For over 10 years now HTML 4.01 has been the standard for coders around the world, but since the release of HTML5 users web experience has been taken to a whole other level of functionality. Web browsers like Safari, Chrome, IE and Firefox have taken advantage of this new web standard and have implemented many of their features with it.

Because HTML5 has many advantages for SEO companies, not many know exactly what does advantages are and how to really take advantage of all the latest features.

Here are some simple key elements of HTML5 that will help your SEO:

1. Updated Semantic Tags & Geo-location Microdata Elements

HTML5 has the structure and elements to bring better visibility to your site. Header, article, and nav tags. With Geolocation Microdata, you can have search engines index your information alot better, including reviews, events, etc.

SEO benefits: ”With this cleaner code, pages will be indexed more efficiently. Pages will load much faster due to its simplicity and less call to actions from third party tools.”

2. New Media Elements

HTML5 will not need the the help of most third parties in order to access its rich multimedia features. For instance, playing audio or video on a webpage had no set standard practice until HTML5 came into being. Generally, flash has been the most called upon third party to play video and audio files in the past, but with HTML5 say goodbye to flash little by little. Embedding video into your site and having it work perfectly with mostly all browsers is the future of what HTML5 brings to the table.

SEO benefits: HTML5 videos will be indexed by search engines much faster. Videos are ultra-fast and are browser based. Also, slower internet connections can have a better browsing experience without video buffering since the downloading and playing both take place in HTML5.

3. Canvas Element

With HTML5 canvas you can now draw charts, graphics, or go all out in a interactive experience for your site.

SEO benefits: It provides greater stability as compared to a plugin since the browser includes the Canvas.

4. Local Client Side Storage

Cookies will also be a thing of the past as we learn that holding on to cookie data is sluggish at best and not the best solution for best browser experience. HTML5 only uses data when called upon it. Data is stored and accessed using Javascript.

SEO benefits: Website’s performance becomes unaffected even after storing large amounts of data.

5. Form Elements

The forms have now been suited with more variety and functionality viz. date, time, URL, email, calendar, search etc.

SEO benefits: Better design and functionality on mobile devices.

6. Multi-tasking capabilities through Web Workers

HTML5 has made web browsers capable of multitasking through Web Workers. Javascript used in the past could not even handle heavy computing. Scripts that would run for long also used to get timed out. The features of Web Workers are somewhat similar to the traditional Java or C# multi-threaded applications.

SEO benefits: Greater flexibility to the developer in separating the content from code intended for processing tasks.

Author: Luis Metzger

Courtesy of www.jemsu.com

Website usability is the key to a healthy, productive website and happy customers. Because a site that lacks focus, uniformity and usability can undermine the main goal of your website, it’s important to take a step back every now and again and ask yourself whether or not your website is truly working.

To do this, you’ll have to step into your users’ shoes.

This can be extremely useful, and may help you find answers to questions that frequently plague webmasters and business owners, such as:

Why do so many purchases get abandoned in the shopping cart?

Why is one page/product so much more popular than another?

or

Why is my bounce rate so high?

Ready to look at your website with fresh eyes?

If you’re ready to take a critical look at your website, take a step back and pretend you don’t know anything about your business. Maybe you have a question related to a certain product or service; or maybe you, like your users, have come to a particular page after performing a search for a keyword.

Whatever the case, it’s important to look at your site from a few perspectives. Take a look, for example, at the homepage, an interior page, the contact page, and the shopping cart.

From the homepage ask:

• Where does your eye go? (Are these the things you want your users to look at? Why?)
• Are you able to quickly ascertain precisely what it is the business does?
• Are you able to easily find what you’re looking for? (From the search bar; the page links; and the header and footer navigation.)
• Is the messaging (both visual and textual) targeted to the core audience?

From an interior page, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the second-level navigation make sense?
• Do the calls to action make sense?
• Are you offered links to additional, similar content?
• Does the breadcrumb navigation help you understand where you are?

From the contact page, ask yourself:

• Are you offered several ways to contact and “follow” the business?
• Are you given an idea of what will happen after you attempt contact?
• Are you offered any “next steps” after filling out a contact form?
• Are there things on this page that might not belong? (Calls to action, 2nd-level navigation, etc.)

From the shopping cart, ask yourself:

• How many clicks does it take to complete a purchase?
• Do I have to sign up, or can I check out as a guest?
• Am I able to calculate shipping costs early in the checkout process?
• Am I offered time-saving payment options, such as a saved credit card number or the ability to use PayPal?
• How long does it take to check out, from beginning to end?

By looking at these aspects with fresh eyes, and an open mind, you will be able to see whether or not your website’s tools, content, and organization, is truly doing what you need it to do: engage your customers with useful content while moving them seamlessly from introduction to conversion.

If it’s not, it may be time to take a step back and begin to think about how you can reorganize your website and retarget your content to make the most out of every pair of eyes that finds your site.

Author: Lauren Owens

Courtesy of www.morevisibility.com

Google has always remained a conundrum in terms of its search algorithm and the updates that it launches from time to time. It’s due to this reason that SEO is much of a guess-work for many SEO professionals. As a website owner or publisher, you need to keep yourself aware of all the search-related developments that happen at Google. Thankfully, Google Matt Cutts continues to answer your questions and remove many of your doubts related to search rankings or penalties. He does an excellent job by releasing Q/A videos.

Recently, another Googler John Mueller asked this;

Is it a good idea to add thousands of new pages to a website, all at once?

Well, this is an issue of concern. There are a lot of online businesses or companies that would decide to add hundreds of thousands of new pages to their websites, all at once. Whether this is something you need to achieve in several stages or at once is what you really should be careful about.

It usually happens when you want to launch or add a new section to an existing website. So, what do you do?

Well, Matt Cutts answers.

According to Matt Cutts, it’s a warning sign if Google detects a case where thousands of new pages are added to a website all at once. In most of these cases, Google may want to review a specific website manually. The fact of the matter is that it happens very rarely that a website adds hundreds of thousands of pages overnight. That’s why it raises a red flag with Google.

But, you know what, Google has a strong point to make if something like this happens. According to Matt Cutts, it’s highly unlikely that one can add a new section containing thousands of new pages each of which features top quality content. As it may not all be high quality content, your website has good chances of going under a manual review.

That’s why you need to be careful!

According to Google, it’s advisable to start small or achieve launching thousands of new pages in smaller chunks. In this way, you’ll find it easy to focus on the quality of content while not making Google suspicious.

Therefore, it’s important to be a little more careful if you plan to add a new section which contains too many pages. At the end of the day, it’s all about whether you are creating top quality content. If you are launching new pages with scanty or low quality content, and that too in large quantity, you should be ready to face a slap by way of a Google manual review.

Author: Daniel Lew

Courtesy of www.gseo.net

1. DO YOU NEED A GREAT BLOG?

We are about to launch a new website called Blogican.com with services that a lot of people wanted forever.

Do you have a great idea for a blog, but don’t have time or skills to creat one, so it looks top notch? Or, may be, you need to quickly add another WordPress blog to your blog network and make sure everything is setup right? Blogican squad of professionals will install and setup from scratch a great looking, SEO optimized WordPress blog on your or our hosting account with premium theme, logo and set of great plugins IN ANY NICHE YOU LIKE. We will fine-tune everything the way it is supposed to be.

There will be basic and premium setup packages available, where premium one offered with original content, premium plugins and lots of other extra goodies.

Blogican.com is launching on Monday, April 22nd, 2013.

Click to learn more »

2. DO YOU NEED HELP WITH EXISTING BLOG(S)?

Blogican.com will be also offering some great monthly services for existing blogs, new or old, for very affordable fees:

• Blog updates – where we will keep your blog’s WordPress software, theme and plugins always up-to-date and functional
• Blog hosting – unlimited WordPress optimized hosting
• Blog content – human written articles – researched, created and published to your blog with relevant images on a monthly basis. Or, existing articles, republished from popular article directories with relevant images. Or News Sets in any niche regularly posted to your blog. Or related videos from YouTube or other video sites posted to your blog with titles, descriptions and even comments.
• Blog monetization – e-commerce products with your affiliate links from popular marketplaces or datafeeds autoposted to your blog.
• Blog SEO & Promotion – various services to help you promote your blog and increase quality traffic.

Click to learn more »
 

Blogican is BLOG I CAN where you can blog because you want to!

When people shop, whether online or offline, there is always a measure of uncertainty throughout the buying process. Typically, the uncertainty fades as the buyer journeys through the process of researching their purchasing decision. They gather facts about what they need, look at features, benefits, quality, pricing and so on. A brand that is really good at selling will be one that is really good at helping the potential customer to navigate through their uncertainty to confidence that they’ve chosen the right product or service for themselves.

Much of the sales process, after all, isn’t the product or service itself. Much of the time (but certainly not always), the customer has already identified their need themselves. They know they need your product or service. They are just looking for the BEST solution to their need. The better you are at this, the more sales you will attract.

One of the ways that you can help take customers from fear and uncertainty to confidence and action is through the use of a psychological principle called social proof. This is the phenomenon that humans determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. After all, it’s usually the case that when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do (but certainly not always).

The Principle in Action

I remember taking a younger person to our local amusement park. This person enjoyed roller coasters, but there was a new big one for this particular year. It’s 400 feet high and goes 0 to 120 in 3 seconds.

When we arrived and the little man got a good look at it, they made the decision that they wouldn’t go on. Of course, having rode the ride before, I knew that he would thank me if I could somehow convince them to choose differently. Basically, I was looking for a way to build their confidence and motivate action (just like we do with buyers). This was the perfect situation to utilize social proof.

The first thing I said was “Everyone else wants to go on it and no one else is afraid to. What are you going to wait all alone by yourself?” They thought about it for a second. Still no go. Next, I said “Look at all the other people in line. There’s like hundreds of people and no one is dying when they get off.” They thought a little longer, took a step toward the gate and…still no go. Lastly, I said “Look at that kid over there that’s just getting off. He’s the same age as you and he’s got a huge smile on his face.” BAM, it worked! And of course, they wanted to go on again and again after that.

Now, he certainly was alleviated of all fear and doubt. I had to wait in line for an hour with him shaking. But, pointing out that someone with similar qualities to him (age and size) sealed the deal. This is why you see TV commercials, infomercials, billboards and banner ads that contain people that look just like you (if you’re the target). It’s because this principle is especially strong when we view the others to be similar to ourselves.

Applying this to business

Buyers, especially first-time ones, always have a certain level of fear and doubt when it comes to deciding to purchase. It’s unknown whether or not their individual experience is going to be a good one or not. Therefore, marketers have to help them gain the confidence they need to “enter the gate” so to speak.

This goes beyond throwing more features and benefits at them and touting the greatness of the company. Customers need to perceive that people similar to them are extremely satisfied with the results of doing business with you. If they don’t, it gives them a reason to doubt if they are making the right choice, which can cause them to either go somewhere else that provides this confidence, or make the decision to do nothing at all.

While a good testimonial certainly doesn’t make the sale by itself, it gives evidence to your customers that what you say you will deliver upon has actually occurred before. Not only that, but it’s occurred over and over again with people that are similar to them facing the same problem that needs solved.

Author: Mike Fleming

Courtesy of www.searchengineguide.com

So July 1st is looming in the distance with gray clouds hanging heavy and your anxiety is building as to what you’re going to do the day the Reader dies. No one really knows why.

Well, you have options! Everything is going to be okay! Here are the top 6 best ways to get your RSS Reader fix and come to terms with the loss of Google Reader, plus a readers digest on the best option and why. Whatever your grieving process, you’ll be happy you read this:

1) Digg

Ready and poised to take Google Readers place, Digg is set to launch their reader the day Google’s goes down. Yes, I did say Digg.com, and no, Digg isn’t dead. Not only are they expecting to take that coveted place but they plan on doing it better. The plan is to incorporate social media aspects that Google decided to nix from their reader. Social media today runs the internet. It’s the best way to determine what people are really interested in and Digg plans to use this as a filter system.

The only problem is that they’ll be in Beta until the giant falls so we don’t really know what exactly we’re getting. Keep in mind though that Digg is looking to make a social comeback to the forefront of what once was their domain.

If the interface is similar to their Pinterest-like news home page, I think I’ll take it! I find this format easy to consume, with large headlines, an excerpt, and easy access to “read more”. And if social shares is well integrated, this would be a fabulous solution.

2) The Old Reader

Please forgive their name, for they know not what they’ve done. The Old Reader is designed in homage to Google, but much like Digg has decided to integrate social media so you can see what your friends think about the same things you’re reading. You’ll be able to transfer subscriptions, find friends via Facebook or Google contacts, and they’re even working on a mobile app so you always stay tapped in.

The downside? Their name really.

3) Feedly

The best thing about Feedly is that you can sync it with your Google Reader so any subscriptions you want to hang on to, just transfer them over with one click. This is the frontrunner and most talked about reader that may very well take the place of Google Reader. Why? Because it’s easy to navigate, everything is in a familiar format but with a nice hipster like spin to make it easier on the eyes.

I’ve yet to hear of a downside to using Feedly. As a matter of fact I’ve only heard of one: If the Feedly server is down then you can’t access the reader. How often is that really going to happen though?

It only took me minutes to get up and running with Feedly. I also love their apps, as I tend to consume most of my RSS feeds on my mobile. I’m pretty impressed, and excited to see how Feedly improves once they reach larger audiences.

4) NewsBlur

You can opt for either the paid or free account on this one depending on just how much freedom you want. If you want everything unlimited then you’re going to want to shell out the twenty-four bucks, at least to try it out for a year. If you’d rather not pay then you’ll just have to deal with being limited to twelve subscriptions.

What’s nice is that when you’re viewing each article you can see them on the original site, much like with StumbleUpon. If that makes no difference to you though, NewsBlur is a good option because you can curate the content onto your own blurblog, and organize the content that you really liked vs. what you don’t, similar to the starring system Google Reader had.

Here’s an example of the view. I have to confess I prefer the sleek, clean interface that I’m used to with Google Reader. I, for one, don’t think I’ll be spending too much time on NewsBlur.

5) Bloglines

A well established reader Bloglines has it’s place in the reader hall of fame. Why is this reader awesome? Because you can make your feed location specific, widgets help you organize and optimize your use, and it’s super easy to sync your current subscriptions so that you don’t lose anything.

What I really don’t like about Bloglines is when you switch to the reader format from the widget format it opens in, it looks very similar to an inbox. Google Reader is a great app in that you can see the bold headlines and a snippet of the article. For those who enjoy visual displays, you can change your view to an image based view.

Personally … I prefer to consume my news in a text format. It’s easier for me to scan and quickly figure out the meaning of the content.

Bloglines is definitely up there in my list of Google Reader replacements.

6) Yahoo Pipes

Quite possibly the best option available for SEO and anyone in online marketing because it allows you to filter to your heart’s content, something not easily done on other readers. I’m talking down to the most minute detail. This ability to synthesize only what you really want to see from the multitude, maybe 500+ feeds your subscribed to, is a godsend if you’re using this for content curation, as well as to spur the creative machine when coming up with your next article.

Using Yahoo Pipes you can create feeds and filter them by keywords, or you can get very sophisticated and create RegEx filters of social media searches or trending topics.

The downside is that the reader itself is hideous. Once you switch out of the pipe like filtering tool and into the reader of your compiled articles it’s difficult to process the information. You can access Pipes through MyYahoo but you’re confined to a 150?150 slot that looks a lot like an inbox. What I love about Yahoo Pipes? I can create an RSS feed of my filtered RSS newsfeed.

So What’s the Verdict?

Reading RSS feeds is such a key element of an online marketers life; through RSS feeds I stay on top of industry news, follow what other industry leaders are doing, and discover content to share through my social feeds. Finding a strong replacement is essential!

For now, I’m getting ready to use a combination of Yahoo Pipes and Feedly. Pipes give you the options to create an RSS Feed of your filtered subscriptions. Absolutely brilliant. So a great option is to subscribe to everything your heart desires on Pipes, then subscribe to that feed via Feedly, which hands down is the best option for those of us who have been battling addiction with Google Reader.

You get the best of both worlds, an aesthetically pleasing and functional reader as well as a fabulous filtration system that can pinpoint all the information you want to focus on no matter the industry.

Until Digg releases what it claims to be as the beast of readers, my final verdict is to opt for a diabolical combo of Pipes and Feedly.

Author: Marcela De Vivo

Courtesy of www.searchenginejournal.com

The Great Debate between Responsive HTML and Native Applications

By now, you’ve likely heard scads about responsive web design, one of the more important and trendy technologies currently on the scene. Responsive HTML is programming that simply responds to the user’s device, delivering an experience appropriate for the screen they are using to view the content. For developers, this means the days of painstakingly building sites for specific screens is potentially over, as responsive design lets webmasters create one cohesive site that works on desktops, tablets, smartphones and everything in between.

At first glance, it would seem responsive HTML must be the new obvious choice for all development, as it enables you to reach every screen with one batch of code. Depending on your audience, product and site, however, it may still make more sense to tackle each screen separately.

The big question though centers around the ever-present SEO factor: Is responsive web design good or bad for SEO? The answer: both. It all depends on you.

Responsive Web Design in Detail

There are essentially three key pieces of technology woven into well-written responsive HTML.

1) CSS3 Media Queries – These are the elements that identify the actual screen size and device a visitor uses to access your site. They test conditions on each device including minimum and maximum height, resolution, orientation and aspect ratio. These media queries allow you to determine which CSS style should be displayed for any given device; a critical step to achieving responsive design.

2) Fluid Grid Layout – These parts of the code are the magic that allow the page to expand or shrink dimensions so that it stays within the viewable area, without the need to scroll. Fixed-pixel sizing is rendered obsolete with this method, allowing the design to freely adjust itself by percentages and dynamically change position without breaking any other area of the site.

3) Fluid Image Scaling – Just as above, but for images. When images are sized using CSS in this fashion, the pictures work in conjunction with the fluid grid layout to achieve maximum design flexibility.

The Advantages of Responsive HTML

Besides the obvious flexibility, responsive design can save significant dollars by allowing developers to create one site only, rather than multiple sites and apps to cater to all manner of screens. While there are certainly reasons to create a native app, you need to first consider what your audience is looking for. If you offer services that users need on the go – like a restaurant, book store, salon or hotel – a responsive experience eliminates the need to download a mobile app, and will likely land you far more customers because of the ease and speed. Since mobile browsing is surpassing desktop usage across the globe, this is a major windfall.

It used to be SEO experts touted the responsive method as a superior choice because of the complexity of multiple URLs, but in recent months, Google has changed the game. Up until recently, Google was not able to consolidate multiple site URLs for mobile and desktop experiences and equate it to the same business. That, however, has now changed. If you have one URL for your desktop site and another for mobile, switchboard tags now allow Google to understand which site should appear when, and your URL structure matters not. One URL may still feel like a simpler tactic for your business, but Google will find you either way.

When Responsive Design Is Not the Best Choice

Last June, Google did declare that responsive HTML was their development preference, but they clearly stated they will still support dynamic serving and mobile URLs. Many wrongly assumed that because responsive is Google’s “preference,” it’s the only way to go. Google themselves still develop native apps for tablets, mobile devices and desktops, so that’s your first clue that there are still other factors to consider.

One of the biggest drawbacks to responsive design right now is speed. Because this kind of programming generally requires more code, responsive sites often take longer to load. Speed is a key SEO ranking factor, as Google gives preference to all aspects that create the best possible user experience. Slower load times could also negatively affect your site’s bounce rate and conversions. There’s a lot of research that shows mobile users are an impatient bunch, so make sure your responsive site still falls in reasonable load time parameters, and watch that you don’t lose customers because of speed.

Likewise, if your audience primarily uses one screen only – maybe your site revolves almost entirely around a mobile app, like FourSquare – then using responsive design for multiple screens wouldn’t make sense. Choosing the responsive route could also prove damaging to your SEO results if you only consider keywords and categories that desktop visitors will use, and not cater to mobile as well. True, this is more an issue with content than the code itself, but it’s easy to leave one audience out when you’re consolidating your efforts.

Your Key Considerations

The biggest factor in determining if responsive design is right for your business: your audience. If your customers are primarily smartphone users, they have very specific needs that would likely only be met through a mobile-centric experience.

On the other hand, if your demographic will access your site through screens of all sizes, and you are looking for a faster, easier and less expensive development process, responsive HTML is just the ticket.

No matter what you choose, you will obviously need to give heavy consideration to the unique SEO factors inherent with each solution. Responsive HTML isn’t intrinsically good or bad for SEO, especially now that Google consolidates link equity for equivalent mobile URLs. Again, it’s about your customers. If you find keywords and categories are similar across screen sizes, by all means, consolidate and enjoy responsive benefits. But if you need to consider your demo on a screen by screen basis, you may save time and money with responsive design, but the SEO and individual product losses could be catastrophic.

Yes, the current hype around responsive web design is certainly warranted. It’s a fantastic technology that is making life better for developers and users alike. But just as with any technology, it’s certainly not one-size-fits-all.

Author: Tina Courtney-Brown

Courtesy of www.infokwik.com

We’ve been working on a couple of websites that sell consumer product: physical objects, in other words, that people buy and use. When you have a site selling an object, it seems reasonable to use the name of that object as your main keyword.

People who are searching for a Roku, a Weber Genesis grill, or a 27? TV with DVD player are planning to buy it, the thinking goes. These are the shoppers you want to attract, so those are the terms you should be ranking for.

Here’s an essential question to ask yourself first: Does Amazon sell it?

If Amazon sells that product, you will probably not show up at the top of the screen when consumers type in the name of the product. You-know-who will. What’s more, they’ll offer a lower price, free shipping, and way more reviews than you do. Their shopping cart is probably snazzier than yours. There is, if we can be frank for a moment, no reason for the average shopper who wants to buy a common product to buy it from you instead of from Amazon.

The person who has vaguely heard that there are devices that can stream computer content over a TV is another kettle of fish entirely. That shopper will be searching for information. He’ll be interested in various options and ready to read an article that compares them.

The person who is thinking about stepping up, when it comes to grills, and getting something to replace that old hibachi is likely to be interested in things about grills and grilling in general. Someone who is dissatisfied with her current TV and DVR but isn’t sure just what she wants would be better off with in-depth discussions of TVs than with a bunch of different product descriptions to read through.

If you catch people while they’re at the point of developing awareness of a problem or desire and exploring the options, you are much more likely to show up when they search. If you offer them the information they need, and then provide an easy way for them to shop for the product immediately instead of going to Amazon, you are more likely to sell your product to them.

You probably can’t compete with Amazon effectively. Fortunately, you don’t have to. Catch buyers at an earlier point in the decision cycle instead.

Author: Rebecca Haden

Courtesy of www.hadeninteractive.com

How and Why to use Video Within Your Content Marketing Strategy.

I have seen first hand, through my career travels, how positive the results from implementing video can be for businesses and brands whatever the size or sector.

You may have been one of the few people that were skeptical of exactly how video would take off as another means to market content, however, it has persevered and is growing in strength and determination, to a place where YouTube is now the second largest search engine, and online domination within the sector is in sight, so take note.

It isn’t a secret that visual forms of media are successful, as advertising is based almost entirely upon the use of imagery and representations, however using video within a content marketing strategy is still a unique and brave decision to make, but one that should definitely be considered, before you get left behind.

Just as it took a while for brands to fully understand, embrace and implement social media knowledge, video is proving the same. However, this has set the bar high and everyone wants a piece of the campaigns that take the web by storm by becoming viral.

Successful campaigns include The Old Spice series of ads that was based upon obscure humor targeted at the most popular demographic of online sharers, the 18- 25’s. More recently #DancePonyDance has been shared, liked and retweeted beyond belief considering the concept is a moonwalking miniature pony. Similarly Harlem Shake, a song that people notoriously freestyle dance to wildly, has swept the world.

With personal interpretations popping up from the Armed Forces, right through to television channel presenters and multinational corporation employees from the boardroom, I don’t think Baauer, the songs creator, quite anticipated the reaction he has received.

These examples are, granted, quite zany experimental ideas that are based upon likeability and ultimately, silliness. Creating something similarly successful is very difficult and in most cases the response can’t be predicted as it is purely based on taste and judgment but targeted market research, as with other forms of content will give as clear picture as anything else. Scale these enormous concepts down and there is a real possibility to get your brand talked about by creating something imaginative and extraordinary.

A key message that I should add in here, is that video cannot be used as a cop out or quick fix for content that is lacking in quality. We have all heard the ‘content is king’ discussion many times, however this must still be the case, whatever the medium.

Proof it Works

Video has other benefits, such as improving SEO. By including relevant keywords within the videos description you can help rank that particular page for that term. Lets not ignore that the infamous Panda penalty is also watching the bounce rates of sites closely.

Videos keep users on the site for longer therefore can actually help keep away from being at risk of penalisation. Fortunately for the Marketers among us, it is human nature to respond completely differently when met with video content to the usual reams of text.

This is also clear by looking at the amount of impact different content has in the graph below. For example, a human face and voice is proven to make the viewer trust the source more fully as well as convert the information into more memorable information that can be drawn upon, therefore achieving the marketers holy grail to create not only a brand supporter but advocate too.

The key themes and messages you spend hours deliberating over how to portray, need no longer be such a task. Let a video take the strain whether it is a ‘presenter’ talking directly to the audience, a role-play scenario or alternatively a compelling kinetic typography piece (using only graphics in the form of animated words).

This may all be ringing alarm bells or making you nervous as to how this medium could make a huge dent in your budgets, but, surprisingly it doesn’t need to. Even more reason to give it a chance!

As you can see from the content funnel, video is shown to raise awareness of your company and campaign but also converts that awareness into sales and leads, making a positive ROI, which is a rarity for one medium of content and realistically often the decider between giving it a go, or not.

This may seem like the ‘trendy’ thing to be doing, and lets face it, there always seems to be something that gets portrayed as the new, in thing for marketing, that will blow your competitors out of the water, but I’d like to suggest that video might indeed be one of the best tools for the job. Your content doesn’t need to be any less targeted and its success is as measurable using readily available metric tools, as any other parts of your strategy.

Video is as accessible, if not more so, than a lot of other types of content due to the emergence of apps to allow consumers to not only view video content on mobiles and tablets but to also contribute and create their own.

This availability of every content type, whenever and wherever you are, has happened within the same time frame as the steep increase in the popularity of social platforms, which has inadvertently created a fusion of the two, resulting in the way we receive and share information has drastically altered.

It is clear that video is instrumentally important within this with sites such as Twitter and Facebook undergoing huge redevelopment to optimize for this, more interactive content. The emergence of other moving image apps like YouTube, Vimeo and Vine are on the market due to demand and are being lapped up by audiences worldwide.

Where to Start

Some handy considerations to make before you start shooting or looking for an agency to help you out are similar to that of written content, as the two need to not only compliment each other, but also bring something a bit extra to the table in order to make it interesting.

Think about the style, tone, video length, shot choices, locations, presenters or storylines, graphics and of course the social sharing options or ability for the viewer to interact with what they are watching using a hash tag or specific twitter handle, for example.

Create a document so that the entire team understands what remit they are working to and encourage input, all worthy campaigns are continuously evolving, if things are left stagnant the likelihood is it won’t be so effective.

Once the video is created and ready to launch, plan the best way to amplify it using a variety of social channels, as well as featured within your company website. If you plan to make several videos then it may be useful to create a branded channel on You Tube but show the links in a video specific tab on the website.

The advantages of doing this are the space and speed your website will run at if rammed with large video files as well as the ease of quantifying views and shares which would be simpler by utilizing an existing platform.

Getting it Watched.

One of the best ways to ensure your video is a success on social platforms is to amplify its reach to a relevant audience on Facebook. By using Facebook’s Power Editor you can specify which post to amplify and ensure that the audience you target only get served the ad as a news feed placement amongst the posts of their friends and liked pages.

The great thing about promoting your video in this way is that you can specify exactly who you would like to see your video, whether they like your page or not.

In a recent campaign we ran, we achieved over 10,000 views for a very targeted audience for a client in the financial services sector. This worked out at 4p per video play, which with the high returns in that sector worked out to be a very cost effective method of promotion.

The great thing about amplifying in Facebook is that whilst you achieve your primary aim of video plays, you will also see secondary benefits such as an increase in page likes and engagement.

A Word from the Experts

So, before this begins to sound like just little old me singing the gospel of video-logy there are some other reputable people that actually agree and here’s a few examples of why…

First up is Brendan Cournoyer, Content Marketing Manager at BrainShark. When quizzed about his feelings towards video he said,

“Video allows you to repurpose old ideas into new formats, and generate more content. It helps you extend the reach of your business by exposing your brand to new audiences that prefer video to text.”

“It creates more impactful content that engages viewers, as people tend to retain more information when they can see AND hear it. It can improve overall SEO as search engines like Google continue to place more value on pages with video content. It creates new resources for your audience to share with others via email and social media”

“It allows you to reach new mobile audiences who can now watch video content via their smartphones and tablets. It can even help boost open and click-through rates for demand gen and email marketing campaigns.” Amen Mr Cournoyer!

See, my one-woman campaign for cool, experimental video actually has some reputable supporters! Here’s another from Sean Rosensteel’s recent Forbes post.

“There’s a powerful psychological factor in actually seeing someone make a concerned comment, critical review or passionate personal opinion. This kind of message just pops up out of the social stream because it’s a living, breathing engagement. I call it “social proof” because you get more than the words, you get the holistic message – the subtle body language, the mild inflections and the look. Everything coupled together brings true authenticity to the message”

“So consider “social proof” as a newborn, hot and emerging trend going forward. This heightened form of social engagement is being used by forward-thinking and savvy marketers. They’re leveraging video in ingenious ways, and building up their social stature to boot. It’s social proof in action. Why is it working? Because as social grows, so does the value of and the demand for more meaningful digital relationships, or social engagement. My prediction? Social and video will find pure bliss in 2013.” Here, here Sean, we at Zazzle agree with you.

Finishing off my expert perspectives with a few words from Rand Fishkin, CEO and Founder of SEOMoz on the technical benefits of video.

“Video content is helpful for SEO in two ways: directly and indirectly. Directly, video earns interest, links, embeds, and social shares, all of which contribute to rankings and visibility in the search engines”

“Video also gives publishers a direct opportunity to compete in the YouTube search results, and YouTube’s actually the second largest search engine (by query volume) in the US, behind only Google itself. Indirectly, video has the opportunity to earn rich snippets, which increase click-through-rate on organic listings and to earn greater branding value than raw text or images by themselves”

“Video is memorable and engaging to a degree that other content types are not. Here at Moz, we consider it a win when a video earns half as many views as a standard blog article because we know the brand value of a video is so much higher.”

Final Word

.

Twitter updates, earlier this week has encouraged video sharing from the top video sites, such as Vine and Youtube as it now doesn’t support Moby Picture, Vodpod or Posterous. This constant updating in the methods in which we can distribute and share video information is narrowing the options available to us forcing us to use these ‘premium’ sites.

This will result in one superior set of social platforms containing well-made content. More than half of these platforms will be visual media, after Twitters recent purchase of Vine and Facebook’s investment in Instagram.

Platforms are now as passionate about being successful and social as they are for promoting good quality content that isn’t just a regurgitation of material done before.

This means we are literally on the cusp of a hugely exciting turning point within the industry where the quality of what’s being produced is higher and more competitive than ever before.

The most thrilling part about it all, as a content marketer, is that there are no boundaries for what companies can produce regardless of what their business is or does, so the bar is well and truly raised. This means companies are going all out to make their content more fun, more obscure and unique than not only their competitors but also those in other sectors and countries completely.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, to be memorable, go viral or be viewed as different in any way it’s going to take a lot of thought, planning and choosing an agency to work on your behalf that fully ‘get’ your brand, themes and key aims.

Alternatively you may choose to create a department in house if you plan to provide this kind of rich, blended content regularly, in which case, choose wisely and although I usually hate this saying THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, it’s been done, it’s continuing to be done and the market is already saturated. Create your own “wheel” and take advantage of those who can provide valuable insights into successful and unsuccessful concepts.

This will enable you to not only produce something new, innovative and groundbreaking but something that will take the world by storm rather than fall at the first hurdle, like minidisc players, 3DTV and robotic vacuum cleaners, which lets face it, plummeted faster than Felix Baumgartner.

With a strong creative team in place, combined with those able to analyse and provide valuable assistance to the ideas process, you essentially have a dream team that are capable of creating the perfect content strategy.

Key Takeaways

“Video allows you to repurpose old ideas into new formats, and generate more content. It helps you extend the reach of your business by exposing your brand to new audiences that prefer video to text.” (Brendan Cournoyer).

By including relevant keywords within the description of your videos you can help rank that particular page for that term. Beware of the infamous Panda penalty that’s also monitoring the bounce rates of sites closely. Videos keep users on the site for longer therefore can actually help avoid being at risk of penalization.

With a strong creative team, combined with logical, analytical individuals that provide an alternative view within the ideas process; you essentially have a dream team capable of creating unique and engaging content.

Author: Steph Grove

Courtesy of www.zazzlemedia.co.uk

When it comes to keyword research one of the most important things to factor into your process is user intent. Two people could search for very different things and use the exact same search query. For instance, if I were to search for “apple” am I looking to buy a new computer or do I need a pie recipe? Which searcher is the one you want coming to your website? On the other hand, two people could be searching for the exact same thing and use very different search queries. After all, “gym shoes” and “sneakers” could very well mean the same thing to different searchers. At the end of the day it boils down to user intent—how is your target audience searching for the products/services/information you have to offer? Those are the keywords you should incorporate into your SEO campaign. Failing to account for user intent means you could be missing out on a huge chunk of your target audience.

Let’s say you owned a company that sold accounting software for small business. “Small business accounting software” is undoubtedly one of your priority keywords and a good portion of your target audience probably searches uses that keyword or some variation thereof. But what about those prospective customers that search for “small business bookkeeping software” or “finance software for small businesses”? Failing to incorporate those keywords into your SEO program means your website isn’t going to do well for those kinds of search queries and your website might never make it on those prospects’ radar. That’s why it’s so important to think like your target audience when conducting your keyword research—you don’t want to miss valuable segments of your audience.

It’s also important to factor user intent into your keyword research because how you think/want people to search and how they actually search could be two very different things. Your industry might rely heavily on jargon but someone that is just beginning to think about your products/services might not be familiar with the lexicon you use. Believe it or not, I still get asked what “SEO” stands for from time to time. Someone looking for SEO services might actually start by searching for something like “how to show up on Google” (which actually gets over 14,000 searches a month). How is a site owner supposed to find an SEO services provider if they don’t even know to search for “SEO”? As the site owner it’s your responsibility to figure out how people search and decide if that’s the kind of visitors you want coming to your site. Remember—it’s not about how you want people to search; it’s about how they actually do!

User intent isn’t always something you nail right off of the bat. Sometimes it takes several months (or even years) to fine tune you keyword selection enough so you make sure your SEO campaign helps your website show up for the right people using the right keywords when they’re looking for your services. Keywords aren’t set in stone either. Search behavior is bound to change and you want to make sure your SEO campaign evolves with it.

Author: Nick Stamoulis

Courtesy of www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Are You in Need of a WordPress Caching System so that You Can Make Your Site Load Faster?

At the time of writing this post, the WordPress Plugin Directory features around 23,550 plugins, with the number of total downloads being 411,769,171. Apart from the fact that WordPress blogging platform is deeply loved by Google due to its solid SEO features, this platform is also popular for its plugins.

By using these plugins, you can get almost anything done without touching or modifying a single line of code. The official directory of WordPress plugins has a variety of plugins to offer. One important category among these is ‘cache plugins’. A lot of WordPress bloggers and site owners use them to improve the health of their web properties. You can use these cache plugins too.

But why do you actually need a cache plugin?

To understand what a cache or caching plugin can do for your site, you’ll need to know what WordPress caching actually means.

Well, WordPress caching is a process by which copies of your webpages are generated in static (i.e. HTML) format or cached database queries, and stored on your hosting server. So, when a user visits your blog or website, the server instantly serves them with the cached web pages of your site. And the database is not queried, thereby accelerating the page response time. As it’s obvious, the WordPress caching system actually reduces the download time of your site.

To create a wonderful browsing experience for the visitor, it’s vital to make sure that your WordPress sites loads faster. That’s exactly why you need to use WordPress caching plugins on your site. By using these plugins, you can quickly improve the performance of your website or blog, attract more traffic and generate more revenue. Therefore, you can’t afford not to use them, can you?

Now that you have clearly understood what a WordPress cache plugin can do for your site, you must be curious to know which ones are the best. Considering the high number of plugins featured in the WordPress plugin directory, it’s not quite easy to find the best cache plugins for your use.

Let me save you time that searching for the best caching plugins in the official directory of plugins might consume.

Given below are some of the best cache plugins that I use for my own WordPress blog, and suggest that you use them too if you think your webpages are not loading as fast as they should. Losing visitors only because your WordPress site doesn’t load faster is not wise when you have the best solutions within easy reach.

Quick Cache – Featuring a highly user-friendly interface, this WordPress caching plugins is one of the most recommended. The credit of developing this awesome WP plugin goes to Primo Themes.

W3 Total Cache – This is a cache plugin which most of the web’s popular WP sites use. If you want to increase the speed of your website by as much as 8% – 10%, you should get it installed right away.

WP Super Cache – This WordPress caching plugin has the potential to enable your site to deal with a high amount of traffic. This plugin is also used by several popular bloggers across the web.

Hyper Cache – If your hosting provider is not very rich in resources (as far as cpu and mysql are concerned), this is just the right plugin to use. One of the most salient features of this plugin is its ability to reduce disk storage.

WP File Cache – If you update your WordPress site pages on consistent basis, this plugin can prove to be of great help. This plugin is a little different in the sense that it does not cache the entire web page, but only parts of it.

Hyper Cache Extended – Created by Mapto Lazarov, this caching plugin offers an array of awesome features. In addition, it also offers support if you are looking to make your site friendly for mobile device users.

Author: Daniel Lew

Courtesy of www.danlew.com

As a web marketer, we often start working on websites after the initial development stage. It stands to reason, right? You don’t need web marketing until after the website has been built. Until then, there is nothing to market! While this may sound logical, when it comes to building a website that can be properly marketed, that process must start far earlier than website rollout. In fact, web marketing starts before you even settle on your new business name!

Without setting the proper architectural structure, and specifically, choosing a domain name and making your URLs search engine friendly, you’re setting yourself up for a whole mess of problems later on. Getting out ahead of these can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of development, not to mention the headache of fighting the search engines while making necessary changes.

Focusing in on domain name and URL structure, there are several key areas that any business owner will be wise to pay attention to while having a new website developed.

Choosing Your Domain Name

If you’re just starting a new business, before you even select your new business name, you first want to make sure the domain name is available. Unfortunately, this may mean having a few (or perhaps hundreds of) backup name options in case the URL for the name you want isn’t available.

There are things to pay attention to when you are choosing the URL for your website.

Purchasing Alternate Domain Names

Once you’ve secured your domain name it’s a good idea to secure some alternate versions. This is akin to protecting your brand. The last thing you want is some other company purchasing a domain name similar to yours as a means to capitalize off the brand equity you’ve been building over the years.

Here are some alternate domain options to consider:

Abbreviated versions: Think of ways to abbreviate your domain name and secure those domain names. Shorten words into a few letters, use the domain name initials, or a combo of both. (i.e. BFM.com, BisB.com, etc.).

Hyphenated versions: For ultimate brand protection, you can buy domain names with a hyphen between the words. Many businesses have similar (or the same) name and if the hyphenated version is available, they’ll buy it. This created direct competition to your brand.

Alternate & Misspellings:An interesting thing about my company is that no matter how many times we tell people, they still get the name wrong. We’re called Pole Marketing, Pole Positioning, and even Pole Positioning Marketing. And that doesn’t even touch the alternate ways to spell “pole” (pull, pul, pool). Grabbing alternate name spellings and even misspellings can help you hold on to your brand name, but also capture traffic from those who type your domain name incorrectly. Which happens a lot.

Brand Names: If you sell a product with brand names, it can be wise to buy up product/brand domain names. This is especially true if you’re building your own product brand name. As these become household names, you want to be sure to capture traffic from people looking for that.

Alternate TLD: There are a lot of TLDs available (top level domain; i.e. .com, .net, .org, etc.). Buying them all up for your domain can be cumbersome and expensive. But there are some cases where you might want to secure these, especially if you do business in other countries. Buying up these TLDs before someone else does can ensure you own your brand in that country.

Once you have all these domain names secured, you’ll want to implement a 301 redirect for each. This redirect will take your visitors from the alternate domain to your main site. Getting this redirect right is important. Other methods of redirecting, such as domain parking, 302 redirect, etc. can be lead to some potentially serious problems later.

Fix Canonical Issues

Every website comes pre-built with duplicate content. I addressed these issues in detail in The Complete Guide to Mastering Duplicate Content Issues. Without getting into too much duplication here (yes, that pun was intended), I’ll briefly discuss one of the universal duplicate content issues.

Every website home page can be accessed by six different URLs:

While each of these URL will get the visitor to the same information, each URL can be indexed separately causing duplicate content in the search index. Eventually the search engines get around to figuring out that these are not duplicate pages, but until then you’re basically working against yourself. And even once they do, there is no guarantee that you’ll get 100% of all link value associated with any of these versions.

Using server side redirects is the best solution to ensure that whenever any of these URLs are entered they all lead back to the one you choose. Talk to your web host to find the best server side solution for these redirects. The next best solution is to add a canonical tag to your home page code. It looks like this:

This tag tells the search engines that www.site.com is the correct version for their index and link metrics.

Keeping Your Home Page at the Root Level

Many times websites are built with the home page somewhere other than at the root level. An example of this was a site I had been to years ago called YourMusic.com. When you typed in www.yourmusic.com you were redirected to www.yourmusic.com/home/.

Having this improper URL structure they were setting themselves up for disaster, if not failure, if and when they ever changed the URL for the home page. While the redirect from yourmusic.com was redirecting properly, any change would have forced an additional redirect from yourmusic.com/home to it’s new location. This can cause a host of issues, not the least of which are lost rankings and loss of link value through any new redirect.

Be sure to keep your home page accessible at the root level, and redirect all visitors to that URL. Always.

Building Search Engine Friendly URLs

With your URL and domain names secure, it’s time to focus on the URLs of pages other than your home page. Many systems use long and complicated URL structures that you couldn’t type correctly if it was being dictated to you letter for letter. This isn’t what you want. The best URLs use a combination of keywords, good structure, and brevity.

URLs should be structured similarly to how visitors navigate your site. If your site is divided into several categories and sub-categories, these should be used as URL folders and sub-folders. For example:

www.site.com/category/sub-category/page-name.html

Using categories in your URL structure helps you utilize keywords in your URL, which can prove somewhat valuable to your search optimization efforts. It also gives the visitor context to what they page might be about before they even visit.

www.site.com/perfume/chanel/alure.html

In the example above you know that “Alure” refers to the name of a perfume by Chanel. Clearly this page is all about the Chanel perfume Allure. These are great visual cues to web searchers when they are scrolling through search results looking for a page that is most relevant to their search query.

Hyphens, Not Underscores in URLs

When creating URLs with multiple words, it’s best to use hyphens rather than underscores. For the most part, search engines treat them the same, however there have been some issues with them in the past. But from a usability perspective, in some situations underscores can be hard to differentiate from spaces.

If a URL is presented as a link, you want the viewer to know exactly how to type that URL into the browser bar. Any miscommunication here can lead the visitor to someplace other than where you intended.

Establish a Proper URL Hierarchy

Over all, you want to have a strong URL hierarchy that isn’t too shallow or too deep. Like Goldilocks, you want it to be “just right.”

Flat URL Hierarchy

If your hierarchy is too flat you run the risk of having all pages being deemed as equal. We often set up our navigation to draw our visitors through categories and sub-categories, and we should set up our URLs in much the same fashion. When “every” page of your site is essentially on the same level the search engines have difficulty telling which pages should be grouped together topically, and how to give proper weight to pages that are higher up navigationally.

Deep URL Hierarchy

The opposite of a flat hierarchy is one that is too deep. Instead of causing pages to appear to be of the same value, a deep architecture causes pages to have a far lesser value than they need in order to perform in search engine rankings. A deep architecture essentially devalues the pages at the bottom to the point of being almost worthless. Or at least, considered worthless to the search engine.

Perfect URL Hierarchy

The perfect URL hierarchy is one that isn’t too shallow nor too deep. It’s “just right.” You want each page on your site to be found within just three or four clicks. There are exceptions to this, depending on the size of the site, but most sites can be structured so any page isn’t too far removed from the home page. This is both in terms of clicks and the directories in the URL itself. Using proper URL directories allows you to get your keywords in place in the URL and keep a relatively shallow URL structure.

Putting all these URL tips into practice will give you an effective search engine friendly architectural structure that also helps your visitors navigate, find or understand your site. You’re serving two masters, but good URL practices serves them both.

Author: Stoney deGeyter

Courtesy of www.polepositionmarketing.com

From celebrities to grandmas, everyone is using Twitter to share content and links. As one of the most popular social networking sites in the world, Twitter boasts a huge following. By increasing social influence on Twitter, businesses and individuals can reach a huge amount of people with little effort. Here are five ways anyone can gain Twitter followers fast!

1. Search for Keywords

Let’s say you have a business that sells picture frames online. By searching for keywords that other Twitter users post, for example the keyword “photo frames,” you can find Twitter users that might follow your account if you post about related content. Instead of simply typing “photo frames” into the search in Twitter, search for entire phrases that include your keywords or search for similar words like “picture frames” in order to have a more specific search result. Include words like “want” and “need’ photo frames to view who is interested in wanting your product in real time. After finding your targeted audience, reach out to them on Twitter and begin interacting with them by first following their account. Favorite their tweet and let them know what you offer, without overly self-promoting. Take it a step further and reply to them in a comedic way – they will appreciate it

2. Analyze using Followerwonk’s Bio Cloud

By using Twitter analytics, you can find out more about followers and recognize trending data to gain more followers. The analytics app Followerwonk includes a bio cloud search tool that analyzes the bios of your current followers and displays the keywords most used. This feature will help you not only find other users to follow, but will map out and graph the demographics–age, gender, location and data related to your audience–so you can tailor your posts and interactions based on their Twitter activity.

3. Compare users with Followerwonk

By searching for information about your competition, you can strategize about how to grow your audience based on what other people in your industry are doing right. Using Followerwonk’s compare users feature, you can type in three Twitter handles of people or companies that are similar to you, whether they’re in your industry or sell the same type of products as you. The “compare users” search feature will show you which users follow two or three of the accounts. You should follow these users since they are obviously interested in the same product or niche that you are connected to.

4. Suck Up to People & Ask Questions!

Tracking users, following them, and engaging in a conversation with them usually results in them following you back. You can praise people by tagging them with their Twitter handle, favoriting their Tweets, and asking questions based on their expertise. This starts a conversation in which the user thinks positively about you right away and will consider following you. To sum it up, people like to be recognized. Hopefully, after they follow you, they will retweet or reply to your post, which will have your handle appear on their Twitter feed, and will result in their followers follow you.

5. Use Twitter’s Advanced Search

Some users forget it even exists, but Twitter’s advanced search can be a valuable tool in finding more users to follow and be followed by as well as narrowing down exactly what you want to search for. This feature allows users to find Twitter handles, exact phrases, posts containing either or both search keywords, tweets sent to and from handles, keywords related to or near locations, tweets sent by a certain date, posts with links, and more.

Author: Nick Walz

Courtesy of www.webimax.com

Landing pages, oh boy! For an average search marketer, there is no one day that goes by, without having to deal with landing pages. Sometimes tweaking them, perfecting that messaging, adding a tracking code or measuring that A/B test result, there’s always something they pull us into.

I’ve been a big fan of landing pages always, mainly because in a world (search that is) where many things are vague, landing pages are the only thing that has everything in black and white. They’re like your daily report cards, showing you how well or poor you perform by the hour, by the minute and the second.

Interesting isn’t it?

Well, let’s take a look at the some of the most popular and efficient tools out there that will help search marketers create kick ass landing pages.

1. iOn Interactive’s Live Ball Landing Page Software

One of my personal favorite, these guys are like the Tiger Woods of landing pages. An amazing set of tools, that integrate well with other platforms, lets you tweak data to the granular level and beat the s*** out of your competition. You like it or not, you got to have tried Live Ball, if you ever had a landing page.

2. Page Wiz

This is another amazingly simple landing page creator tool, that lets you a whole lot of things with simple drag and drops. It has got an A/B test tool, Load Balancing, Analytics and a Template gallery to name a few.

3. Hubspot Landing Page Creator

Probably the most convenient and versatile marketing tool out there today, Hubspot has a dedicated Landing Page creator, that integrates with almost all the popular CMS out there. One of their highlights is “Smart Fields” – which can automatically remove fields for which you already have information. Little things like this count!

4. Instapage

This is a fairly simple and straight-to-the-point landing page creator software that makes everything easy and simple. Several templates to choose from building landing pages here is easy as 1-2-3. They also have analytics and form generators. Probably not as sophisticated as Live Ball but does the job neat!

5. Lander App

These guys are the web 3.0 version of landing pages. Totally eye candy, apple like interface and easy drag and drop features, it is a pleasure to create landing pages on Lander App. It comes with all the regular features, Google Analytics integration, Social Integration, Email Marketing Integration, CRM Integration and support.

Author: Mani Karthik

Courtesy of www.dailyseoblog.com

Retail websites are flush with product information, specs, and images of items available for purchase. However, it may be difficult to find a way to provide detailed and engaging content for customers visiting a website when they’re just looking to purchase.

Starting a company blog provides a good opportunity to attract new customers and engage current customers with content about your products and other topics that are of importance to them. It doesn’t matter if the items being sold are car parts, clothing, electronics or furniture, there is an opportunity to help solve pain points and arm your customers with information that encourages engagement and purchasing decisions.

Showcase Merchandise & Industry Trends

Clothing: Showing apparel while still providing value to customers is easier than one might think. Use a blog to keep customers up to date on the latest trends, or mix and match clothing options using featured products. This may spark an idea in the customers mind and encourage them to purchase.

Technology: The tech industry is constantly evolving and most Americans want to stay up to date, or ahead of the curve. Your technology blog can prove to be a great resource for the latest electronics industry news and trends. Also, if there are tips and tricks that can be provided to customers on how to best use your products or troubleshoot common issues, you will prove to be a valuable resource to them.

Involve The Online Community

The community of online customers and fans are priceless to building trust in your brand. In fact, recent reports have found that 31% of surveyed consumers read an online review before making a purchase and 50 or more product reviews can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.

Social Networks Can Augment A Blogging Strategy

Finding the right social networks for your brand can be tricky. The company’s listed below are considered to be the top retailers on the big 5 social networks. A review of what social media strategies are working for top brands can provide guidance and inspiration for your social media and blogging plan as well.

- Facebook: Walmart

- Twitter: MLB

- YouTube: Nike

- Google+: GameStop

- Pinterest: LL Bean

Provide An In-Store Experience Online

For online retailers that also have stores, the majority of revenue will be generated offline. Why? Customers like to see and touch the merchandise before making a purchasing decision or obtaining help from a sales associate if needed. Online retailers can go so far as to create an in-store experience online. Find a way to provide content for customers that makes them feel motivated to purchase.

Whether you’re just beginning blogging or are on the hunt for new tips to improve an existing content marketing strategy I hope that these tips put you on the way to providing new and innovative content to your customers. In an online world filled with competition and quickly evolving best practices, it is essential that you arm yourself with the tools necessary to stand out from the online and real world competitors.

Author: Ashley Zeckman

Courtesy of www.toprankblog.com

Recently, many of our clients have been getting creative and really branding their businesses and their websites for the future, establishing the foundation for building their brand online. Unfortunately, this can be a giant headache for webmasters and SEO’s. It is critical from a SEO standpoint that we understand where to start, and further more, make sure you do all the right things at the right time. Since we’ve had such so much experience with this very task lately, I wanted to make a guide to help you through the process. This process is outlined for having your two domains hosted individually, and aims to present the easiest way to go about changing your domain from one to another.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

To have a headache-less transfer of a website you want to make sure you properly define your goals. For example you want to make oldsite.com become newawesomeness.com, it will be very important throughout this process to keep this goal in mind and know the two site’s identities. It can be very easy to make wrong moves if you don’t establish your current domain and it’s extensions from you desired domain and your new extensions. Just keep the end goal in mind and this will be a simple, seamless process.

Step 2: Redirect Like a Boss

Best practice all around for SEO is to make sure you have continuity to your website and you avoid the dreaded 404 errors using 301 redirects. This helps ensure that any inbound links you may have to a given page are redirected to the new content or a relevant page. Instead of a user landing on a dead page, you create a good user experience while retaining your links you may have earned. 301 redirects are an SEO’s best friend and should be a common practice to anyone managing a website. If you need a bit of background information on redirect and what exactly 301 redirects are SEOmoz has a rather informative redirection page.

While changing your websites domain you will want to make sure to redirect all of your content to the relevant pages on the new site. You must do this BEFORE forwarding your old domain to the new one. Also, this process may create a little down time for the site depending how many webpages you have and how long this process takes. Often if you are not building anything new you will just be redirecting that domain’s pages to the new domain with the same content. For example oldsite.com/we-love-seo should redirect to newawesomeness.com/we-love-seo. This redirect would be done on oldsite.com redirecting to newawesomeness.com. If you are also doing a redesign, it may be easier to do the domain change and then implement the changes to the design and content, just for simplicity sake. All of your 301 redirects should be a one-to-one match from the old domain to the new domain, otherwise you might want to double check and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Taking the time to redirect your content properly will have a huge payoff in the long run for the users and especially to not lose any SEO value you may have already established.

**If you are looking for some simpler way to find all of your pages on your website you can either use Google Webmaster Tools and see all your internal links(all of the indexed content by Google) or use a tool like Screaming Frog that will crawl your website and produce a report that can be exported.

Step 3: Webmaster Tools – Using the Toolbox

Once you have all of your redirects to your individual pages finished, and your new domain set up, create a Google Webmasters account for your new site. You will be doing a formal Change of Address through Google Webmaster Tools. The change of address can only be done if you have access to both (old site and new site) Webmaster accounts. This tells Google that you are changing your address and can expect the change in addition to the similar content.

The is the screen you will use to submit the change of address it is fairly straightforward, the change of address should be submitted from the old site’s Webmaster account.

Step 4: Internal and External Absolute Link Changes

Almost there, this is the final step in the process. Making sure your website has updated links, not only internally but also as many of the inbound links you can get updated will greatly help. Making sure your internal links, if they are absolute(i.e. http://oldsite.com/matt-green-is-my-hero instead of /matt-green-is-my-hero), are updated will help to avoid excess redirecting and any confusion from the user. Updating links will also help Google index everything quickly and properly for your website. You can also do this step earlier in the process if desired or convenient but is often finished after all of the redirecting and forwarding has been completed.

Branded Happy Camper

Using these steps and this guide will help to get quick SEO results when doing a change of domain from one to another. Google states in its guidelines to keep the old site active for 180 days after completing the change of address submission and redirecting process. After that point you can decommission that website and continue business with your new branded look.

Author: Frank Scharnell

Courtesy of www.ethicalseoconsulting.com

A predetermined site outline will result in a well organized site which will be easier for search engines to navigate.

A critical tool to help search engines navigate and classify information on your website is your Sitemap. While most blog layouts, such as different WordPress themes, are not terribly complex, developing a basic Sitemap and submitting it to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live will help ensure that these search engines are able to quickly and easily find content recently published on your site.

You can also use your Sitemap to provide metadata about different types of content on your pages, such as images and video, as well as mobile and news content. You can use a Sitemap entry to describe a video’s category and run-time as well as kid-friendly rating, or to describe a photograph’s content and subject matter. Sitemaps are a great way to let search engines know that your page even exists. If your page is new and has few links, Google and other web crawler bots may not easily discover it.

What is a Sitemap?

Basically a Sitemap is a simple XML file listing the URL of each page of your website, along with additional information, known as metadata, about each one, like how often it typically changes, when it was last added to and how important it is, relative to the rest of your site’s URLs. This information allows the various search engines to more effectively navigate your site, since web crawlers generally only discover pages from links within the site, and to the site from other websites. A Sitemap supplements this data to allow search engines to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about them using the associated metadata.

Sitemap Protocol

Templates for creating a Sitemap can be found online using the latest protocol that will be accepted by Google and other major search engines. While there is no guarantee that using this protocol and submitting your Sitemap to the major search engines will improve your page rankings, it does let the search engines know that your site exists and improves your chances of getting noticed.

Building Your Site from a Sitemap

Starting with a Sitemap is also a great way to build a website, using it as a sort of outline to determine your site’s layout. A predetermined site outline will result in a well organized site which will be easier for search engines to navigate. Another advantage of a well-planned website is that you will not have to make major page changes later on. Once you have established your web site, making changes to the layout or to page URLs can lead to broken links and ultimately harm your site’s search engine ranking.

WordPress’ Sitemap Plug-in Tool

For those with a WordPress blog, creating a Sitemap is exceptionally easy, using a sitemap plug-in tool offered by WordPress. This special tool is simple to use and will help you create an XML Sitemap which ensures that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com can better navigate and classify your blog. The plug-in is not only useful for creating Sitemaps for all sorts of WordPress blogs but also custom URLs as well.

In addition to helping search engine web crawlers to see the entire layout of your site and retrieve information more efficiently, WordPress’ Sitemap plug-in tool sends a notification to all major search engines whenever you create a new blog post about the newly added content. You can get this plug-in from the Plug-in Directory at WordPress.org.

In summary, if you have built a lovely blog, selected a handsome layout from one of many custom WordPress premium themes, are regularly adding fresh content, photos and video and followed all of the basic SEO rules but have yet to generate any significant traffic, it may because you haven’t yet created a Sitemap. Creating and submitting a sitemap to all of the major search engines is an important step in letting the world know that your site is open for business.

Author: Shivbhadra Gohil

Courtesy of www.seogoogleguru.com

• Brand new Facebook Links module update (v 1.01): automatically sends links to Facebook timeline
• eBoard update: news line appearance was improved
 

The tool that promises to launch the next era of websites, smartphone apps and online video is finally finished.

HTML5, the long-in-the-works update to the language that powers the Web, is “feature complete,” according to an announcement made Monday by the standards-setting Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). There’s still some testing to be done, and it hasn’t yet become an official Web standard — that will come in 2014. But there won’t be any new features added to HTML5, which means Web designers and app makers now have a “stable target” for implementing it, W3C said.

The HTML5 language lets developers deliver in-the-browser experiences that previously required standalone apps or additional software like Java, Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash or Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Silverlight. It supports lightning-fast video and geolocation services, offline tools and touch, among other bells and whistles.

The W3C has been developing the spec for the better part of a decade.

“As of today, businesses know what they can rely on for HTML5 in the coming years,” W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe said in a prepared statement. “Likewise, developers will know what skills to cultivate to reach smart phones, cars, televisions, e-books, digital signs, and devices not yet known.”

Most of the top browser makers didn’t wait for the language to be 100% finished before building support for some elements into their software. The latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari are already compatible with most HTML5 elements.

Netflix (NFLX) and Google’s YouTube are two of the most prominent HTML5 adopters, but many others have also taken the leap. The Financial Times abandoned its smartphone app last year in favor of an HTML5 mobile website. The site looked and functioned like a native app — with the advantage that FT didn’t have to make changes to multiple versions of its code on multiple smartphone platforms. (Using a mobile website instead of a native app also let FT avoid paying Apple for in-app purchases.)

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), a strong supporter of HTML5, produced a viral interactive video in 2010 with the help of rock band Arcade Fire that showed off the potential of the new Web features. Firefox browser maker Mozilla made a splash in February when it created a smartphone operating system called “Boot to Gecko,” which is almost entirely based in HTML 5.

HTML5 grew prevalent enough by 2010 that then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs was able to unleash an epic rant against Flash and get away with it. A year later, Adobe more or less conceded that Jobs was right, abandoning its mobile Flash software in favor of HTML5 support. In November 2011 blog post, Adobe called HTML5 “the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.”

There’s still more work to be done. W3C said that about 63% of Web and app developers are actively using HTML5 to make their sites and software, but “browser fragmentation” remains a big reason why many still aren’t using it. Though most up-to-date browsers support at least some aspects of HTML5, older versions of some Web browsers like Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Internet Explorer don’t.

That’s why W3C is working on cementing HTML5 as a new Web standard, making it interoperable and fully supported by any modern browser. It will take two years to complete the testing and standardization of HTML5, the consortium said.

What’s next? W3C is already working on HTML 5.1, the first parts of which were just submitted in draft form

Author: David Goldman

Courtesy of www.money.cnn.com

Since Maya were wrong and life goes on (luckily!!!) we would like to continue doing what we’ve been doing for the last several years and what we really like to. We will keep on developing tools for Internet marketing and website building.

We decided to celebrate this new stage of our lifetime process by significantly slashing down the price of one of our main product:
SGW – Self Growing Websites system.

Until we calm down or until we grab a sufficient number of license holders we offer (new customers only!):

SGW Pro version for $147
SGW WordPress edition for $97.

SGW Pro version will contain all 18 modules including the most recent Facebook Links module. Various input content types, number of monetization opportunities, several SEO and promotion techniques are now available in a single package. All these can be implemented not only for WordPress blogs but for websites built on Joomla or Drupal platforms, for Blogger blogs and for your custom web templates.

WordPress edition is also something to think of. Some modules are not included so to make a further price cut. However you can purchase and activate additional modules any time. And you know what? If you don’t need some module which is included into the original package you may exchange it for the one you really need.

We glad we made it so far and would like to continue developing our SGW system. As always we would love to hear your ideas and propositions. Any feedback will be appreciated without any exceptions.

See our new SGW solutions and enjoy the life!

Creating a popular blog isn’t hard. If you follow this guide you’ll be covered on the content end, and the rest just involves social media promotions. The hardest part about blogging is generating a positive ROI from it.

Over the last 7 years I’ve created 4 blogs: Pronet Advertising (I don’t own this blog anymore), Quick Sprout, KISSmetrics, and Crazy Egg. Each of those blogs not only exceeds 100,000 monthly visitors, but more importantly they drive customers to each of my businesses.

What I learned the hard way is that monetizing blogs is much more difficult than building traffic, but I feel that I know have a formula that works well. Here is the formula I use to monetize my blogs:

Webinars

If you have a product or service, you should consider doing a weekly webinar. The webinar shouldn’t just be about your product or service, but instead it should be around something that benefits your potential customers.

For example, although we sell a customer analytics solution at KISSmetrics, we continually create webinars on marketing related topics as our ideal customer is a marketer.

By giving them useful information for about marketing, it builds trust within our brand and that drives signups. Plus, whenever we see a fit, we can always plug our analytics solution within our webinars.

Now to the tricky part about webinars is that you have to you to convince people who are watching them to signup for your product or service. Here are the two ways we do it:

1. Ask them to signup – you can tell people who are watching your webinar to signup for your product or service. But I’ve found that if you get 10% of the people to convert you are doing really well, especially if you are driving them to a paid product. Realistically less than 5% of the viewers will actually signup for your paid product if you ask them to do so within the webinar.

2. Offer a free trial – when people are signing up to watch your webinar, include a “check box” that gives them an option to signup for a free trial of product. We typically can get 41% of the people who signup for our webinars to optin for our free trial from this approach.

Remarketing

It’s much easier to drive traffic to your blog compared to your main site. The reason being is content marketing can drive millions of visitors through the use of infographics, content guides, and plain old blog posts.

Once you have a large audience reading your blog, you want to remarket them. Through services like Retargeter and Perfect Audience you can pixel all of your blog readers, so that when they browse random sites like TMZ, they’ll see a banner ad for your company.

What we’ve found is when you remarket to your blog readers, you will get a click through rate .2%. And out of all of those visitors, 3.58% will convert into a customer.

As for the cost of remarketing you shouldn’t be paying more than $2 a CPM for web based remarketing and you shouldn’t pay more than 50 cents a CPM for Facebook based remarketing.

Call to actions

There are a ton of ways you can drive traffic from your blog to your main website. The easiest ways to do is by through call to actions. There are 4 effective call to actions that you can easily use:

1. Hellobar – through the use of Hellobar you can place a simple little orange bar (or whatever color your want) at the top of your blog posts. In that bar you can put whatever text and call to action button you want. On Quick Sprout my Hellobar message is: Learn how TechCrunch increased their traffic by 30% in 60 days. When people click on it, it drives traffic to a landing page that collects leads for me. 3.53% of all Quick Sprout readers click on the Hellobar.

2. Navigation link – within your navigation bar, you can include a link back to your corporate website. On Quick Sprout, the navigation item I added to one of my corporate websites is the “consulting” link. That link gets clicked on 1.21 % of the time.

3. Static ad – within my sidebar is an ad of “Ben Huh” that states “Neil helped us grow to 500 million pageviews a month”. That ad gets clicked on .94% of the time.

4. Scrolling ad – at the bottom of my sidebar is an ad of Michael Arrington. As you scroll down to read the rest of this post, the ad scrolls down with you. That ad gets clicked on 2.58% of the time.

Although the call to actions don’t seem like they get clicked on a lot, when you combine them, I am able to divert 8.26% of all the traffic from Quick Sprout to one of my corporate sites. In the end all of those visitors drive over 6 figures in new revenue each month when you look at the lifetime value of each customer.

Case Studies

If you are targeting businesses as your primary customer type, case studies are another great way to drive customers to your business. There are a few ways you can do this:

Give away the farm – case studies that tend to convert well in my experience are detailed ones. Think Harvard Business Review type of case studies… Go so deep within each one that you are giving away your secrets so people know exactly what you did. And make sure you include a picture of the customer as well as a testimonial from them. And most importantly, sell your product or service within the case study.

Promote your case studies – The easiest way to promote your case studies is to turn each one into a blog post. Just make sure it benefits your readers by teaching them something new. In addition to that you can link to your case studies within your sidebar like I do on Quick Sprout, or highlight them on the homepage of your blog like I do as well. Because of I showcase my case studies in these two areas case studies make up 3.73% of all of my traffic and 4.19% of all the people that read those case studies turn into leads.

Special promotions

One of the easiest ways to convert readers into customers is to offer them special promotions. From doing a blog post that offers readers a special discount, or a bundled deal like Appsumo tends to offer, you can get really creative in driving signups.

What we’ve found to convert the best is doing bundled deals. For example if you are a software as a service company, you can team up with 4 other companies and offer everyone’s product together at a super discount price. The best part about doing this is you can also get the 4 other companies to blog about the bundle so you won’t just be promoting this to your user base; you will be gaining access to the other companies’ audience.

The conversion rates on these types of offers range a lot as it depends largely on your offer and price. But to give you a sense of rough conversion numbers, you should be able to convert at least 100 of your readers assuming your blog gets over 100,000 unique visitors a month. If you can’t achieve those numbers, it means your offer isn’t good enough.

Collect emails

My favorite way to monetize a blog is through emails. It’s a much longer process than the above methods, but the conversion rates tend to be higher.

Now lets start with a the ways you can collect emails on your blog:

Popup – by leveraging tools like PopUp Domination, 1% to 3% of your readers should be giving you their email address.

Sidebar – by adding an email optin form within your sidebar, you should be able to convert .5% to 2% of your readers into an email subscriber.

Blog posts – at then end of each of your blog posts you can add an email collection box. Typically .75 to 2% of your readers shall convert into an email subscriber with this option.

I know the percentages above vary a lot, but it depends on how many of these optin methods you use. The more you use, the more cannibalization there will be, so your percentages across the board will decrease. But if you offer something for free in exchange for someone’s email, such as an eBook, your percentages can potentially be on the higher end.

Once you have the emails you want to create an email drip system. Typically the email drip consists of at least 7 emails and it is sent to people automatically over time. With services like MailChimp, Aweber, or SendGrid you can easily create a drip. Within those emails you need to educate your customer base and sell them over time.

A good email drip should convert at around 5%. So if you collect 100 emails, 5 of them should turn into customers. And if you suck at writing drips, you can always hire consultants to write them for you.

The key to email copywriting is to educate first, build trust second, and then sell. And you can’t do this by just writing a few emails, which is why the rule of thumb is to sell on the 7th email as it is hard to accomplish all of that in less than 7 emails.

Conclusion

Blogging can be very profitable, you just have to focus on converting your readers into customers. Just don’t focus on monetizing your blog until you have at least 20,000 monthly readers.

I typically wait till I have at least 50,000 readers as the numbers haven’t panned out for me under that. In which the cost to maintain the blog costs more than the revenue I generate from it until I have at least 50,000 readers.

Author: Neil Patel

Courtesy of www.quicksprout.com

A new service called Blogican (Blog I Can) coming out in January of 2013. We will offer a full range of services for bloggers of all levels:

• WordPress blogs installation and setup along with professional themes and plugins
• Blog maintainance – wordpress, plugins and themes recurring updates.
• Blogging optimized professional hosting
• Original human written niche articles auto posted to your blog on monthly basis.
• Niche related affiliate products with your affiliate ID posted to your blog.
• Niche related videos posted to your blog.
• Blog monetization in the form of banners, google ads and contextual links.
• And much more…

Sign up for the early bird list here.

• Articles module update (v 3.56 -> v 3.57): module “Preview” fixed.
• Images module update (v 2.12 -> v 2.13): “Use content title as a keyword” option was added.
 

As 2013 is now just days away we’re into the critical planning period for most marketers.

While time will undoubtedly be spent drilling down into a multi-faceted digital strategy plan, necessity should dictate that at the very heart of it lies great content.

Industry websites like this one have been filled to the brim with posts preaching the content sermon during the latter part of 2012 and the New Year offers businesses a chance to realign budgets and plans to take full advantage of the shift.

For big businesses that may mean employing a chief content officer and launching a major new agency push to realign their available resource and skill sets, but for smaller firms this just a pipe dream.

But a smaller business can execute a successful and effective content strategy. There is still a huge amount you can do as a small business with a great idea creation process and time. Irrespective of what niche you occupy.

Here a few ideas to help you formulate a quality content led digital marketing plan.

How to Come up With Ideas

Great content strategies stand or fall by the quality of the ideas that come together to make them.

And the best bit is that ideas are free!

You don’t need huge budgets to brainstorm ideas. Yes, larger numbers of people can help with idea creation but in reality too many cooks do spoil the broth.

The optimal number for any one brainstorm is 10. Any more people in a room and communication and sharing breaks up into smaller sub-groups, which makes capturing output that more difficult and ineffective.

Creating the perfect environment is easy and cost effective. While meeting rooms work, rooms with light and things going on make for a more stimulating conversation. Pubs are great for this if you can secure a side room, alcove, or similar.

Other brainstorming tips include:

- Appoint an “idea recorder” to note each and every relevant idea.

- Clearly define the problem you wish to solve at the beginning.

- Develop ideas communally. Don’t always write down the initial idea as often the group will throw it around and create a better final output.

- Break every 90 mins and force people outside or to grab a drink. It allows the brain to reset.

Want to know even more? Read up on techniques such as reverse brainstorming, starbursting, brainwriting, or read this piece on how to keep them coming even when the ideas dry up.

How to Get Organized

Ideas are nothing without structure, however. The times we have seen great ideas die through a simple lack of structure, or a team full of great creative not living up to expectations because of their adversity to planning then we’d be rich.

How to Get Your Content Noticed?

This post isn’t really about planning or idea creation, however, but rather sharing real tactical tips on how you can make your small budget content plan fly.

Below is a list of cost effective tips that every business can action to maximize the ROI of any content investment made.

1. If Your Audience is Local

Create content of relevance for your community and seed to hyper local bloggers and print news outlets. Local paper reporters are hungry for any kind of good news story and often have trouble finding them! Help them by placing it in their laps. Google has also been offering local businesses a chance to register their business for some time, so do this as a bare minimum.

2. If You Have a Promotional Budget

It can work really well to assign budget to paid search, across Google and Facebook. Even Twitter at a push. By creating super targeted ads to download pages you can collect lots of data and reach many more people than without it. This works really well for podcasts, whitepapers etc. that can sit behind a sign up form.

3. If You Want More Return Visits

Interact. Allocate time to becoming a valuable part of the community by sharing knowledge via your blog, in forums, and in guest posts.

Add into your time the set up of Google news alerts around your brand and mentions of snippets of your latest content. By spotting them you can build relationships with those sharing your content. This creates brand allegiance and trust and in turn effects return visits.

You can then affect this further on page by offering loyalty or gamification schemes for repeat purchases, review writing, etc. There are now lots of great plug ins for key CMS platforms that help with this, including sweettooth for Magento or Punchtab, which can work across the board.

Customers who feel appreciated are going to give the love right back in the form of loyalty.

4. If You Want to Prove How Great You Are

Give your products away for free. It’s the best possible way of driving awareness and trialing as you de-risk the situation. People also like ‘free’ and it can be used to create new audience via competition outreach.

5. If You Want to Get Rid of Stock

Sales work but with every man and his dog doing it you need a way of turning it into a content event. Some try the “share to grab a bargain” option to incentivize social sharing, others get even more inventive.

There are sites like this one devoted to weird sale items. By adding in an unusual item, or creating a strange reason for the sale that make the “January Sale” norm look totally dull. Craigslist is full of oddities and you can use this to your advantage. Make sure your sale includes weird items to attract attention and links.

6. If You Want to Get Really Creative (Desperate!)

If you’re really creative (desperate!) there is no end to what you can do. This guy is selling the rights to his last name during 2013. You can bid to legally own his surname for the entire year!

7. If You Have Willing Friends

Check out guys like iwearyourshirt.com for a fun, creative, and relatively cheap way to get your company seen. These guys promote companies by wearing their T-shirts and doing crazy stuff for them via social media. You can do this too!

8. If You Like Face to Face

Organize a meet-up for either local people or niche enthusiasts via a site like meetup.com. It may not seem like a great way of creating or marketing content initially but the reality is those attending will write and tweet about the experience.

9. If You’re an Expert

A great way to engender trust is to share that knowledge. Publishing whitepapers, eBooks and regular quality article creation will help build that association. You can do this “off page” too by getting involved in Q&A aggregators like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Groups and Quora.

10. If You Feel Like Giving

Donating to charity can create great positive PR. You can wrap the giving element into some kind of competition also where the winner can decide who the beneficiary is. You can also work with the charities themselves to leverage audience reach.

11. If You Have a 404 Page

Make your 404 page memorable. It costs very little to get really creative with your ‘this page is broken’ message – like these here.

12. If You Like Surprises

Why not randomly upgrade people. Everyone loves an unqualified and unexpected extra and Zappos have made it a key marketing trick. It’s also relatively inexpensive to do.

13. If You Like Saying Thank You

Why not create or improve the existing thank you page on your site that a customer receives shortly after buying.

Even better why not partner with a strategically relevant business to reciprocally exchange space on each other’s thank you page? This works incredibly well if your products or services have real synergies. So, think car dealers and warranty businesses for example.

14. If You Like Debate

Make sure you content plan has a regular opinion piece as opinions sell papers. Opinion is something we aren’t yet that great at online and it’s a real opportunity in your niche as people will come back to it and interact with it for its controversy.

15. If You Like Using Emotions

Fear, love, and the other emotions are key triggers to brand affinity and purchase. Ensure you have content mapped to this as part of your plan based on the emotions most important to your particular niche. Just be careful if you use humor, as you need to clearly understand your audience to get it right.

Author: Simon Penson

Courtesy of www.searchenginewatch.com