Why You Need Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategy that utilizes high-quality Web content to get people to your website. You write content that is based around keyword search terms. If your site is optimized correctly, then search engines will start to send people to your site when they search for keywords that are found in your content.

When you correctly utilize a content marketing strategy, you can get all kinds of free traffic to your website. The search engines don’t charge you to send traffic to your site. This is like getting people walking into your business without having to spend any money on advertising. In many cases, content marketing can also improve your perception in the eyes of the consumer. If you’re willing to give out free, helpful information, then they will be more likely to believe that your products or services carry good value.

Common Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

When you engaging content marketing, there are some common mistakes that you should try to avoid. For example, many people make the mistake of trying to cram their content full of keywords. They think that search engines want to see lots of keywords, so they write content that doesn’t sound natural. Try to write content that just has a few keywords, but is primarily designed for people to read.

Another mistake that people make is using content that has already appeared elsewhere online. Search engines hate duplicate content, and they will typically punish your site for it. If you to paraphrase content or simply copy it out right from some other source, you are going to be hurting yourself in the long run.

Making it Work

If you are interested in pursuing a content marketing strategy, there are a number of tips and tricks that you can use. For one thing, you need to be creative and put forth the best effort that you can when creating your content. You may want to consider making infographics, videos, and audio files to go along with your written content.

You may want to hire creative professionals or editors to look over your content when possible. This will bump up the quality of the content a notch. You should also publish your content on the proper platform such as WordPress, instead of just throwing the content in with your eCommerce stuff.

Once you have great content published, try to distribute it on high-quality bookmarking and directory sites. Your content should also be optimized effectively for search engines. This can be done by creating compelling information for people to see in the search engines. Then distribute your content through social media as much as possible, and you might be surprised how well your content marketing does.

Citations:

• photo taken from Flickr with CC license. Author: ocd007

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source

Ben Sawyer is an content marketing strategist for a few small business clients from New York. These are his content marketing tips based on his experience with creating online marketing campaign for candle wholesale ecommerce website.

Do Not Break the Rules

This should be a no-brainer, but a surprising number of people think that they can get around the rules that Google has implemented. Google has applied these rules for a reason and if you try to break them, Google will surely find out and will penalize your website. One thing to avoid is keyword stuffing, as Google wants your articles to be written for human beings, rather than search engines. While the algorithm changes that were brought forth by Panda and Penguin eliminated most of these poorly written articles, some website owners feel the need to attempt to outsmart Google, which never ends well. Create an honest online advertising campaign, as this will bring the best results.

Don’t Purchase Links

Google looks at the number of backlinks that your website has and uses this information to help with your search engine ranking. While this might make purchasing links sound like a good idea, it is not. Google now considers the quality of the websites that are linking to your website. If you purchase links, they are likely to be from a substandard website. When Google finds out that most of your links are from websites of this nature, it will punish your website and send you down the search engine rankings. While you can still use Google Adwords advertising, your SEO campaign will be in serious trouble if this occurs.

Create Fresh Content

It should go without saying that you must have unique content on your website, but some webmasters do not understand what this means. The content that you put on your website should not be found anywhere else online. If you own more than one website or will be advertising your website on another site, you must have unique content for each location. Once you have duplicate content, Google will find out and could end up blacklisting your website.

No Shortcuts

Overall, you should focus your online advertising on the products or services that you have to sell, while creating a website that people want to visit. Many websites in the past relied on black hat methods of driving traffic to their websites, which led to numerous Google changes. Today, the only way to succeed long term is to do things the right way. Take your time and use a variety of methods, such as Google Adwords advertising and SEO, to drive traffic to your website. If you build your business in an ethical way, you are sure to be rewarded by Google, rather than punished.

Featured images:

•  License: Royalty Free or iStock
  
• Source

Patrick K. Feld is a blogger and internet marketer who recommends Perry Marshall’s training on Google AdWords.

If you have a Google ID and want to be part of Google+ which is the next big social networking site on the net, here is a complete guide on how to get started. When you enter Google+, the first question you will be asked is if you want to link your Picasa Web Album to your Google+ account. If you wish to share your photos and videos with other people on your network, you can agree to link the two. The next page will greet you and guide you to your profile.

Create Your Profile

Click on the black bar on the top part of the screen so you can view your profile and edit the information you wish to. You can also alter the privacy settings for the different circles of people who are on your list on this page itself. Once you have filled in the details you like, you can continue to your profile and have a look at what it looks like before moving on to check your updates on the Posts tab.

Add Connections

When you want to add people to your Google+, an easy way to go about it is to choose the Show All option on the Suggestions sidebar. Here you will be able to find all your friends who are already using Google+ and add them to your circles. If you want to add a friend who is not on the list of suggestions, use the Find and Invite tab to do so.

Create Circles

With the help of this feature, you can organize your connections on Google+ a lot better. The networking site offers you some default circles including Family, Friends, Acquaintances and Following. You could also create a new circle by hovering over the Drop Here section. All you need to do to put different people into different circles is drag them over to the desired section.

Tweak Your Settings

To tweak your settings, you will have to click on the Options tab located on the black bar at the top of the screen. Go through the notifications you receive, information you share via photos and geographical location, auto approval of tags and change them according to what you want to share and what you don’t.

Stream Your Updates

When you return to your home page after setting up your profile, you will receive a stream of updates from all the people in your circles. If you want, you can view all the updates at once or go through them circle by circle. A down arrow next to each arrow will give you the option to share, report as abuse or block a certain connection’s updates.

Chat and Hang out with Friends

A sidebar on the left of your Google+ account will show you the connections that are online for chat or video chat. A green dot and a green video camera determine so respectively. Simply click on the name of the person you want to chat with and start talking! Google is an ever-growing enterprise and keep updating their features from time to time. As and when newer features emerge on Google+, their Help Section should be sufficient for all your queries.

Featured images:

• 
• License: Creative Commons image source

lan Smith is an avid tech blogger with vast experience. Web development and internet marketing company. Follow Alan on Google + and Twitter.

Not surprisingly many of my tests failed, but equally I’ve noticed a number of trends among my own blogs – and repeating these concepts time and again continue to reap rewards.

Indeed the more successful blogs I have been applying these strategies to are now seeing more search engine traffic than many of my older and more established sites so I’m confident that anyone can apply these tips to see significant growth in their search engine traffic.

Write Longer Articles

Right now it seems that Google places more emphasis on longer content than shorter content. As you know, most articles published on blogs are in the region of 500-800 words in length with roughly 600 words probably being the “sweet spot” for most writers.

However I have found that my longer posts – those greater than 1000 – consistently out-perform articles of a standard length. They not only rank higher for their primary keyword phrase but also draw in additional long-tail traffic from the search engines. On one blog where I have only posted articles of 1500-2000 words over the last few months my traffic numbers are sky-rocketing.

The old adage that there is no “perfect” length of an article and that a blog post should only be as long as it needs to be seems to be totally out of kilter with what the search engines want.

So post less, but post longer, meatier and more valuable articles. Personally, I’ve dropped my posting schedule to just one juicy post per week – yet I’m seeing more traffic than ever before. If in doubt – go long.

Include Images

Adding images to your posts doesn’t just make them more attractive to visitors; it also seems that Google is more likely to rank your post. And I’m not just talking about one single image at the start of your blog post; rather about “decorating” your post with numerous photographs, charts and illustrations throughout, each with a carefully targeted description and ALT tag.

In doing this I’ve got top rankings for blog posts that are almost solely images and for keywords that I’d never in my right mind believe was possible a few short months ago.

There are all sorts of places you can find royalty free stock photos so use them liberally to legally add attractive, eye-catching and SEO-optimized images to every post that you make.

Deep Link

Many of us bloggers focus our time on building backlinks to our main homepage but thanks to Google’s updates it’s all to easy for these homepage links to look artificial or spammy. I have now stopped building keyword-focused links to my blog home pages – and instead focus almost exclusively on branded links.

In contrast, I now try to create a handful of deep links – containing a range of relevant keywords – to every new post I publish. Certainly this adds to the workload – not only am I writing a 1000+ word article for my own site but then two or three 600 word articles to distribute as guest posts on other blogs. However when you combine these strategies it often only take a couple of links to hit the front page of Google – even for reasonably competitive kwywords.

Not only do these “deep link” – that link to a specific article on your site rather than the homepage – look less artificial but I’ve found that by linking to my keyword-focused articles I’m actually getting far more search engine traffic as a result.

Interlink Your Posts

Linking one of your blog posts to another serves two distinct benefits. Firstly, it makes your site more usable and keeps visitors on your site for longer as they click through from one post to another. However it’s also another useful way to build a few additional links to your latest posts.

Simply use the WordPress search feature to look for previous posts of yours that are in some way relevant to your latest article and try to add one or two links within the body of your article to your newest post.

This helps Google to discover your content faster and can also have a beneficial effect on your search engine rankings so long as you don’t overdo the concept or fail to vary your anchor text.

Get On Google Plus

The jury is still out about the long-term benefits of Google Plus and whether it will survive but one thing is undeniable; generally speaking the fact that your photo can appear by your search engine listings helps to draw the eye and encourage more people to click your listing rather than that of your competition.

In other words, by getting on Google Plus you’ll be able to increase your search engine traffic without actually having to increase your rankings. So long as you show up on the first page of Google for some searches most bloggers have found that their traffic goes up simply because their profile picture leads to more clicks.

Richard Adams is a UK-based internet marketer and author of How To Promote Your Blog.

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/methodshop/6939604809/

In this day and age, it is incredibly important to have a strong

social presence. If you are not known on the internet then you may as well not exist. Apart from an expertly created website that utilises all search engine optimisation tools, social search and platforms have become just as important and if you run your own fashion business, then a social presence is even more important as it fits your brand and offering perfectly. Your fashion business should already have a website that is SEO optimised, a Facebook and Titter profile and a Google Plus account. The next social media train you need to board is Pinterest. Fashion and style is the third most popular category on Pinterest and the second most repinned on the social media site. If this is not enough of a push to get your fashion brand onto the social media site, then how about the fact that Pinterest referrals spend 70% more money than visitors referred from non-social channels, and are 10% more likely to make a purchase than those referred by Twitter and Facebook. In this interesting and informative article, we look at the benefits of Pinterest for your fashion business and how to go about getting traffic to your site and creating an online brand that people will want to share.

How To Use Pinterest For Your Fashion Business

Build a following

Before you start your journey of success on Pinterest, you need to build and gather a following. This will be comprised of your fans, clients and following which will want to admire your fashion business on Pinterest. Share your Pinterest profile with people who already celebrate and follow your brand through Facebook and Twitter. Make sure to add a follow me button on your other social profiles, website and letters.

Gather new fans

Once you have encouraged your existing fans to follow you on Pinterest, it’s time to create a new following and group of fans. Follow popular and high profile Pinterest app users in your market of fashion and affiliate businesses. Make sure to comment, repin and get involved in popular discussions circulating out there.

Problem Solver

Looks for Pinterest users that need help or questions answered relating to fashion or style. You will become the fashion business and Pinterest profile to go to for all fashion related questions.

The importance of links

To generate significant traffic to your fashion business site, make sure to include a link to your site from Pinterest. Also add an optimised description of what your business does in your Pinterest profile.

Imagery

The last step which is one of the most important is to make sure you choose Pin-worthy images that people will want to share. Build Pinterest boards that also share knowledge and create a conversation. Using social media is not just about advertising your brand, it’s about an interaction.

Featured images:

• 
• License: Creative Commons image source

Jemma Scott is a freelance fashion writer that looks at how Pinterest can benefit your brand as well as the new designer suit on the market.

Businesses that do not have experience in Internet marketing may want to consult with Search Engine Optimization Services (SEO) so the can have successful marketing strategies online. Backlinks are important to any business in search engine optimization.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links that will direct customers directly to your website. Search Engine Optimization services will assist your business in creating good backlinks because they know the benefits of not only helping your business gain more customers, but what backlinks can do for search engine optimization.

The Role Backlinks Play In Search Engines

When most people use a search engine, they tend to never read past the first page of results. This makes it vital for businesses to show up on the first page when potential clients search for their services. Backlinks can make this dream come true for businesses. Major search engines such as Google use tools that evaluate backlinks to avoid spam.

If they find your business has a lot of good backlinks directing consumers to your site, they consider your site to be full of good information moving it up in the Google search.

How Backlinks Can Effect Sales

Backlinks have a lot of good benefits for business and increases their sales. By making it closer to the top of a search engine site, more consumers are likely to choose your business based on their keyword search.

This will not only increase your website traffic, but will increase your sales as well. Backlinks also provide means to your website besides search engines as well. Some businesses may link up with other businesses, connecting your business with customers through recommendation of another company.

Obtaining Free Backlinks

Backlinks are difficult to do because they can be hazardous if they are not good links. But there are legitimate free ways to create backlinks as well. One of the methods was mentioned earlier. Businesses may link up with other businesses making an agreement to advertise links on each other websites. This usually works best if the business you link with is not a competitor but has some sort of connection with your business.

Some SEO services will offer free backlinks with their SEO service. Obtaining backlinks through an SEO service is one of the best choices since you will guarantee the links are quality ones and they offer tools that allow you to track your backlinks.

Anchor text is one of the most valuable untapped resources of backlinks. Anytime you have gone on a website and seen a link disguised as the words ‘click here,’ this is an example of anchor text.

Using the term click here is not the best way to create a backlink, instead, your business could benefit from using valuable keywords that pertain to your companies business. You SEO service company could better assist you with all the tools to create proper backlinks.

Robert has been publishing articles about how to use and gain the benefits of SEO tools online. His research and understanding of services have showed people how SEO services can give them the most out of their Internet marketing.

Building an email list is powerful. All successful online entrepreneurs have list. Check out this powerful videos on how you can build an email list.

Lesson #1: Why You Need To Build A List

Why You Absolutely Must Build a List

• If you have a list, you control your traffic flow
• You aren’t at the mercy of Google or other SE
• It helps you build relationships
• You need fresh leads to convert into sales
• It allows you to stay in constant contact as close as you can get to auto-pilot income
• Every successful marketer has a list

Lesson #2: The Modern Day Tools You Will Want

A Good Reliable Auto-Responder Service

• Aweber.com
• GetResponse.com
• iContact.com
• Avoid using FREE Services

You Cannot Proceed Without This

• HostGator.com
• BlueHost.com

There are many other good hosting companies out there, these are just a couple I really like.

You Are Going To Need A Domain

• Broad – MarksGardeningTips.com OR
• Specific – 10WaysToGetRidOfWeeds.com

When starting out, it’s perfectly okay to go with a broad domain. When you get a winner, you can get a specific domain name.

These are the two places I recommend you purchase your names:

• GoDaddy.com
• NameCheap.com

You Are Going To Need A Squeeze Page Template

You can make your own if you know HTML.

You can make it easy and use a template or WordPress theme built just for marketers.

• PaperTemplate.com
• OptimizePress.com
• WPLeadGorilla.com

Lesson #3: The Perfect Sales Funnel to Suck Up The Cash

Sales Funnel to suck up the cash.

Lesson #4: Choosing The Best Niches to Enter

Choosing The Right Niche Really Isn’t That Hard … Just Look For People That Are Desperate For Help

People seem to spend so much time trying to find the perfect niche they don’t need to.

For list building purposes, let’s just concentrate on these 3 massively huge and desperate niches:

• Health
• Wealth and
• Romance

In the health niche, you have everything from how to lose weight to getting six pack abs to dealing with stress and anxiety.

Just have a look at the ClickBank.com marketplace and you can see there is a lot of demand for products in the health niche.

These are all massive niches and if you put together a simple little free report or video that will help them, they will give you their email address for the information and you will start to build your list.

Lesson #5: Laying The Foundation (Your FREE Offer)

You Must Offer Something For FREE That A Reasonable Person Would Pay For

• The Secret To Something
• How To Do Something Special
• The Top 5 About Something
• The Dangers of Something

It doesn’t have to be long or complicated. A simple 1-5 page report or short video is enough content if the information is good.

• To create a report, use OpenOffice and export your report as a PDF.
• To create videos, Windows Movie Maker (iMovie for MAC), Camtasia, CamStudio or Screenr

Lesson #6: Setting Up Your Lead Capture Unit

Your Squeeze Page Has One Purpose And One Purpose Only…To Get Them To Optin!

You Need A Strong Headline

I have noticed that some of the best headlines solve a problem, offer a solution, make a promise, cause controversy, peak curiosity, or make an enormous claim.

After the headline, you might also want to include a few bullet points, but they aren’t always needed.

Some of my best performing squeeze pages are nothing more than a headline, a strong call to action, and an optin form.

A strong call to action is very important. Tell them exactly what to do.

Enter your Name and Email Address RIGHT NOW for Instant Access

Lesson #7: Crafting a Killer OTO

The Very First Thing A New Lead Should See From You is Some Sort of Something Special Offer

• This product needs to be in the same niche and very related to what they just opted in to
• This needs to be a product you have created or is a very high quality PLR product
• If you are using PLR, try and make some changes to make your product unique
• If your FREE offer is weight loss tips, make sure your OTO is about weight loss
• This product does not have to be huge. It could be anything from a 10-page report that shares a killer secret or a 20-minute video that shows how to do something not everyone knows.
• Make sure your OTO has great value.
• The whole point of an OTO is to offer new subscribers a great value
• If you use PLR, make sure it’s a quality product
• Your product should be something you would be proud to sell 2-3 times the price you’re charging. In other words, don’t try to sell junk.

Lesson #8: Adding a High Dollar Upsell

Having A High Dollar Upsell In Place Allows You To Really Kick Up Your Business

When you have an offer priced over $97 that converts well, you can afford to advertise and get more people into your funnel and ultimately make more sales …THIS IS HUGE!

This product doesn’t have to be yours, it can be an affiliate offer, just make sure it’s a quality product.

Some Good High Dollar Upsells Are:

• High End Training Or Membership Sites
• Done For You Services Like Setting Up Websites
• Coaching or mentoring programs

If you can’t find a high dollar product, you can bundle together several different products into one larger package!

When you are first starting out, you can skip this step, but you really should get a high dollar offer in your funnel as soon as possible.

It really can be different between making hardly any money or just a small profit to making enough money to scale up your business and really profit like crazy.

Lesson #9: Setting Up Your Auto-Responder

If You Setup Your Auto-Responder Properly, It Can Pay You For Years To Come

• The first thing you need to do is create a list
• Then you create your optin form
• Have your OTO page be the first thing they see after they optin your list
• Next you add followup auto-responder messages to go out over time
• You can have anywhere between 1-100+ followup messages that go out to subscribers over time
• Your very first message needs to deliver what you promised on your squeeze page
• Follow up messages should be a combination of free information and promotional messages
• Your first few messages should not promote any affiliate offers at all, only your OTO Or Upsell
• Get personal with your list, share stories and interact with them. Don’t just sell to them

Lesson #10: Traffic Getting Methods That Give You Almost Instant Traffic

For Absolute Best Results You Really Should Invest In Yourself and Your Business

The quickest way to having a list full of subscribers is to purchase traffic to your squeeze page.

Sure you can get standard with FREE traffic, but if you really want to build a big list quickly, you really should invest in some paid traffic.

Paid Traffic – Solo Ads

• A solo ad is where you purchase a mailing for your offer from another marketer who has a list of subscribers.
• Solo ad can be very effective and are one of the best ways to test out paid advertising
• You can start getting traffic for about $30.
• Safe-swaps.com is the number resource for finding marketers that are selling solo ads in the Internet Marketing Niche
• You can also look for solo ad sellers on the warrior forum or better yet, try and approach known marketers in your niche and ask if they would sell you a solo ad… many will.

Paid Traffic – Free WSO

• If you are in the Internet marketing niche, you can go to the WarriorForum.com and run a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) and giveaway your free offer. It will cost you $40 but it is a great way to get eyeballs on your offers almost instantly.
• Just make a quick ad and link right to your squeeze page.

Free Traffic – Forum Posting

• When you are just starting out and have no idea to spend on advertising, forum posting is a clever way many people use to get free traffic.
• Join forum in your niche, create a sig file that links to your squeeze page and become active in those forums

Free Traffic – Ad Swaps

• In order to take part in Ad Swaps, you must have a list of at least 100 subscribers
• An ad swap is when you get together with another marketer and do a mailing for each other
• So you would mail their ad to your list, and they would mail your ad to their list
• Ad swaps are a proven method to grow your list, and as long as you don’t go overboard your list shouldn’t get over worked
• Safe-swaps.com is my favorite source for finding ad swap partners