Content marketing is a marketing strategy

This form of marketing involves creating and publishing media content to acquire new customers.

This informative content, useful or entertaining, can be presented as news, blogs, videos, white papers , ebooks, graphics, case studies, guides, systems Q , photos, forums, press releases, etc..

Content marketing is especially developed on the web so that it differs from advertising, which is traditionally displayed as advertising through the means of banners and images on websites.

Businesses write about real scenarios often using storytelling on their sites, then distribute the new information to the different social networks. They then can engage in a real conversation with their community of fans or customers. Building Trust and Loyalty.

Content marketing is not focused on the sale , but simply communicates with customers and prospects with programs that promote elements of brand equity. Many online marketing campaigns will feature social responsibility, cultural heritage, and their ability to innovate.

This marketing channel is distinguished from advertising that must sell (spot, banner advertising , product placement ) and sponsorship that brings visibility.

Content marketing sends a relevant message about your product or your service at the right time, to the right people. Subtly done, it will directly improve performance and reader demand (potential prospects).

By creating great content, you can create more openings for a sale, generate traffic to your website, promote your brand and educate customers and prospects about your offers.

Follow these six tips to maximize your marketing efforts:

1. Say goodbye to the promotion – Do no promotion. Promotional materials are neither exciting nor inspiring. promotion is anti-marketing content.
2. Be relevant – Content that is not relevant or does not provide a strong interest in the player,  will not bring any success. when you write content, make sure it will be useful to the reader.
3. Fill empty – Content marketing must answer a question or a problem. A really useful information can even be used at the conclusion of the sale.
4. Think editorial quality – A poorly written thought can be misinterpreted and can also damage the reputation of the company. Take the time to make sure that your content is presented in a thoughtful way and has no error, the substance and form.
5.  Follow your goals – Keep your objective in mind. No need to waste your time and resources to create content not going in the direction of your goals.
6. Provide evidence – You create content related to your business goals, so it can move to the subjective. Make sure that each piece of your content is created or supported by evidence, quotes, stories, statistics, studies.

Writing and publishing articles can generate targeted traffic to your site over a long period of time. Write articles belonging to the theme of your site and submit them to the digg-like or article directories. This allows your items to receive a very high visibility.

In the best case, your articles will be published all over the Internet by other website owners and blogs that need content for their own sites, blogs or newsletters. Writing  articles also helps to build backlinks (links pointing to your site) and build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Advantages:

• This strategy is good for SEO.
• Blogs and websites that cite your articles have a common or related subject are so good backlinks.
• This is a great technique if you prefer quality over quantity.

Need help with your Content Marketing? Orangehat are the experts and we are here to help your business grow. 

Call us today 800-788-8596

There is no way around good SEO

Ever since SEO has become the most potent weapon for Internet marketers, there have been thousands of people trying find out new ways to trick the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and have engaged in, what can be at best called shady practices, to get better search engine page ranks. While the primary objective of any content marketing strategy or social media marketing is to eventually create a dominating presence in the virtual world, especially in search results, yet the route taken by SEO experts or content marketing specialists cannot be questionable or illegitimate in the eyes of Google.

There had been a lot of speculation recently that Google penalizes sites that are critical of Google or speak unfavorably about Google’s services, principles and policies. Matt Cutts has clarified that Google has no such policy of penalizing a site that is critical of the company or the search engine giant’s policies but he reiterated that repeat offenders with the clear intention of violating the norms set out by Google Webmaster Guidelines would certainly fall under the scanner and might be hammered down.

It has to be seen from the perspective of websites being devastated because no SEO strategy, content marketing idea or social media dominance can make a tinge of a difference if Google decides to penalize a site and brings its ranking crashing down. Having said that, there have been SEO practices that used names of the likes of Google and other reputed sites or companies to squeeze through the search engine algorithms and get a higher ranking, not by the virtue of content or the ranking of the site but with the help of the presence of essential words that people look for.

Google is all out to penalize all sites that do not have good SEO strategies and if you are working on content marketing or a new SEO strategy, stay in line with Google’s policies.

Don’t let Google trash your site, call us today or fill out our form for free consultation and client examples!

800-788-8596

The all important SEO terms and definitions.

Have you ever been looking into SEO and come across some words or terms that just left you baffled? I spent a good hour thinking up common terms searching for the exact meanings, so here you go, a comprehensive list of SEO terms and definitions.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization; The process of configuring Web content in order to gain the highest potential rankings for a given search engine.

SEM – The paid process of promoting websites by way of advertising on search engines. As opposed to SEO, which is trying to optimize your site to get “free” traffic in what are called the “organic rankings”

Search Engine -A program for the retrieval of data, files, or documents from a database or network, esp. the Internet.

Search Algorithm – an algorithm for finding an item with specified properties among a collection of items. Google’s has a highly secretive program used to scan and rank pages based on content. According to Google, each page is considered on over 200 factors to determine its value in response to the particular search in question.

SERP -A Search Engine Results Page, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.

Content – The things that are held or included in something. All of the pictures, articles, blog posts, advertising, etc included on a web site

PageRank – A link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that a assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyper-linked
 set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set

Title Tag – An HTML element is an individual component of an HTML document. HTML documents are composed of a tree of HTML elements and other nodes, such as text nodes. Each element can have attributes specified. Elements can also have content, including other elements and text

Meta Tags – HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document.

Backlink – incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).

Keyword Density – Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Stuffing – Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.

Web Crawler – a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, or Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters

Robots.txt – A file in the root directory of a website which has been created to direct the activity of search engine crawlers or spiders.

Linkbait -Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention

Link Farm – a group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services

Anchor text – The link label or link title; the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines

NoFollow – A link which carries the rel=”nofollow” attribute. A link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, will not pass juice, and does not count towards overall link authority and PageRank.

Sandbox – a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered and penalized websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

Duplicate Content – Using the same content on more than one page. Aka plagiarism The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own

EMD URL – Exact Match Domain; a domain name made of a long-tail keyword phrase, company name, etc. ex “www.freecreditreport.com” to rank for the phrase “free credit report”

Canonical URL – Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

Got it?…. Good! Ha! Feel free to come back anytime or bookmark this as a reference! I also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for more  tips and tricks!

SMB budgets in 2012 have seen a large increase in digital spending.

With the massive amount of money spent spreading the message, it would seem that the recession we’re in is a myth! Perhaps it is true that consumer spending has taken a hit, but here are some juicy statistics from the BIA/Kelsey SMB Digital Conference in Chicago that reveal some interesting trends with online marketing.

Small business marketing expected to increase 40%  digitally in next 12 months

 This preliminary chart is from the BIA/Kelsey annual Local Commerce Monitor Survey that talks to 300 small businesses. A 40% increase is an outstanding prediction on the growth of small business marketing taking to the digital channels. With the slow improving economy and with the ever increasing media dominance of the consumer, the Internet is driving all marketers to show more focus on the digital realm.

 Small business marketing has nearly doubled using digital media channels over the last 5 years.

An increased audience fragmentation is solely due to digital marketing . I remember the days that you could just put an ad in a Yellow Pages book and attract a nice share of the market. Not the case today, small business marketing plans must promote media buys across multiple channels to get the same audience as they did in the past. Are you?

Small business marketing budgets show SMBs will spend one third on digital media

It is predicted that in the US, the total local ad spend  to be more than $130 Billion in 2013. BIA/Kelsey estimated that in 2010 SMBs spent about 20% of their budgets on digital marketing equating roughly to $5 billion. This means that 30% of small business marketing dollars in 2013 should be somewhere around $9 billion. Don’t get left behind and let your competition have a leg up!

Facebook is dominating the small business marketing digital landscape

It’s free, easy to setup and use, and has over 900 million users! FaceBook is dominating the landscape now and small business marketing has grown tremendously since FaceBook’s conception. There are so many success stories of SMBs taking advantage of FaceBook’s network and the trend is increasing each and every day.

You need a digital small business marketing plan

There is no doubt that the landscape of small business marketing is changing and with these revealing numbers, digital marketing is here to stay. Are you prepared for 2013?

 

 

Google confirms hidden SEO benefit of authorship: bonus links after a clicking the back button

Digging into useful SEO information out there for you readers is one of my favorite things to do, and in doing so, I stumbled upon something that will benefit anyone who actively stays on top of Google trends.  Today, I stumbled upon an article that confirmed the hidden SEO benefits of Google Authorship.

What is this SEO benefit?

According to Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee:

If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.

Really??!! What exactly does this mean and how does this happen?

If you do a Google search and pick a result that has an author rich snippet associated with the article, read the article for a short period of time and click the back button, Google will then include “More by (author)” along with three links to other articles.

You read that correctly, Google will build you back links! You can actually do this yourself by reading your own articles as well and add this to your daily SEO routine. Search for your posts, click and read, then hit the back button. Although, you can’t do this with haste as Google is measuring time-on-site to determine if a reader enjoys the content. There is no specific information out there on how much time a user needs to spend on a post, but tests out there on the Internet determined a minimum of 2 minutes.

Google has confirmed the following:

If a user visits an article by an author and it seems like they’d be interested in finding more articles by this author, when they click the “Back” button to return to the results page, we’ll show more results by that author.

This is all very good news for us bloggers and SEO professionals out there! Link building is a challenge since Google clamped down on this past year with algorithm updates. Too many links too quick will get you penalized! This is a safe and Orangehat way– it’s also Google approved!

To learn how to use Author Rich Snippets for SEO, read my article about how to set it up so you too can take advantage of this hidden SEO feature.

Example of Authorship Snippet

Read more SEO tips and tricks by Ryan Neal

All to many times through out my circles of  colleagues, potential customers and even my friends, I hear that social media is not a good tool for marketing.

That just could not be further from the truth… Here are some common objections that I have heard about social media and it’s place in business.

My Customers Don’t Use Social Media

Really? Have your customers heard of the Internet? This has got to be on of the most naive statements I have ever heard! Do a quick search on the Internet and you’ll find something like this:

Facebook: 955 million users; more than 42 million pages and 9 million apps
Youtube: 4 billion views per day
Google+: 250 million registered users

-Craig Smith on Social Media

Chances are, your customers are in that mix somewhere… also, that is a lot of prospects to go after and market to!

Social media is not for our business

If your business is not about marketing for dollars, then this could apply. I assume that it is a common misconception that social media is just a place for friends and that no one pays attention to marketers. Your brand has a story to tell, so be social and put a human face to your brand!  A successful social media campaign will bring in: AWARENESS, SALES, and LOYALTY 

Nobody tweets about us, so we don’t need social media

This statement is true to those that do not give people something to tweet about. This could also be true for businesses and people with boring concepts and marketing strategies. Look into viral marketing, these types of campaigns are successful because they are exciting and have the ability to generate buzz. Give people something to share and talk about and your idea could hit levels that were once unimaginable!

Social media is just marketing

Social media plays a role in marketing, sure! But it’s much deeper than that. Social media is a way to engage people and even manage your customers! These day, people are quick to turn to social media and either praise or trash, so why not give them the avenue to come straight to you? Social media could even limit the time spent on the phones talking to irate customers and show publicly how well you can handle a situation.

If you’re not using social media in this digital age, you are truly falling behind. Sure you may not see instant result, but you build the story and reputation of you brand. That is the most important part of the whole game.

I have been on the search for advice on monetizing my blog designs and web templates.

I don’t just mean the most elegant looking of blog designs, but a template that is designed to get the most out of the traffic that my website and blog may get. So, in the nature of GuruBloggers, I thought I would share with you some of my findings…

This is a screen shot of a study done on blog designs and website layouts with eye tracking software. The colors represent areas of where random people’s eyes concentrate on while viewing different blog designs and website layouts. The red area represents where eyes view the blog designs content, and where blog designs get the most attention. The yellow comes in next, with blue being last and rarely viewed with any attention at all.

On the far left, we have one example of many blog designs that is a text rich piece of content. We can see where the content has nearly all the web surfer’s attention. Notice the where the red is concentrated the most, this is how much focus the article actually received. Keep your content short but keep it interesting and do a soft sale in the last 100 words!

In the middle we have a website that has banners, a large image placed on top, an ad on the top far right and the content in the middle. Notice how the most concentrated on part of the content only shows red at the beginning of the lines— this means the content is barely looked at the further right and down as the text in the article continues…

On the far right, we have a search result screen shot from Google. This shot is probably the most important reason we blog, work and play on social media, as well as spend time and money on enhancing the SEO on websites. This shows where people pay most attention to in the search engines, and it’s not the ads on the far right. It is the organic search results. It seems to be a familiar result, I too often look to the first 3 results in Google!

15 tips to know about websites and blog designs.

• Text actually captivates an audience more than pictures.
• People begin viewing websites from the top left, much like a book!
• Banners often get ignored.
• Don’t use fancy fonts in blog designs, people tend to ignore those too.
• Lower parts websites are usually just scanned, so keep the good stuff at the top.
• Short paragraphs will keep your audience’s attention, keep it around 300 words.
• Blog design and websites with the ads on the top or left part of the content to get the most views.
• Place ads in your content or right below and get more views.
• Big pictures catch more eyes than smaller ones.
• Headlines draw attention and make your pieces more credible and convincing. Choosing the right CSS for blog designs can make a headline really stand out.
• Web users spend more time navigating menus of blog designs and looking at the buttons of a website.
• Bullet points are better at keeping readers’ attention compared to large paragraphs the also.
• Some will skip large chunks of text.
• Nothing wrong with white space! It helps blog designs stay neat and organized.
• Place menus on the top part of a website, web-surfers are used to looking up for navigation.

While we may not implement some of these tips here on GuruBloggers, it is nice to know for our clients’ blog designs and we like to share information that we find even more! So when you in the creating process, keep all of this in mind to make the most out of layout!

Be on the look out for blog designs and web templates from GuruBloggers for you to download!

Sources: BBC News | GoogleBlog | DreamGrow