While many businesses are warming up to the idea of content marketing, they are still limiting themselves. There is so much more to content marketing than starting a blog or creating social media profiles. There are so many more content marketing channels available, including video. For some reason, many businesses are hesitant to get into video marketing. That’s because they don’t realize its full potential and are “over thinking” the process.

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google for a reason. People like to watch videos, and they aren’t just watching videos featuring funny babies or cute animals either (though that may be how it seems). People look for videos to find information on just about everything. Some people prefer to be shown how to do something rather than read a lengthy how-to guide. Any business from any industry has something to show target audience members. YouTube is the most popular video sharing site, but there are plenty of others too. In addition, a video can appear in a Google search result if it is well optimized providing potential customers or clients with one more way to learn more about you.

There are many excuses that businesses use to try and get out of developing and implementing a video marketing strategy. The first is that they don’t think that they have anything worth sharing via video, which is completely false. Take a tour of the office, interview an employee or a client, film a training session or an appearance at a trade show. It doesn’t have to be anything complex. As long as it gives a little glimpse into your business, that’s all that matters.

Some businesses are hesitant to create videos because they have the wrong priorities from the start. They think that a video is only worthwhile if it gets lots of views and goes viral. Really, for marketing purposes, the only goal should be to create a video that target audience members will find beneficial and appreciate. It doesn’t need to achieve viral status in order to be effective. In fact, viral videos may get attention, but they don’t always lead to anything more than that.

What it comes down to is the more good content that you put out on the web, the better the chances are that you will be found. People like to receive information in different formats and may prefer a video over a blog post. Even by investing just a small amount in a camera and some editing equipment and producing one or two simple videos a month you can really add a lot to your content marketing portfolio.

About the Author:
Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO firm. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

The Internet allows people to share their thoughts on just about anything, and it’s largely uncensored. For businesses, this can be somewhat of a scary concept because they no longer have full control over their brand image. However, that doesn’t mean that a business has no control at all.

What a business does have full control over is its own web properties. Use your website and blog to your full advantage. Include a review page on your site and optimize it for “Company X reviews”, “Company X testimonials”, etc. This increases the chances of someone finding the information that you provide (not the information provided by others). If you’ve worked with lots of great clients in the past or have lots of happy customers, ask them for a review or testimonial. Many will be happy to do this for you.

Another way to control the online reputation of your business is to produce quality content on a regular basis and share it not only on your web property (like your blog), but also in other places across the web. Content is what establishes trust with target audience members and these links establish trust with the search engines. Link building for SEO purposes can also serve as a safety net for online reputation purposes. The more links that there are with controlled branded content, the better the chances are that it will outweigh any kind of negative sentiments should they occur. As part of a link building strategy, and to protect your brand image, it’s advisable to build profiles on many different web properties. Due to the trust factor of these sites, the profiles will rank well for a branded search.

Social media should be a part of every business’s online marketing strategy. It’s a great way to communicate with target audience members and monitor what is being said about your business or brand. Negative comments are bound to happen, but what matters is how they are handled. If you show that you care, apologize, and make good on the situation publicly people will be more likely to forget about it.

Since your online reputation is so important, it’s necessary to spend time monitoring it by checking profiles and review sites on a regular basis. Set up a Google Alert for your company name so that you can immediately check out anything new that is posted about you. It certainly takes some time, but is well worth the effort. It’s important to take action before a small issue becomes a much larger one.

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO agency. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

Conduct National Keyword Research
The methodology behind how someone searches for your product or service is the same no matter where you are located. Don’t worry about the location when conducting keyword research. The location will be added later. National search volume is a good indicator of whether a keyword will be successful or not. If there are only a few searches for a particular keyword on a national level, that means that there will probably be none on a local level and it’s not a good keyword to target.

Keep It Simple
Typically, the website of a local business is relatively small. There is no need to try and “stuff” excess information into the content just for the search engines. That’s a spammy approach and will be a turn off for website visitors. For example, don’t create a new page of content to target every surrounding city or include a long list of zip codes in your area. It’s obvious that this is only for the search engines. Instead, focus only on the actual city in which you are located (or cities if you have more than one office location).

Activate Local Profiles
Google, Bing, and Yahoo! all allow businesses to fill out local profiles that will appear in the search results for specific related queries. Providing basic information is free. Make sure that these profiles are complete, accurate, and verified. While you can’t control the position of a search engine profile on the results page, it’s still important search engine results page real estate that shouldn’t be ignored.

Include Address and Phone Number
While it may seem obvious to include this information on a “Contact Us” or “About Us” page, this information should also be included on every other page, either in the header or the footer as crawlable text. Use a local phone number, not an 800 number. This information is important to have on every page because it confirms to the search engines where you are physically located.

Utilize PPC if Needed
Since you have limited space and content on a local business website, you can use PPC advertising in order to target additional long tail keywords or other areas. This provides an additional outlet to get your brand noticed in the search engines.

About the Author:
Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO firm. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

The right way to use social media for business depends on many factors including target audience and business size. Perhaps the most important factor to consider is the nature of the business. Social media efforts should be in line with the brand image and reputation and all other marketing efforts, both online and offline. There are plenty of social media tactics and tools that can be used for brand pages, but that doesn’t mean that you need to use them all. It’s very likely that not every function of social media is applicable to the needs of your business. Doing it all or doing too much can lead to confusion, distraction, and possibly even frustration of followers.

Some of the popular social media strategies for businesses are to hold contests, promote special deals and coupons, and encourage fan and follower check-ins. For local businesses and B2C businesses, these strategies are great for raising awareness and encouraging social participation and engagement. However, these strategies may not make sense for a company in the B2B services industry. Every social media strategy should be unique.

The key to developing the right social media strategy that works for your business is to do some research and plan ahead, instead of jumping in and figuring it out as you go along. This all starts with deciding who will manage the campaign. Obviously, a small business probably doesn’t have the resources to outsource the work. This isn’t a bad thing. After all, the people already working at the business, especially the business owner, know it best. For a larger corporation, there may be more than one person involved in the social media strategy. If this is the case, they all need to be on the same page from the start.

Social media is a great tool for building a brand and it now has an impact on SEO. However, for all businesses it’s important to remember that a social media page shouldn’t be the end point of interaction. It’s important to get followers to click over to the actual brand website in order for them to take action.

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO company that offers B2B SEO services. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

Why Organic Traffic is So Important?

Before going into the finer details, let me clarify why organic traffic is critical and why you should focus on building a natural and expanding link portfolio, rather than target the same landing page over and over again. First and foremost, organic traffic drives the maximum number of conversions, sales and clicks. It was true 10 years ago and this law holds true till this date. Nothing can beat the conversion ratio of the “general user” who clicks the first result in Google search, when compared to the traffic received from Adword ads, banner advertisements, social media campaigns and so on.

And the most amazing part is that it is completely free, but needs a lot of effort and background preparations. Once you reach the top spot, traffic is going to flow in naturally and all you have to worry about it what you want the user to do, rather than how you get them.

Why Build a diverse link portfolio?

A lot of the webmasters I know repeat the same mistake of gaining link popularity of a particular page but wonder why their efforts are not showing results.

No longer anyone can gain a decent exposure on search, by gaining hundreds of links to a single landing page on any domain. Google and other search engines are well versed with such techniques and they can determine whether your link campaign is natural or marketed. It is certainly not deceptive but it is by no means recommended for better exposure.

Instead, you should try to get external links to deeper pages and let the Google juice flow across your entire domain. Different pages that relate to a single context are much more powerful than one page with tons of links.

Example: You want to get targeted traffic on your sales page which is about “Men’s footwear”. Instead of buying tons of links with the anchor text “Men’s footwear”, you should start a blog and talk about different men’s footwear, collections, trending items and so on. A blog gives you exposure in your niche and there is a high chance that other bloggers will pick your stories, link to them, tweet about it and share it.

The result is much more powerful and search engines interpret the following conclusion:

“Okay, this site has a blog and they regularly publish stories about “Men’s footwear”. Interestingly, a lot of other sites frequently link to different pages of the blog, which proves that this particular person isn’t link farming them or paying money for those links. This must be a wonderful resource, otherwise people won’t link so naturally to different pages on the blog”.

Now, when your blog gains a good level of trust, popularity and reach among it’s audience, you know how to hit the hammer when the iron is red hot. Prepare a call to action right below your blog posts and request your readers to check out your sales page – the landing page where you want to drive conversions.

More importantly, the more interesting and useful resource you have on your domain, the more trust you will command. The secret of getting more conversions is Trust, not just links and links and links. Get over it, start a blog and build it as if no one is listening. Your efforts will pay off after a due course of time and the results will be long lasting than before.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant who works for a company that provides a to-do list tool for businesses and individuals.

The first way to determine how valuable a link will be is to use free online tools to research the website that you intend to get a link from. Websites like Compete, Website Grader, and Network Solutions WhoIs will give you an inside look at the website and provide you with information about generated traffic and domain background. If a website receives low traffic, low grades, is hosted in a foreign country, and hasn’t aged more than a year the link won’t hold much value. On the other hand, if the website checks out via all of these sites, that is a link worth going after.

Another way to determine link value is to analyze target audience behavior online. What sites are target customers or clients visiting? Link building isn’t just for the search engines. It’s also for improving online visibility and generating traffic back to your website. Conduct research and analyze the backlinks of competitors in order to find websites that target audience members visit frequently.

A link from a high authority site that generates traffic from target audience members is great, but what’s even better is if there is some kind of potential added value in the link. For example, are you able to establish some kind of relationship with the website owner? Can they provide you with additional link building opportunities down the road like guest blog posts or can the relationship even lead to opportunities beyond linking, like a business partnership or referral? It’s important to think beyond the technical aspect of linking.

Perhaps the easiest way to determine link value is simply to use common sense. Take a look at the website. Does it provide any value? Is it easy to navigate and does it provide a good user experience? Or, does it have multiple spelling and grammar errors and is it loaded with ads? If it doesn’t look like a website that you’d like to spend time visiting, it’s likely that the search engine spiders and prospective target audience members have the same bad impression of the site and the link doesn’t hold much (if any) value.

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO services firm. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

User Experience
Any web property that you operate should have user experience at the top of the priority list. It’s very likely that your target audience members can find the same, or very similar, service or product that you offer elsewhere. Don’t frustrate them with a poor layout or navigation. The same theory applies when it comes to your content. Any interaction with your brand should be easy. A website or blog visitor should never have to think too much because if they find themselves thinking too hard, you’ve lost them. A blog should be easy to navigate and include post categories and archives by date. Including social share buttons also makes it easy for them to share the content with their fans and followers. If these buttons aren’t included, it’s unlikely that someone is going to take the time to open up a new window, sign in to their account, and copy and paste the link. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t find your content “shareable”; it just means that they didn’t feel like spending that extra time to share it.

Improve Brand Visibility and Reach
The ultimate long term goal of any content is for it to rank organically in the search engines for targeted keywords. But this takes time. If you create quality content, don’t you want people to see it immediately? This is why it’s important to have a robust social media presence and a respectable amount of followers. A simple post or tweet will share your fresh new content with the people that care about your brand or industry the most. But you don’t want it to stop there. Hopefully, your content is good enough that they will want to share it with their own fans and followers, which will improve your brand exposure. Including social share buttons increases the likelihood that this will happen.

Social Signals
Social media is no longer just a brand building and communication tool. A social media presence, or lack thereof, now has search engine ranking implications. If a link is shared frequently in social media, the search engines determine that it is a valuable link, which can result in better search engine ranking position. Since including share buttons increases the likelihood of a blog post getting shared, it also increases the likelihood that it will improve your search engine optimization efforts.

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a search engine marketing company that offers social SEO solutions. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

While it’s true that there are multiple reasons that an infographic is beneficial, not everyone should create one. An infographic supports a strong web presence. If you don’t already have a strong web presence for your brand within your niche, you have more important things to worry about.

An infographic is only effective if people are going to actually see it. If you don’t have a strong online marketing foundation, it’s doubtful that the infographic will be very powerful. In order to get your infographic shared to build your link portfolio and brand online, you need to have a significant number of people to share it with. Are you active in the social media and blogging community? Do you have a respectable number of opt in email newsletter subscribers? If not, how do you expect your infographic to be found? Don’t assume that people will eventually find it somewhere on your website. The goal of an infographic is for it to travel, and if you can’t start the process by sharing it to a significant number of your own followers, there really isn’t a point.

Another thing to consider about infographics is that if you want to do it right, it’s not easy. It takes time to research the topic and organize all of the information in a way that flows smoothly and makes sense to the reader. Once you’ve spent an appropriate amount of time preparing it, it needs to be developed and designed. If you don’t have an in house designer, you need to outsource the work to a professional, which will cost you. If you don’t already have a strong online marketing foundation, your money and time is better used elsewhere.

In order for an infographic to be truly effective, it needs to be accurate, beneficial, and professional looking. It also needs to have the potential to reach a wide audience. If your infographic won’t meet these criteria, don’t bother. Work on everything else first, and then create an infographic that is worthy of your time and resources.

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a Boston SEO company. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

So much has been written about the subject of targeted website traffic and increasing the visitor count to your site, an awful lot of it good quality information that if implemented could see you create a six figure online business relatively quickly. The unfortunate thing is that the vast quantities of information available can also hinder many an online business owner, especially those who are new to the whole online marketing game.

So much of the information regarding traffic revolves around the medium in which you should be using to send interested visitors to your website, debates rage far and wide across the internet as to which is more effective, video marketing, article writing, blogging,  podcasting, forum posting, pay per click and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day the medium is only as good as the marketing message contained within the content; if you are offering something of value to people they will naturally be inclined to see what it is you are offering as they will want more of the same, good quality information.

The key to targeted website traffic is however what you then do with that content, where do you distribute the content so it is easily accessible to your target market, so they can consume the content and follow the links back to your site.

An example of this using the medium of article marketing would be after creating the article, to submit to your own blog, then to the article directories, online forums within your niche that allow article posting, other sites and blogs within your niche that accept articles, just Google “your niche name” + “submit content” to find such sites along with online newsletters and e-zines.

With the rise of social media you can easily send your content out to your following by posting to Twitter and of course Facebook, another great strategy to get your content seen more widely through Facebook would be to post a link to your article within relevant groups on Facebook.

You could also go one step further and submit your content to offline publications within your niche such as trade journals and industry or niche specific magazines, these publications are always looking for content and will happily review what you have to offer for publication.

The above are just a few ideas to help you get started and think in terms of quality of content as well as quality of distribution. Start to think along the lines of your prospect and where they go online, what sites they visit, what blogs do they read, what social groups do they belong to and which forums do they belong to. This will make the job of driving targeted traffic to your website so much easier.

Targeted website traffic is the key to succeeding online and without doubt the cornerstone of a six figure online business. To receive more free training on how you can learn to build a six figure online business please visit www.robbrightmarketing.com

The reason is because email newsletters, in the mind of many, border all-too-closely to spam and other unsolicited email. Though email newsletters, if done well, can be a great benefit to the recipient as well as the sender, a poorly-done newsletter can actually damage your reputation and unsell your site or product.

Unfortunately, the difference between a newsletter your subscribers look forward to getting and one they toss in the spam folder is often a minor one. But by simply following these best practices, you can help ensure your newsletter serves as a positive, routine contact for your subscribers and not as a recurring annoyance.

1. Clarity Before Subscription

Far too many newsletter subscription pitches fail to include what is actually in the newsletter. Why should the reader subscribe? What will they be getting? And how often will they be getting it?

Not only are better-informed readers more likely to sign up for your newsletter, but they’re more likely to stay as they know what they are getting into. Compare that to subscribers that are surprised at the volume or content of your newsletter and either unsubscribe immediately or begin to junk your emails.

2. Double Opt-In Only

Every email address on your subscriber list should be obtained through a double opt-in process only. This means that they have requested a subscription on your site (or some other means) and then confirmed that with an email sent to their account.

Email lists that don’t use double opt-in are simply too prone to abuse as anyone can sign up anyone else. This, in turn, puts your newsletters in the hands of those who never really wanted it, turning what should be a legitimate mailing into spam.

Always remember spam is in the eye of the beholder so it’s important to make sure the recipient won’t see it that way.

3. Send at the Best Time

One of the most common ways for your emails to be treated as spam is to have them appear in an inbox filled with other spam letters.

Though there is no single best time to send your newsletters, you typically want to do so when your readers are active on their computer but not too busy.

For example, if you reach out to a business audience, the ideal time might be right after the morning email clean out but before lunch. Likewise, if your audience primarily checks email at home, it might be early evening, shortly after they get home from work.

Understand your audience and learn the best time to send your newsletters to them. You can even further segment this by requesting additional information from your subscribers and then target different readers at different times for maximum benefit.

4. Easy Unsubscribe

It’s a sad truth that, of all of your subscribers, some 91% are going to want to eventually leave your email newsletter (PDF). It’s just part of the life-cycle of an email newsletter.

Making this part of the process is critical to not angering your readers. After all, just because someone is unsubscribing from your newsletter does not mean they won’t purchase your product, read your site or otherwise participate in your community, it just means they no longer want that particular element and and it’s best to not upset them lest they leave completely.

Furthermore, the easier it is to leave, the less likely readers are to mark your newsletters as spam and the less likely they are going to be filtered out for others.

In short, a clear exit helps everyone out.

All in all, there is no reason to be too nervous about newsletter marketing. Though it can be risky if done poorly, if you operate with good faith, make sure people know what they are subscribing to and let them leave when they want, the risk is fairly minor.

While it might mean putting the brakes somewhat on your lists’ growth and being a bit more careful with how you use it, a well-built and well-maintained list is, in the long run, worth far more than one most merely toss into the spam folder.

Best of all, it creates something people look forward to getting and eagerly open, meaning they are a willing audience. That, in turn, is something that almost every advertiser dreams of.

This guest post is written by Lior Levine, a marketing consultant for a web hosting company that provides a list of the top 10 website hosting companies available online. Lior also consults for an international company that provides innovative new cancer treatments.