Friday 28 March 2014

Some Ways to Gain the Right Online Exposure with SEO

For any business, it is crucial to create a robust online presence and ensure easy accessibility to targeted visitors. The more useful a website is to the user, the better it will perform in SERPs. SEO is an investment that will help you gain excellent online exposure. On-page and off-page SEO strategies, when implemented properly can do wonders for your business. It would be wise to implement a strategy that uses both SEO and SEM together.

How to Get Maximum Online Exposure with SEO

Let us discuss this with an example. Imagine that you run an elevator & lift company that serves the areas - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Your main goal would be to enhance the online visibility of your business website. Here are certain SEO tips to help you out.


Make your website user-friendly: Create a uniquely designed website with easily navigable pages. Make sure not to load your website with too many heavy images. This may increase the loading time, prompting the visitor to move to your competitor's website. Remember to add a call to action or a quick contact form in each page you create.
 
Choose the right domain name: Having a relevant internet address is essential in terms of brand recognition and is a vital part of a successful optimization plan. A simple domain name related to your business or targeted keyword such as "homeelevator.com" or "homeelevatorcompany.com" is ideal since it makes it easy for a searcher to simply type the business name into a browser to find your company. Even thought this helps it is not necessary. Exact Match Domain is no longer valuable. Nowadays getting domains like that are difficult. Search Engines are no longer interested in an exact name but to make sure your brand is well established in your domain name.

Do your keyword research: SEO begins with the words typed in the search box. It is crucial to rank for the right keywords. Make sure to pick less competitive, geo-targeted long tail keywords specific to your business. This can attract the right kind of visitors to your website. Choose the keywords that your prospects may type in to find you such as "Home elevators NY, NJ, CT" or "Multilift Vertical Platform Lift NYC".

Advanced keyword research tools such as Google AdWords tool, Wordtracker and Market Samurai can be used to find targeted keywords.

Create engaging content: Create fresh content for web pages, articles, blogs and newsletters that will engage your current and potential clients and educate them on the advantages of quality elevators and lifts and why your company is their best choice. Make sure your content is unique with the right keyword density, adhering to the latest Google algorithms.

Optimize your title tags and meta description: A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. Title tags should be descriptive and readable. Often visitors go for the easier option of reading the meta tag and description to know about your site, rather than opening the site and reading the entire content.

Get quality back links: Growing the link profile of your website is critical to gain attention and traffic from search engines. It is also important to get quality links from relevant websites related to your business. Your link building campaigns can include sharing guest posts, testimonials, case studies and RSS feeds. Ensure to include keyword-rich anchor text.

Be active on social media sites: Social media presence can generate awareness of your elevators / lifts and brand, and help you reach the millions of users on social media platforms. Make sure to regularly update your social media profiles, and share interesting content / videos that can persuade more buyers to contact you via social media.

Go mobile: Mobile optimized website is a necessity now with more and more people using Smartphones and tablets to search for businesses. The mobile version of your site is in fact a smaller version of your existing website with a more simplistic design. Make sure your location is "findable" to mobile searchers.

Track the progress of your website. Use Google analytics to keep a close eye on your visitors' activity and to identify the sources of your traffic.

Have you got enough time for all these SEO efforts along with managing your core business? Most businesses do not. Then the option would be to outsource your SEO tasks to an experienced SEO company. Staying constantly abreast with all Google updates and changes, skilled SEO specialists at reliable firms ensure comprehensive services at affordable rates.

Article Source:- How to Maximize Your Online Exposure Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Wednesday 19 March 2014

YouTube Marketing - Promote Your Brand to the Next Level

Online video is virtually dominating the internet, and businesses are striving to keep abreast with this trend and promote their brand. YouTube is a great platform that businesses can effectively utilize to promote their messages. It is important to be aware that most people visit YouTube for the primary purpose of entertainment and therefore businesses must create and publish YouTube videos that are entertaining enough.

Video marketing has been adopted by many famous brands such as Sony Mobile and Jamie Oliver's Food Tube, which are taking advantage of YouTube's mammoth audience base to engage with their potential customers. Compared to other traditional search engine optimization strategies, videos in your SEO plan can maximize your outreach and attract more number of customers. Let us consider how YouTube fits into an effective search engine optimization plan.

YouTube Marketing for Business Success

Video SEO based on YouTube analytics essentials, can play a solid role in deciding the success of your marketing strategy. According to this report that quotes Chris Clarke, chief creative officer at DigitasLBi, the agency that produces YouTube content for Sony Mobile, YouTube remains the biggest and best video site on the web. However, brands aren’t leveraging YouTube talent in the best way. Brands need to provide content that operates in the ways YouTube and its communities operate. Only then can they make the best of YouTube marketing.

Though challenging, businesses can choose from the many promotion options available on this popular video channel. Pre-roll ads that run before videos and are skippable can be created. This is an economical option since the advertiser needs to pay only when someone watches the ad for at least 30 seconds. There is also the option of buying ads that appear at the bottom of the screen during video or buying display advertising on the site.


Here are some reasons why you need to consider YouTube marketing.
  • Absolutely free and easy to upload your video in YouTube and share it with others.
  • No need to spend on web servers to store your video, as it is possible to host it directly through YouTube.
  • YouTube easily accelerates the broadcast of the video and helps to reach out to a massive crowd.

Find the Perfect YouTube Tool

YouTube provides powerful tools which you can use to create excellent content, share content, build a strong fan base and effectively market your brand.
  • YouTube Capture: This enables you to create movies on the go, capturing every moment. You can record as many clips as you want and any number of clips can be stitched together. Moreover, you can trim and reorganize the clips conveniently from your phone and even add a soundtrack that you prefer either from your own music library or from Capture's audio library. Upload your video to YouTube and simultaneously post to all of your social networks.
  • YouTube Video Editor: This is another valuable YouTube tool that can be used to enhance your uploaded videos in your web browser. You can combine videos, add music and text effects, trim and rotate clips, insert transitions and stabilize clips. You can auto-fix and fine-tune the colour and lighting using a panel of controls and soothe the shakiness of the video. Options are available to alter the speed of the play. You can specify half speed or quarter speed and include smooth slow motion effects. The face blurring property of the tool identifies and removes the anonymity problem of actors. You can also add your favourite music from the approved tracks available in the library.
  • YouTube Captions: With this tool, you can add, edit or remove captions and create automatic captions.
  • YouTube Analytics: This tool allows you to monitor your videos/channel with up-to-date metrics and reports. Data is available for Views, Traffic sources, and Demographics. This tool can be accessed through youtube.com/analytics.
  • Audio Library: This enables you to download background music for your videos. It is absolutely free as well.
To gain ultimate success in your business, you need to have a clear-cut understanding about video marketing tactics and trends. YouTube is a prevailing platform to optimize your video content. Make the best use of the built-in tools available in the website to enhance your visual content and gain maximum visibility for your brand.

Take some time to learn about the use of videos in SEO, and how YouTube can help in promoting your brand and improving your reputation. A professional SEO company can guide you in this regard, while providing video SEO services customized to your particular requirements.

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Study Reveals Quick Twitter Responses Work Wonders

Skeptical about the importance of Twitter marketing? The following survey would clear your doubts.

Immediate Response to Tweets Demanded by Customers

A recent study by Millward Brown Digital for Lithium gives fascinating insight into how businesses should carry out Twitter marketing and customer care. The findings revealed that 53% of the consumers expect the business to respond to a direct tweet to it, or one involving its products or services, before an hour passes. 72% of consumers expect the same if the tweet deals with a complaint about the business or its products. The survey was conducted on 501 consumers who claimed to be active communicators with businesses on Twitter.

The study also showed how important responding quickly to tweets is. It is where businesses can build their reputation. 38% of the respondents revealed that they would feel negative about a business or brand if it failed to respond to a tweet promptly, while 60% of them claimed that they would even take negative action against the brand if it failed to respond to tweets within a reasonable time period. The reason why a tweet was made determines the urgency in response expected by customers.



Greater Sway over Customers with Prompt Response

The study also revealed that brands promptly responding to tweets were able to get more positive reactions from the consumers. 47% of the respondents revealed that it was likelier for them to recommend a brand that responded promptly to tweets. 34% of them were more likely to buy more stuff from such brands.

If anything, this survey only shows how businesses need to embrace Twitter marketing. All social media marketing is massively beneficial but Twitter, as proved, has the capacity to enable businesses to directly influence and impress customers.

Hashtags

Using hashtags is the ultimate means of leveraging the power of the social media. Now has this hashtag concept thrown you into confusion? Here's some light. A hashtag basically groups the information posted in Twitter.
  • What these hashtags do is bring users with certain interests in touch with posted information that deals with those topics.
  • When businesses use hashtags to post content on Twitter, even users who are not in their list of followers could access them. It's a great opportunity for businesses to get themselves new prospective customers.
  • Hastags work not just for Twitter but on other social networks as well such as Facebook and Google+.
So here's how hashtags can be used. All you need to do is identify the topic your posts would fit in. There may already be a hashtag for the topic. Check out the hashtags others in your field of business are using. You can collect a list of such hashtags and choose which ones you'd like to employ for your posts. Clicking on a hashtag will open a new list containing posts having the hashtag. This is true for Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. Hashtags dealing with various topics can also be combined to deliver more accurate results.   

This is crucial and could give businesses the vital edge over the competition. Twitter marketing should indeed be a major social media marketing strategy for small and medium-sized businesses and hashtags should be a major element of it. Start loving Twitter and hashtags like never before.

Social Media Analysis

A reliable and professional SEO company can help businesses in that as part of their social media marketing services while also providing social media monitoring and analysis on a regular basis. Effective social media analysis is how your business can perfect it social media strategies and ensure their effectiveness. Thanks to the sheer volume of consumer data and the sprouting of social media activity it is important to study how people connect to each other in these social networks and how and what kind of data is shared the most.  

Social media analysis also helps in gathering analytics which can help you make informed business decisions, particularly those dealing with customer service and marketing. There's no better way to get a clear idea of customer sentiment than through social media analytics. The services of an experienced SEO company obviously help in gathering precious social media data.

Article Source:- Study Reveals Quick Twitter Responses Work Wonders

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Increase Website Traffic through Affordable SEO Services

It is possible to increase your website traffic through affordable SEO services. At present, the Internet is used by many business firms to reach out to their customers. These business firms provide details about their main products and services through their websites. Internet users mainly depend on search engines to acquire details about required products and services. That is why it is important to own search engine friendly websites. Your website can be made search engine friendly with the assistance of SEO professionals who are skilled in their field.

Optimize Web Pages According to Search Engine Norms

Through search engine marketing and placement services, you can make your business website appear more attractive, professional and balanced for the search engines. SEO services ensure you top positions in the result pages of the search engines.



Improve Your Online Visibility through Advanced Website Optimization Techniques

Advanced SEO services make sure that you receive consistent net traffic for your website for a long time. For promoting your business website among online users, the important website optimization techniques used by the SEO firms include:
  • Planning and designing of websites
  • Research of keywords
  • Creation of website content
  • Building reciprocal links
  • HTML code optimization
  • Meta tag optimization
  • SEO copywriting
  • Submission to directories
  • Submission to search engines
  • Blog writing
  • Article posting
  • Maintenance of ranking reports

Select a Reliable Company

In order to satisfy your website optimization requirements, it is important to depend on a professional SEO company. At present there are a number of companies offering reliable SEO services. Therefore it is important to identify the appropriate company, which can offer superior services at affordable service charges, within minimum time.

Article Source:- Increase Website Traffic through Affordable SEO Services

Thursday 6 March 2014

Paying Attention to Three Elements - Content, the Links and the Social Signals - Is Crucial for Success in SEO

Google's web spam hunting algorithms, Penguin 2.0 and Penguin 2.1, have literally changed the face of SEO. If you really want your business to be easily found online and not lose out to competition, you should stop using old-school search engine optimization strategies such as article spinning (replacing the words in any existing article with other words manually or using software and posting as your own article), link spamming (building as much as links without checking relevancy) and keyword stuffing (using number of keywords unnaturally for boosting up rankings). Instead, the way things are at present, you should focus on three things - creating great content, credible links and social signals. Let’s take a close look at each of these critical factors.

Great Content

Unless you create fresh, compelling content and organize your site well, no one is going to visit your website, regardless of your optimization efforts. So, what makes great content? Pay attention to the following five key aspects:
  • Keyword Research - You can optimize your business website only if you know how your targeted visitors search for your products and services. Proper keyword research is important to find the right keywords for optimizing your content. The right strategy - prepare a list of possible keywords or phrases that might be used for searches, analyze the search volume of each term and check which ones have low competition but are still relevant to your customers.
  • Organize the Keywords - Once you have a list of relevant and less competitive keywords, organize them by mapping them to major sections on your site. Suppose you are a plastic surgeon in Manhattan, New York. Your business site will have several pages that talk about the services offered at Manhattan and New York. The best keywords for those sections are 'plastic surgery New York' or 'plastic surgery services Manhattan'. Here, knowing what sections of your site to target for the specific keywords in your list is very important.
  • Optimizing Content - While optimizing your content with relevant keywords, make sure that you are using the right keywords naturally. Do not overuse keywords for the sake of getting higher ranking. Include your primary keyword in the title and Meta tags.
  • Better User Experience - Your site should load quickly when clicked and visitors should be able to take action easily and quickly. In other words, user experience counts for better click-through-rates. Ensure that your site is easily navigable for visitors. To improve user experience, check the bounce rate (the rate at which visitors leave your site after viewing just one page) on Google Analytics. If the bounce rate is high, it may because you have not optimized those pages so they correlate better with the search terms or because of complicated design. Don’t hesitate to seek professional website design services if necessary.
  • Efficient Web Design - Make sure that your site design is clean (not spammy) and well-organized. Design the site for optimal conversion rates. If you have a site with obsolete design and want to build an authority site, consider upgrading rather than developing a new site.
  • Frequently Updated Blog - Google ensures better ranking for sites with fresh, up-to-date information. Blog posts are among the pages that search engines crawl and index the most. So regularly updating the blog on your site can improve search ranking.

Credible Links

Earlier, search engines would consider your content more valuable if it received more inbound links. Inbound links can still build trust and authority, make your page rank higher and drive more traffic, but they must be high quality links from a site which is reputable and relevant to your industry. Quality link building is possible in the following ways:
  • Guest Blogging - Find an appropriate blog and send a pitch to the blog owner with an offer to write a post for their audience. Once you build trust with this audience, you can make them visit your site too and build organic links. However, make sure that you are choose reputable blogs relevant to your industry and content.
  • Press Release Submission - Create a newsworthy press release, optimize it smartly and submit it to an effective press release distribution service to build more organic links and improve your brand reputation. Google’s recently published link schemes say that using forced optimized anchor text in press releases will result in a drop in search engine ranking. The best optimization strategies are to link call-to-actions instead of keywords, minimize the use of keywords, and add Google Authorship and no-follow all links. You can distribute social media press releases - multimedia, bookmarks, blog posts, images, embeddable components, RSS feeds and much more - for a broader audience and receive lots of organic links.
  • Spice Up Your Content - Instead of writing new content each time, you can re-package your existing content across various platforms and mediums. For example, you can add images to your White Paper and distribute it as a video through You Tube or Vimeo.
  • Utilize Real-World Connections - Engaging in various real-world activities such as sponsoring local events, speaking at conferences, or becoming a member of a professional associations will give you the chance to list yourself on their websites with your company description and website link.
  • High-Quality Directories - Do not list your site in every directory you find. Look for the directories where it will be useful to list your sites such as local directories which help to rank for location specific keywords, professional directories that focus on your industry, and established directories that focus on your area of expertise.

Social Signals

Social networking activities can really improve your online brand reputation as they have a direct impact on search engine rankings today. Whatever you share on social networking sites will go viral in a shorter time. Still, the quantity and quality of social mentions matter to search engines. You can generate quality social signals in the following ways:
  • Engagement on Social Networking Sites - Create an authoritative and appealing profile (you can create business pages) on social networking sites and engage actively by sharing content, thanking people for shares and retweets and joining discussions. Spend few minutes regularly for this.
  • Brand Your Social Presence - You should make a strong social presence by staying active on social networking sites and also build your brand in three ways - brand your profile name and descriptions and link to your website, ensure that your profile layouts and design stay similar to your website, and share professional content constantly in your brand's name.


  • Easy to Share Content - Make sure that your content can be shared across various social networking sites. Place social share buttons in your content (as given below) for that.
  • Choose an Effective Platform - Rather than being present at every social networking site you know, consider the social behavior of your target customers and select effective platforms accordingly. This will increase your social signals. However, having a presence on Google+ is very important today as the posts published on that platform are crawled and indexed very quickly and can pass on link equity.

These elements are the bedrock of a successful SEO campaign. Rather than stumbling at tedious optimization task, get support from a professional SEO company that offers comprehensive, affordable SEO packages.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Matt Cutts Speaks Out at Pubcon 2013 Moonshot, Core Search quality Changes and the Future

At Pubcon 2013 at Las Vegas Matt Cutts talked about the track Google has been taking to improve user experience.

“Moonshot” Changes

The search engine giant has made some, what he termed, “moonshot” changes that deal with the following: 
  • The Knowledge Graph has enabled Google to comprehend entities in the World Wide Web rather than only searches. It has helped make the search engine more knowledgeable and smart and identify things rather than “strings”, according to Cutts.
  • The Knowledge Graph has proved pivotal in the Hummingbird algorithm overhaul recently launched by Google. In relation to this, Google is working on improving its conversational search and voice search capabilities. Cutts highlighted Google’s efforts towards understanding the relationship existing between words in search queries. 
  • This is particularly relevant with voice search. When users make a query and get results and then make another one in relation to the earlier query but without expressly identifying it likewise, Google can figure it out and provide appropriate results. For example, if a user asks, “What are the Pyramids” and performs a search and then asks “How old are they” Google’s deep learning can identify that this query is connected to the previous one.


Points on Core Search Quality Changes

Cutts then moved to the major quality changes at the core of the Google search engine’s functioning.
  • “Hummingbird” is the topic looming here. Hummingbird has been launched with the aim of improving natural language translation. It helps Google identify the most relevant and important words in a search query and develop a concept based on which it provides the results. This is basically intelligent scoring, and Hummingbird has already been felt on 90% of the queries. Most users have not suspected any changes though they are beginning to receive more relevant results.  
  • Cutts also talked about softening or reducing the effects of its Panda update which would enable some of the affected sites to be brought back. 
  • With smartphone ranking, Cutts revealed that Google would not display a Flash site to users who do not have Flash in their smartphone. 
  • Cutts also said that webmasters can continue to deepen the content they have on a topic which would help increase their authoritativeness on the respective subject.
Observations on the Future

Looking toward the future, Cutts revealed that the only aim of Google is to provide information and to increase its capability of being able to provide answers for specific queries. He also acknowledged the growing importance of mobile devices and the fact that 40% of all YouTube videos are played in mobile devices.

Matt Cutts also said that getting social signals are symbols of authority in the long term and indicate that you are worth listening to. It is exactly what the search engines will think as well. 

These are vital points that an experienced and professional SEO company will be noting to prepare its clients accordingly. An efficient search engine optimization firm will prepare in advance for changes such as these so that its clients can continue to perform effectively in the search rankings.