There are instances when SEO is not the best solution as a traffic source, the squeeze page is one of them. Here’s a good example of a question I’ve seen in marketing forums a number of times…
Q: “I understand that SEO is content and backlinks and all that mumbo jumbo. Now normally I’d think you’d stick your squeeze page out there and SEO that, but with that there’s no real content so no real SEO. The other issue I have is that I went and wrote some articles a while back and when I really changed to what’s working for me now, none of the directories will except my new squeeze page as its very small and has about zip content (but has been converting the best for me). So do I need to completely reconstruct everything I”m doing to get started with SEO or is there something I’m just not getting about what pages need SEO and what pages can get subscribers?”
Here’s another one for your book of best social media campaigns. Ikea recently hosted an in-store sleepover in their Essex store for 100 lucky social media contest winners. (See video above.)
The campaign is clever and sure to earn the furniture company a collection of media mentions, but what’s especially compelling is the fact that Ikea didn’t need to hire a team of developers for some fancy Facebook app. This is a social media campaign executed through pure cleverness. Here’s how you can do the same for your company: Continue reading “5 Steps to Creating a Social Media Campaign That Won’t Kill Your Budget”
As an advertiser, you need to get to your customers, wherever they are. Now, more than ever, your customers are on their mobile phones doing everything. Paying bills, checking scores, and most importantly, doing research on what they’re next purchase is going to be. According to Google, 65% of mobile users do research on products, restaurants or services on their cell phones before buying and that 50% of all mobile searches result in purchase. And when it’s estimated that there are between 6-8 billion Google searches made on mobile phones a month, you’d be crazy to not start a mobile-targeted PPC campaign!
Before you can just set up a mobile campaign, there are a few things you’ll need to iron out to make sure your website is mobile friendly, so let’s you prepared for mobile AdWords management.
Pitching article ideas to bloggers is the same as pitching to magazine editors. You have to be professional and engaging. If you fail to accomplish these two things in your pitch, it will be deleted without being read.
There are six ways you can write a stellar pitch, one that will compel any blog owner to request your work.
It’s interesting how many businesses act like SEO is in a different department than marketing… “oh that’s IT.” This is a real problem for people who implement SEO because the expectation is often: “go do your technical thing to get our site ranking but don’t expect any help from us, that’s your job.”
This kind of thinking might have worked out fine a few years ago but today the search engines treat sites that don’t engage as not so useful – and that impacts search rank. “But it’s just a program, how could it know what’s engaging or not?” Oh my friend, the algorithm is a program, but don’t be naïve, that’s not all search engines have at their disposal to evaluate and rank sites today.
Have you ever wondered to what degree SEO can be automated within an ecommerce site? That is the mission and lifeblood of AscenderCart. Listen as I ask some tough questions and Lee explains some of the features of their software: Continue reading “An Ecommerce Shopping Cart Focused On SEO”
Lots of bloggers and marketers have participated in social voting sites like Digg and then give up because they didn’t see many of their posts get to the front page. What is really possible if they participated in a more effective way with these sites?
If you’re in a developed country and have at least a tenuous grasp on current computing trends, you know that mobile advertising is hot, and getting hotter by the minute.
A whitepaper from Yahoo, “Mobile Internet – Delivering on the Promise of Mobile Advertising,” addresses some great questions about this up-and-coming medium:
Will brands realize the full potential of mobile in 2012?
What are current mobile user preferences and patterns?
Is mobile advertising effective?
How are people using tablet PCs?
What are some opportunities and best practices for mobile advertisers?
It puzzles me why so few businesses really attempt to optimize conversions. Why is that?
I think it has to do with the way people think about web sites. When someone wants to increase the action they get from their site the first thing that comes to mind is increasing the amount of visitors the site gets. This is just logical, and is naturally the first thing that comes to mind. Doing more with the same amount of traffic , on the other hand, is not something that most people immediately think of.
Social SEO is a hot topic right now. It refers to the social factors that can influence search engine results. If you are overly focused with your on-page efforts you may be missing this component. One solution is to put yourself in the position of your audience. In your experience what information has prompted you to comment or share with your network? It is likely including these factors in your writing will propel your content through the social pipes.
An interview with Will Hinton, serial entrepreneur and networker.
Will was a member of the startup team for nationally-distributed magazine, Paste Magazine; he is owner of SiteBrew, a web development company, and the webmaster at Manhattan Associates.
I’ve always been one of those people who spends way too much time online finding content around the web. Recently, I started a new job as an SEO and this skill has become incredibly handy while writing guest posts for link building. Because of Google’s Panda algorithm, it is becoming more and more important to have quality guest posts on respected sites—you do not want your backlink profile to stem from non-relevant PR link farms.
While I am admittedly too good at finding things on the web, there are times where I am still stumped for guest post ideas. I write for a website called Scarves.net so I do a lot of blog prospecting and inspiration searching in hard-to-find corners of the web. For this type of research, many times the best ideas that I need are not the first hit in Google. When I am searching for great tips on how to wear scarves, how to store your scarves, and crafty projects for scarves that make great guest posts, I always turn to these five websites. Whether you are searching for info on scarves, marketing, or SEO, it does not matter. These sites can always help to get those creative juices flowing again.
Considering all the social networks available today, LinkedIn isn’t usually at the top of the list. Should LinkedIn be at the top of the list for certain businesses and individuals?
People hear about the algorithm so much they don’t realize the other side of Google’s ranking matrix – human raters.
A few years ago, conversion optimizers wondered whether their work to improve a landing page’s conversion rate also influenced search rank. Well, today it most likely does because of human raters.
I believe many bloggers want to take every post they make viral. Is this a realistic goal to achieve? It probably isn’t, but you shouldn’t aim to take every one of your posts viral in the first place either.
The number of posts that actually go viral is pretty low. However, if you know how viral marketing works, you may be able to take a couple of your posts viral. Here are some reasons why your viral marketing campaign may not be working and what you need to do differently.
A jaw-dropping 212 million shoppers showed up to take advantage of Black Friday sales in 2010, with an even more astounding $39 billion being spent on merchandise. What this means for your business, of course, is a healthy competition to draw in as many of those 212 million shoppers and as much of an “in the black” profit as your organization can manage going into the first day of the 2011 holiday season.
With tech trends evolving from year to year, advertising has done so as well. Attracting your customers is, to the dismay of shop owners everywhere, going to require more than a simple flier or word-of-mouth campaign. Luring in customers means intelligently implementing a social networking strategy into your business’ marketing plan, which may include ubiquitous sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and various other sites with mass followings scouring the Internet in search of which retailers have the greatest deals, and what exclusive offerings businesses like yours have made available online.
What gets more attention from prospects: listings with images or those with customer quotes?
As it turns out, the answer is “yes.” Mediative recently completed a study watching people interact with search results in Google Places listings. They wanted to know where people look, whether listings with reviews influence people and if/how people use the maps.
The study involved 12 in-person participants using eye-tracking software and another 90 participants online. The premise was that each participant took an imaginary road trip across Canada, choosing a place for a friend to get a tattoo in each of 4 different cities: Hamilton, London, Winnipeg and Edmonton.
Larry shared some interesting statistics on text message marketing: according to Nelson Ratings the average text message gets a response within 2 hours.
He also shared that any B2C business who offers any kind of coupon can benefit from text message marketing and they are always finding new and creative ways to use this technology to do marketing.
Many people get started blogging with lots of enthusiasm only to give it up a few months later because no one seems to know about it or show any interest in the discussion.
The Experian Hitwise Black Friday 2011 Webinar provided marketers with plenty of useful data and implications for the fast approaching Black Friday 2011: November 25.
Visits to the top 500 retailer sites during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday increased from 2009 to 2010. Additionally, the graph below shows that visits to the top 500 retailer sites is higher and picking up through mid October 2011 as compared to the same period in 2010.
as a traffic source, the squeeze page is one of them. Here’s a good example of a question I’ve seen in marketing forums a number of times…
wherever they are. Now, more than ever, your customers are on their mobile phones doing everything. Paying bills, checking scores, and most importantly, doing research on what they’re next purchase is going to be. According to Google, 65% of mobile users do research on products, restaurants or services on their cell phones before buying and that 50% of all mobile searches result in purchase. And when it’s estimated that there are between 6-8 billion Google searches made on mobile phones a month, you’d be crazy to not start a mobile-targeted PPC campaign!
pitching to magazine editors. You have to be professional and engaging. If you fail to accomplish these two things in your pitch, it will be deleted without being read.
SEO is in a different department than marketing… “oh that’s IT.” This is a real problem for people who implement SEO because the expectation is often: “go do your technical thing to get our site ranking but don’t expect any help from us, that’s your job.”
factors that can influence search engine results. If you are overly focused with your on-page efforts you may be missing this component. One solution is to put yourself in the position of your audience. In your experience what information has prompted you to comment or share with your network? It is likely including these factors in your writing will propel your content through the social pipes.
realize the other side of Google’s ranking matrix – human raters.
they make viral. Is this a realistic goal to achieve? It probably isn’t, but you shouldn’t aim to take every one of your posts viral in the first place either.
advantage of Black Friday sales in 2010, with an even more astounding $39 billion being spent on merchandise. What this means for your business, of course, is a healthy competition to draw in as many of those 212 million shoppers and as much of an “in the black” profit as your organization can manage going into the first day of the 2011 holiday season.
