No matter what type of content marketing you do, keywords matter. Keywords help decide whether your YouTube videos will be found, your articles read, or your website discovered by people searching online for businesses.

Keywords are important to understand.

Before you start researching keywords, you need to understand two basic principles: traffic and competition. Traffic refers to the number of people who search for this keyword each day, while competition refers to the number of other sites trying to rank well for this keyword. It might seem smart to go for the keywords with the most traffic, but this often gives you poorer results. It’s harder to rank for keywords that are highly competitive, because big businesses have already established a firm ranking.

Long-tail keywords are the “low-hanging fruit” to go after.

A regular keyword might be something like “plumbing” or another short phrase, but a long-tail keyword is longer and consists of something like “after-hours sink blockage plumber in Denver” or another long, specific phrase. They are easier to rank for because people are probably not optimizing their sites for specific phrases. They have much lower search traffic, but since you’re likely to rank well for any long-tail keyword you try, it will still generate a significant amount of traffic.

Finding keywords for your business.

Researching keywords for your business is a tricky process. You need to find keywords that work with your business and are aimed at your target audience. You can hire an outsourced company to do this for you, or you can download software or use online web applications to do it. When you’re looking for keywords, there are a variety of strategies you can use to find keywords with just the right amount of traffic and competition.

How to target keywords in your content.

Some people get excited when they find keywords and go after each keyword with a vengeance. They write articles that incorporate that keyword a dozen or more times and try for high “keyword density” so the search engines know they’re targeting that phrase. It doesn’t work long-term, however, and search engines penalize keyword stuffing. Instead, focus each piece of content around one or two keywords and let synonyms, variations, and so on come up naturally.

Keywords are integral to the success of your business, and learning how to research and understand keywords is important if you’re planning to be found online by anyone who is searching for related terms. You can significantly increase your business whether you are an offline or online business by using keywords properly.

Author Bio : Kieran Fowler has extensive expertise in website marketing. Her articles mainly appear on business website marketing blogs. Visit the Webeden website for more information.

The post The Importance of Using Keywords in Your Content Marketing appeared first on Inbound Now.

If one blogger receives a TrackBack, then it is a nice way of knowing that the information they entered into their blog is valuable and is being referenced by other people in the online community.

There are advantages to be gained from the use of TrackBacks

They have a search engine optimization value that some people feel is important. They may attract new readers and may validate you as an expert within your chosen field or niche. Sometimes they are good for getting people to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed or newsletter. Google may be using TrackBacks when they decide which blogs are going to be authority blogs.

You can use TrackBacks to optimize your blog or website content

The Google analytics dashboard will show you where you have received TrackBacks. You should go over to the website that has referred to you and thank the author. You could also leave a high quality and supportive comment on the author’s content section. You could even refer to the author’s website in your next website update or blog post. You may even wish to go a step further and start a new blog post about a similar topic to see if you can attract any further attention from that author. You could thank the author for referring to you, and then tell him or her that you are going to do a more in-depth blog post next week.

You can figure out what types of blogs are sending traffic to you

If you can figure out the types of blogs that are sending traffic your way, then you can optimize your content so that it appeals to that particular target group. There is a chance that you are accidentally appealing to it anyway, but why not go the whole hog and start outright targeting that group, and maybe even promoting towards them.

You may even look into the idea of forming a partnership with the target blog owner who is sending TrackBacks your way. There may be a potential for a little bit of reciprocal promotion.

Figure out what your most popular content is

A TrackBack is a little bit like a vote for your web content. Why not use these votes in order to plan your next batch of content? If you are getting lots of these “votes” for one page in particular, then you would be a fool to pass up future articles on the same content. You could try building a series around the topic on that page, or even expand that topic to bring up and discuss any questions surrounding it.

You can use TrackBacks to decide whom to link to

If a certain blog is sending TrackBacks your way, then why not link to it instead of its competitors. If the blog master is pretty savvy, then he or she will notice this and may start sending more TrackBacks/links to your website.

A lack of TrackBacks may also be helpful

If you notice that a certain area of your website is not getting many TrackBacks, you can have a look at it to try to find out why. There may be a very good reason why that area is not getting many TrackBacks, but it may be because that area is lightly attended or simply not of interest to your user. You could remove that section of your website or blog. Or, better still, you could update and improve that section so that it is more heavily attended and/or so that people send TrackBacks to it.

TrackBacks should be used as all the other tools on Google Analytics should be used (as a guide for what you should do next). Do not base your decisions on what you see on Google Analytics, but do take what it produces under advisement, and never simply ignore what you find on there.

This was a guest post contributed by Kate Funk. Kate  is a passionate blogger and online tutor at Rushtutor .

The post How to use Google Analytics TrackBacks Feature for New Content Creation appeared first on Inbound Now.

1. Getting back links with a ‘nofollow’ attribute

Back links with nofollow attribute tells the search engines that you do not want them to consider that particular link. Google ignores the nofollow links and would not count them as a backlink for page rank.

If you want to rank top in Google, always do a quick check whether links on the page where your link will appear has a nofollow tag in or else its mere a waste of time. Ask yourself are you really interested to link your content with the page/link which doesn’t provide any benefits. This mistake happens when you are building link via link exchange.

Link exchange is a great way to build back links, but unfortunately you find a few webmasters who are there to trick you. Suddenly you may come across a nofollow attribute or your link may disppear even if you have paid for it. Therefore you should regularly check if the link is still active and there is no nofollow attribute.

2. Having a good link but with useless anchor text

Building link is a tedious process and sometimes can be very frustrating, so whenever you struggle hard to get a backlink from a website which has highpage rank, make the maximum use of it. Consider you get a backlink from a website with high page rank but your anchor text is something like ‘click here’, such links are of no use. So, the keywords in the anchor text are vital and hence the backlink should include them. Analyzing the anchor texts of links can be easy if you are using tools like Ahrefs and Opensite Explorer.

3. Having a link from a site that has tons of links

When you are hunting for blogs for blog commenting, you find blogs that show 1000+ links in the comments section. Now, question yourself is it wise to place your link here with thousands of links on the page? The answer will be no because no one bothers to see your comment or your link when it is included with thousands of other comments on the website.

Hence, a backlink is worth if it comes from a page which is not loaded with thousands of links. Instead of wasting time on blogs which are stuffed with links, comment/share your thoughts on active blogs where admin and other users consider your comment as valuable. Blogs like this are a great place to comment and express yourself instead of wasting time on unmoderated blogs with tons of links.

4. Place an image link in place if having a text link with keyword is not feasible

Sometimes the webmasters in a hurry to receive backlinks forget to add an anchor text link. In such cases, an image link can do the job of bringing in more traffic. But nothing is better than keyword in anchor text for SEO purposes.

5. Not using ALT text, if you can only have an image link

Text links are a better option than image links, but if image links is the only option, don’t reject it. However, make sure to use your keywords in the ALT text of the image link.

6. Getting backlinks from irrelevant niche sites

This is a costly link building mistake. When searching for backlinks, you should consider relevant sites only. If you have a dating site, adding links from finance one is not worth. It is true that it is quite difficult to find relevant sites to draw the links from but unless your site is in a very narrow niche, you are likely to find hundreds or even thousands of relevant sites you can get a backlink from. Backlink Builder helps you to find a list of such sites that are ideal for your niche.

About The Author – Diana is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, travelling and reading books. She contributes to Reputation Changer

The post 6 Costly SEO Link Building Mistakes You Should Avoid appeared first on Inbound Now.

Many people believe that content creation is the easiest way to make money from home. It is not that easy.

You only have a few seconds to engage your audience and have them stay a while and come back for more. This is why it is a good idea to ensure you are creating compelling headlines, interesting writing, and even awesome images.

1. Read Popular Blogs

Reading popular blogs is a good way to ensure you will be able to create the best content. You can find the most popular blogs by searching for them with Google or your favorite search engine. You can also visit websites like Technorati where they have the most popular blogs.

By reading the best blogs online, you can find out what makes them so popular. Read their headlines too to find out what the best headlines are to use to engage your audience. You don’t have to copy from them and it is best if you don’t but you can create your own content, headlines, and images by finding out what works for other people.

2. Group Brainstorming

There are many different ways to brainstorm but group brainstorming is the best way. This is because you not only have your own ideas to use but the ideas of others. Sit in a room with a group of your friends or other writers and have everyone brainstorm their own ideas and write them down on a piece of paper. Once everyone is done, you can then either have them speak aloud their ideas or exchange the pieces of papers with each other. This is a great way to find great ideas to create the best and most interesting pieces of content for headlines, writing, and images.

3. Ask your Readers

Another great way to find out what people want to view and read is to ask your readers. You can do this by writing and publishing a blog post asking them what they want to see in your next post or article. You can also ask them what the most compelling headlines they have ever seen are. Ask them also what types of images keep them coming back for more.

4. Let Someone Guest Post

You can also let someone you know, whether off line or online, guest post for you. Let them post their best and most interesting piece on your blog. This will not only bring more readers to your blog but will also give this guest poster a link back to their blog which will give them more traffic as well.

5. Keep an Eye on Daily News Articles and Social Media Posts Daily

To find something interesting to write about, read the news every day and write about it. You can also keep track of daily social media posts from those you are connected to or follow. You never know when a good idea will pop into your head for something to write just from the social media posts.

6. Share both your Successes and Failures

Write a blog post or article talking about your successes and failures. You can do this without bragging or complaining. Not only can you show people what you have done to make it where you are now but you can also share what not to do. This is interesting information because people are always interested in what helps others make money and what not to do to lose money.

7. Write About and Publish Infographics

Many people like to view infographics. Infographics are images with information on them. Not only can you write about what the infographic is saying but you can also publish the  as your image. This is a good way to create interesting content as well as images. You can share a new infographic every day by finding websites that publish the newest ones daily.

Alice McLean is a writer at bestessays.com with background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.

The post 7 Effective Tips on How to Create Interesting Website Content appeared first on Inbound Now.

“Content Marketing and Link Building – Content Marketing is Marketing or promotion and link building is a skill useful in such marketing. “

It’s all about attracting visitors: Content is the most relevant aspect as far as your visitors are concerned. Content basically consist of blogs, articles, infographics or any small or big information that people may find useful. Since their origin, links have been considered as one of the most important factors in SERP. Content marketing on the other hand, is a path to give exposure to your brand, whereas links to the sites act as votes in favor of our own websites.

Research about people’s needs: The very first step of every marketer should beto find such networks where people may stay active on web; pursuing their work in a field they are interested in the most. Companies which really want to get something from content marketing should provide something new and original every time, avoiding the pre-written content. Moreover, Matt Cutts has advised not to promote same content or article repeatedly on web.

Therefore, it’s time now to promote something new and unique which may develop interest among the visitors using such networks.

Steps To Successful Content Marketing:

#1: Define your content marketing goals

Before creating content, some points to be considered:
- Be specific to choose the type of content from various options, namely – webinars, ebooks, checklists, presentations and more.

- Give weightage to the look of the landing page for that content.

- Select an appropriate format to create content such as text, content color, relative images and many more. In addition to that, frame your content in a format that throws a great impression upon the visitor.

#2: Build Audience and Network

Try to interact with more people making use of social networks. However, be sure that you interact with people who are active and frequently logging in to their accounts.

#3: Write Content which proves to beeffective

Get reference from other articles or blogs to get the necessary flow in your content. Know about the specific interests of your audience and keep delivering your content within definite timing intervals.

#4: Bring Creativity in Your Content

Add interactive stuffs like polls, quiz and contests in your content. This will enhance the time duration of the users on your content compelling them to stay longer on your website.  This could be one of the acute ways to attract more traffic to your website which would help to deliver better results.

#5: Promote Content

After creating content, you could probably look out for the appropriate network to promote your content. Choose the network for promotion which could drive more people to your content and maximize the activities on it.

#6: Follow up Networks

Even if you are done with your content promotion, your job is yet not finished. Your real task actually starts now. Make a statistics of the networks, which provides you the maximum shares or likes for your content. Also, look out for the networks, where users can do more discussions for your content and so on. This will help you to make instant decision about the network along with the type of content.

A good content makes an outstanding impact upon the users. This may provide great benefits to you in the SEO industry. So to achieve success in SEO, an individual should be well aware of the terms associated with the content like impactful or result-driven.  Let’s have a look upon the nature of result-driven content.

Nature of an Impactful Content

Many website owners commit a mistake by assuming content marketing to be the process which initializes after building a site. However, this is not completely true. Content marketing is the process which can be started along with building the site.

Below are some of the steps which may help to develop an effective content:

 Step 1: Try to match up the words with search queries

People usually like to click on links which match their search queries. So brands need to know about such queries before developing content and should add those terms into their content. Apart from adding search queries in content, provide relevant information as it is the much needed thing for which the user visits the website.

Step 2: Content Structure

Is your content easily searchable? If the answer is no, then look out for the appropriate methods through which your content could be easily viewed by the visitors.

Step 3: Serve Content In Less Time

Make sure your content doesn’t take much time in loading and that it is instructive and to the point. These factors will increase the number of visitors to your content.

Step 4: Entertaining Stuff

It is necessary to develop a content that engages the visitors till the end. So try to make your content interesting and enjoyable.

Conclusion:

Content marketing is an effective strategy nowadays. Each link to your content is considered as a vote to give priority to content and by getting higher no. of votes, you could top up in SERPs. Make sure to create a content which implements all the above requirements, promoting it so that it suits a place to see more outcomes.

All Image Credit: Blurbpoint.com

Author Bio:

Sanket Patel is the Founder of Blurbpoint.com, a leading SEO Company since 2006 specializing in Advance Guest Blogging Services, SEO Services, Link Building, Online Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing and many more.  He has extensively researched on the ultimate recovery process of Panda/Penguin which is working successfully these days.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SEO.BlurbpointMedia

Twitter: http://twitter.com/blurbpoint

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/blurbpoint

Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/106037923634996585528/

The post Content Marketing: A Prominent Link Building Strategy To Earn Visibility And Links appeared first on Inbound Now.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, made headlines recently when he said “Authorship” would be the most game-changing shift in search-marketing to date. And that’s saying a lot considering recent Panda and Penguin updates that have already transformed the organic marketing landscape.

If Schmidt is right (and he probably is) the idea of authorship and author rank is something you will really need to understand if you plan on getting traffic from search-engines over the next few years. If you’re not familiar with Google Authorship, I recommend reading these articles first to get up-to-speed with the implications of the change:

What is Author Rank? – The best explanation of author rank I’ve found written by AJ Kohn of BlindFiveYearOld.com

Google Authorship and the Fast Track to Better Rankings: Case Study – Awesome case study by fellow Minnesotan Jeff Saur of Jeffalytics.com.

If you are familiar with Google Authorship then you’re aware of the dangerous implications these changes will have on content without a verifiable author.

This is scary stuff. But what should you be doing to prepare for this shift? In the remainder of this article, I’ve outlined the three things I did to get ahead of this change with my own blog. Do you agree with the steps I’ve taken?

Step 1: Established Rel=Author with My Blog

Admittedly, this is a no-brainer for anyone reading this article. I signed up a Google+ account and associated the rel=author tagging into the code to my blog. As a result, I’ve gotten rich snippets published within the search results (see screenshot below) simultaneously sending a signal to Google that I am the official source of this content.

If you’re not sure how to set this up for your own website or blog, check out this tutorial.

Step 2: Increasing My Author Rank

My plan for building up my author rank begins by contributing guest posts to established marketing blogs. No Ezine articles or Squidoo lenses here. Only real websites with real audiences will be considered to try to get my name associated with top tier blogs only.

Also, I’ve been linking to my blog URL and Google+ profile within the byline of each guest post when possible.  This is a basic tactic, but it’s helped me to gain a few additional Google+ followers as a result, which probably boosts my author rank a little further.

Step 3: Changed My Guest Post Guidelines

I’ve always had restrictions on the type of content that was eligible to be published on my blog. The content was required to be well written, at least 450 words in length, and on topic. But based the increased importance of authorship, I’ve added a new requirement.  Contributors must follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to be considered for publication. No exceptions.

If you run a blog of your own, you’re probably used to receiving the occasional request to publish a post on your site. More often than not the request comes from a sketchy looking email address like the one I received from someone named Mandy Pantinkin. Either the famous actor from the hit drama Homeland moonlights as a guest blogger or this is a made up name. I’m assuming the later is true.

By requiring guest bloggers to follow you on social media, you are validating the author is a real person. After all, how many folks that write guest posts don’t have a social media profile? The ones that aren’t real people usually.

How are you adapting?

You now know the three things I’ve done to react get in front of Google’s growing preference for content that can be attributed to an individual. Do you agree with my thought process? If not, how are you preparing for the inevitable changes?

About the Author

This post was written by Brett Lindenberg of 500aMonth.com. Download his free blue-print to getting your first 1,000 leads online here.

Twitter: @brettalanseo
Google+: https://plus.google.com/110823248848843183463
Facebook: www.facebook.com/500amonth

The post 3 Steps to Increasing Your Google Author Rank & Why it Matters appeared first on Inbound Now.

And rest assured that people are saying something about you on the Web; there is no such thing as a neutral online reputation. The best-case scenario is that your online reputation consists of positive reviews, enthusiastic social media mentions, laudatory blog entries, and, of course, your own company website, poised for maximum search engine visibility. The alternative scenario is that your online reputation is plagued by defamatory reviews, negative news stories, BBB complaints, and malicious attacks from your competitors.

The difference, of course, is the difference between ongoing success and utter ruin — but how can any company work to develop its understanding of its own online reputation?

Starting with the Basics 

The most common implements of reputation monitoring are Google Alerts and Bing Alerts; you can use either tool to receive regular updates whenever new search engine listings are published, making use of the desired search term — that is, your company name or other branded terms. These tools are foundational, and not without reason: They are great resources, and crucial for any business that is serious about monitoring its online reputation.

With that said, it is critical to be aware of the ways in which these Alerts are limited. It might surprise you to learn that there are entire corners of the Web that Google and Bing do not index — and, therefore, they are corners of the Web that do not register in these Alerts. These corners of the so-called “Deep Web” include social media conversations, as well as some online review sites. (It is also worth noting that there is not perfect overlap between the coverage areas of Google and Bing, so you really do need both of these Alerts systems if you wish to be comprehensive.)

None of this is meant to disparage the very fine tools offered by Google and Bing; it is meant only to note that it may prove necessary to augment these tools with a few additional reputation monitoring tools.

Additional Tools for Online Reputation Monitoring

We might begin with some of the most popular tools for online reputation management — such as Klout and FollowerWonk. Though often referred to as reputation monitoring tools, it is important to note that they do not offer reputational threat alerts, which is what most companies really need. That is to say, these tools seek to gauge how influential your social media profiles are on the Web; they do not actually tell you whether your company is attracting positive comments or negative ones, which is really what most businesses need.

There are some useful tools to help fill in the gaps, though — starting with SocialMention. This is essentially an online search engine that allows users to search for mentions of selected terms in social media conversations, on blogs, and so forth. The tool is not necessarily perfect or comprehensive, but it is close enough that it is a good addition to any online reputation monitoring toolset. What’s more, it offers “alerts,” similar to Google Alerts and Bing Alerts, which makes it convenient.

ReviewTracker is another essential tool, one that does exactly what it says it does. By using ReviewTracker, companies can keep abreast of all of their latest reviews, on sites like Yelp, OpenTable, and Foursquare. Given how influential online reviews have become, in terms of consumer behavior and purchasing decisions, online review monitoring is truly vital.

One quick note we might offer is that ReviewTracker is a paid service, which means that some smaller companies may balk at using it. If that’s the boat you’re in, note that you can simply monitor your online reviews manually, heading to your online review profiles at least once a day. Diligence is critical, however — should a negative online review appear, you will want to know about it as soon as possible.

The Importance of Online Reputation Monitoring

Why is online reputation monitoring so important? It is important because, when a negative online listing appears, you need to know about it and to respond to it as quickly as you can; and, when a positive piece of content appears, it is wise to harness it and promote it. The bottom line is that your company needs to know where its online reputation stands — which is why ReputationChanger.com reviews all of the latest and most essential resources for reputation monitoring.

Mike Zammuto leads a team of experts providing personal reputation management services at www.reputationchanger.com. Prior to joining Reputation Changer, he was the COO of ChaCha. Earlier in his career, he worked on .NET 3.0 at Microsoft.

The post The Importance of Online Reputation Monitoring appeared first on Inbound Now.

In fact, you’ve probably already used some of the new features without knowing it.

Say, for example, that you’re looking up car dealerships in your area and want to see where you can find a used Mercedes. You type “used Mercedes” and your location into Google and chances are a map appears in the right hand column with points indicating where dealerships are located, along with the Google+ page for the closest Mercedes showroom.

The effect of Google+ isn’t always as obvious as the right hand page placement, but if you own a business, having an account not only increases your website optimization with your regional audience, it also helps you get your name out there in more ways than one.

1. Google+ review pages

Businesses, whether they have a Google+ page or not, can receive reviews through Google+. In a Google search, the number or reviews appears just below the business website in a bright, eye-catching blue along with the option to write a review. If your business is a restaurant, then the Zagat score (out of 30) also appears (Google bought Zagat in 2011). For people who come across your business in a standard search, this feature lets them know what other people are saying about your company, but if you’re a Google+ user, you not only see the reviews written by friends from within your Google+ circles first, you also see who’s checked in at your business, pictures, and the ability to set up a visit through your Google calendar.

2. Circling your target audience

Google+ Circles is similar to Facebook friends but with the added feature of intuitively being able to “sort” them from the moment you sign up for your Google+ page. By placing people you know or customers into categories, you’re able to specifically target what you share and with whom. If you run a landscaping business, for example, you could categorize your customers into those who receive regular lawn service, those who only get seasonal treatments and those who have purchased major landscaping projects. You can then send out targeted messages to just one group, some or all.

Another way that your page allows you to target your audience is through intelligent optimization. Since your location and services are listed on your Google+ page, your page is much more likely to come up when people in your area are searching for your type of service. In fact, unless a person using Google search switches off their personalized search results option (a button in the upper right corner of Google search pages that appears as a figure’s head and shoulders next to an image of the world), then Google will automatically display results culled from their search history as well as their location and connections within their Google+ page.

3. Google+ Authorship

Have you noticed on recent searches that some search results appear with the author’s picture or an icon next to the result title? This feature is called Google+ Authorship. Not only does having a picture appear along with a link to your site make your search result stand out, it also inclines people toward trusting your site a little more since they’re able to “look you in the eye.”

To set up a Google+ Authorship page:

• Post regularly on your website and cross-post or link those articles/blogs on your Google+ page, making sure you include your byline each time.
• Once your authorship status on your site is established, request your Authorship through Google+ (http://plus.google.com/authorship). Google will send you a confirmation once you’re approved.

The only catch with Google+ Authorship is that your email needs to be connected to your main website in some way, such as Joe Smith is the author of blog posts on his site www.LeavesofGreenClean.com, so his approved email is jsmith@leavesofgreenclean.com. If you’re somewhat code savvy, however, some authors have found a way around this catch by using a rel=author tag that links back to their main website when posting on other sites.

4. Google+ Ripples

Ripples is Google+’s answer to social media analytics. While a recreational Google+ user might see a Ripples page as a fun way to see who read his or her post, businesses can gather valuable information from this one, comprehensive circle chart.

While you can view the Ripples on any of your posts, you can also view the Ripples of any public post by clicking on the down arrow in the upper right hand corner of the post. The chart that appears shows your post in the center with a number of circles radiating out from it, each with a name inside the circle. This indicates who has shared a link to your post and by hovering over each name, you can see what they said about the link when they posted it. The circles become smaller and smaller as they become more removed from the original post, so in one glance you can see not only how many people found your post interesting enough to share, you can see who your top influencers are.

In all, Google+ is less of a “ghost town” and more of a basis for structural change in how we interact online. And right now, it affords businesses with the opportunity to not only optimize their website but to effectively reach out to their target audience.

Have you considered getting a Google+ page? Why or why not? What impacts have you seen from the implementation of Google+?

Allison Rice is the Marketing Director for Amsterdam Printing (www.amsterdamprinting.com), a leading provider of promotional marketing pens and other promotional products to grow your business and thank customers. Allison regularly contributes to the Promo & Marketing Wall blog, where she provides actionable business tips.

The post Four Behind-the-Scenes Ways That Google+ is Changing Social Media Marketing appeared first on Inbound Now.

What is Market Research?

Market research is the overall task of establishing questions about your intended market and finding answers. Market research can take on a variety of forms and formats. However, you can categorize most methods into one of two categories:

• Quantitative Research: These methods most often relate to numbers and trends. Possible sources include surveys, polls, social media and existing research data. From basic interest in your brand to the efficiency of your campaigns, quantitative research provides numbers and benchmarks for charting and analyzing success.
• Qualitative Research: These methods typically work to obtain insight into various questions. Focus groups, face-to-face interviews, observational studies and other tools help to uncover the motivations and reasoning behind market behaviors. Instead of raw facts, qualitative research can help discover the why and how of various market trends and brand concerns.

In most cases, revealing the best ways to optimize your market strategy requires utilizing a combination of both research types. This provides a broad overview of your intended market, brand opinion, strengths, weaknesses and potential ways to improve your efforts.

Why Utilize Market Research?

Compiling the benefits of market research would take pages. However, these are four of the major benefits you can expect to gain from market research:

1. Improving efficiency: When it comes to marketing, it is all about ROI. Without market research to back your strategy, your brand could be throwing money away. Depending on your business, this could be the difference between success and failure. Market research allows you to maximize the benefit of each dollar invested in your marketing.
2. Spurring Innovation: When it comes to establishing your brand as a leader in your market, it is all about brand reputation. A major contributor to brand reputation is authority and innovation. By conducting research into the common concerns of those in your market, you can place your brand in a position to fill vital needs within your market. This creates an innovative appearance. With that, comes increased exposure and authority. Sometimes the best marketing strategy is simply knowing your market. Market research gives you to tools to do that.
3. Identifying Problems with Your Brand: Brand problems, such as poor image, inconsistent voicing or poor targeting, are not always apparent. With the hectic routine of growing your brand, things sometimes slip by unnoticed. Market research provides objective ways to assess your brand’s marketing and other characteristics from an outside point of view. By identifying problems with your marketing strategy or brand through marketing research, you can fix issues or shift directions before the problem becomes critical.
4. Simplified Brand Expansion: The insights gained through market research extend far beyond your marketing strategy. By getting to know your market, you can promote your brand using their vocabulary, directly address their concerns, find new uses for existing products or services, ensure your marketing is reaching the proper audience and improve conversions or lead generation. All of this results in a cascade of benefits that reach every corner of your brand. The cornerstone to this is proper market research.

When to Utilize Market Research?

Though market research has specific roles in creating a business plan, designing market strategies or expanding your brand, it is a tool that can be used for your business continuously. By alternating qualitative and quantitative methods, you can create routines that will ensure that your brand is always in the optimal position for success. Often one research cycle will uncover additional questions and fuel another. If you are constantly exploring your marketing practices and the state of your market, you are always primed for action and growth.

Your marketing strategy will make or break your business. Market research offers numerous ways to optimize your marketing strategies to improve the chances that your brand will succeed, grow and prosper.

Willie Pena is a freelance writer who enjoys writing about marketing research, social media marketing and also ethnographic market research. The best way to connect with him is on LinkedIn.

The post The Importance of Market Research in Developing a Successful Marketing Strategy for Your Brand appeared first on Inbound Now.

Currently there are number of blogs in SEO sphere, stating that Rankings do not matter anymore, as personalized results have killed the real essence of rankings. But I guess they are missing the fact that rankings are not just indicators for success or failure instead there are some other benefits as well as reasons why ranking should still be considered as important.

In my opinion ranking does matter and there are couple of different reasons for that. Today I am going to share few of these reasons why I still track rankings and will continue doing that.

1.     Client Requirement

I have been working for number of different clients. Some of them are open to new technology and are fine with accepting the change easily but then there are also some who are quite stubborn about any change. They are the people who use internet only to check their regular emails and for browsing stuff, (believe it or not but many of them still use IE).

What I mean to say here is that they want measured result. Obliviously every client wants to know what you have done the entire month because you are charging them money and its worst to pay money if you do not see any quantifiable outcome from it.

Rankings are easy measurable indicators for any campaign’s health, and so every client looks forward for it! It won’t be wrong to say that you need to track rankings because this will help you gain your client’s trust and work comfortably with each other.

2.     Problem Indicator

Ranking can also be a great help to track a serious problem in one go. For instance, there are 100+ keywords, that you are tracking for a project and other day you notice an abnormal fall of let say 15 to 20% of the keywords out of 100. This is a clear clue that something has gone wrong with the website or perhaps a Google animal update has rolled out. You can even track pros and cons of any recent change/experiment that you did with the website, through SERPs ranking.

You probably would now be thinking that you could track the same thing with traffic drop as well so why bother for rankings! Right?

Wrong! … Let suppose you have a gigantic website with tons of visitors per day and you see a slight trip in traffic. The reason for this trip could not necessarily be the problem but instead it can be something inevitable such as trends of search and more. Rank tracking will allow you to get to the root of problem within microseconds and you can go with the preventive measures accordingly before it is too late.

3.     Lower Hanging Fruit

Ranking is important not only to asses your present position for different key words but it also tells you where you should focus in order to improve your conversion rate for the business through online mediums.

If you are going to focus on rankings and track it on regular basis, you will see which keywords are easy to grab and where long term planning is required. Let say, you got some keywords that are ranking on the 2 page of SERPs. These should be considered as lower hanging fruit as compared to the keyword that might curtly available on later pages of Google.

Rankings allow you to decide what to consider as lower hanging fruit and what keywords need a long term plannings.

4.     Save on PPC

Businesses usually use a mix of SEO and PPC to endorse their products and services in digital world on an initial level. As SEO is a long-term game, so businesses invest on PPC to gain some quick profits while SEO is underway.

Ranking allows you to keep a track of keywords progress in search results and help you strategize further to reach your goal inorder to receive traffic and get leads out of it.

Rankings can even help you save on your PPC, simply! You track your rankings and see which keywords are on the first page of Google and if these keywords are in the PPC as well then you can easily stop it to save some real bucks without compromising the leads and traffic entering from those key phrases.

There are multiple other factors why you should not over look ranking as important rather focus on it for your further progress.

The above mentioned points are what I thought of  with to prove that rankings are very important when it comes to digital marketing and tracking your progress but  I believe there are many more reasons that you can come up with  … I would love to hear back from you in the comment section.

About the Author:

Sahil Kakkar is a search enthusiast and in the industry for several years. Sahil quickly understood the power of rankings and develop a Rank tracking tool that allows you to track the most accurate rankings (normal and local rankings) against 1000s of keywords on daily basis.

The post 4 Reasons Why Search Engine Ranking Still Matter For Your Business appeared first on Inbound Now.