.  Branding can make a promotion compelling while allowing you the space needed to tell your complete story.

Reason #5 - MLM & Network Marketers Can Get Business Directly From Facebook Custom Tab Fan Pages

Are you in a MLM or Network marketing company? Here is the ticket to appear to prospects that you are a top leader in your company.

MLM marketers can stand out from their own company's marketer's competition through the use of custom tabs. You can go directly to the replicated site available with their own code number embedded within it without leaving Facebook. You can impress the visitors you are recruiting with the feeling that you are the best upline to choose from, because your fan page custom tab display sets you apart from the other distributors. Through the use of custom tabs taking them to other online pages, slide shows, live chats, polls, quizzes, foursquare customer check-ins, yelp reviews, maps, ability to book appointments online, collect email addresses for emailing fans, their own blog or videos. Visitors can also buy your products or sign up to be a recruit right on your fan page.

Reason #6 - Separates Window Shoppers From Potential Customers

Want to increase visitor engagement time? The mysterious exploration engagement button is not a button, it is offering a multiple choice of tabs.  

By having multiple tabs you can increase your visitor's time of engagement actively alive investigating your company so they can get a feel of your brand while not having to hop off Facebook. Your pages will be able to separate or convert those visitors with a true specific interest in knowing more. The curious general public window shoppers can be converted to serious prospects or clients. New clients can set up their business accounts with your individual code number for your company and manage their own account right from Facebook.

Reason #7 - Branding

What is the firepower of your brand identity? You go from average and ordinary to remarkable and memborable with each tab they click on. With your multiply custom tabs on one site they can see and feel your same brand embedded in every tab they click.

Your Facebook custom tab fan pages can describe through images exactly how incredibly professional, modern, and current your service and products are.  The custom tabs or apps can be powerfully branded to match you business identity. If you want your business to stand out and be unique, here is your fire power for identity. This can make the difference between your visitors forgetting your business or remembering it. Your choice - get custom tabs or be ordinary and average (forgettable). Don’t be known as a plane Jane with a generic page and brand. If you want to be a top brand leader then you have to do what top brands out there are doing. Give customers a reason to believe you are the best out of your competition.

How Do You Keep Your Fan Page Alive And Interesting?

It is important to make your fan page unique and interesting not just in looks, but also in the posts. You can ask questions, share experiences, post fun things, give updates on products, promotional offers, coupons and more.

Remarkable results won't just happen with an ordinary non-tab fan page. Visitors won't give a LIKE to a generic boring fan page. 

Whether you decide to get assistance in setting up your custom tabs on your fan page or you want to do it yourself, having Facebook Fan Page Custom Tabs are extremely an important tool for getting your business exposed and increased.  If this sounds like something you need or want to know more about, or if you have any questions on how to take advantage of online marketing, contact us today, St. Paul Marketing Team, at 651-731-0768 or email us at info@StPaulMarketingTeam.com. 

Now It Is Your Turn…

Do you have a Facebook Fan Page with custom tabs? Which tabs do you feel have produced the most results for improving your fan's engagement?  Which tabs did you select on your Facebook Fan Page? What Facebook fan page do you love that uses custom tabs? Share the url for your favorite custom tab fan page so we can all visit it? Feel free to comment below and share your stories and experiences.

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Facebook Lists: Why And How

Are you irritated by that one friend that posts 20+ times in a day?

Do you rarely ever see certain posts from friends in your news feed? In this post we will explain how to eliminate seeing posts from irritating friends that post 20+ times a day and how to see more posts from certain favorite Facebook friends. We will discuss what a Facebook list is, why you want to have one, and how to use it.

What Is A Facebook List?

A Facebook list is a way to personally organize posts certain friends on Facebook into a personalized newspaper. By having friends organized into lists, you control your personal news. You see and send content, pictures, or videos in your Facebook stream based on who you want to see or hear from. Organize your friends by interests, how you know them in your life, or who you want to keep track of.

Why You Need To Have A Facebook List? Click On The Video Below.

What Is A Smart List?

Did you know that Facebook has an automated friends list? Click on home and then look at the left margin and you will see a list under the category called, “Friends”. The top four on this list is called the “Smart List”. The categories for the smart list include: close friends, acquaintances, family, restricted, city, and school.

Smart lists are based on the profile information you provided and where you live. It automatically places friends on those lists from the information you gave on your profile such as: work places, educational intuitions, and places you have lived.

How Can You Manually Add Friends To Your Smart List?

Select the list you want to add more friends to. On the right side, Facebook creates a lists suggestion of friends for you. Click on to "add to" your list. Above the list suggestion is a box that says, “+Add friends to this list”. Enter the names or emails of friends you wish to add to this list in the box provided. If you add people into your “Family List” they will be notified to confirm this.  Other lists don’t require confirmation notifications. In fact no one will know which list you put them under except the family one.  

Here Are A Few Examples Of Possible Lists:

• Famous
• Not Sure
• Bloggers
• Great Photos
• Ex-Coworkers
• Posts Too Much
• Hot Singles
• Make Me Smile
• Dump After Reaching 5,000
• Religious

How Can You Manage Your Lists?

After you have added people to your lists you created, you can manage the different kinds of notifications that you can see from your lists. Click on the particular list; go to the top right side where you will find a button that says "Manage List".  Click on the small triangle next to it and a list should pop up. It will give you the selection of rename list, edit list, choose update types, and delete list.

If you click on Choose Update Types, up pops the following list with checkmarks in front of the following selections: status updates, photos, games, comments and likes, music and videos, and other activity. Just click on the checkmark of the selection you wish to eliminate.  It will remove the checkmark and you will no longer see that category from the friends in that list. For instance I don't like to see games so I have unchecked games on each of my lists.

How Can You Organize Facebook Friends On Others Lists?

On the left side where it says, “Friends” there is a button to the right of it that when you hover over it that says, “More” in blue.  Click on "More" and a page will pop up. On the top of the new page, click on “+ Create List”.  Another box will pop up, type in the name of the list (category) you wish to create (high school, sports, church, co-workers, etc.) and the names of people you want to go on that list, then click on create that is in blue.

Time Management

No longer will you be swimming like a fish lost in a sea of Facebook posts and chaos. Once you get your lists organized you will save time. Just click on a particular list and find posts that you wish to hear from.

Your Turn ...

If you find using Facebook lists has improved your experiences on Facebook in same manner, share with us below. What other creative lists categories have you made?

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8 Benefits Of Mobile Marketing For A Business

Looking for another way to market to existing customers?

Do you realize you might have an untapped gold mine among your present customers you already have? The search for a high-impact and cost-effective method to increase revenue can be found by looking at existing customers. This is a great way to gain additional sales for your business.  A business that markets to its existing customers can do so at a lower cost than trying to gain different groups of new customers.  A business can use mobile marketing to achieve this goal. Below are 8 benefits that make mobile marketing a smart choice for a marketing strategy of a business.

#1 - Opt-In Option

Mobile marketing is an opt-in option since subscribers have signed up or opted in to receive a message periodically by email or on their mobile device. This means that messages need to be tailored to all the subscribers of a mobile marketing campaign.

#2 - Immediate Impact

Mobile marketing promotions can be seen by users instantly.  A new message can be easily created and executed. Messages that are sent will be received in seconds by all users. This means that you may have customers in different areas that will receive a message almost instantly.  Another bonus is that the message can easily be forwarded or shared on social media sites.  

#3 - Affordable Cost

The cost of mobile marketing is much less than traditional marketing methods.  A business does not pay any postage, printing costs, or air time for a commercial. You can send messages in bulk that often cost less as the volume of messages increases. This is a good option when a business has a small budget for advertising.

#4 - Conversion Rates

Mobile marketing offers a higher rate of conversion because messages can highlight a specific product or service that is directed to a specific audience. This will often result in response rates that are high to convert a large number of subscribers into paying customers. Mobile marketing is able to offer users a discount or special promotion. Response rates are often 10 percent or higher.

#5 - Customer Engagement

Customers of a business with a mobile device or smartphone can be easily updated with important and up-to-date information about a business. This helps engage customers with messages that include a call to action. This can include stopping in on a specific day or visiting a business's website.

#6 - Customer Feedback

Messages can be sent to subscribers to gain feedback on a product, service, or a recent promotion. This is a great way to determine the preferences of customers. They can let a business know if they like an aspect of a business or voice their displeasure. Feedback can be used to improve products and a service to customers.

#7 - Mobile Website Versions

Consider creating a mobile version of your website. This gives mobile users that ability to view the site and the information you want  to provide to your customers.

#8 - Target Marketing

Tools are available that allow marketers to determine the location of the customers for a business. This provides another way a business can easily engage their customers.

Your Turn ....

If you are currently experiencing great results with mobile marketing, we need to hear from you!  Add your comments and tips below.  

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Kanchan Bhattacharjee has a wide knowledge regarding internet service deals provided by the best Internet providers. If you are looking for the best deal from the best provider then visit Internetproviders.net

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How Can Blogging Help Your Local Business?

Are you a local business owner that is looking for new strategies to get more customers?

If you have a website for your company, the next step to enhance your website and get traffic to it is to establish a blog. What can a blog do? In this article we will discuss how a blog can raise your company’s brand, get more traffic to your site, and make your business look like the credible source. If you want a result that can translate into more money and customers then blogging would be beneficial for your business.

Blogging Reason #1 – Improved SEO Rank

Do you want more traffic to your site? Do you want more leads? By having rich content on your blog with relevant keywords that people are searching for, it will get more comments, attention, likes, shares, etc. If you had many articles that provided fresh unique content, your blog will rank on page 1 in the search engines. Blogging is a natural way to optimize your site for search engines to get your business found! Your articles could rank for various combinations and get free traffic.  Each new blog post you publish creates another way for prospects to find you. If you were Google looking at dozens of small static websites a thriving blog found on one site could be a huge quality signal, boosting that business blog to the top of the SERPs for many of their primary keywords. The higher your blog appears on the search engines results, the more people will visit your blog.  Which means, more exposure for your business. By adding local keywords you can also target your audience to where you live. By having a blog they are more likely to find you. If you’re blogging on a regular basis, there’s a good chance that Google will rank you higher in the search results. If they can’t find you online, they probably won’t buy from you.

Blogging Reason #2 - Increased Credibility & Authority

Do you want to establish your business as a credible source for a subject matter and the top source for your niche? If your articles are answering the solutions to all the problems they are searching for and your competitors are not, you will look like the credible source. When you have a great looking site that has quality content it adds to the favorable impression (“Yes, we’re the best business for …”). It makes them want to stay on the site and read more. By having a blog they are more likely to find you. When you blog, you create new content pages that will show Google you have “fresh” articles and this will also help increase your authority with them.

Blogging Reason #3 - Builds Social Presence

Do you want your business to be found on other social media sites?  People are finding businesses on social media sites. In today’s social media world, engagement with your customers is expected and having a blog is essential to market your business.  When you blog you add the ability for people to comment, share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more. This is working smarter not harder as your fans are helping you to market. We are in the era where recommendations from friends are valued highly. The more people that share your blogs, the more your business is being promoted. When they share your posts, those links can turn visits into leads.

Blogging Reason #4 - Build Trust

Do you want people to know, like, and trust your company? Having a blog can answer questions and be solutions to what they are searching for. What happens when a prospect visits your static website? What is there to set you apart or convince a prospect? If it doesn't standout they will yawn, get bored, and leave your site. When you add a blog on your site, they will discover a wealth of information.

Your blog should have articles with content that solve real problems. They will gain a better understanding of what you are about and what you do. When you educate people they get to know and like you.  This makes your business more credible and they begin to trust you. They can post comments and immediately engage with you. No more yawns, instead they will be more willing to contact you for help over another competitor.

Blogging Reason #5 - Branding

Do you want more control of your business brand? A business blog can allow you to dictate an image to potential customers. Blogging lets people learn more about you and how you can help others. When you write about what you know, what you are good at, etc. this is great for branding.

The best business blogs add value through fresh content before they begin to sell to their readers. They build a community and educate their readers about their market. The more they feel that they know, like, and trust you, they more they will buy from you.

If you have a business website that is missing a blog, you are also missing out on traffic, rankings, engaging with visitors, and more. Blogging is an essential part of your marketing campaign. Don’t skimp out where it counts! Start blogging today and show that you are the expert in your field.

Do you have a business blog that helped expand your business? If so, we would love to hear about it!  Comment below and share with other business owners what your business blog did for your business.

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5 Simple SEO Tips To Optimize Your Website

How do you beat your competition, increase your visibility, and get traffic to your site?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a technique used by webmasters to rank their sites/blogs higher in search engine rankings.  If you have enough money to hire a SEO company or SEO expert for optimizing your blog/sites then do so. However if you don't have the extra money to spend on hiring a SEO expert then there is no need to worry because you can optimize your website/ blog by yourself. SEO is a process involving experimenting and learning. What do you need to do to get started? Below are 5 simple SEO tip to optimize your website:

SEO Tip #1 - Site Map Submission:

Do you want the search engines to find your site and index it? A sitemap is a list of accessible pages of a websites or a blog. Sitemaps provide page rank and link popularity to all the pages linked inside your site. It can help with the usability and site navigation.

There are two kinds of sitemaps: HTML sitemap and XML. XML sitemaps are treated well by the search engines. Sitemap submission is the first thing to be done when you want to optimize your site for the search engines. You should also submit your site map to the Google webmaster tool and Bing webmaster tool.

SEO Tip #2 - Title Tags:

Does your site need a higher ranking? Title tags are an important aspect when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines. With well-optimized title tags, almost any site has a chance to improve their ranking.  With just a few small changes and you could rank for some very competitive phrases within a few weeks! Title tags are often missed as many web designers don’t seem to bother with them. It is worth spending a bit of time going through your own website to check to see if all your title tags are relevant and unique for your webpage.

Don’t be lazy and just put anything for the title as it needs to be unique. Title tags give a good indication about the content of your web page. Title tags should have less than 70 characters (counting all spaces) as search engines only show 70 characters in search results. Use of relevant keywords in a title tag is always suggested. Do not use the same title tag on more than one of your pages.

SEO Tip #3 - Meta Tags:

Do all of your pages describe what differentiates your web page from the competition? Meta tags (Meta keywords and Meta description) are used to describe the content of a web page.  Meta tags are divided into Meta Keyword and Meta Tag.  Meta keyword tags are not as important as they use to be, but the Meta description tag is still useful. A Meta description should be between 50 to 160 characters (including spaces). It should include your web page's primary as well as secondary keywords. You should use keywords in a concise manner so the description doesn't look like spam. Each page needs a unique description because every page is different.

SEO Tip #4 - Fresh And Original Content:

Do you want to be the authority of your niche? Does your site provide solutions, tips, and advice that no one else offers? Do you have a blog? There is no doubt that content is king and I believe it will be king always. To obtain better rankings in the search engines, write fresh and original content for your site or blog. Never copy content from others because this may lead to the removal of your site from search engine results. Update your blog/site at regular intervals with fresh and original content. Your articles should be fresh, unique, and useful to your readers.  The more fresh content you post the better rankings in the search engine and the more you will attract people.  

SEO Tip #5 - Backlinks:

Backlinks are the incoming links to a website or a webpage. Backlinks are considered the back bone of SEO. What matters most for backlinks is the quality of the link, not the quantity. The more qualitative and authoritative backlinks you have, the more value is given to your website or web page by the search engines.

Above are 5 simple SEO tips to optimize your website. There is no greater investment than SEO.  What SEO benefits have you found? What other SEO tips besides the 5 listed above do you feel are important?  Feel free to share your views about this post.


About Our Guest Blogger Ashish Kamble:

Ashish Kamble is the head of Operations and SEO at Parigh Technologies, an excellent provider of good SEO services. 

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8 Sure Shot Ways To Lower Down Sites Loading Time

WordPress really is one of the best tools around for making a 
fantastic website, and we've spent the past few months tailoring our 
platform to optimize the performance of WordPress sites.

We've also spent some time identifying which settings will make 
your WordPress site perform as fast as possible, and we wanted to 
take a moment to share our learnings with you. Based on our 
experience and testing, we've put together the following 8 tips to lower down sites loading time: 

1) Install W3 Total Cache 

Installing a caching plugin is probably the best way to noticeably speed up your WordPress site. In our testing, we've found that it can reduce your page load times from seconds to 
milliseconds! (Your own experience may vary, of course.) 

2) Switch To Latest Version Of PHP  


We've recently rolled out a much newer version of PHP, v5.3, which includes some improvements that make WordPress (and  other PHP applications) perform much better. Switching to PHP 5.3 is as simple as pushing a button. 

3) Make Sure You're Running The Latest Version Of WordPress 

Keeping your WordPress installation up to date is one of the simplest ways to ensure your WordPress site is running at peak performance. (You'll also take advantage of the security patches that come with each upgrade and prevent hackers from exploiting the vulnerabilities of older versions.) 

WordPress makes it very easy to upgrade -- you should be able to 
 do so right from the WordPress dashboard. If not, you may be able to use Simple Scripts to help you upgrade to the latest version.

4) Minimize Http Request 

Usually the maximum time is take by http requests so to lower down the time use less amount of scripts that include saccling up of any files from the server.

5) Images

Images are another factor that increases the site load time use images of smaller sizes and try to reduce the quantity of images on a page. The preferred image formats that you should use are JPG, GPEG, GIF ( for animation ).

6) Opt For Cloud Services

Try to include different cloud services for your need like registration form, any special type of integration like power point presentations, video integration as these cloud services have better servers and it will reduce the load on your own server.

7) Use Zip Compressor

Zip compressor is the most common compressor which reduces the size of file by 70%. Before you upload any file for the download purpose include that file in the zip which will reduce down the website loading time for initiating any download.

8) Use CDN

CDN ( Content delivery network ) is a set of networks distributed all over the world and contains the files of your website. When the user opens your website a CDN will prompt the server that is nearest to the user and the user will get the files from the nearest CDN server. This will reduce the processing time for any file and reduce the time for the transferring any file.

About Our Guest Blogger Arsh Kapoor:

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How Can You Condense Time Frames & Maximize Blogging Success?

Are You Looking For Great Ideas To Blog About While Squeezing The Most Out Of Your Time? 

Do you have a blog action plan? Having your own action plan plays a crucial role in the overall success of your online blog. In this article we will discuss some basic steps to make your blog more successful in terms of attracting visitors or other goals you may have.  Successful bloggers always know exactly what they will do to get what they want (even if they don’t always spell things right). Unlike the bloggers who blog randomly and pray for success, they follow their own action plan.

What Do Top Bloggers Do?

There are no hidden secrets; they create a plan to succeed. They don't just try their first time and succeed. It is through experience and practice; they train just like top athletes.  They list the tasks to be done, outline the strategies, and propose the tactics to achieve their goals. Below are three steps that will help you stay organized and focused as you build your blog plan.

How to Plan Your Blog Writing

Blogging Step #1 - Evaluate Your Writing Progress And Goals

Goals-Do you have blogging objectives and goals set for blogging? 

If you want to reach your goals, you have to stay focused on them. The purpose behind creating a blog can vary. Are you trying to attract more traffic and subscribers? Are you trying to generate money through online marketing strategies? Are you just sharing your expertise with other people? It is important for you to evaluate your blog and blog related posts to determine if your are achieving your purpose. Your readers will continue to follow you once they understand you are traveling down the same path with each posts towards your goals.

Audience-When you are writing your goals, keep your audience in mind.

Who is your audience? What would they like to know about your niche? What problem can you help solve for them? How do you meet the needs of your target market? What makes your business or blog special from your competition? What are they really passionate about? What would they be Goggling to find?

End Results-Know what you are aiming for.

You cannot measure your progress until you know the end result you are aiming for. Each goal should be quantified and have a date.  Example of goals could be: number of posts per week, number of page views, number of subscribers, number of unique visitors, Google page rank, etc.  So it will look something like this: I will post  2 articles every week, with a total of 48 posts every 6 months. I will contact at least 10 blogs in my niche where I can submit guest posts. I will raise my blog’s page ranking from 1 million to 100,000 by next December 1st.

Blogging Step #2 - Create An Effective Action Plan

Do you want to increase your blog traffic?

Then you need to know how to attract it and have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you won’t know the odds and it will take longer to reach no matter what your goals are. If you get in the increasing traffic game and treat it like it is a sport you are competing in, it will start to happen. On the other hand, if you have no plan or goal, there will be no increase in traffic.

What is your action plan for your blog?

As soon as you have listed your aims and objectives, start prioritizing by listing tasks and set timelines in order to achieve them. You can set different priories for different tasks; it all depends upon how you set your goals and objectives. Knowing the "why" of what you are trying to accomplish speeds up your results. When you know the "whys" you will know what order to put things in.

Have you checked out what your competitors are doing?

Check out competitor blogs in your niche. Make notes of what they are doing right and wrong.  Don’t steal their words, but copy the way they organize things. Your competition can give you great ideas for your business and marketing it as well. When you are all done with analyzing the competition go back to your to-do list of what you can do to make your blog stand out above theirs.

Questions To Consider As You Plan:

• How many hours can you commit to work on your blog every week?
• How often are you going to write?
• Will you be doing product reviews or writing tutorials? 
• Will you be answering customers frequently asked questions?
• Are you going to have guest bloggers, a staff of other bloggers, or tackle it all yourself? 
• What topics will you write about?
• What are the most pressing problems of your prospective clients?
• When will you publish your new posts, daily, weekly? 
• Are you going to outsource some of your articles for backup?
• Are you going to make some video blogs?
• Are you going to have podcasts?
• How many guest posts are you going to do?
• How will you promote your articles?
• How are you going to advertise yourself on social media sites?
• How often will you comment on others blogs?

Make an action plan based on the priorities of tasks.

Blogging Step #3 - Do The Work: Execute

Are you concentrating on the "why" for each tasks?

Constantly review your "why" of each task. Do as many of the tasks as you can do each day. Some tasks have to be put off until later as they will require you to wait for time or money. Keep reviewing your lists and checking off items. By concentrating on the "why" more than on the task, it will seem effortless. Keep in mind what it will feel like when you accomplishing your tasks. Feel the satisfaction as you cross each task off your list.  

Are You Using Your Time To Optimize Your Talent?

You have to define your goals and objectives in order to become a successful blogger.  It all comes down to your niche, purpose, audience, and your way of action. Use your time to optimize your talent more.

Why is being consistent in blogging important?

Being consistent in blogging is important because it is the only way to increase readers and achieve blogging success. One way of being consistent is to keep the topics within your niche. If your blog is about dentistry then you want to make sure that is what you are blogging about. Be consistent is important with the amount of times you post your blog. Readers get use to reading your articles and look forward to the next one. Maintaining content and updating your blog shows your commitment to your readers and subscribers. Blogging isn’t just about content it is about providing value and being the expert that helps them. Give your readers value in your content. Everyday action is the hardest one but so long as you have tried and added something meaningful every time you can't ever be down on yourself!

Back to you…

If you have a blog up and running, what has worked or has not worked for your blog? What other steps or tips need to be included that we did not mention? Will you try to plan out your blog? Please leave below a comment and share your thoughts.

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5 Great SEO Tips That Will Rapidly Boost Your Ecommerce Sites

Are You Linked To The Internet World Such As Articles, Blogging, Etc.?

Then you are likely to have come across our dear friend “SEO”! Well, Search Engine Optimization is something, that pretty much everyone is going crazy about. Those who work in the corporate world, educational sector, social work sphere, or people who do blogging for fun only; all must battle with the search engine optimization!

What Is SEO Or Search Engine Optimization?

Well, I like to go by the literal translation of the term: Search Engine Optimization refers to strategies that are applied to optimize a web-page for search engines, so the search spiders would pick them up more often. When you optimize your website or a page with SEO techniques, you are actually increasing the likelihood of attracting the search spiders to crawl more often at your page. After all how can you sell anything off your website if customers can’t find you? The more traffic you get to your website the more chances are the customers will buy.

What Are The Top SEO Tips That Can Boost Your Website?

Well this article explores the top five SEO tips that may come handy for those, who are running an e-commerce website. However, others may also apply most of these tips (with a bit of modification wherever and, if, necessary). Now, without further ado, let’s talk about the top 5 tips for SEO work:

SEO Tip #1- Update Title Pages Dynamically

Using the right keyword in Title tag may bring a huge difference in the search engine rankings for your website or page. For instance, if your website has title tags that look something like this: Europe Marketing, Europe Website Designing, Europe SEO Consultation, and your website is not getting a good ranking, you need some alterations. You may change the tag sequence to something like this: Europe Marketing, Europe SEO Consultation. Try building a script, so you have the exact log of the hits that a particular keyword brings to your website.

SEO Tip #2- Make Use Of The Active Window

Most users would not pay much attention to the navigational section of your website. A lot of people desire to find their answers at the content section of your website or the active window of your web-page. So, try inserting links within the content. Avoid leaving links at the footer because, it gets least attention (if any at all). A user is more likely to click on a link that is within the content they are reading than the sidebar, header, or footer.

SEO Tip #3- Link Up The Products Page Directly From The Home Page

Are your product pages deep within your link structure? This is a common theme made by many ecommerce sites that are not ranking. It is more beneficial to place a link near your home page. The more distance you bring in between a web-page and the home-page, the least domain authority it will receive. Make sure that you practice ‘deep linking’ strategies, so your products page links directly to your website home page. You can also add related posts in your blog articles and link them with anchor text. Instead of saying “click here” use keywords in the article that will link to other posts you have. This will make it easier for customers to find your products and for search engines.

SEO Tip #4- Get User Reviews And Guarantees For Your E-Commerce Website

This is a hard task, however, once accomplished it can mean the difference in enhancing the reputation of your website. Content by users, such as, testimonials, product reviews, comments etc., matter a lot. Get genuine testimonials of satisfied customers. You can place a picture of them or a video to show that they are real people. It is more believable to have a video or pictures otherwise people may think you are making it up. Have you ever been to a website that says Jennifer M. from Minnesota likes this? Well who is this Jennifer? It sounds made up and not authentic.

SEO Tip #5- Make Sections And Link Them Up

Try making several sections or categories in your products page and then link them all together, somehow. This strategy is useful in passing Page Ranking to most of your web-pages.

By following the above mentioned 5 SEO tips, your website would surely increase on its ratings in the search engines.

Do you have other tips or ideas that will rapidly boost your ecommerce sites? Do you have any suggestions that worked for you? Leave a comment below and share them with other readers.

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4 Vital Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

Why Do You Need To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings?

The Internet has apparently become the biggest database of all. Now data whether it is articles, songs, and movies are being added to the digital database at an extremely faster rate. It is tough to compete in the indexing and ranking of this digital information. As we all know people won’t look further than first two pages for a particular keyword, so it’s only plausible to improve your search engine ranking.

What Are The 4 Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings?

We have taken the liberty to outline 4 methods to boost up your search engine rankings. Just follow our lead one by one as we take you through a recipe for success. By following our lead you can achieve measurable results and considerable success.

1.    Advertising

The search engines operate on a principle that is same to the advertising based model. Produce great content for the audience and sell that demographic to the advertising website. By clicking the “submit URL link” you can submit links to multiple search engines and social bookmarking sites. It is a very simple process and time consuming too. To do that easily you have the availability of websites that would do the exact same task for you for instance digg.com and stumbleupon.com. Some of these websites are providing this service for free while others are charging a fee for it. Some reaps the advertising revenue. But you are only concerned with advertising on the top ten search engines. The others are not your concern.

2.    Paid Submission Services

The smaller companies may be hesitant to use the paid submission services but it will only work in their favor. It is important to be aware of the current trends prevailing in the market and updating your search engine requirements according to it. The consumers remain happy with the results obtained and so do you. It gives the company a competitive edge over their counterparts. With paid submission, you can get your page indexed more quickly. This method is effective and fast. Everything comes at a price is the moral here.

3.    The Spider’s Intricate Web

What are spiders? These are search engine programs that crawl all through the worldwide web and document data. Spider will record particular specific words and determine its page rank and index it. It’s a complicated procedure. For example if one word is used five times in a website, whereas it is used eleven times on another website then the second website will have a higher page rank. Spider is a very complex program and does thorough and extensive work. Some expert tricksters use keywords extensively on the white background to increase page rank. Spiders do take it in consideration. But you can get banned if caught. Even the images can be named as keywords to increase page rank.

4.    The Meta Tags And Its Role

There are two kinds of Meta tags.

-          Meta description tags

-          Meta keyword tags

It’s a small teaser to the website given below the title. But making tags appealing and attractive is a thing of the past.

In the late 1990’s, spiders used titles given at the front page to gain insight to the website. It can be any website. That isn’t the case any more. Website owners used Meta tags misleadingly so they decreased in popularity with passage of time and no longer play a vital role in ranking and indexing. Now backlinks have acquired more importance. Google no longer uses Meta tags for indexing.

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SEO: How To Get Your Business From Invisible To Rock Star

Have You Woken Up To The Importance Of SEO?

SEO, when combined with worthy content writing and complemented with capable marketing, can yield a successful business venture. Today, one of the simplest ways to judge the credibility of a company is by typing its name in the Google search bar and viewing the page results. If someone is searching for your business are they going to find you or your competitors?  Does your site show up on page one or are you invisible? Google is a robot and has numerous strategies on what your page is all about. Find out what people actually enter into Google when they are searching for your product or services.

Dominating Your Niche Doesn't Happen Overnight!

When people search, they are searching with keywords that interest them, not the name of your site. You need traffic keywords in your website and blog that will show up in the search engines so prospects can find you.

When wanting to commit to SEO, ensure that you do it the correctly. If you are not confident, get an SEO advisor (or company) that you trust. Also, go for referrals and make sure you have only ethical SEO principles added to your campaign.

SEO can be an expensive and extensive task. But when done correctly, SEO has tremendous delivery potential. If you intend to dominate your niche over your competitors for your target market, you should consider that it is not an overnight job. In fact if you do too much and too soon, you might even get your site banned.

Getting your business from invisible to the rock star of your niche is an ongoing process. Whether this may be your first encounter with SEO or you have been doing it for awhile, it takes time and effort. It is a long term strategy for online marketing and you are unlikely to see favorable outcomes quickly.

Is SEO Alone Enough To Grow Your Business?

No matter how small your effort to make an online presence, you have to start somewhere to create your niche in the World Wide Web. You should be getting marketing from a range of sources. SEO alone may not be enough to drive you to success. Indulge into other areas which can help your business grow. Think of other marketing activities that can give boost your SEO.

What Can Make Your Business Go From Invisible To Being The Rock Star Of Your Niche?

• Social Media - Popular social media sites, like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter have potential to deliver encouraging results. As these social sites  engage more and more people each passing day, they can be executed to complement SEO operations and take them to an elevated level. Google favors companies who engage more with their audience using social media as they can be the right platform when executed correctly.

• Blogging – Blogging helps drive traffic to your site and amplifies your brand. You want to answer solutions to clients so well that they will want to come back again for more information. When people search, they are searching for answers. The keywords in your articles will drive people to your site. Remember they won't Google your company name!

• Guest Blogging - Guest blogging on other sites is a great way to get high quality links back to your site. It can expose new readerships to you and establish you as an authority of your niche.

• Interactive Branding Email Headers – With the high amount of Emails traveling to inboxes daily, make your business stand out with an attractive header. Interactive links will increase more traffic to your site, fan page, blog posts and other marketing channels you have established.

Click On The Video Below To See The 12 Reasons Why You Need SEO For Your Business: 

What Is The Best SEO For Today’s World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web has constant upgrades and is ever changing. SEO is not restricted to keyword research. It is aimed at enhancing websites and generating traffic as one of the ultimate goals. On-page optimization, like title tags and copy optimization, is helpful. However, the technical SEO is the more critical part (like code). It involves elements on the page that a user can not see without looking directly at the source code.  This includes elements such as: site speed, ip detection/redirection, 301 and 302 redirects, http headers, crawler access, JavaScript, and flash. If you can master technical SEO, winning the battle is easier. Knowing both the on-page and off-page SEO can make you a sharp SEO practitioner.

Your web designer or web developer might not know much about SEO or how to rank your site well in search engines. If they have expertise in SEO, ask them to take care of all these things needed for higher rankings. If they have no clue, get an SEO advisor (or company) that is competent.

Do You Know How To Use Your SEO Tools?

You may find a lot of tools to deliver positive outcomes. You need to know how to use them correctly for best results. Link building is a practical solution in SEO. There are traditional link building ways that have a higher capacity than internal link optimization. Using directories and social media, both have the potential to give you results. You need links to use in both areas for effective results. Good site usability and worthy content (both creation and marketing) are other important considerations.

SEO has matured with time and you may need to catch up with the required skills to make your mark in the industry. The extent of expertise required may be subjective to your special needs and specific requirements. Concentrate on your target market and goals to travel smoothly in the roller-coaster ride.

Attracting traffic is all about thorough keyword research plus posting fresh interesting content answering solutions and optimizing your SEO.

What was your worst SEO mistake you made? What are some SEO tips that gave you great results?

About Our Guest Blogger Diana Maria:

Diana Maria is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology, health, and parenting. Beside this she is fond of games and gadgets. She also likes reading various articles on cellphonebeat.com & gizmowatch.com.

Visit Diana’s websites: Gizmo Watch and Cellphonebeat.

Connect with her on Facebook, and Twitter.  

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How Link Building Is An Important Factor For SEO

What Are The Main Fundamental Ingredients Of A Cost-effective And Successful Search Engine Optimization Campaign?

It is a mixture of techniques and skills that helps in link building. SEO link building has become one of the most significant factors in the ranking of websites online. When you add keywords with well written content you will have enhanced your website. It makes your website more accessible to search engines. Link building is another technique that helps in accomplishing good page ranking.

Why Are Backlinks An Important Role In SEO?

Link building falls under off-page optimization where you can not control the backlinks to your site. This means you don’t have control over who decides to link back to your website. Backlinks are important because Google views a website as worthwhile when others link to your site. The quantity and quality of backlinks factors are: freshness, quality of the contents of the site, and its distribution. There are numerous methods of link building that provide benefits on various terms. It is worth your time and money to start with high-value inbound links that will count more than your efforts.

What Is Link Building? How Do You Get External Links Back To Your Website? Check Out This Video Below On Link Building:

How Using Relevant Keywords Improves Your Website Visibility

Basically, link building means constructing backlinks to your site that will help your site to index better and faster with search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo. Moreover, the contents present in the link should be relevant to the topic and its associated keywords. Your website will be able to generate higher traffic with creating more backlinks. This is why it is very important for your website visibility and SEO campaign to have high quality baclinks.

What Is A Quality backlink? Check Out This Video To Find Out More:

Why Is Quality Link Building More Important Than Quantity?

The quality of the links is very imperative which refers to the websites and directories that are linking back to your website. Links submitted to popular and credible website directories give out greater rankings when compared to linking to ordinary blogs and websites. Consequently, search engine bots show links presented to related websites. The term bot is referred to as an algorithm of search engines that help to filter content and give out useful search results.

Link Building To Popular Search Engine Websites

The concept of link building is easy but the inflated difficult part is search engines do not give importance to links that have been unnaturally produced. They instead favor links acquired from well-known and quality websites (e.g. Gizmo Watch and Cellphonebeat). Search engines have the knack to recognize connecting a blog comment and a website link in any content or article.

Why Should You Keep Your Website’s Content Fresh?

It is necessary to produce quality and fresh content to gain high web traffic. Ultimately, the content you produce are read by people and they are the ones linking to you. Posting original, fresh, authoritative content on a regular basis will build your brand and site with visitors. When you answer questions it will encourage more people to come back for more fresh content and solutions. The quality of fresh and interesting content you post will encourage readers to share with others via social media, bookmarking sites, or word of mouth.

Link building is an important branch of SEO that can not be overlooked. To achieve success in SEO technique you need to stay patient, build link rights/authority, and then you can watch your website climb up to the top of the search engines with each quality link.

What other link building techniques do you use? What have you tried that works?

About Our Guest Blogger Brianne Walter:

Brianne Walter is a freelance blogger who is passionate about writing. She frequently writes on Technology, SEO, marketing, and social media related topics.

Visit Brianne’s websites:Gizmo Watch and Cellphonebeat

Connect with her on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.  

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6 Pinterest Pinboard Ideas For Driving Traffic

Are You Looking For New FREE Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Website?

Pinterest is the hottest new social media site right now for business and it is only in its beta stage. Pinterest currently is the number three most-popular social media networking site in the U.S., behind Facebook and Twitter, according to Experian Hitwise.

In this post we will be discussing what Pinterest is, how to gain website traffic from it, and pinboard ideas to help you get your brand out.

Did you know that Pinterest has surpassed LinkedIn AND Google + !!!. According to http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/21/pinterest-uniques/ Pinterest grew 52% to 17.8 million visitors in February 2012. Some even estimate that the net worth could currently be around $500 million . The average Pinterest user: 89 minutes/month and the Average Twitter user: 21 minutes/month (source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pinterest-7-7-billion-company-100000931.html ).

 What Is So Appealing About Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media site that like its name indicates - allows you to "Pin your Interest". It is like collecting a free bunch of magazines pictures without the cost or clutter. It has many great pictures to get ideas from; recipes and some even like to use it as a dream or vision board.

This visual, social bookmarking site is here to stay! Here millions of people are able to organize and share their pictures with “pins”. You can pin up pictures that you are interested in on boards for the category or theme that you create. Likewise someone might like one of your pictures on one of your boards and repin it to one of their boards. They can even "follow" pictures or videos you have pinned.  You can pin just about any picture or video that is out there on the web, and repin the image to your board. Friends can comment on your pictures and hit the "like" button.

You can invite friends from your Facebook account to join you as it is linked to your Facebook account.  When you follow a friend, pin something to your board, or comment on a picture it will be updated on your Facebook wall. 

How Can You Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic Back To Your Website?

Does your website have videos and pictures?  If so, you can strike gold by using of Pinterest to help increase your brand in a visual way. When you create a pinboard, make sure you put keywords in the description and include links to boost your SEO ranking.

Pinterest is currently using the "do-follow" links that you would use under a picture that you pin on your board for the description. Many other social bookmarking sites use this. It doesn’t pass on link power, but it does help associate your site with anchor text and increase your exposure. When a user clicks on a picture or video that is pinned, they are lead back by the link that you have typed in, to the originating website (if you have placed a link there). For example, if you are selling shoes, you could type in a link under a picture of a pair of shoes so when the viewers click on that picture, it will take them to your website where you sell that particular pair of shoes (by the link you have programmed in).

Just like other social media platforms, Pinterest supports the usage of hashtags.  Hashtags used on pins makes them more search-friendly.

Click on the Video Below To See 6 Ways To Use Pinterest Can Be Used To Brand Your Small Business:

Here are 6 Pinterest Board Ideas: