5 Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business

5 Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business

It’s easy to get lost in the seemingly endless number of options to market and promote your small business. Perhaps you have heard about Twitter for ages, but you haven’t so much as tried to sign up for an account, not knowing its true worth. You don’t know if traditional marketing tactics will work for you, but you don’t know too much about other avenues, either. Luckily, I’m here to shed some light on your options as a small business owner.

Social Media

The landscape is widespread: bookmarking websites like StumbleUpon, smartphones with mobile apps, Facebook, and so on. How do you know what to use to ramp up your company’s marketing presence?

First, define your goals. What are you trying to get out of social media? Are you trying to generate leads, share content, or create new relationships?

Second, choose a platform that fits. If your business is culinary, design, or beauty-based, you could benefit greatly from using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Tumblr. Businesses that don’t rely on up-to-the-minute trends and creative photos and images (most manufacturers, for example) wouldn’t benefit as much from Instagram or Pinterest.

Third, ask yourself if you are going to create a position based around social media, or if you are going to do the posting yourself. Think about the time it takes to form relationships and build a following. If your business is doing well, most likely you need to hire an expert who can dedicate his or her day to the many networking opportunities that revolve around social media. Develop an editorial calendar to plan when posts go up, or manage your social media content stream through a platform such as Hootsuite.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Naturally, you want your company to be found online, preferably high up in Google Search. If you want to establish your brand, SEO is the way to go. SEO is simply integrated digital marketing that allows you to identify keywords and optimize content to improve the visibility of your website. To this end, measurable link-building and the creation of quality viral content are respectable marketing tactics that work. Scheming and spamming never get any company anywhere in the long run.

SEO’s return on investment (ROI) fluctuates as PPC (see below) rises and falls, and organic search results are more trusted than paid advertising.

That’s why SEO is more worthwhile over time.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

PPC marketing provides instant results because it generates visitors quickly and also lets you measure your budget and ROI appropriately. Becoming well-versed in Google AdWords helps your company take full advantage of the potential benefits of PPC marketing.

Have you already established your brand? PPC is terrific for companies looking for another avenue to continue to build their business. If your first method is already working, PPC can open up your company to additional leads, at a cost. You will see these leads quickly — in some cases instantly, as soon as the campaign is activated. The customers who click on PPC ads know what they want; they don’t want the trouble of a time-consuming Web search. PPC ads transport these customers directly to a page where they can purchase what they need. This avenue helps your company build brand awareness, collect impressions, and open doors to obtaining valuable new leads.

Email Marketing

Don’t underestimate the power of email. From viral email campaigns to weekly eBlasts, many emails are opened consistently due to factors such as subject line, quality, and deployment time. Customers come to look forward to worthwhile content that makes its way to their inbox. Do your research, give the audience what they want, and see profits rise.

Content Marketing

Without content marketing, a website can easily get lost in the shuffle. Many would say that you don’t need a social media strategy or an SEO strategy as much as you need a content strategy.

Although content marketing includes quality-written Web content and social media maintenance, it also includes blogs, eBooks, webinars, white papers, and a variety of other outlets. The key is to engage with your core customers on a level that they relate to, a level that promotes action from their end.

When it comes down to it, it’s pretty simple: Know your audience, establish a plan, and test, test, test to see what works for your small business.

What marketing tactics have been most useful to you and your business?

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7 Directions for Web Development

Why Web Development Is like Building a House?

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FOR      http://zubair141.blogspot.com

Build a Better Website!

I’m sharing these ideas because they will help you build a better website. Thinking about web development as a home building project will help you:

• Have the right expectations going into a project
• Deal with the inevitable challenges
• Take the negative emotion out of the project
• Work more effectively as a team
• End up with a better end product

Let’s take a look.

1. Don’t Bring Your Baggage

Every stakeholder comes to the project with baggage. Mary wants a walk-out basement. Joe wants Flash animation. But if the property is flat as a pancake and the website’s purpose is SEO, this particular baggage will clutter up the project before it even starts, and create conflicts that needn’t occur.

2. Start with a Blueprint

Nobody would start pouring concrete before looking at a blueprint, but lots of people start designing web pages before doing a site map and a wireframe. A site without a solid foundation will be unstable and unsuccessful, no matter how skilled the workers are.

3. Hire a Tyrant

The last thing you want on a homebuilding project is a touchy-feely project manager: your house will sit roofless and rotting in the rain six months after the promised move-in date. For this reason, whoever is running your web development project should have the grit and determination of a field commander. You may not like him or her every day, but you’ll be head over heels in love when your website comes in on time and on budget.

4. Expect Problems

No matter how solid your foundation and skilled your team, there are going to be light switches in the wrong place and air that doesn’t circulate properly. Some problems are fixed quickly and others can’t be fixed cost effectively at all. Perfection is an unrealistic expectation when building a site, so don’t blow a gasket when you realize there are calls to action that visitors can’t find and navigation that doesn’t flow. Stuff happens.

5. Your Workers Are Only as Good as Their Tools

Would you want your Berber carpet installed with thumbtacks? How about a granite countertop tied to the decking with rubberbands? If this sounds sketchy to you, don’t make the same mistake with your website and saddle your team with an outdated CMS (content management system), out of date design software and an unstable development environment.

6. Your Tools Are Only as Good as Your Workers

There’s a reason why I don’t pound nails: I’m the type of guy who could break two windows and an arm changing a lightbulb. Do your writers understand the fundamentals of web copywriting? Do your designers have a thorough grounding in web design? If not, they may do more harm than good, like yours truly on a home improvement job.

7. Check Your Work

When construction is finished, a final home inspection provides some assurance that the roof won’t cave in. A thorough, pre-launch test of your website accomplishes the same thing. It’s better to hear that your Contact Us form doesn’t work from your inspection team than from a prospect who tried to use it to place an order two months earlier.

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Awesome SEO Tricks

If anybody tells you that SEO is a shell game and great content naturally gets found in search, do not listen. These people are wrong, dead wrong, and dangerously wrong if you want to be rewarded for the great content you are producing.

Basically, this school of that says that great content “naturally” rises to the top (top of what?) and therefore writers do not need to soil their hands with “manipulative” SEO techniques such as inserting keywords in text and acquiring inbound links. Great content speaks for itself, and that’s all there is to it.

As a writer, I wish this was true, but it isn’t. Here’s why.

What Is Great?

Actually, let’s start with what is right about this point of view. Any SEO knows that Google wants to deliver the best and most relevant content to users of its search engine. This is only common sense: who’s going to use a search engine that gives you horrible, irrelevant links when you perform a query? Answer: nobody. Of course Google and every other search engine on the planet wants to reward great content and ignore — or even punish — bad content.

Problems set in when we start to think about how to define quality and relevance. How does Google know what “naturally” great content looks like? Google’s complex algorithm is the criteria it uses to evaluate markers of content quality. Is it original? Is it authoritative? Is it popular? Is it useful? What is it about? Try answering these questions in a precise way. You’ll quickly see that identifying great content isn’t a “naturally” easy process by any stretch.

Google Can’t Rank What It Can’t See

A big problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is that it oversimplifies the practice of SEO.Obviously — but apparently not obvious to SEO critics — Google must be able to read content before it can do anything with it. One of the most important SEO activities, and one totally overlooked by critics, is to make sure a website’s architecture clearly communicates what the content is about and how pages of content relate to each other and to the most relevant search queries.

I don’t care if you’re Ernest Hemingway or William Shakespeare: if Google can’t read it, it can’t rank it. And there a lot of websites out there that are so poorly built from an SEO standpoint, my statement isn’t as much of an exaggeration as you might think. Decisions about how to set up navigation, what text to use for page titles, and where to interlink pages within the domain, along with many other considerations, have a huge bearing on Google’s ability to ascertain the value of the content.

If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them

Another problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is it that it is self-defeating. By stereotyping all SEO work as manipulative, people not only do a disservice to SEO — they do a disservice to themselves! Yes, it’s true that black hat SEO practitioner bend every rule to sneak lousy content into positions where it doesn’t belong. But this is not an argument to ignore SEO, it’s an argument to excel at SEO! It seems to me that any great writer would want to work overtime to push his or her contentup in the rankings, and push the black hat crap down.

If we cede the search ground to the black hats, the only content people will find is the worst content. Knowing the anti-SEO argument is well-intended and rooted in principle, I’ll make my own moral appeal: as true believers in meaningful content, we have an obligation to work as hard and ethically as we can to motivate Google to share our work.

Speaking the Language of the People

A third problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is its inward focus. Pardon me for saying so, but I think writers should pay attention to the words people use in their search queries. If, for instance, I’m writing a post with SEO advice, I think it’s good to know that in the last month, 74,000 people searched for “seo tips”, 2,900 searched for “seo advice”, and 1,300 searched for “seo ideas.” Now, as a writer, maybe I prefer the term “seo advice,” but so what? Wouldn’t I be a smarter writer to use a term that’s far more popular?

Paying attention to keywords helps us write in a way that is more clear and relevant to readers, which strikes me as a very good thing. Ignoring keywords is just as bad as abusing keywords … maybe worse.

Authors Will Rule SEO

The thing I love about the anti-SEO viewpoint is its delicious irony. Nobody places a higher value on great content than Google, and now, finally, Google’s technology is catching up to its ideology, in the form of Rel=Author links. What Google is trying to do here is associate content with its author in addition to where it was published. Google wants searchers to be able to find the best authors — exactly what purists are after.

In the long run, the author will have as much or more influence over rankings than the publishing sites. This is a big deal. It means we have to update our SEO practices rather than ignore them — now more than ever.

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3 Reasons Why SEO Matters: Improve Search Engine Rankings

3 Reasons Why SEO Matters: Improve Search Engine Rankings

This is why SEO matters: If you want to improve search engine rankings, there are two ways to make that happen, and both techniques have to work together. First, you have to write amazing content. Second, you have to employ sound keyword strategy.

I spent last weekend in Hollywood, California. It was a great trip for two reasons:

1. I was able to take a bunch of goofy tourist photos.
2. I was afforded the opportunity to help people understand the importance of SEO.

3 Reasons Why SEO Matters

Here's the brick wall I usually hit when explaining the importance of SEO. Most writers are allergic to numbers and statistics. Some writers are completely against structure (these writers often fight against the idea of using outlines).

However, if they're going to get the most bang for their buck online, writers (and all professionals) need to optimize their websites for search engine. Here's why:

1. SEO leads to discover-ability. Most people who need to know the answer to something now go online to find the answers. Sites that aren't optimized for search engines will not display in the search results. If your site isn't on the first page of results, it's pretty much invisible. In fact, most sites that aren't in the first 3-5 spots on a search page will receive fewer than 5% of all clicks on a given search.
2. SEO leads to higher traffic. A common method for measuring success on blogs and websites is to look at traffic. That makes a lot of sense. One good method for increasing traffic is to post a lot of new content, but it takes a lot of effort for each new page or post. Any even better method is to post content that receives as much (or more) traffic on day 365 as the day it was first posted. This can be accomplished with great SEO.
3. SEO leads to improved content. Many writers point to content as the reason they object to learning SEO. They argue that targeting keywords leads to stilted language. Let me agree for a moment: Yes, it can. In such cases, keyword-loaded posts with stilted language do not perform well in search engine rankings. It takes a combination of great keywords and great content to consistently rank on page one.

Improve Search Engine Rankings

I'm only writing this post because I've seen the power of SEO first hand. I've spent the past two years experimenting with content on this blog, including increasing posts, linking to social media, and optimizing for search engines. Some experiments have worked; others have failed; and I try to share everything with my awesome readers.

As many long-time Not Bob readers know, I was posting nearly every day through the first five months of 2012. I'd driven traffic to my blog to new levels through many strategies mentioned in my 25 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic post. Then, life got in the way, and I was able to run a different type of experiment--a very passive experiment. I was able to see what my Not Bob traffic would be like without new content.

This is only my 2nd post since August 7 and 10th since May 31. In fact, I didn't even post in the month of September. Traffic on my blog actually increased during the months of June through September (October is still in progress) by 44.8% in 2012 over 2011. In the month of September (in which I didn't make a single post), my traffic increased 41.4%.

I'm not sharing these stats to make your eyes gloss over or to boast. I want to emphasize that the traffic to my blog in my absence was not due to new content. Instead, it was mostly through new readers finding me while searching for answers online. My combination of solid content and great keywords helped increase my traffic while I've been away.

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SEO Basics for Beginners

What is SEO?

SEO Stands for Search engine optimization, which is used to get traffic and to show up in search engines, SEO contains two words 1. Search engine 2. Optimization

1. Search engine 

Google is the best example of a search engine; we use Google daily to search movies, games, and other things by just writing a single word.
 Search engine works to search that word in other websites to show you and after searching Google show you each and every website one by one in different pages. It's easy to use Google rather than finding your specific keyword in websites one by one. 

 For example : if I want to download a game " Sleeping dogs " So I will go to Google and simply write sleeping dogs free download,
 If I want to get the game without search engine then how I can get it ? Without search engine it’s very difficult to find out your specific game or any specific keyword in this way I will open alot of websites one by one and search them. - Too difficult! 

2. Optimization

Optimization is an English word which means “Make the best use of “ In the field of SEO optimization means to optimize your website in search engines. There are alot of search engines which helps us to get traffic or to show up you as I discussed above. People optimize their websites or blogs in search engines to get traffic and for other purposes. Optimization in search engine is not difficult and not important but bloggers and web-masters should optimize their website for their readers! 

Types of Search Engine Optimization 

1. White hat SEO         2. Black hat SEO

1. White hat search engine optimization (SEO)

White hat SEO is also called user-friendly optimization, in this optimization only legal and user-friendly optimization is accepted. This is opposite to black hat and white hat SEO don't allows any illegal optimization or over optimization, Webmasters and bloggers have to write for their readers and focus on their readers not on search engines. Over optimization is also a bad thing for optimization. If you want to do white hat SEO then you should write original content and fresh content. Do not use any illegal and black hat technique and that's it! 
Back links 

Back links is the post powerful method for search engine optimization, there are a number of methods to generate quality back links and through back link we can easily optimize our website in search engines. 

 How to make backlinks ??

Well there are more than hundred ways to build backlinks I have written few methods to get back links but quality backlinks check it here: 5 Killer tips to build quality backlinks  

Quality content: 

Now a day’s quality content and user-friendly content work's more then back links and search engine optimization, Writing a quality content will not only improve reader-ship on your but also attract search engines to your blog. 

 Building backlinks is necessary but not much important as compared to quality content , So focus on quality content not on optimization, Write for your readers not for search engines. 

 Trust me! I've asked from every expert about this, All experts said that we don't care about search engines, we write for our readers not for search engines

I advise you to write your own, Original and fresh content to attract crawlers and search engines towards your blog or website.

Social media sharing  

Social media is the most power tool for marketing and to grow your buisness.Websites like facebook,twitter and pinterest are the most popular social media websites and every blogger or webmaster need to use them to gain traffic, 

 Don't use social media as entertainment channel, Use them like a traffic source

Black hat Search engine optimization (SEO)

In this type of optimization webmasters or bloggers try to dodge search engines and get high rankings and over optimize their websites by building mass back links. 

 There are a number of peoples doing black hat SEO but it's not good. Now a day’s search engine is more clever than those optimizers. 

 Black hat SEO contains alot of methods so let's discuss them!

Cloaking :

Cloaking is a black hat method to optimize a website in search engines, In this method peoples do over optimize a page and post to search engines, Or they make diffrent types of pages with the same content " Making diffrent tittles with the same content or making different content with same tittles to optimize the post in search engines is called cloaking” 

A cloaking page is packed with a number of keywords and advertising ads to over optimize and get serp's . 

It's very bad thing for those who write for their users and readers in this way they can't get rankings and can't get traffic if they even have good content and good optimization. 

Hidden Text

 Some year's before, People's was using hidden text technique to dodge search engines and they were successful in that, but now a days Google and other search engines are more clever then peoples. 

 Actually hidden text is a trick in which peoples write a long tail keywords or do keyword stuffing in hidden mode. They change the font size into smallest and change the text colour same as background, In this way their readers can't see it but now a days search engine's has feature to see all hidden text and links even in micro format.This is very harmful for bloggers and webmasters. 

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the most popular blackhat seo method,In this method people Stuff a lot of long tail keywords into a page and which help’s them to get targetted visitors and a good traffic from search engines easily. Now a days google panda and google penguin don’t allow these keyword stuffing and penalizing those webs who are doing keyword stuffing or doing any other black hat SEO technique,

Click jacking

Click jacking is not a new method but very rare people know about this,In this method webmaster’s put a script in their website and specify a point to click,
  When someone visit the website and click anywhere in web, The click directly jacked to the point specified by the webmaster

In this way they can get a number of facebook shares, Google +1’s , retweets and pins easily.But remember “ google is more smarter then others “ so never use these tricks to gain traffic and rankings, These are black hat SEO techniques and we didn’t shared them to help you in SEO but these are for knowledge. An SEO expert know’s everything about SEO including the wrong way and the right way but he do that what is best for his blog or website.

Never use any of black hat method otherwise google panda and google penguin will penalize your web or google will de-index your website or blog from search.

Well there are alot of ways of black hat SEO but here we can't discuss them.Soon i will post a article about how to do white hat SEO ! Thanks a lot for reading.

SEO Phrases & tricks

Assuming that there is a solitary thought that has driven a great part of the virtual universe of the web and has enormously swayed much of its development is the idea of Keywords Selection.

Indeed, essential word determination, "deciding on the right watchwords", is the chief crucial, essential and profitable on-page Search Engine Optimization plan in any site's SEO battle.

In particular, essential word determination is the heart of any business' showcasing battle at its by and large essential level; since essential words are what web indexing tools' arachnids are creeped for, filed, and in addition what look strings are matched opposite and what internet searching tool clients sort in when they are scanning for items, aids, and replies to their analyses.

SEO Tips on Keyword Selection

As deciding on the right watchword is what makes clients achieve your web space, or all the more altogether is what the entire online searching tool activity is determined to, it is indispensably paramount to study how to select the right pivotal words for your destination. Here are some SEO tips that might help you pick the right catchphrase for your site:

1. Make a Keyword/Phrase List that is appropriate to your business

You can do this by utilizing pivotal word proposal devices for example Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Include correlated magic words (incorporate a reach of head terms, mid-terms and long-tail decisive words) and contenders' URLs to a watchword recommendation apparatus and get a record of proposed pivotal words. At that point you can include your particular incorporating including varieties, plurals, and subsidiaries of the words/phrases on your record.

2. Evaluate Each Word/Phrase keeping in mind the end goal to get the undoubtedly pertinent magic words that might carry the most astounding measure of value movement to your resource by thinking about the aforementioned essential angles:

Fame/ Status

You can utilize programming like WordTracker that might give you cement ubiquity figures of every hunt word/phrases based upon genuine web crawler action. Clearly, decide on keyword/phrases that have a higher number for you can want they can create more movement. It can additionally give you supplemental keyword/phrase prescriptions and varieties.

You can likewise look at worldwide monthly looks and rivalry. Conceivably search for level rivalry and up to 1,000 monthly seeks.

Specificity

Consider words/phrases that your potential clients will look or sort into web indexing tools. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential clients; think like them, not similar to an internet searching tool enhancement master.

For additional particular keyword/phrases very nearly consistently have lesser contestants and is in all likelihood much more effortless to get towering web index rankings.

Inspiration of User

Attempt to comprehend the inspiration of online searching tool clients by examining the pursuit word/phrase they utilized. By comprehending them you might likely comprehend and confirm the best statements/ expresses that these clients might possible pick or select.

3. Survey and Keyword/Phrases Performance

Use programming or apparatuses that intermittently dissect the exhibition of every single keyword/phrase based upon which keyword/phrases are carrying your locale the most important guests. Doing this might help you hone/refine your online searching tool advertising battles since you can evacuate and trade non-performing keyword/phrases and expand your venture towards the statements that are conveying guests that truly change over (come to be clients).

4. Slender your Keyword/Phrases List

Following assessing your keyword/phrases and its exhibition, slender down your record. Pick no less than 10 keyword/phrases for each SEO crusade -your mark name and four extra watchwords. Attempt to picture if folks looking on the proposed terms, seeing your post might truly change over.

There are other SEO tips to help you pick the right catchphrases; even online searching tool improvement aids offer this sort of utility. Depending on if you have supplemental SEO tips, don't hesitate to remark beneath.

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