What is SEO?

What is SEO? SEO is an abbreviation and stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines when, words or phrases relevant to what a site is offering, are typed into the search window. For a site to receive many visitors from a search engine’s users, it has to appear earlier or more frequently in the search results list. SEO takes into account how the search engine works, what people search for, the actual search keyword or phrase typed into the search engine, and which search engines are preferred by the target audience. SEO may target different kinds of searches. For example an image search, a video search, a local search, or a news search. Optimizing a website to achieve good SEO may involve editing its content, HTML, and the associated coding to increase the relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Some tips and techniques for getting better search results: Write great, unique content that uses words or phrases used by people who search for your product or service. Make your content easy for people to share and link to it. Use your keywords as anchor text when you are linking internally. Links that say “Click here” do not do anything for your search engine visibility. Do some research on keywords at the beginning of the project. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on each page. The tile is an extremely important on-page SEO factor. Commit yourself to the project. You have to keep doing it. SEO is not a one-time event. Things change all the time, so what worked last year might not work this year. Have web analytics in place. This will help you track what is working and what is not. Be patient! SEO is not about instant gratification. It may be months before you see any results, especially if you are a smaller company.

Convert Website Visitors Into Customers

Is Your Website Ever Finished?

A website is never truly complete.  Your website is an asset to your business and it needs some care and looking after after just like any other aspect of your business. Your website provides a great platform to market yourself and your business. Think of your website as being done in stages. It is born, built, redesigned and updated. This means that your website is in a constant stage of being. Once one stage of your website is completed, it is time to think about and move on to the next stage of your website. Your website shows people where you are in your business, what you have to offer and what you stand for. Redesigning and maintaining your website are quite different. Changing the look and feel of your website is redesigning. Redesigning your website includes changing the theme or creating a new unique look for your business. This is an opportunity to show everyone how much you have grown. Making sure your content is up to date is part of maintaining your website. Maintenance also includes making sure links are still functional and that all updates of plugins, themes and WordPress Software are up to date. You may not have the skills or the time to redesign or update your website yourself even though software builders like WordPress give you the opportunity to make changes by yourself. When you don’t have the time or skills to make changes, it is advised to outsource the task to a web designer. Maintenance should be done regularly. Depending on the type of business you are running, maintenance can be done, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Your website should be redesigned every 12 – 24 months, however this does depend on the growth of your business. You need to be honest with yourself and decide whether or not you want to maintain your website or if you should outsource. Outsourcing your maintenance and redesigning frees up your time to concentrate on making your business work. Your website needs to be cared for so it can contribute to building a successful business.

4 Tips to Improve your Marketing Automation

Outstanding Content Powers Campaigns Yes, we know; you’ve heard it before – Content is King. We only mention it again because, even though this is true, a lot of people ignore the fact that it needs to be outstanding, appealing, engaging content – not just any content. Content needs to be useful, valuable (content that sells), something that your readers will want to share. Content that isn’t freely accessible or is stagnating on web pages isn’t going to cut it either. Content needs to be unique and well written and it also needs to be exclusively yours whether it’s in the form of e-books, cheat sheets, white papers, etc. Add a Personal Touch Marketing automation provides an opportunity for a more personalized approach to all your marketing initiatives. Use personalized content to attract your target audience, making it as spot on as possible via webinar and video invites, etc. Use Demographic/Firmographic Details Online marketers have been taking advantage of demographic and firmographic statistics to segment their email lists for decades. One of the coolest things about marketing automation is that it integrates demographic and behavioural data, allowing you to rate a buyer fit when it comes to what you’re offering and buyer interest. Test, Test, Test Any marketing efforts call for persistent testing in order to maximize performance. The same testing comes into play with nurturing leads via marketing automation. Options available for testing are endless and include content, subject lines, landing pages, the number of days you wait between your messages and even the time of day to send them. Continual optimization and testing will increase the ROI of your marketing automation.