WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

Search Engines evaluate who is linking to your website to determine how relevant your website is within your industry. Pages that are linked to more frequently are weighted higher by search engines and are more likely to be visited.

Inbound links or “back links” are considered a vote of confidence for your website. Therefore getting “quality links” is an integral part of ranking higher than your competitors on the search engines.

Quality Links:

* Come from popular websites in a related industry.
* Links from higher ranking pages are worth more than miscellaneous links.
* Links that appear higher up in a page are more valuable than links that appear on the bottom of the page in the footer.
* Pages that have large numbers of links may be diluted and less authoritative.
* “Anchor Text” matters. The actual words that link to your webpage are important. For example, linking the phrase “internet marketing Carleton place” to my website is more effective for me than linking the words “Click Here”.

Where do Quality Links come from?
Sadly there is no silver bullet. A certain amount of links will develop naturally over time, but unless you have a very popular site to begin with, playing the waiting game won’t work. Buying links for a link farm typically doesn’t work well either. Those links are typically low quality and can get you into trouble over the long run due to their dubious source.


The first step (the only step I’m going to cover in this post) is to locate sources of quality links. I want to focus on the low hanging fruit:

* Websites that already link to you
* Websites that link to your competitors

In each case it is safe to assume that websites that link to you or your competitors probably link to sites that are relevant to you. Because those sites are relevant to your market, it is safe to assume that sites that link to THEM are also relevant to you and are probably also good link prospects.


There are a variety of methods for tracking down specific links to your site and to the sites of your competitors. The most efficient method is to use professional software that is designed for that specific task. Two that we user are Wordtracker and Web CEO. Keep in mind that there is a learning curve to use them correctly. There is also the associated expense of purchasing the tools, and the time to follow through with the results. I’ll cover that on an upcoming post.

If you want your website to be a success online, you will need to think and plan strategically about your website visitors and what action you want them to take. Most websites don’t do this. This is what will set you apart from the rest. Your website is your business image to the world open for everyone to see.

Do you want your website visitors’ first impression about your business to be good? If you answered yes, find some tips below to incorporate into your digital marketing strategy and to help you make your website stand out from the rest.

Business website tips
Customer: Always focus first on your customer. When a new visitor arrives on your website for the first time, they are usually looking for something or answers to help solve a need that they might have. This could be anything from buying specific products or solving a problem. It is vital that you must understand what your best customers are looking for and then make sure you can address them clearly on the specific page that they arrive on.

Image: Design your website around your customer and the services or products that you offer. If you are selling to Generation Y, use a trendier look that integrates social media elements and if you are selling to Baby Boomers, design your website with a high contrast with larger font sizes. Your website design should about be consistent with your industry and branding. If you are selling to corporate customers, then you will need a polished and professional look.

Action: What do you want your websites visitors to do when they arrive on your website? Contact you? Sign-up for a newsletter? Your website pages should always have a clear path to action. Keep it short and simple with clear call to actions (CTA). Too many possible actions and your visitors will leave instantly. Make the decisions that they have to make on your website easy. Make it visible and clear for your arriving visitors. Design a single primary action into your website pages.

Trust: People have always been cautious of buying online. Write the content of your website to address the needs of your visitors in a language that they will understand (no technical jargon). Also, make it easy to contact you with a phone number and an actual street address. You can include a shipping procedure, privacy policy and a refund policy on your website. Include a trust building “About us” page that includes more in-depth information about your company and what you do.

Websites that get good results are focusing on the needs of their visitors. Always remember that it’s not about you but about your visitors!

Visit our site to learn even more digital marketing tips, techniques and best practices that will work to enhance your online brand!

What really defines Social Media (Web 2.0)? Is it just the technology or the human side? We usually tend to always talk about the technology that is involved with Web 2.0 such as Blogs, Wikis, RSS, AJAX, Api’s, XML, etc.  Although it is the technology that makes Web 2.0 work, this transformation is really sparked by basic human needs.

Social media/networking is about collaboration, connecting, sharing, interacting and expression. With Web 2.0, the online world is being woven in the social fabric of today’s technology driven lifestyle. Web 1.0 was really more about technology trends and Web 2.0 is about the integration of this technology in the basic needs of our daily business and social lives.

Collaboration

Rather than working all alone, tools like Wiki’s and CMS (Content Management Systems) allows for people to work seamlessly together. Other social media tools allows companies to communicate and develop procedures and policies to collaborate with customers and partners.

Sharing

You don’t have to read a blog, news feed or online magazine alone.  The Web 2.0 web allows for interaction and the sharing of information with others. Sites today allows easy sharing of opinions (blogs), videos, images and even your favourite web links (social bookmarking.

Connecting

The technology tools of social media allows people to interact and connect in their common interests.  Social networking sites allows users to connect and collaborate in real-time.  It’s all about connecting people and developing a network approach to business.

Expressing

Blogging has always been a way for human expression.  People can express their opinions on just about anything.  The web 2.0 spaces such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to name but a few allows for easy expression, representation and participation.

Interacting

People always want human interaction.  Social media has brought in conversational marketing.  Companies now holds a two-way dialogue with their customers through real-time chat, instant messaging and blogs.

Internet marketing is the use of the web to advertise, promote and to sell products and services.  A strategic internet marketing plan is quite similar to a strategic business plan, just with a focused and narrower objective.

In building your internet marketing plan, you need to think about how this fits into your business objectives and other traditional marketing strategies.  All these strategies should interrelate and work together for the best results.

Find below the key elements that I always include in any internet marketing plan.

Business plan

Describe your company and your company history.  What are you long and short term overall objectives? What products or services do you sell?

Marketing plan

What targeted market do you compete in? List and describe your primary competitors along with their weaknesses and strengths.  Who are your targeted customers and on what overall basis do they make the final buying decision? What are your positioning, branding and pricing strategies?

Internet marketing

Based on your marketing plan, what are your online objectives in terms of lead generation, traffic, selling, warranty service or customer service? Develop your strategies around search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, affiliate marketing, podcast marketing and blog marketing.

Blog marketing

Based on your targeted customer demographically, what informative and interesting content can you present to them to develop a strong readership? You can always use your blog to support your other online marketing strategies and marketing plans.

Do you have a company presentation? You can use SlideShare to get the message out about your business. SlideShare provides tools and web space for publishing your business presentations online.

An astonishing 25 million website visitors – most of them professional people – participate in SlideShare every month, making it ‘the world’s largest community for sharing presentations‘.

How Can SlideShare Help you?

Participating as part of the SlideShare community enables you to upload, enhance and share your slides, and discuss other PowerPoint, PDF and Open Office presentations with like-minded people.

The purpose-built online sharing tools allow presentations to be shared privately (for internal use only), as well as publicly, with the aim of eliciting some social interaction from your target audience.

Getting Your Message Heard
Spreading your sales message across multiple web platforms is part of an effective Web 2.0 marketing strategy. With this is mind, you can use SlideShare to help:

• Upload your company presentation to share with new and existing customers
• Publish tutorials about your products to enhance your support services
• Share slides from business presentations as a means of reference and promotion
• Develop conversations with other businesses that relate to your industry
• Add insightful comments to enhance other presentations in your niche

To bring an extra dimension to your presentations, SlideShare tools allow you to synchronize audio with your slides. Once a presentation is viewed, the user interface provides all the usual methods of sharing content across the web that millions of web users are now accustomed to just as in YouTube.

Making New Connections
As well as publishing your own materials, use the SlideShare search tool to find other presentations that relate to your target market – or simply to locate topics that interest you. Make comments and contribute genuinely to enhance the presenter’s message.

As part of the SlideShare community you can join and create groups related to your areas of interest. Monitoring groups will allow you to hone in on who will be most compatible with your interests. It will also give you a feel for the tone to take when you first make contact.

Presentation Tips
Adopting a professional but simple approach to preparing your business presentations will enable you to publish short, succinct and memorable marketing messages. With this in mind, here are some tips:

• Be creative with your copy – not with ‘wizzy’ effects
• Keep the presentation style simple – a light colour background for your slides is ideal
• If you are using images, optimize them so the slides load immediately
• Keep your messages short and to the point
• Consider adding some personality – it is a social networking site, after all
• Don’t overwhelm the viewer with facts and figures; use them to enhance your message, not as your message.

Additionally, if you use business presentations, you may want to consider dusting them off and publishing them on the web.

There are many more digital marketing techniques like this that will help your business gain exposure and drive growth online. Here are a few of the world-class online strategies you can implement into your company’s digital marketing mix.

In order to have a successful website, you need your visitors to take action.  You might have exactly what they need. If you have your visitors interested, how can you get them to commit? You also might have a clear and compelling offer, but that is not always enough to let them take the final decision.

It’s a fact that people are wary about buying online. You always have to build trust by eliminating their risk. Your visitors are looking for reassurance.  Adding strong trust-building elements to your website or blog is frequently the difference between a poor performing website and a money maker.

Find below 20 tips you can implement into your digital marketing strategy to build trust, credibility and lower your prospects’ anxiety.

1. Offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee.
2. Include an option for a free trial or introductory offer.
3. Include a video clip of the product in action to help the customer see what they are buying.
4. Have a simple and hassle free returns policy.
5. Prevent surprises by disclosing shipping costs early in the shopping process.
6. On your home page and ordering pages have ‘trust logos’ prominently posted (Bank logos, VISA, HackerSafe).
7. Give reassurance that you will guard their privacy (no spamming, emails won’t be sold to spammers).
8. Include helpful product education and ‘how-to’ advice. The more time they spend on your site, the more they will trust you.
9. Include user product reviews and ratings.
10. Include real testimonials and reviews by people who have used your products.
11. Get endorsements from industry experts and professional organizations.
12. Include links to press coverage from the mainstream media; include an ‘in the news’ or ‘press’ section on your website.
13. List any industry awards you have won.
14. List any industry associations you are a member of (or use their logos in #5).
15. Include actual case studies you have done.
16. Disclose any ongoing costs to maintain and operate the product.
17. Include your phone number and physical address prominently on your site.
18. Offer offline ordering alternatives such as finalizing the purchase by phone.
19. Offer multiple payment options.
20. Offer multiple shipping options.

The goal with call to actions is to be transparent and to show your prospects why they should trust you. Always provide real value and offer your customer choices.

Visit our site for more digital marketing tips and industry techniques that will help your company’s website convert visitors into customers!

Recently, Time magazine released its picks for the Best Blogs of 2010. The list is filled with some unexpected surprises from all genres. Hollywood gossip and tech news are, of course, represented, but so are independent cartoonists and guides to greener living. But most importantly, this list of blog successes can also serve as a digital marketing tool for illustrating the best practices to creating a successful and influential blog of your own.

While the list is diverse in its topics, the one thing that every blog on the list has in common with the others is the presence of a strong narrative that speaks directly to their target audience. As with any great movie or classic novel, a strong narrative voice is essential in blog writing. Blogs that have soared in readership are the ones that simply tell a story in a voice that readers look forward to hearing day after day. Your company’s blog can achieve this, too! Let’s turn to Time’s list for some inspiration.

Zenhabits.net, at the top of the best blogs list, does how-to with style and smarts. The site is devoted to helping readers create a more peaceful daily existence. Created by author Leo Babuta, zenhabits features blogs on how to avoid stress and how to de-clutter your life but does so in a narrative that isn’t preachy or judgmental. The blog is a wonderful example of how to convey your message and purpose while also helping a reader or two.

For examples of one-of-a-kind web resourcefulness, kottke.org is an excellent place to start. Creator Jason Kottke covers all of the liberal arts, from architecture to Woody Allen films, while digging up unique trivia and bizarre factoids. Kottke can be used as a template for the “a little originality goes a long way” blogging motto. Plus it’s informative and fun, so the blog is actually contributing something to the blogosphere — a goal that professionals and business owners should all aim for.

Talking about high aspirations, the writing on Roger Ebert’s Journal is also very impressive. Despite losing his ability to speak due to cancer complications during the mid-2000s, Ebert’s voice has never been stronger in prose that describes everything from his passion for films to his health and travels. Ebert’s fighting spirit and frank discussions make his blog a real winner. What company blogs can take away from Ebert is that it’s okay to have a personality — in fact, it’s encouraged!

List-making blog success, however, is not just for the big guys. Any business – big or small – can turn its little blog into one of its strongest online tools and into a daily reading for customers!

Visit our site to learn more about how content marketing can make your business’ blog absolutely list worthy.

Social bookmarking is great way to get more visitor traffic to your website or blog. Interested social bookmarking site visitors will discover your links and browse to your articles, website pages or blog posts.

Search engines will also discover your links found on popular social bookmarking websites as most of these Web 2.0 channels are ranked very high on the search engines. It is a great way to get your pages indexed on the search engines.

Social bookmarking can help you develop a regular flow of unique visitors to your website or blog over a period of time.

How does social bookmarking work?

Social bookmarking is a way of saving your favorite bookmarks to a public website and tagging them with relative keywords found in the content of the page you want to save.

Others can see your bookmarks and tags as you can see theirs. This allows people to organize, search and select bookmarks based on these tags. These can then be accessed from any web enabled computer.

People search social bookmarking sites to find the most popular websites dealing with almost any subject. Some of the popular social bookmarking websites features a ranking system where users can vote for your bookmarks.

To put it in simpler terms, if your site is rank highly by others, your links will become popular and viewed often.

Social bookmarking tips

• Register: This will be the first thing you will do when you find a social bookmarking site that you would like to use.
• Widgets: You can make it easy for other users to bookmark the content of your website and blog by adding social bookmarking buttons such as Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us or similar sites to your content. Visitors will then be able to bookmark your content with just one click.
• Participate: Search and find informative, great content that you can bookmark around the web. You will gain a reputation by only presenting the best content. Be social and social bookmarking will pay off.
• Great content: Always focus on creating content that is informative, unique and that inspire others. If your content doesn’t stand out, bookmarking won’t work. Valuable content is always the key.
• Occasionally bookmark: When you have created an outstanding content article, it is really ok to social bookmark it yourself. It should meet the standard you set for other or it will hurt your own credibility.

LinkedIn is a business network that has grown exponentially over the past few years and the reason for this is that it is an invaluable digital marketing tool for finding people who can help you to reach your goals. One of the main benefits of using LinkedIn is that it helps you to discover the relationships between people and the mutual contacts who can introduce you to other influential people. Also for people who run professional organizations or associations, LinkedIn will stimulate the dialogue and interaction between members thereby attracting more members.

Your LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is a three degree network in as much as it only considers your first three degrees as your network. So people you know are the first degree, their connections are the second, and those that know them the third. This makes sense since the more degrees of separation the less personal the connection and the harder it is to reach them. If you want to reach people who are outside of this you should become a member of a group that they are a member of. You may then contact them directly, as long as they have not changed the standard privacy settings, which most do not.

Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups can also help you to raise your online visibility. If you think of online networking as being based on increased communication, then you should be taking part and sharing or giving information, asking for help and thanking others for help provided. This will increase your visibility and profile, as well as strengthen your relationships with those in your network.

So take some action and

• Answer questions in the Discussion forums and post relevant articles in the News section
• Ask for help and information from your network, make sure you have thought through the question and people will provide help and assistance to you, which helps to build relationships
• Thank people in public, in a current discussion or forum or start a new thread. Be specific and generous and you will be amazed at the results you will obtain.
• Provide a recommendation to someone who has provided a service or helped you in some manner.

So if you wish to use the network to find new customers, a new employee, supplier or partner, then LinkedIn can provide the information and connections to make that happen.

Join our network on LinkedIn for daily updates and some best-in-class industry tips for your company’s digital marketing strategy.

The most important aspect of starting any new business is to network with other business owners. Networking allows you to not only promote your products and services to others, but it also allows you to educate people about the unique aspects of your business and enrol them into finding you new prospects and leads.

Business networking becomes easier with online “social networks” like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Online social network sites are web-based services that allows individuals or groups to construct a public or semi public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users and groups with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature of these connections may vary from site to site.

Back in the day, you used to listen to the radio, watch television or you picked up the newspaper to see what is happening. Social networking has changed this so that anyone can communicate, broadcast and interact about “what is being said” and share it with others.

Social Networking according to Wikipedia

A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relationships among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service

Business Social Network

A Business Social Network is a variation of the ever so popular social network service but it focuses only towards business networking, business opportunities, etc. It has become a very effective method for both small and big companies wanting to reach specific people internationally and demographically. With the help of a Business Social Network, businesses are given the opportunity to reach more people and have a bigger audience.

Just like networking in real life, the basic rule still applies – it is all about having the same interests. On the Internet, online businesses that shares the same interests would contact each other. If all goes well, they would forge a partnership or an alliance to boost their status.

Why Business Networking is important

The important part of Business Social Networking lies in the smart ways to link to people around you. On Business Social Networks you are not only linking to people but gathering knowledge about their business whereabouts. A professional Business Social Networking service attracts, aggregates and assembles prominent business-focused audiences by creating virtual, interactive and informative meeting places.

Business networking sites also allows you to showcase you or your company’s unique services, position and talents in the most positive way. In the past, your business dress created lasting first impressions. Now, a more realistic picture is formed through the web before any actual face to face meeting takes place. This means height, weight, etc no longer plays as important a role in business success as in the past– and we are all on a more even playing field.

Business Network Marketing

Whether you own your own business or work for a company, there are distinct competitive advantages for better understanding and using Business Social Networks to promote your products or services. There is a lot of information on the topic of Business Network Marketing, that it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, flickr, YouTube, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, etc are just a few social networking sites to consider when planning your online marketing campaign.

Business Social Networking can be the answer for promoting your business, through the easy cost-effective marketing it is capable of. Clearly, social networking means are less expensive, more cost – effective, than advertising and other marketing plans although it takes time and dedication.

Business Social Networking provides the exposure every business dreams about. With this kind of exposure, new opportunities are not hard to get. People looking to invest in a business will look for a well reputed person, group or organization, the more your name is repeated, the more chances you get for new opportunities.