Build Brand Awareness Online

If you want to be successful with your business, it’s vital that people know who you are and have a positive view of your brand. There are many simple ways you can create a buzz for yourself online; the trick is to get creative and think outside of the box to do so. With all of the tools and resources that are now readily available, if you put forth a bit of time and effort, you will be able to easily garner attention to your business and brand. Read on for a few ideas.

1. Match Your Blog and Social Media Profiles to Your Website

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth mentioning. It’s essential that the design of all your online content looks the same. Find blogging software that allows you to customize your design and lets you match the URL to your own domain. For social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to name a few, you will need to create a custom social media avatar that you can use across these sites. But, since the image dimensions vary between these sites, you will need to tweak your logo for each account. If you don’t take the time to do this, you run the risk of your logo being cut off or stretched, which will look extremely unprofessional and tarnish your brand’s image. Although you cannot completely customize your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Twitter allows you to do so, so make sure your profile matches the look and feel of your official website.

2. Cross-Reference All Your Profiles

Once you have all of your social media profiles looking their best, you will now want to link all of them together. Make sure your website and your blog have social media icons on them so users can go to them with a simple click of their mouse button. Similarly, you will want to make sure that all of your social media accounts link to your blog and website. By doing so, not only will you make it extremely easy for people to find your information, you will also be signaling to the search engines that all of your social profiles are related to your site, thus building relevance. If you correctly link all your accounts together, your social media sites will show up when someone enters your name into a search engine and will push any negative press or reviews off the first page of the SERPs.

3. Engage Your Existing Audience and Actively Woo New Fans

Being involved in the social media sphere presents you with endless opportunities to interact with your customers and reach out to potential ones. For instance, you can create contests, quizzes and surveys and provide fun rewards and promotions for the participants. Online gaming is huge, so if it fits in well with your niche, you may want to consider creating a game. Creating videos and interactive content such as infographics that aren’t directly related to your brand but are related to your niche will also go far in promoting your brand. You may also want to consider reaching out to your fans and brand loyalists to see if they would be interested in sharing a particular piece of content with their friends and followers. This move has multiple benefits—not only will you be increasing the chance of your content going viral, you will also be engaging in an open dialogue with your customers, which is another good way to boost your brand.

The above guidelines are but a few ways you can bolster your brand’s presence and gain credibility. You are only limited by your imagination and if you dedicate yourself to finding new and innovative ways to spread the word, you are certain to be amazed by the results!

Landing Page Optimization

Landing pages play an important part in converting visitors to customers, so great care needs to be taken when creating these pages. A landing page is a specialized page where someone is directed when they click on your link from an email or social media sharing sites. Since the landing page is the first thing visitors new to your site will see, it’s of the utmost important to make sure this page is optimized for optimum conversion. Following are a few suggestions for making the most of your landing page.

Keep it Simple

The primary purpose of a landing page is to tell your visitors what you want from them, whether that be purchasing a product or signing up for a service. Thus, you want to have as few distractions as possible to divert visitors from the main call to action. Avoid superfluous images and text that can overwhelm and divert a visitor from the reason why they’re on the page to begin with. Your landing page isn’t the place to experiment with different fonts and design elements. The best plan of action is to keep the fonts simple and easy to read and to use white space and headers to organize your information.

Put the Important Information Above the Fold

People want to be able to find the information they seek and do so fast, so it’s extremely important to place your call to action towards the top of your landing page. You definitely don’t want to make visitors have to scroll over halfway down the page to find the sign up button. Make it as easy as possible for them to find the appropriate information by putting it at the top of the page and list the less important data below it.

Hone Your Content

Since your landing page’s function is to achieve a conversion as quickly as possible, you’ll want to use text sparingly, yet effectively. You don’t want to throw up just any old content; rather, it needs to be carefully crafted so it has the most impact. After all, it is the wording that will be doing the selling, so you need to pay attention to every word, from the first line in the headline to the last one in your call to action. Just remember to keep your message clear and to the point to avoid any confusion or uncertainty.

Keep in mind that there’s no exact science to landing page optimization and that constant testing and experimenting is necessary to find what will work best for your particular company. If you aren’t getting the results you are after, try tweaking your headlines and the wording of your copy. Don’t get discouraged if at first you aren’t able to succeed—just keep trying!

The Importance of Meta Tags

Over the past couple of years, the use of meta tags have become widely debated, with many abandoning them because they don’t have a measurable affect in search engine placement. While this is true, meta tags don’t factor into how the search engines will rank your site, they still have an extremely useful function and if you aren’t using them to their full potential, you’re seriously hampering the effectiveness of your website. Meta tags control the information that’s listed about your site on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and it’s crucial to optimize it to generate traffic and conversions. Following are examinations of the most useful meta tags and how they can boost your business’s reputation.

Title Tags

Title tags define what your business is about, so you definitely don’t want to leave it blank. If you do, Google will create one for you and do you really want a third party defining your company for you? Of course not, so don’t overlook this crucial step. When choosing a title, make the most of the ~60 characters that are available to you by listing your organization’s name and a descriptive tag line. You will want to create a different title tag for each individual page within your website by acting as though you are placing an ad for each particular page. Take some time to come up with copy that will entice users to click through by thinking of what would lead you to be interested. This process sounds very time consuming, but it only takes a few seconds if you do them as you create the pages.

Description Tags

These tags generate the description that shows up underneath your website’s title on the SERPs. Again, while Google has acknowledged they don’t use this information for ranking purposes, it’s still very important to include it. This is your chance to list more in-depth information about your company and to represent your brand so people will be interested in learning more. Don’t merely repeat what you put in your title tag; instead, enhance your title, be as descriptive as possible and don’t waste this precious real estate with quotes, dashes or other non-alphanumeric characters. If you don’t create a description tag yourself, a random snippet of text will be chosen from your site by the search engine and it may not always make sense or be relevant.

When you take time to optimize your meta tags, you are signaling to those who come across your website that you’re a business that wants to be taken seriously and cares about its customers. While it’s desirable to be ranked well in the search engines, you need to keep in mind it’s actual human visitors, not search engine spiders, who will be buying your product!

SEO and Usability — What’s More Important?

We’ve all heard the old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” When it comes to creating a successful website, it’s easy to get bogged down by a similar issue; specifically, is it more important to create an amazing-looking website that dazzles visitors and is easy to navigate or is implementing SEO the most valuable use of time? If you want your website to be a success, it’s necessary to find the ideal balance between these two very different elements so your site is findable and engages visitors and converts them to buyers (or, whatever else it is you’re trying to accomplish with your website).

Another old adage comes to mind surrounding the SEO vs. usability debate: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” In other words, you could have the greatest website in the world, but if no one is able to find it, it may as well not exist. Therefore, it is very important to optimize your site with the use of keywords, links and quality content so it can be easily found when someone performs a search.

While there’s no denying the importance of getting your site to rank at the top of search results, it’s essential to make sure once users find your site, they will want to stay there. Having a well-structured, easy-to-navigate site is crucial in being able to convert visitors into consumers of your brand or product. Now that you have people in the forest to hear the tree fall, so to speak, you have to make sure your website will make them want to stick around.

Even though it can be a delicate balancing act to get SEO and usability to work well together, by following a few tips, you will get started down the right path. For one thing, these two components of your site should be weighed equally from the very beginning of the creation of your website. At the outset, if your SEO and design teams are considered equally important and work well together, you will be saving yourself from a lot of problems down the road. Also, at certain times, SEO will need to take top priority over usability and vice versa, so the ability to recognize this fact and make adjustments as time goes by will be key to your continued success. It takes careful planning to please both your human visitors and search engine spiders and with some experimentation, you will be able to accomplish this goal!

Are You Doing Anything to Build a Good Online Reputation?

When was the last time you Googled your name to see what others were saying about you online? If you haven’t done this in a while, it is a must to determine what others have to say about you or your business. Being aware of your reputation and then taking proactive steps to cultivate it is essential to your success. Even if you find that nothing has been said, this indicates you have a lack of reputation, which is not a good thing. Make 2011 the year you take control of your reputation and take active steps to ensure that when people Google you, only the positives emerge.

Actively Engage in Social Media

This point has been pounded into the ground but it really is that important. You must be proactive and set up a Twitter, Facebook and other profiles, for if you don’t, in time, others will and it most likely will not be complimentary. You really don’t want your Internet presence to be hijacked by someone who, for one reason or another, may harbor a grudge against your company. So, if you have yet to do so, the first step to take is to create social media accounts so you can control the message that’s being communicated online about your company.

Monitor What is Being Said and Respond Thoughtfully

Now that you have entered into the social arena online, it is crucial to actively listen to what is being said and, before responding to any criticism or complaints, to take plenty of time to research what happened and why. You should put twice as much effort into reading and analyzing what is being said as you do into responding to it. By taking ample time to simple “listen” to everything that’s being said, you will be able to determine the underlying issues surrounding a particular problem and come up with a solution that will bode well for the long term.

Analyze Your Weaknesses and Formulate a Plan of Action

Perhaps you have discovered a huge mistake your business recently made (it happens!) and before news gets out about your error, you need to address it online. Don’t ever try to hide anything, for your customers will find out one way or another and it is best if it is from you. By acknowledging your weakness and being upfront, you are establishing yourself as an honest and accountable enterprise that truly cares about its clientele and is willing to admit to its shortcomings. This openness and honesty is key in your being able to build a good reputation and although it may be a bit difficult, it is worth the payoff.

The key takeaway here is you must invest time and effort into building a reputation built on honesty, transparency and accountability. The masses can either sing your praises or they can destroy your brand—it is up to turn the tide in your favor. Your willingness to face customer complaints head-on and not letting stubbornness or pride lead you to make rash decisions are your biggest assets in ensuring your reputation is as good as it can be.

Do Your Homework When Choosing an SEO Company

If you are an online business owner, investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is an absolute must. There are millions of sites on the Internet and in order to stand out, your site must be designed and formatted in a specific way. This optimization process is very complex with a lot of variables involved, so it is best to go with a professional to ensure that it’s done correctly. Since more and more businesses are deciding to cultivate a web presence, a lot of SEO companies have sprung up in the past couple of years and it is necessary to do your research in order to choose the best one.

The first thing you should ask an SEO company is what kind of tactics they employ. Do they use best business practices and employ “white hat” techniques? You want to work with a company that only uses ethical methods for optimizing your site, otherwise you run the risk of your site being penalized or banned outright.

Another thing to look out for is a company’s willingness to share information with you. Are they willing to answer your questions and explain the processes they use? Or, are they being secretive and evasive about their methods? If it is the latter, you should steer clear, because they are most likely utilizing “black hat” tactics that violate search engines’ rules and regulations and will only end up negatively affecting your site.

Once you feel confident you have found a reputable company, make sure you check out what others have said about them. Do an online search of their company name and see what comes up. You cannot afford to not take this step, for you will gain invaluable insight into what they are really like and if they have any unhappy customers. Although it would be nice to be able to trust a company’s claims, you just never know, so do not neglect to do a little digging.

Keep in mind you will not see results overnight with SEO; rather, it is an ongoing process that is constantly changing and evolving. So, make sure the company you choose isn’t promising you overnight results and request frequent updates. If done right, SEO will yield great dividends and is a worthwhile investment—just be smart about it.

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How Squidoo Can Boost Your Site’s SEO

There are tons of social service websites out there, each with its own unique interface and tools to help with link building and online promotion. It is easy to get them confused and to be unclear on what, exactly, these different websites have to offer, especially in terms of search engine optimization. Squidoo is one such site that can positively influence your SEO.

Squidoo consists of a collection of lenses, which are pages on a wide variety of different topics. In order to use Squidoo to your advantage, you need to come up with an appropriate topic pertaining to your area of expertise and write your lens using well thought out and researched keywords. The name of your lens will be reflected in your URL, so take care when naming it to glean the most beneficial ranking results. You can add eye-catching modules to your lens, such as videos, images or infographics, to attract attention to your lens.

Each individual lens is ranked on Squidoo, with a higher ranking earning more visibility, so it is a good idea to take some time to really make sure that your lens looks thorough and professional. Make sure to add a photograph and a biography frequently update your lens and make comments and “favorite” other lens that you find relevant. Once you have created a high-quality, relevant lens, you will then want to promote it through the usual channels of link building, social media and the like. Since Squidoo contains a PageRank of 8, it is a very effective tool for gaining quality links back to any page of your website.

Although it will take some time and effort on your part, Squidoo is worth experimenting with to boost your SEO by attaining free link juice.