Content Marketing in 2014

Last year we learned that content was a big deal in order to rank in Google search and this year nothing has changed. In fact, it has become even more important. We see that Google is ranking content that people are sharing and discussing. So when you are devising content, ask yourself is your information compelling, interesting, helpful – will people pass it on to others because they think it will bring benefit to their connections?

How do you create an effective content marketing strategy for your business.

1. First of all, if you have a website but no blog it might be a good time to implement a blog. Think about how a blog can add value to your web presence.Will a blog on your website bring more benefit (e.g. blog.yourwebsite.com or http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog) or should you set up an external blog on a blog site e.g. yourcompanyname.wordpress.com. If you have a news/info area already on your website where you can add new content, then an external blog will drive traffic into your website and create valuable links for the search engines. If on the other hand, you don’t have an updateable area on your website, you can attach a blog to your website to build out the content on you website. With any activity be clear about your objectives and what you want to achieve from that activity.

2. Make sure you know your audience. What are they looking for? What are the problems they need solved? What can you do to make their life easier? It is important that you help your prospective customers by giving them information that they will find useful. It is about holding the interest of your reader and putting yourself in their shoes.

3. What sort of content are you able to offer your potential customers – will it be text articles, pdf downloads, videos, eBooks etc .Maybe you can create a nice infographic about changes within your industry? Or maybe a downloadable eBook of tips and trends for your particular niche. Can you use images, ask questions. What type of content will engage with your target market? Make sure your content is always unique and that it is speaking to your customers.

4. You now need to plan your content around specific dates of the year relevant to your business. Have a content calendar in place and decide who in your organisation is going to write each article and what content piece will be written for that time of the year. For instance, Valentine’s Day is coming up soon and if you have an ecommerce store that sells gifts, flowers, trips away etc it is now time to start planning your content around these areas. Consider outsourcing article writing to a third party content marketing provider if you won’t get around to it. The key is to build a schedule and a routine and stick to you. Once your followers expect content, don’t let them down. The search engines will reward you for regular, relevant content focused on the keywords that are important to your business.

5. Adapt your content to the right audience. If you are sharing your content across various channels, be sure to customise it to suit the audience in question.That infographic we talked about earlier will not get the same reaction on Facebook as it would on Twitter for instance. So create different types of content for each internet platform.

6. Finally, a vital part of your content marketing strategy will be the tracking of activity around your content. How many people clicked that article link on your website? How many people viewed that video on Facebook? How many times was that whitepaper downloaded on Twitter? Did any of this traffic become a customer for your business? Which platform drove the highest quality visitors to your website? ……You get the idea.

At Webresults.ie we identify the right digital marketing strategy for your business in order to achieve maximum results for your business and increase your online revenue.

We can work with you through our outsourced services or if you would like to bring the skills in-house find out more about our Web Mentor Programme where we guide you and ensure your time is focused on activities that will drive results.

If you would like to grow your business through the web in 2014 contact WebResults.ie now for a Free audit of your website. We will identify any weaknesses that exist and offer some pointers on how you can drive your business to its full potential on the web.

The Importance of Link Building

3 Key Factors of Link Building:

 

Link building is a task combined with creating good content. Within your content there should be links to certain areas of your website. If you are talking about web services in your content piece, why not promote your own web services with a link.

A key aspect of content creation is that if it’s good, then it will get shared and linked freely by those who liked it. This is where Social Media comes in helpful for sharing content easily with your audience. You can’t however rely solely on other people linking your content so here are the 3 key aspects of link building you should incorporate into your content;

 

1) Anchor Text:

The anchor text is the textual representation of a hyperlink, for example the anchor text for this link is “this link” with the hyperlink being “www.webresults.ie”. Anchor text is important because most major search engines use it to determine what keywords are relevant to a page. For example, if you want to rank for the term “coffee shop,” then you should try to get as many links as you can with “coffee shop” as the anchor text.

 

2) Authority of Linking Domain:

The ultimate goal in link building is to get as many inbound links to your site as possible. This is important for your SEO strategy as it shows search engines that your page is of importance and offers valuable content. The more inbound links you have, then the more likely you are to rank for a certain keyword.

Having a lot of inbound links is all well and good, but having inbound links from domains that have a high authority is even better. Having inbound links from sites with high authority such as The Irish Times, is much better than having links coming from your mate Dave’s blog.

You can check the authority of a page you wish to apply an inbound link on with tools such as moz.com

 

3) Focus your links on specific pages within the website:

When building links to your website, you should focus bringing the readers to a very specific page of your website, otherwise the link is pointless. If in your content piece you are talking about a new coffee bean which will blow both your mind and taste buds, then maybe you could place a link within this piece to a page on your website explaining the variety of coffee products you have in your cafe.

After a while you will begin to see which pages on your site are getting the most visits or showing up for searches, once you see which is doing the best, continue promoting them and building more links to have it climb the rankings.

If you have any enquiries about link building, or any other digital marketing services, then please contact us.

Inbound Marketing Essentials

 

Inbound Marketing is seen by many in the industry, as an essential tool for naturally attracting a wide range of potential customers. Inbound Marketing is a non aggressive approach to making your business known to new customers and forming a bond with current ones. When it comes to good Inbound Marketing practice, here are some of the essentials.

 

Know Your Customers:

A huge factor of Inbound Marketing is providing relevant and useful content / information for your target market. To do this you need to know who your customers are and what they are interested in. A breakdown of customer demographics and interests would be ideal.

 

Research Keywords Relevant to you:

Carry out a keyword analysis for words and terms associated with your business. The objective is to target keywords with a high search rate. Have your keywords as specific as possible to approach your target market rather than approach a broad and unreliable market.

 

Have a Strategy for your Content: (Know your Objectives)

Be sure to speak to your customers about content relevant to your industry. Your aim is to speak to each customer type at each level of the “sales funnel” (Leads – Opportunities – Proposals – New Customers).

 

Create Content Frequently:

Your aim is to now create educational, thought provoking content related to your business area. Think of what you would be more likely to share or comment on, don’t focus on sales and talking about what you do.  You need to be doing this at least once a week to keep your site fresh.

 

Insert Links:

Having both internal and external links throughout your content can both help with user experience and encourage inbound links from those external websites. Try to fit in maybe 1 or 2 links in your content.

 

Include Images:

Images help break up the content for the reader making the content more presentable when done correctly. Include an image title and alt text so that search engines can pick them up.

 

Incorporate Calls to Action:

After reading your piece of content, give the reader something to do or somewhere to go, ideally back to your website!

 

Share on Social Media:

Social Media sites provide a great platform for you to get your content out there and shared. It is a great opportunity for creating more inbound links to your site.

Why use Inbound Marketing for Your Business?

Build Your Business Profile:

Present your business as the experts in your field offering relevant, helpful information, updates, tips and advice. Generally information that is helpful to your clients and prospects when they are in the market for your products/services.

Give Personality to Your Brand:

Inbound marketing enables companies to express themselves in an informal manner. They can show what their company is passionate about and what motivates them.

Build Your Business Profile on the Web:

By offering interesting, engaging content, your contacts and followers will share your information with their contacts, building your community and getting your business in front of new prospects.

Engage With Customers:                 

Inbound marketing enables your company to engage with your customers on personal level

and build strong relationships. It makes your company more approachable to the public.

Improve Your SEO:                           

Effective inbound marketing will improve your SEO. The search engines are placing more and more priority on social media activities and links when presenting search engine results. By focussing on the terms that are most relevant and building content around them on both social networks and your site, you will build up your rankings on the search engines for terms most relevant to your business. At Webresults.ie we can help you create a successful content strategy that will maximise your SEO and social media activity to drive sales for your business.

If you would like to find out how to devise and implement a successful inbound marketing strategy for your business that will build your profile and drive more high quality customers to your business, please contact Webresults.

Content Writing: An Inbound Marketing Essential

Content Writing:

 

Content Writing

Content writing is a form of inbound marketing which many marketers having taken a great interest in. This involves writing blogs or articles about topics which relate to your company. This content is given out freely to the public and is a good way of connecting with your customers and sharing your knowledge presenting you as the expert in your field.

The content will involve a mix of topics and formats around topics that are relevant to your target market and information that will help them move closer to using your services or purchasing your products.
The approach is not promotional and doesn’t involve hard sales language. The content is more focused on relevancy, interesting, compelling and practical information. The content could be a review of a new product or a piece on the changing environment of an industry, a relevant event or a question or comment to get engagement or interaction from the reader It should help draw parallels between what is important to the customer and what the company stands for.

Research carried out by Hubspot revealed that those who blogged recorded 55% more visitors than those who didn’t, showing the power good content can have. However, for this content to succeed in warming your brand to current and potential customers; it has to be good!

 

9/10 Business to Business (B2B) companies say that they will be producing more content than they did last year. This means that there will be a constant stream of content covering every area of business. So you will need to make your content stand out from the crowd and be beneficial to the reader, offering good advice and a critical outlook, so that it has a relevant impact on the customer’s viewpoint.

When writing a blog try to create educational, thought provoking content related to your company. Think of what you would be more likely to share or comment on, don’t focus on  sales and talking about what you do.

Your website and blog content should be used in conjunction with other inbound marketing tactics such as SEO and Social Media, including the search terms you are targeting as a business so that your content will show up in search engine results.

Social media is a great tool for making people aware of your website content or your blog. By leaving links to your blog on social media sites, customers might then explore the rest of your site having read your piece. This could lead to sales and feedback.

Why use content writing?

 

Build Customer Relationships:  

• With good content writing you can build strong relationships with current and potential customers. At Webresults we can help you devise a content plan and create strong and compelling content

 

Give Customers an insight into you:    

• Good content writing can give customers an insight into what it is your company is passionate about and puts a human voice behind the brand. This will build trust with your customers

Create Natural Interest:             

• Content writing is a good way of gaining natural interest in your brand from potential customers. Customers will also view your brand more favourably to those who force advertising at them constantly

      Building your rankings on the search engines:

• Publishing relevant content, that is optimised and around topics that your target market are searching around and interested in, will offer more opportunity for the search engines to pick up your information pieces/articles and by your readers liking and sharing your content, they are giving the search engines more reasons to rank your content above other similar content.

Present you as the expert in your field- Having a strong content plan will build the profile of your business as well as your own professional profile, giving more credibility in your business and your services.

 

For more information and advice on good content writing, contact us at: http://www.webresults.ie/contact

A Quick Guide to Social Media Marketing

Have you started using social media to promote your business? Are you unsure of how to use it properly/effectively for online advertising? Our article on Social Media for beginners may be just what you need to understand how and why it is a great tool for your business.

You can read more about Social Media Marketing at A Quick Guide to Social Media Marketing.

If you would like more information on social media marketing and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

5 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

You can blog on a regularly basis with quality content but if you don’t have good SEO, then odds are you won’t have many readers. WordPress, the leading bloging platform takes Seo very seriously and provides a plugin community that values SEO and has developed a number of plugins to help. Plugins allows users to extend their WordPress blogs abilities beyond the features that are part of the base install; WordPress has a database of over 18,000 plugins with different features.

The five plugins listed below will increase traffic to your blog. They will enable you choose the right tags, tell search robots what to work on, optimize your post titles and more.

1. Automatic SEO Links

2. Google XML Sitemaps

3. Nofollow Case by Case

4. SEO for Paged Comments

5. SEO friendly and HTML valid subheadings

To read more on this go to article 5 of the Best Seo Plugins for WordPress on our website

Google Adwords – Costly unless effectively managed

Google Adwords can be a costly form of advertising unless your PPC Campaign is correctly managed! Angel Investment Network found that the keyword Insurance was the most expensive word in Pay Per Click advertising via Google Adwords, demanding $54.91 CPC. So how does this affect your business? Cost effective PPC advertising relies on bidding an amount you can afford on keywords that will attract the right customers, i.e. visitors that will convert to actual sales. A well managed campaign, on the other hand can be a very cost effective way to attract customers.

To find out more about this  read the full article on cost-effective management of Google Adwords Pay Per Click Campaigns.

Networked Blogs – Social Media Tool

Networked Blogs is a user-generated blog directory and syndication tool. It  allows you to bring blog posts and news sources direct to your Facebook, Twitter and mobile.

Some features include:

• Add blog to directory
• Automatic publish to Facebook
• Add blog tab to Facebook pages
• Publish to twitter page
• Google Analytics Tracking

For more information on Networked blog tool and how it can work for your business, read the full article here.

How to Get Backlinks Automatically

We all work hard to get backlinks to our sites, in fact, it’s probably the most time consuming job we all have to perform to help our websites succeed. A new WordPress plugin has been released, this plugin is called Digi Auto Links, and it gives you automated backlinks for every single blog article you write. Digi Auto Links gives you backlinks in all the right places – from sites that are relevant to your niche, which makes them much more valuable. These are high ranking, Panda-friendly links that would take you hours to get manually, but this plugin does it for you in mere seconds.

What the plug in can do for you:

The Benefits of Blogging for SEO

A Company blog is often set up as a medium to reach your target market; informing and providing them with content that you think would appeal to them. It allows you to create an informal public persona which makes your company more accessible to the public.

Uploading good quality / relevant information will not only attract visitors (and potential customers) to your blog and website, but will help build up your reputation. This can result in visitors getting involved e.g. signing up to regular updates, RSS Feeds, commenting etc.

Creating a company blog not only benefits your target market but can also be a great way to improve the Search Engine Optimisation of your website.

The benefits of Blogging for SEO purposes include: