Boost Organic Search Traffic with These 3 SEO Basics
You can boost your organic search traffic with these tips.
Using only ethical, honest SEO basics and internet marketing tactics, you can help the search engines find, rank and share your content. The more they share your content, the better your chances of attracting new website visitors and turning casual visitors into loyal customers.
Three Ways to Boost Organic Search Traffic
Search engine optimization is the art and science of helping search engines find, rank, and serve your content to people searching the web for the best information on a given topic.
A search engine’s job is to find the best content online that fits what a given user types into their browser window – no more, no less. These automated robots scan the billions of pages of internet content available, indexing, archiving and serving web pages and all sorts of online content, including images and videos, based on what they can “see” online. What they “see” are words: only words. They can’t read a picture or video, so anything other than text must be tagged with words in order to be found online. (That’s why I emphasize “words that work” – because online, your words are working words. They must serve a purpose!)
So what are my top three SEO basics to boost organic search traffic? There are over 100 factors that search engine marketing experts believe go into a well-optimized web page. I’ve heard some experts claim there are 100, and others say there are 200! No one knows for sure, because the folks at the search engine companies don’t tell us exactly what goes into the algorithm or ranking formula that propels the little bots out into the world and helps them sort through everything from Aunt Gertrude’s bread pudding recipe to the President’s latest speech.
Marketing writers like me, as well as SEO companies and experts, look at the tweaks they make to web pages, analyze the data, and determine which factors helped boost page views, traffic and more. Then over time, they notice trends, and share those trends as SEO best practices.
Here are my top 3 SEO basics or best practices that your company should implement immediately to boost organic search traffic.
SEO Basics Tip 1: Keyword Phrases
- Research and update your keyword phrases: The topic of your content is represented by keywords or keyword phrases, groups of words that cluster together to give both search engines and readers an idea of what your web page is about. A well-chosen keyword phrase can do wonders to boost search engine traffic. What’s a well-chosen keyword phrase? It’s one that represents what’s on the page honestly and truthfully. It’s one that few companies have figured out yet. And it’s one that a lot of people are searching for.
It’s darned hard to find, that’s what it is.
Yes, finding the best keyword phrases for search engine optimization can take forever. Sometimes it takes months to find the best starting phrases for a new website. Don’t rush the process.
To find great keyword phrases for your own website content marketing needs, start with how people are finding your site now. Look at your online records; what keyword phrases are guiding people to your site now? Which content is performing the best? Focus on those phrases and run them through Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or a paid tool. Look for over 1,000 searches per month as your first criteria; look at the competition next.
Keywords and keyword phrases are words that work. They’re my favorite SEO basic to focus on when I find an underperforming website that needs help, because often with a few tweaks in the on-page content, the back end tagging and the tags on images, I can boost traffic dramatically in a few weeks or months.
SEO Basics Tip 2: Inbound Link Strategies
- Add inbound links and linking strategies: Links, links and more links. Inbound links are links from other websites that send traffic to your site. They’re golden. They’re great. They give you amazing traffic if done correctly. But they must be added naturally and without artifice. The search engine gods are good at spotting artifice and artificial linking schemes, and they punish without mercy those seeking to manipulate their search engine rank through the use of such schemes. So don’t offer an “even swap” of links with a friend: “You point to my site, I’ll point to yours.” Such swaps, once standard fare among SEO companies, are now out of favor with the search engine gods. While you won’t get penalized, you won’t benefit, either.
What WILL get you in trouble are those paid linking schemes where you plunk down cash and a company spams the world with your links. Not only is that an obnoxious marketing tactic, it’s ineffective. It will also get you in trouble with the search engines. Don’t do it.
So how DO you build links into your website? The old-fashioned way: by producing well-written, rich content that tells a story while it sells. I don’t care whether you’re selling pain cans or traffic cones, with B2B content marketing, you need a story.
I’ve heard folks say that “busy business executives don’t have time to read long content” but that’s not true. They don’t have time to read USELESS content. To build inbound links, you need great content that provides useful information to a busy executive. Such content may get picked up by other news sources, social media link-sharing sites liked Stumbled Upon or Reddit, or shared via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other platforms. Once it is shared, the links multiply, and so does the traffic. But you must start with useful content.
SEO Linking Best Practices
Some best practices for encouraging inbound links to your website include:
- Offering facts that are hard to find elsewhere, or that few people know about in your industry. You can discover these facts through surveys, studies, and other methods. Distill them into digest-sized blog posts, papers and presentations that you share on your website, and post a prominent notice encouraging people to link to your site as the source. Perhaps you can conduct a study of how traffic cones are used, or the best color for traffic cones if you are a B2B manufacturer of traffic cones. Such a study, if done well, may be of interest to your primary customers such as law enforcement, municipalities, and more.
- Create guides and have them professionally written and designed. Make them into PDFs and offer them as downloads without making customers jump through hoops to obtain them. Sure, you want some content that requires a visitor to turn over their precious email address to build your list. But don’t make every download on your website contingent upon signing up for a list. Be generous. Content marketing is all about generosity, and generously shared, relevant and well-written content works wonders to increase your inbound links.
- Make a link-building strategy a long-term project. Links don’t happen overnight. It can take time to encourage inbound links. Work with a professional internet marketing agency or content marketer to create a strategy and tactical plan that aligns with other marketing channels and helps your business achieve its overall goals through a solid linking strategy.
SEO Basics Tip 3: Images
- Use your images to boost organic SEO: I mentioned earlier that search engines cannot read pictures. That’s true, but they can read file names, tags and descriptions of images that you upload to a server. One SEO best practice or SEO basic that many people neglect is using images as part of their search engine optimization. Rename your image files with keyword-rich titles that reflect the images but also boost traffic. Use the alt-tags to provide more words that work for search engines, and don’t forget to use any and all tags in the back end of your website to their full advantage. This includes meta keywords, which although not widely used today may still help, title tags, page descriptions, and anything else your system provides to help you tag, title and create keyword-rich data for search engines to grab onto.
These three SEO basics have helped both my clients’ websites and my own websites and blogs rise in the search engine ranks among some stiff competition. They can work for you, too. Try them yourself and see. If you’d like some help creating a strategy around SEO basics, please use the Contact Form on my website and schedule an appointment. We can discuss your website goals and needs, and I can provide you with a fair estimate for my work to help you. Let’s figure out how to make words work for you.
Don't Be Afraid of Long Copy in SEO Content Writing
Several years ago when I first began offering SEO copywriting services, long form copy was a no-no. Anything over 500 words and clients freaked out. “It’s too long!” they say. “No one will read it!”
It reminded me a little of the scene in the movie Amadeus when the emperor, dismissive of Mozart’s composition, gestures with contempt and says, “Too many notes.”
The world of search engine optimization and SEO copywriting has changed greatly in the last few years, more so in the past year than in any other time. It used to be that writers kept copy short and infused keywords into the headlines and body copy following a precise, scientific formula. Today, writers and SEO experts know that follow a scientific formula for SEO content writing is deadly; writing for interest, engagement and entertainment is the way to capture the hearts and minds of both human site visitors and search engines.
Long or Short, It’s What You Say that Matters
Long copy or short copy, in today’s world of SEO writing, what you say matters more than how many words you use to express yourself. There’s no such thing as a precise SEO formula anymore.
Even though there’s no longer a specific word count to aim for, it’s still important to write your online copy for an onlin reading audience. That means you should:
- Use big, bold, attention-grabbing headlines.
- Leave white space between paragraphs.
- Break up long blocks of text with subheads for easier readability.
- Use bullet points for lists whenever possible (like this list) to make the key takeaways scannable.
- Hyperlink to deeper copy within your website.
- Hyperlink from anchor text keywords, not the ubiquitous “Click here” seen on older sites.
With an estimated 93% of marketers using some form of content marketing to capture attention and drive interest and awareness for their brands, it’s critical that business owners master some or all of these SEO writing skills. Even if you don’t intend to write everything yourself, knowing best practices can help you provide useful feedback to your professional web content writer as she drafts materials for you.
Three Reasons to Use Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail isn't dead, despite opinions to the contrary. Rather, it is undergoing a Renaissance. Many businesses are returning to direct mail marketing or incorporating it as part of an integrated marketing campaign, aligning it with digital marketing channels. Here are three great reasons to use direct mail.
1. Direct Mail Is Personal
Printing techniques have evolved to enable customization of direct mail that makes it both personal and targeted. Gone are the days of "dear occupant" letters. Instead, mailers can address letters to the recipient and even target the offer to the intended recipient, depending upon how the mailing list database is set up. Personal offers and appeals, even personalized gifts with purchase can be tested, measured, and used to boost response rates. Personalization is the number one reason why direct mail remains a popular marketing tactics.
2. Direct Mail Is Competitive
The U.S. Post Office shipped 79.5 billion pieces of advertising mail in 2012 compared to 103.5 billion in 2007, according to their website. Although that seems like a huge amount of mail, consider how many television, internet, radio and magazine ads customers are exposed to daily. They may receive two or three advertising pieces in any given day; chances are good that they will see 10, 20 or 30 times that many ads or more on other marketing channels.
With less direct mail arriving in the mailbox, businesses have a better opportunity of standing out with clever, attractively designed direct mail pieces. The International Journal of Research in Marketing published a paper in 2011 stating that direct mail creative design accounts for 10 to 25 percent of campaign success. (Feld, S., et al., The effects of mailing design characteristics on direct mail campaign performance, Intern. J. of Research in Marketing, 2012). Investing in professional creative design for your direct mail piece appears to boost open and response rates.
3. Direct Mail Is Effective
Direct mail remains a very effective form of direct response marketing. The Direct Marketing Association published a report in June 2012 stating that the response rate for direct mail is 4.4 percent compared to direct response email marketing, which achieves an average response rate of 0.12 percent. While it is true that the cost per piece or cost per contact for direct mail is higher than that of email, the return on investment may also be higher, depending upon the price point of what is being sold and the costs to produce the mailer. When all things are equal, direct mail continues to outperform email.
Direct Mail Remains Competitive for Certain Market Segments
Lastly, direct mail remains a strong marketing tactic to reach specific market segments. Wealthy consumers continue to respond to direct mail pieces, taking the time to read long form copy and respond to offers for luxury products. Niche markets, including hobby and special interest markets, respond well to well-targeted product offers, especially offers for products they cannot find easily in stores. With a good mailing list, expertly designed mail piece, and an appealing offer, direct mail continues to be an effective marketing channel.
Direct mail isn't dead. It remains a viable, effective marketing channel for many businesses.
How to Get a Mailing List for Your Business
Many small business owners want to use direct mail as part of their marketing mix, but they're not sure how to get a mailing list. The best mailing lists are the ones the business itself owns, called house files. These lists, usually compiled from customers who have purchased products or services from the business in the past, are great to promote sales or new products to loyal customers. But what if you want to generate new sales and acquire new customers? You must rent a mailing list.
Lists Are Rented, Not Purchased (You Don't Own the List)
Lists are rented, not purchased. Many marketers and business owners talk about buying lists, but lists are usually rented for specific uses. They may be rented for one time use, which means that only one mailing can be sent to the addresses on the list, or they can be rented for unlimited use. Unlimited use is something of a misnomer, as there may be boundaries around the usage.
For example, depending on the fine print in the contract, unlimited use may mean that you can continue using the list for as long as you want to or it may mean that you can mail to the list as many times as you want to during a discrete time period, such as within one year.
What Is a List Broker?
Companies that rent lists are called list brokers. Using the analogy of renting an apartment, a list broker is like a real estate agent. If you were searching for a one bedroom apartment with a balcony, a real estate broker would generate a list of potential apartments in your price range for you to see. List brokers perform a similar function.
After learning about your mailing and possibly reviewing a sample mail piece, they may ask you questions about the target audience. They may want to know what you intend to sell, or more about the customers you'd like to reach. These questions help brokers narrow down the choices and provide you with the best possible lists for your needs.
Types of Direct Mail Lists
There are two basic types of direct mail lists. Compiled lists are the least expensive, but tend to be the least effective. Companies compile customer data and mailing addresses from public documents, such as telephone directories, to create lists based on zip codes. Usually, little or no data on the customers on the mailing list is available beyond basic census data.
Response List vs. Compiled Lists
Response lists usually perform better than compiled lists, but they are also more expensive to rent or lease. Response lists may be based upon lists of magazine subscribers, catalog purchasers, or people who have in the past responded to a direct mail offer. Many response lists offer renters additional data points for consideration, such as the last time customers purchased something, information on what they purchased and other facts.
These can help you target the best possible recipients for your direct mail offer.
When Was the List Cleaned?
Like an apartment, a list needs to be cleaned. List hygiene includes the last time the list was updated, the last time it was checked against the post office's change of address files, and whether or not it has been checked against the file of deceased persons. Such tasks can reduce the number of nixies, or returned direct mail pieces that are returned because they are undeliverable.
If the list broker cannot perform these tasks, a mailing house or printer who handles direct mail can typically provide the services or help you find a local vendor who can.
Removing bad addresses from the list saves postage, printing and mailing costs. It also enhances good will. Nobody likes getting mail addressed to a family member who died!
How to Choose the Best List
Be choosy about where you rent your mailing lists. Old mailing lists are not only more likely to be undeliverable, but they may also be beyond the original terms of the lease agreement. Direct mail companies do track the usage of their lists by using something called a seed file or seed addresses. These are a few addresses seeded or sprinkled throughout the list of employees or subcontractors of the mailing list owner who get a copy of every direct mail piece sent to the list file.
You can't tell at a glance who those people are; their addresses look like anyone else's. They will, however, check mail they receive against approved use of the list, and if a list is used outside the scope of an agreement, expect a bill in the mail from the list company.
Direct Mail Works
Renting mailing lists is an art and a science. It's always smart if this is your first time choosing a mailing list to speak with a professional direct marketer and seek their advice. Direct mail offers a powerful, measurable method of acquiring new customers. Direct mail may be an older market method, but it remains a vital and powerful one when used correctly.
Guest Blogging Tips
If you're looking to increase traffic to your blog or website, guest blogging offers individuals with strong writing skills the opportunity to share their thoughts and gain valuable links into their websites. Readers, curious about what else you may have to say on a topic, may click the link back to your website. Guest blogging is a viable method of building backlinks that conform to Google's guidelines while introducing your unique perspective to a new audience.
Guest Blogging Tips - Finding Opportunities
There are several ways to find guest blogging opportunities. You can:
- Pitch bloggers whose blogs you enjoy reading, and who have audiences similar to the people you wish to reach. A garden blogger, for example, may read several blogs on small space gardening, vegetable gardening or flower gardening. She may wish to write a short, simple email to the blog hosts, introducing herself and offering a specific blog post idea for future use. If the blog owner is interested in proceeding further, the host will contact her.
- Use a website such as MyBlogGuest. MyBlogGuest is an online networking site where users can sign up for free and find blogs to share guests posts or advertise their blogs for content. It's an easy to use and useful website to find potential guest blogging opportunities.
- Study an online directory of guest blogging sites, such as About.com's online directory.
How to Be a Great Guest Blogger
Great guest bloggers develop a reputation for reliable, engaging and creative content - a huge benefit of guest blogging. To be a great guest blogger, someone who develops such a reputation, follow these tips:
- Treat your host's blog as if it were your own. Only submit the best content you possibly can. It should be as good or better than content you'd share on your own blog.
- Adhere to deadlines. Nothing makes a host more upset than a guest who disappears without submitting content on time or who constantly asks for deadline extensions. The blog host is doing you a favor by accepting your content; be courteous and respond promptly.
- Specify in your pitch the intended audience (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Then write for that audience.
- Keep your blog post focused on the promised topic.
- Do not pepper your post with links back to your website. One link at the end is sufficient.
- Provide a short, three-sentence bio if asked.
- Run your blog post through spelling and grammar checks. I also like to use an online plagiarism tool such as Small SEO Tools to catch any phrases too similar to what someone else wrote. My content is always original, but the fewer phrases mimicking what someone else has already written, the better.
Not all blogs accept guests posts (Acorns and Insights, the blog for this company and what you're ready now, doesn't accept guest posts.) Nevertheless, for those blogs who do, guest posting can be an amazing source of leads, exposure and site traffic.
Guest Blogging Tips and Services from the Experts
Seven Oaks Consulting can help. We provide blogging and ghost writing services for many C-level executives, marketing agencies and experts too busy to write their own blog posts. We can help you find guest blogging opportunities and write expert content that engages, informs and entertains your audience, driving leads and sales. Contact us today.
How to Create Memorable Content for Your Blog or Website
Learning how to create memorable content for your blog or website is a matter of figuring out what will stand out from the crowd. And what stands out whenever you write something is passion - passion for your subject matter, passion for your audience, passion to solve a problem your customers have.
Passion means more than slapping several exclamation points on the end of a sentence or telling folks how wonderful something is. Passion, like art, is contagious. Passion seeps through the written word and oozes from every letter, every comma, every sentence.
We disbelieve people who tell us, "I'm passionate about great customer service."
We believe them when they actually SHOW us what that looks like.
If you want to write great content for your website, articles, blog posts or social media shares, find the person in your company who is most passionate about what you do. Find the person with a passion for writing. If you can't find that person in-house, then find someone like me, someone who writes daily, who plays with words for the sheer joy of it, and who has an inquisitive sense that enables her to learn new industries and delve deeply into the nuances of your product.
Whatever you do, do it with passion. Your passion for business is what helps your online content stand out from the crowd.
5 Tips to Create a Customer Focused Website
Why This Website Wows, and 5 Tips to Make Yours Wow, Too
Five years ago, I tried to make jam for the first time. I'd received a bag full of persimmons from a neighbor and had no idea what to do with the fruit. So I opened my cookbook up and followed the recipe to make jam. Unfortunately, if you know persimmons, you know that one under ripe persimmon can spoil the entire batch of jam. I must have had several unripe persimmons, because the jam not only curdled, it tasted like fiery gasoline mixed with lemon juice. Yum, yum. I threw out the entire batch, jars and all, and swore I'd never make jam again.
Until July 4th, that is, when the wild blackberry bushes flanking my driveway yielded not one, but two quarts of luscious blackberries. I felt brave. But my cookbook didn't have a good recipe for blackberry jam! What to do? Search online for one, of course.
And what website did I stumble upon? The Ball Canning and Recipe website.
And this, my friends, is a website that WOWS - and I'll tell you exactly why, and not just because I made an awesome batch of tasty jam.
Why the Ball Canning Website Work
Here's the website: Ball Canning.
These are my top 5 reasons why this website works to acquire, retain and create loyal customers for the Ball Canning Company.
- It's super EASY to navigate. Many times I enter a website and find myself poking around odd corners of the site looking for what I need. I end up on virtual dead ends and digital alleys. With this site, everything I needed as a home cook was just one or two clicks away....easy!
- It made canning SIMPLE. I'm new at canning. This was the first time I've ever tried to make jam with blackberries. Pectin? What the heck is pectin and why do I need it? Why are there several kinds on the shelf at the grocery store and which one do I need? The Ball website seemed to anticipate my neophyte questions and answer them easily and quickly.
- The tone in the text was just right...neither too advanced to confuse me nor so simple that I felt talked down to. Instead, the copywriter made me feel like he or she was taking me under the wing and guiding me through the steps of the recipe...like I had a trusted friend in the kitchen!
- The site had handy calculators that meant I didn't have to think - the site did all the thinking for me. Plus it was fun to play around with the buttons and dream about making strawberry jam next.
- Speaking of fun, Ball makes canning your own food seem like a blast. The pictures on the website made me want to run out and buy new Ball jars - colorful ones. The entire site encouraged me to try new things and delight in my thrifty, creative canning projects.
What is the secret that makes this entire website work so well? The Ball corporation knows and understands its target audience - people like me who are new to canning.
My neighbors are country women; they grew up learning how to can food. They know intuitively how to make all sorts of tasty, delightful things. They don't need this website. They like the recipes, but the pectin converter? The explanations? That's for the likes of me, a former Manhattan executive who never learned to cook who now loves to explore home cooking and crafts.
The secret to a great website is to always keep the end user in mind. The target customer, your marketing manager might say. The entire website, from start to finish, should be about the visitor - not about you, not about your products.
Ball's site could focus on its nifty caning jars, it's useful jar lifters, or its canning products. All well and good. But that gets boring, fast.
Instead, they focus on ME and my PROBLEMS - my problems were:
- I'm new to canning and making jam.
- I'm confused about this thing called pectin.
- I only have 2 quarts of berries and the typical recipe calls for more; how do I adapt it?
- How do I convert the amounts to my smaller quantity?
- I need an easy recipe to feel successful!
YOUR KEY TAKE-AWAYS
As a business owner, you may be doing a lot of your own website work or blogging yourself. To make your website work FOR you, not against you, use these tips and tricks:
- Write up a simple visitor profile to help you imagine your typical customers. WHY does he or she come to your website?
- Now, what content can you add to HELP him or her SOLVE PROBLEMS?
- What benefits do your services offer?
- Can you provide examples, such as testimonials, of helping people who have had similar problems?
- How can you convey this through pictures (images) as well as through text?
Ball Canning does it right. Their website was a pleasure to use. I hope yours is, too.
Oh, and the jam? Delicious. Simply delicious. (Recipe is on my blog, here - Wild Blackberry Jam)
PR Tips: Never Whine in Public
When I read a headline like this, I gag.
"Chelsea Clinton: I tried to care about money." (NY Daily News)
Oh dear me, you poor baby! With millions and millions of dollars, an investment banker husband, wealthy parents and a cushy job from said parents...you TRIED to care about money?
Now, I doubt I'll ever be in the position to be asked the same question as the former president's daughter. And I'm not knocking being wealthy - far from it. I don't mind if you're rich. More power to you and enjoy what you have.
Just don't pretend that you aren't rich when you are.
Don't make it seem like money isn't important when the whole world knows you've got plenty of it, and the readers of the paper are struggling to pay the rent, put their kids through college and fill their gas tanks to drive to work each week.
The public hates hearing rich, privileged people whine about their wealth and opportunities. It's like when the BP oil spill happened in the Gulf and the CEO complained about how he just wanted to get his life back. The people along the gulf coast were outraged, and with good reason. The CEO wanted his life back? How about the people who fished or shrimped for a living, who ran hotels or resorts or charter boats or restaurants that relied on tourism, now suspended because of an oil slick that threatened not just their comfort in the next few weeks but their entire lives? That's another good example of what NOT to say in public.
Here's what we can learn from the former BP CEO and from Chelsea Clinton. While you and I might not be interviewed during a crisis like an oil spill or asked why we joined our parents' foundation, we may have to navigate PR waters some day, and it's a good thing to learn as much as you can before you're in a situation that gets out of hand.
- Pause and think before you answer a reporter's questions: If you're doing a live interview on television or radio, remain focused and don't worry about pausing before answering. You don't have to be glib or quick with your answers. It is better to be slow and thoughtful than to put a foot in your mouth. The same goes for telephone interviews with reporters. Take it easy and think before you speak.
- Always keep it positive. Chelsea Clinton, when asked why she joined her parents' foundation, should have focused on her positive motivations. "I don't care about money" sounds snobby, greedy and just plain silly to most Americans. Instead, she should have emphasized what she DID care about - namely, the same causes that her parents espouse and support through the foundation. It's amusing to consider that she wanted to distance herself from her parents' ideals but couldn't, and that was a good starting place to build rapport with her audience. But she went off message by emphasizing money over ideals.
- Stay on message! Public relations experts talk about remaining 'on message' during communications opportunities. Every person, company, cause or brand has a message behind it. Know what drives your business and your mindset, and what the overall, overarching message you want to convey to the public is, and always bring your points around to that message.
You can't control the media, but you CAN control your response to it. Emphasize the positive, stay on message and pause, think and breathe before responding. You'll be glad you did when the interviews turn out favorable!
3 Tips to Get More Traffic to Your Website
Wouldn’t it be great if you get customers to flock to your website like this? While there’s no magic formula, there are specific steps that you as a small business owner can take to boost your website traffic. Here are my top 3 tips for improving your site’s search engine position, visibility and traffic. If you need help implementing any of them, contact me at Seven Oaks Consulting for a consultation.
Tip #1: Update your website frequently with juicy, interesting content and share-able graphics.
Search engines love fresh website content, and the more frequently a site is updated, the better. That’s one of the many reasons why website owners love Wordpress-hosted sites; the built-in blogging capacity offers easy site updates.
It’s not enough to simply swap out a picture or change a headline and call it a day. What are you saying on your website, both through your text and images? Are you using information to enhance your expertise, your brand position, your approachability?
Content offers entry points for visitors into your website. If you don’t have a content marketing plan, create one or talk to us about creating one for you. Content continues to be an integral part of online marketing and a great way to attract new site visitors once it is shared.
Tip #2: Share Content on Social Media
Share appropriate, brand-supporting links; build networks by commenting and interacting with your followers. Make sure you have social media icons prominently displayed on your website so that site visitors can find you and follow you on their choice of media platforms. Building a robust social media presence helps you generate links into your site when you share those links widely across social media.
Tip #3: Interact Beyond Your Usual Online Platforms
Broaden your outreach efforts. Consciously make an effort to visit new blogs. Bloglovin’ is a great place to find blogs of interest. You can type in the name of a blog you like, and the site helps you find similar ones. I also find fascinating new blogs through Pinterest. Many pinners share images from their blogs, and the link appears below the image when you click through to the original pin. It’s worth trying, especially if your business website is one that lends itself to images or blogger outreach.
Building website traffic takes time and effort. If your traffic is stagnant, it’s time to look beyond your current internet marketing efforts. [pullquote align="left|center|right" textalign="left|center|right" width="30%"]Getting customers to flock to your site is a combination of creating a great website with frequently updated content, sharing that content, and introducing yourself to a wider circle of acquaintances.[/pullquote] Try these three tips today and spend time this summer boosting your visibility online.
Three Ways to Generate Content When You're Stuck
Everyone gets stuck on occasion. I'm not talking stuck, like Winnie the Pooh in his tree or like a kid getting his head stuck in a stair banister. I'm talking creatively stuck, as in, "Oh no...I've got write four blog posts this month and I don't know what the heck to write about..."
Feeling stuck like that is no fun, especially when you're a business person with a pile of tasks waiting for you. It's easy to push aside content marketing and get back to things you feel like you can actually do right now, like pay the bills and check your Facebook account for the 100th time today (guilty as charged).
But if you keep avoiding the blank page, or in this case the blank screen, you'll be left without content and without the opportunity to share your expertise with the world. And what fun is that? None in my book!
I've pulled together three of my top tips for generating content when you feel absolutely stuck, like you're staring at a blank wall or that the creative well has completely dried up. Feel free to grab any of these tips and try them today if you're facing that situation.
- Compile your own "top 10", "top 5" or whatever list. Go back and look over what you've already created. Chances are good you've got several posts you can group together into a 'best of' sequence of posts. Write a one paragraph summary and introduction (surely you can do THAT), and then use bullet points to link to the original posts you wrote. Voila. Instant blog post!
- Create a meme, quotable quote, or Pinterest-worthy share. Use only your own original photos to ensure you're in the copyright clear. Find a quotable quote. Use a free service like Pixlr.com or PicMonkey.com, add the quote, and share. Instant content!
- Review a product, service or website in your industry or niche. I like this one because you can talk about something or someone else without feeling pressured to sell, sell, sell. Plus, you're sharing the love, by helping someone else sell without any pay off on your own. It's a feel-good way to get yourself writing again. I'd stick with only positive reviews, but that's just me. Negative may get you more press, but positive gets you more karma points.
The next time you're feeling stuck, think of this:
So take action!
Written by Jeanne Grunert, Seven Oaks Consulting. Jeanne is an award-winning writer, blogger and marketing consultant helping companies acquire, retain and create loyal customers. She is available for freelance work.